Osmaning Ventura Biography

Hello, My name is Osmaning Ventura and I welcome you to my blog for my sociology course on Deviant Behavior. I am currently a Senior Psych major with a sociology minor at Siena College in Albany New York a small private Franciscan catholic school. The demographics of the area is pretty wealthy and populated with many shopping centers and living areas. Background about me is that I am a 21 year old male Dominican from the inner city of New York City. I am a first generation college student in family as my mother is attending school at the moment in pursuit of her degree as well,  as well as my twin brother who also attends Siena college. This means a lot to me as I am not alone in this process of changing history for my family with an education and being able to go away for college as an opportunity that many people from my background do not receive. More about me is that I am an introvert who occasionally steps out of my bubble to engage and communicate with people. I am passionate about many things in my life such as my hobbies , my hobbies include watching movies (scary, thrillers) , playing video games , working out and spending time with friends and watching sports. These things are important to my persona as I am who am because of values and morals I have developed from engaging in these hobbies and activities. My persona as a Dominican male from the city have made me who I am as my morals and  beliefs are different from those around me, as the household I grew up in was female dominated and the women controlled the household and took care of the men such as me and my brother. This is different but similar from other American cultures such as being white in America as we exhibit different norms and practices. An example of this is that usually in Dominican cultures the mother teaches their son that their woman should take care of them and shouldn’t cook or clean after themselves. Continuing off of this mothers also baby their sons but push their daughters to be independent and powerful as their where. This is different from other cultures in America as the household is usually male dominated and the woman stay home and take care of the kids as the father is the bread winner in common households. This is also different as my household included 3 women single parents such as my grandmother , my mother and my aunt who raised me and where the breadwinners of the household which differs from many other cultures in America. Gender roles are broken in the culture I grew up in as woman have more power and are seen as independent and strong in our society as they are our leaders.

(Me On the Right)A deviant behavior that I am involved or associated with is the behavior of rule-breaking behavior as a child I was an obedient child who followed rules and listened to authority with out a problem. The cultures that I have experienced and been around since entering college made me break out of my shell and mindset of obedience and more of fun and rule breaking.  This specific behavior developed through a culture that helped manifest and embody such a lifestyle such as attending a 4 year college in which I dorm. Thus the behavior being engaged in more often. This could be seen as correlate cause to my behavior as previously I did not engage in rule breaking behavior such as underage drinking or stealing of meals in the dinning halls. These behaviors manifested and flourished once coming to college and it deemed as mainstream behavior for college students to engage in such behavior as it is portrayed in media, movies and TV shows that we watch today. Public social institutions instill and perpetuate this kind of behavior by not having big consequences and or deterrent to the actions and activities being engaged in. On an individual level this effects my persona as I’m often noticed as a person of color with minimal resources in a college institution that has people with many resources and power. This effects me as I could easily be caught in engaging in such rule breaking behavior and face true consequences as white counter parts with resources and connections may not suffer a same fate. Which coincide with social norms of society in terms of deviance.

An interesting fact that shows the number of heritage and culture being a minority group is that only 40.8 million Dominicans live in the U.S . Following this statistic about Dominicans the percent of Dominicans in college is only 10%- 11% in graduate programs. The overall statistic of Hispanic/Latinos in the college pool is only 12%. It is also shown that Hispanics are less 22% likely to have debt than white and black households but due to the fact they attend community colleges or not attending college at all resulting in less debt than those who do and those who go to expensive colleges. A positive statistic about Hispanic/Latinos is that the dropout rate has decreased to a low of 35%.

Becker, Howard S. Outsiders studies in the sociology of deviance. New York, NY: Free Press

of Glencoe, 1963.

Krogstad, Jens Manuel. “5 Facts about Latinos and Education.” Pew Research Center, 28

July 2016, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/28/5-facts-about-latinos-and-                Education/.