Saints and Roughnecks

In class we read an article about social deviance. The article provided too classes of people at a high school. The saints and the roughnecks. The saints were rich, white, "good" kids that were allowed to break the rules. when they did break rules and laws it was just considered "boys being boys" or they were just acting out. The roughnecks had it the exact opposite way. They were expected to be bad and eventually were bad. The key point of these was the groups economic back round. The saints had money, the roughnecks didn't. It is as simple as that. Money was the main factor on how society treated them. I would agree that wealth is the overwhelming factor in how our society views people. We expect the poor to break the rules and the rich to uphold them when they want to.

There are definitely kids at my high school who would be considered saints. Without any names, kids with rich parents who play sports, mainly lacrosse and football could be considered saints. I'm not generalizing all athletes, as I once played football myself, because our teams are very diverse. But the richer the kid, the better the kid is at that sport, the more they can get away with. I find that most of the time, the deviance isn't even hidden. It's blatant and no one cares or the people who do, don't matter. The kid's parents can turn a blind eye to such antics.

I would not say everyone is saint, if everyone was a saint at a high school, I do not think it could function. Things would become too much of a problem where no one could ignore it or it would become extremely bad. But the higher income of the school district, the more saints and we live in a very high income school district.