Me, My Family, and My Community Values

When asked what the difference is between race and ethnicity, I would answer with a blank stare. I believe the two words are used interchangeably in normal conversation all the time; It gets difficult to decipher their true meaning after using it improperly for so long. In my own words I would say race is physical. You can look at someone and tell what their race is fairly easily whether they be Asian, Caucasian, Black, or Hispanic. Where Ethnicity has to do more with ancestry and involves the country of which your family was a citizen of before coming to their current country. Gender is a slippery slope when you talk about the modern definition.

My definition would define gender as the label received at birth by a doctor. Hello, I’m Jonathan E. Fernezan. I am a 21-year-old Information Technology student attending Kutztown University and I am a black Haitian male. Our textbook, Introduction to Social Wealth and Social Welfare, defines Race as “The category of people who share a common descent and genetic origin that may be distinguished by ‘certain physical traits’ or ‘interests, habits, or characteristics’. Gender is defined as “The social and psychological characteristics associated with being female or male”. Ethnicity is defined as “The affiliation with a larger group of people who have common racial, national, tribal, religious, linguistic, or cultural origin or background. ” If you didn’t notice, my definitions differ from the definitions given in the book, but I believe that my definition gave the general idea of what race, ethnicity, and gender are while the book clearified it. My FamilyI think I live in a normal enough house, normal by today's standards anyways. I live in a twin house in Allentown, PA with my two little sisters, step-father, and mother. I also have two older sisters, but they do not live at home. My oldest sister’s name is Daniella, although she prefers Ella. She is 26 if my memory serves me and she is a black Haitian female.

My second oldest sister, who is my step sister, is 22 and a black Haitian female; her name is Patricia. My youngest sister’s name is Selah and she is 7 years old; She is a black Haitian female. My second youngest sister is 10 years old and, you guessed it, she is a black Haitian female; her name is Kenaniah, but everyone calls her Niah. My step-father's name ironically is John. He’s 50, I believe, and he is a black Haitian male. Lastly, the saint who is my mother is Roseline; She prefers to be called Roz. She is around 47 (don’t tell her I told you that) and she is a black Haitian female. When it comes to uniqueness, I had to rack my brain a bit to come up with what makes my family different from the others in the community because I honestly feel that my family is the generic example of the modern lower class in America. One of the things I think we can say is unique to us in our community is our Ethnicity. The population on the East side of Allentown is comprised mainly of Caucasians, Syrians, and Hispanics. There are also Black people, but of the one’s that I have observed, none of them have been Haitian. With our Haitian Ethnicity comes traditions that our culture has for certain holidays. So, another difference we have is the way we celebrate New Year's. Every New Year's my mom makes a traditional Haitian New Year's soup for the family to eat. For similarities, I would point to the fact that the house hold is comprised of two heterosexual parents with children. This is what most of the families in the area have. Another similarity would be that my family is fairly religious and are active members of the church they attend. Like a lot of the community, religion, for my family, is an important part of their lives. My Community For me, in the context of social work, community is a group of people who live in close proximity to each other.

The text book defines community as "a number of people who have something in common with one another that connects them in some way and that distinguishes them from others”. My community would consist of the Allentown residents who live on the East side of the Lehigh river. I believe there is a distinct difference between people who live on the East side compared to those who live on the West side. The easiest way to distinguish would be the housing. Those who live on the West side of Allentown are more likely to be in the downtown area where the housing is mostly comprised of row homes and apartments where on the East side of Allentown there are mostly Twin homes and individual houses. Community Resources Social institutions are defined as “Groups of persons banded together for common purposes having rights, privileges, liabilities, goals, or objectives distinct and independent from those of individual members” (). Any community that has a decent population is going to inevitably have social institutions available to them close by. Allentown is not a small city at all, even when you narrow it down to just the East side. On the East side we have religious, educational, legal, market, and health institutions. While these are not the only kinds of institutions we have available, they will be the institutions I will be providing examples of. For religious we have Christian churches as well as Catholic churches. The East side, of Allentown, has Ritter Elementary as well as Dieruff as its educational institutions. Our health institutions consist of normal family practice doctors as well as the emergency walk in clinic on Airport Road. The legal institutions on the East side include a district court and a township building for the local township.

The grocery stores Redner’s and Giant would be the East side’s example of market intuitions. ValuesLike many fields of work that directly involve people, social work has core values. These six core professional values are service, social justice, dignity and worth of the person, importance of human rights, integrity, and competence. The most important core value, in my opinion, would be integrity. I believe integrity encompasses most of the core values by itself. If a person has integrity, then they would be sure to follow the six core values regardless of the situation they find themselves in while in their field of work. Social Issue and ValuesIn a 2015 raid in July by the FBI on Allentown City Hall and Ex-Mayor Ed Pawlowski’s house the public was shocked to discover the scandalous behavior of our elected city officials. In what was revealed to be a two-year parallel investigation into the Cities of Allentown and Reading, the corruption rampant in City Hall was brought to the public’s attention. A couple months later is when the charges started to be passed out to officials like hotcakes. First came Allentown developer Ramzi Haddad who plead guilty in court to conspiracy to commit bribery. Next was Allentown assistant solicitor, Dale Wiles, who plead guilty to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. These charges were followed by another 9 city officials and public figures being found guilty of one corruption crime or another. The cultivating prosecution was of the Ex-Mayor himself. Ex-Mayor Pawlowski was found guilty of 47 out of the 54 counts he was charged with. I chose this article because it directly affects the community. This is the public’s money, my money, that Ex-Mayor Pawlowski was toying with. The community, myself included, entrusted him to do the right thing while in the Mayoral office and he let us all down and will face the consequences of his actions. It upsets me to think that he used all of our tax money for his own personal gain.