Sociological Rorschach Test

Nearly half [of] US murder victims are black: report. This is statistically significant given that blacks account for only 12.1% of the population. In this cloud of meaningless data, what do you see?

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An excerpt from C. Wright Mills’ “The Sociological Imagination” is standard reading in intro to sociology classes. From the Wiki entry:

Sociological imagination is a sociological term coined by American sociologist C. Wright Mills in 1959 describing the ability to connect seemingly impersonal and remote historical forces to the most basic incidents of an individual’s life. It suggests that people look at their own personal problems as social issues and, in general, try to connect their own individual experiences with the workings of society. The sociological imagination enables people to distinguish between personal troubles and public issues. For example, people in poverty by this perspective might stop to consider that they are not alone, and rather than blaming themselves should criticize the social forces that directed them into their present condition.

There are three key questions that constitute the core of Mills’ sociological imagination:

1. What is the structure of a particular society and how does it differ from other varieties of social order?
2. Where does this society stand in human history and what are its essential features?
3. What varieties of women and men live in this society and in this period, and what is happening to them?

Mills argued that ‘nowadays men often feel that their private lives are a series of traps’. Mills maintained that people are trapped because ‘their visions and their powers are limited to the close-up scenes of job, family [and] neighborhood’, and are not able to fully understand the greater sociological patterns related to their private troubles. Underlying this feeling of being trapped are the seemingly uncontrollable and continuous changes to society. Mills mentions unemployment, war, marriage and life in the city as examples where tension between private trouble and public issues becomes apparent.

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1) Each murder is an isolated incident with a separate victim and perpetrator.
2) All murder is violent, immoral, and inexcusable, therefore:
3) Blacks are clearly prone to violence and immorality at a much higher rate than the general population.

This is the logic that follows when all events in a class are looked at as separate. Courts may treat each murder as separate, but they draw upon precedent and apply common aggravating and mitigating factors into sentencing. Homicide detectives have to draw upon their experience of past murder cases and understand the patterns involved. Are these incidents truly isolated, or are they the same stories played out again and again over time?

Why does the story exist, and who authored it? How does society have to change for the ending to as well?