The article is talking about the social problem an individual finds himself fixed and the only way to finding the way out is to justify the wrong done by presenting it as a good. In the article, the activities unfold from the narration from Lisa McIntyre. She discusses the murder case of Hernando Washington. Right away from the beginning of the article, McIntyre states that the criminal offense that Hernando had committed had left a big impression on her. The people who knew her could not imagine a person of such a character could indeed take away a life of another person. The action of killing seemed much more than a so bizarre to her (McIntyre 2014, p. 9). To help understand why Hernando did such a heinous crime of taking away the life, one will need to read and integrate the article and use personal understanding on the sociological imagination to look into the matter critically to justify whether the action was justified or not. Another concern as a reader should consider is figuring out whether confusion played I people judging her wrongly opposite to what she thought was supposed to mean correct to her. Hernando is from South Chicago.
He is seen to be involved on most activity that is against the law that makes her be aligned in court. Hernando Kidnaps Sarah rapes and kills her and thinks it is not wrong or the act is against the law. The most exciting part is where Lisa explains why Hernando made him do the actions. Lisa states that “It was not that, in his mind, Hernando did not understand that robbery, kidnapping, rape, and murder are against the law.
The fact at first he had denied doing them helped prove that” (McIntyre 2014, p. 24). So, McIntyre knew that Hernando knew that these things were against the law, but he could not understand why everyone was making such a big deal about what he had done (McIntyre 2014, p. 24). Because “he showed no remorse for what he had done, and was only sorry that he got caught, not for what he had done to Sarah”(McIntyre 2014, p. 24).Lisa says that “he was only sorry that head ben caught and had to deal with the consequences” (McIntyre 2014, p. 25).
To Him, Flunking was merely too much punishment. It was just not a big deal in his eyes. Before the presentation of the case in the court, Hernando had got away with the murder of three women who were also from South Chicago. She had realized that the murder was done in hopes of not getting caught, but when Hernando did indeed get caught, he thought the punishment did not fit the crime (McIntyre 2014, p. 25). The anger and confusion can be said to have developed by the people of South Chicago, and no legal action was done even after informing the government namely the policy and the court of law. He thus thinks that the revenge is the only oar comes back to bringing justice to his brother’s death. Lisa McIntyre uses the sociological imagination to understand why Hernando had done what he had done, by looking at the underlying issues, and what Hernando was thinking, or thought about the situation.
McIntyre looked at his background and had seen that he had grown up on Chicago’s South Side, and saw that murder is not a big deal in this area. She even stated that when a husband would kill his wife, it was jokingly referred to by police as a “South Side divorce” (McIntyre 2014, p.25). Police did not care about black people when they were murdered; it was not of higher concern for them. Hernando even had personal experiences in his life where police treated murder/rape as something that was not a big deal. His sister was raped, where the police did not help her at all, and despite finding all covered in blood, they did not help her.
Thinking she had seen her safety by meeting with the police car but to the amazement, the female cop indeed insulted her and told her to go home alone. And when his brother was murdered, the police did not even care enough to arrest the man who did it. Hernando had also been released on bail before for rape, so he had never received consequences for his actions (McIntyre 2014, p. 25). Though Hernando Washington had done a terrible thing but using the sociological imagination, we can put a better viewpoint on why Hernando did not think it was a big deal, and why he felt no remorse for what he had done(McIntyre 2014, p.25). The environment in which he had spent the whole of his lie, doing such a crime did not have consequences. For this can, we can see through the eyes of another by understanding the context. Let say that one is planning to commit murder and realizes that one could get caught and can be sentenced to jail for a whole life or be executed.
Person of sane mind will consider changing the final decision. That what makes one choose not to commit the crime is the consequence of the social rule. Regarding the socially implemented rules, we skew most of our daily choice as one think that the event will affect the entire society. Lisa article indeed was an eye-opener to the real world view of the offenders and the reality involved in judging the severity of consequence. Reference McIntyre, Lisa J. 2014, “Hernando Washington” Pp.18-27 in The Practical Skeptic: Reading in Sociology .CA: Washington State University Press.
