What spookier time is there to discuss politics than in the last few days before the month of Halloween?
Political socialization is a political term that represents the unique perspective and manner in which one views the world of politics. This phenomenon is shaped by several personal and professional influences, including family, ethnicity/race, gender, peer pressure, political conditions during the time of one’s history, mass media and the resource we’re all addicted to using, the Internet. Amongst these diverse influences, three political socialization factors have been most influential in the formation of my own political ideology, and thus, in the development of my personal opinion on individual issues and affairs: religion, education, and region.
For me personally, due to my moderately religious nature, religion has always influenced my political ideology, particularly concerning abortion and gay marriage laws. In my religion, abortion, homosexuality, gay marriage, and recreational use of drugs (other than caffeine), such as marijuana and ecstasy, are all permanently prohibited and unacceptable, first in the eyes of God and subsequently in the eyes of the entire religious community. Since my mother’s upbringing cultivated an integral and significant role of importance for religion in my life, I endeavor to avoid all those aforementioned forbidden matters in my religion. For example, it has been my religion that has shaped my opinions on the relatively recent 2015 Supreme Court case, Obergefell v. Hodges, that legalized gay marriage throughout the United States and it has been religion, once again, that has formed my outlook on the Eighteenth Amendment that was repealed by the Twenty First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, that dealt with Prohibition (the concept of the complete prohibition of alcoholic beverages). Similarly, due, once again, to my religious beliefs, I observed the new ubiquitous trend of multicolored rainbow themes that symbolized the pride and victory of the LGBT community following the legalization of same-sex marriage, and that appeared everywhere in the United States. My religion, in addition to the “ban on booze” consumption, has also molded my morals to include the complete debarment of abortion as an option. I do not condone abortion legalization laws and nor do I support the loosening legislation that is expanding abortion rights in California and elsewhere. But these are simply my own views; they do not define me. Moreover, my religion encourages cousin marriage between families, because it has been a century-long common cultural tradition for generations in Islamic communities. This practice has influenced me to accept nationwide cousin marriage legalization in all U.S. states. However, unlike my family, I am more aware of the genetic health risks associated with marriages between relatives as close as cousins. Thus, along with my religion, education has also been an equally important factor in the shaping of my political socialization.
By taking rigorous college preparatory courses in the humanities and social sciences, as well as in English, my education has served as the second most important factor in influencing my political socialization by providing me with much more information regarding the politics of diverse countries and their respective laws. To demonstrate, during my AP English Language and Composition course in junior year of high school, I was taught to analyze the exact purpose behind every single phrase of the Declaration of Independence, the precise intent of the Framers of the Constitution in every single request and decision they enacted as well as every grievance and redress they discussed. I had to interview individuals who had survived the Great Depression and note their mentalities, financial mindsets, and political opinions on several issues, debates or laws that trouble American society today (disclaimer: this list has only grown since I last interviewed people). And now, by being acutely aware of the political process through my AP U.S. Government and Politics and AP U.S. History courses from good ol’ high school, I, as an American citizen, am more informed and able to make wiser decisions regarding political party leaders, voting, laws, etc., all through my educational experience. For instance, I know that I can use initiative, the right of citizens outside the legislature to originate legislation, to propose my own laws. I can utilize referendum, a general vote on a single political question that has been referred to the governed for a direct decision, to vote on new laws. And I can also use the principle of recall to remove an existing elected government official from office by a petition followed by voting. In particular, I’ve noticed that education and history have manifested that women only secure few rights for the majority of mankind’s existence, and, even today near the end of 2018, little equality exists in societies other than American societies. In fact, even America lacks complete egalitarianism toward women. I would love to use the initiative to reconsider the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) for ratification in Congress and possibly give women legal equality in all societal aspects, permanently, through the U.S. Constitution, the supreme law of the land. Indeed, it was my academic background that gave me this radical outlook on women’s rights. What’s more, during my secondary education, I took extensive courses in geography, which made me aware of how most eastern states were conservative and how most western states were liberal. This formed my political opinion quite differently than it would otherwise have been defined; as I observed the extremely liberal nature of California, a liberal state, and its lack of restrictions on rights such as abortion, and non-traditional marriages (i.e. same-sex matrimony), I came to side with liberal states instead of the more conservative, and thus more ‘regulatory’, states, like, for example, my birth state of Texas. It is through my education in the geographical sciences that I have come to associate certain regions with past historical phenomena and events. For instance, I always associate the South or lower-right half of the Sunbelt states with a predominantly rural, agrarian and formerly African-American slave-dependent economy, and with the American Civil War and Civil Rights Act of 1964. Another case in point of how education has developed my political socialization is the fact of how my Honors Human Anatomy and Physiology science course during junior year led me to strengthen my already rigid staunch against recreational drug use and how it simultaneously prompted me to change my views regarding cousin marriage two conceptions that I primarily based on my religion. In this course, I thoroughly studied about how recreational drug use works to attack, damage and destroy specific parts of the human body both mentally and physiologically and exactly how painful this process could be, especially when considering the financial expenses of health treatment and health risks automatically accompanied with drug abuse. To demonstrate, I once watched a reality documentary describing the debilitating physiological effects of drugs on the human body. In the video clip, I witnessed how an active marijuana user had volunteered to interview for the documentary, and how he had died a few years later soon after the documentary was publicly released. This snippet of information was displayed at the very end of the documentary in the credits scenes, in tiny bold print, and was what set my priority to be a steadfast marijuana antagonist. However, this same education, attained through an anatomy course, also exposed me to the fact that cousin marriage leads to several genetic ailments and diseases, often fatal ones. After learning about the deadly irreversible genetic perils involved in cousin marriage relationships, my education caused me to adjust my perspective on cousin marriage laws to become a committed opponent instead of a proponent of the custom. In this context, however, education proves to be a far more important political socialization factor because, while my religion supports cousin marriage legalization, and even promotes the practice, my religion still has no such requirement. Since education has proven that cousin marriages yield many unhealthy ‘side-effects’, education has clearly played a more significant force in my political socialization than religion. Hence, education and religion clash simultaneously in this concept of cousin matrimony, but also act as two opposing factors that sophisticate my political socialization. Coming to UC Berkeley, the world’s No.1 public university, should shed some more light on this matter as well. Nevertheless, in addition to religion and education, regions have also heavily influenced my political socialization by acting as a tool for experiencing many diverse political environments, some more pleasant than others.
My experiences of living in various countries, namely in the U.S., the United Kingdom, Dubai, Bahrain, Oman, and Pakistan, for brief periods of time, exposed me to a manifold of political atmospheres, all of which have functioned as a powerful factor in molding my political ideology on different matters. My mother country, Pakistan, is a third world country with an infamous reputation for constant political instability. As I travel there nearly every summer to experience the daily power cuts, security issues, digital media restrictions and corrupt scandals of government, I notice the entirely homogeneous trend of keeping all females as “homemakers” confined solely to the ‘domestic sphere’ – a concept quite similar to what the French Enlightenment philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, termed “separate spheres” for men and women in his ‘parenting’ novel, Emile or On Education. In Pakistan, women have little employment opportunities available to them, with the exception of jobs as either physicians or menial maids. Even in 2018, this tragic reality still holds true. The social atmosphere is highly conservative and the existence, let alone enforcement, of women’s rights, is little to none. Likewise, in Middle Eastern countries, such as Dubai, Bahrain, and Oman, the economy is more developed, but the milieu remains a ‘traditional’ male-dominated society with little chance or amenities available for female progress. Laws fail to make significant positive changes concerning these problems as no individual is willing to lobby for a cause apparently deemed as ‘worthless’ as the ‘female situation’. For example, during the year of 2013, a new law was recently promulgated in Oman that forbade single women on employment visas from being able to sponsor their family members to receive resident visas; only families in which the male was the primary breadwinner on the employment visa could receive sponsored resident visas. This law severely restricted the rights of single women in the nation, and thus, this region, and its associated laws negatively affected my political opinion of it: My mother, a single parent on an employment visa, could never sponsor me on a resident visa, hence disqualifying me from attending school in the nation, as students on visit visas are, under the law, not permitted to enroll in any academic institution. This law messes up with young immigrant lives in the country.
Similarly, another restriction of female rights is evident in the Pakistani presidential election process. In Pakistan, women are permitted to run for office, but only if married. This law limited female ‘equality of opportunity’ to the extent that, these lack of women’s rights in the Middle East and Pakistan, have influenced my political ideology to become strictly a feminist one. Due to the tight laws confining female progress to small circles of exercise, I advocate more for female rights than for any other cause and I aspire for women to have a greater part in civic participation and in the general workplace, especially in industries that are ‘traditionally’ and historically controlled by men. I support a woman’s right to vote freely, regardless of her marital status, property qualifications, financial status, sexual orientation (religion still interferes here) or any other discriminatory criterion, and I also believe that women should have the right to sponsor their own family resident visas, regardless of whether a male is present or not, and regardless of whether the family member being sponsored is as distant as a third cousin once removed or as close as a biological teenage daughter.
The Middle East and South Asia are largely conservative countries with increasingly conservative policies. These regions have a strong focus on religion and have almost alwaysremained politically neutral in political conflicts amongst Middle Eastern nations. The religious milieu regularly attends prayers in local mosques and endeavor to steer clear of any and all controversial political affairs, quite similar to the manner Switzerland remained neutral during the Second World War. The driving age is 17 for Omani citizens (18 for expatriates in Oman), 18 for Pakistani citizens and Saudi Arabian males. In Saudi Arabia, women were – not too long ago – interdicted from driving altogether, making the matter of holding a license for ladies today a mind-boggling one. Studying the humanities or social sciences is often never a mandatory graduation requirement in Middle Eastern schools. Thus, most teenagers, and consequently adults whom those teenagers have grown up to be, grow up as denizens with zero political awareness of current political events in foreign nations and hence possess a trivial sense of importance in matters such as voting for political officials (those officials they are able to vote for, because these countries often have monarchical systems of government) or laws. The only type of political awareness that education instills in domestic Middle Eastern students is a general awareness of the country in which the respective school is situated. To illustrate, The American International School of Muscat (TAISM), the only school following an American curriculum in the Sultanate of Oman (that I briefly attended for my senior year of high school), offers either a “History of Oman” or “Modern Middle Eastern History” as a mandatory course for all students who wish to successfully graduate from the school. Likewise, the Dilmun School, a middle school located in Manama, a city in the Kingdom of Bahrain, taught a comprehensive course of Bahraini history to second and third-grade students. The course heavily stressed a thorough knowledge of the history of the dynasties and lineage of Bahraini monarchies since ancient times. These courses consistently remained narrow in both scope and depth, forming a very limited political perspective of only a single Middle Eastern country for students to judge the world and its politics with.
In stark contrast, the United States is, on the whole, one of the most politically liberal nations in the world, even when considering conservative states like Texas. California, as one of the most liberal western states of the US, has laws that include rights that support the minority of the population, and has legalized privileges that are absent in certain other US states, such as legalized abortion (with only a few exceptions) and cousin marriage laws, and extensive women’s rights. By living in this region, my convictions have ‘liberalized’ as well: though my religion asserts its own influence, I have independently liberalized my beliefs to ‘mildly condoning’ LGBT (Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender) rights, although religion will still continue to govern my morals and beliefs. In California, females are encouraged to actively participate in underrepresented fields, such as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) careers, because of the liberal beliefs of the society. The separation of church and state allows for different capabilities in the country, another idiosyncratic quality of American political culture. I noticed this perceptibly shallow political socialization only when it widened extensively after I immigrated back to the States during sophomore year of high school. The American region is extremely liberal, broad-minded and open to new suggestions, regardless of the suggester a crucial trait of justice and fairness in a country. While Pakistan’s invariable agenda of insecurity, corrupt politics and government, power cuts (load-shedding, etc.), and unstable policies/regulations made me loathe the complex topic of politics, developing a conscious nonchalance of it in my personality, the United States’ own political socialization, although an amalgamate of a sundry sense of political socialization, enabled me to revise my own political socialization. Through the diverse regions, I molded my political opinion to be a product of a number of different factors, all shaping a unique political socialization.
En masse, political socialization is more than just a mere, strictly defined political descriptor. It is a name that encompasses the history and analysis of several diverse factors. Some of these factors will have a stronger influence on shaping one’s thoughts and perspectives than others, some factors will have no influence at all, while certain other factors will command one’s entire viewpoint regarding particular political issues and debates. For each collegiette, these elements will be unique to him/her, as political socialization acts as a learning process of how one’s beliefs and opinions are similar or different to another’s and the reason why. Often a singular circumstance or a conglomerate of factors determine an individual’s distinct political socialization. It is indubitable, however, that both personal and professional aspects can have a serious effect on one’s precise political socialization and how it was developed throughout the history of the individual in question. Concerning my own particular case, after careful self-reflection, the three key components that most influenced my concept of political socialization were my religious creed, academic background and the various regions which I inhabited over the course of my nineteen-year teenage lifetime.