Cosmopolitan Checklist Research Paper

A cosmopolitan canopy, as defined by sociologist Elijah Anderson, are public spaces where diverse people gather, and feel comfortable striking up sometimes surprisingly intimate conversations. Cosmopolitan canopies are not always as straightforward as Anderson makes them out to be. A party tour boat is a ship that takes its passengers around a river for about an hour and a half and it has a small buffet line of various foods. A party tour boat is a Cosmopolitan Canopy because, people from different countries join together in dancing to music from various countries, no one is forced to dance or stay inside the cabin, and almost every passenger on the ships got up to dance at least once. I love dancing, but to find places that people will actually join me in dancing is extremely challenging. When I go to parties and start dancing to the music, people will look at me as though I am committing a crime
or they will tell me to stop. When I first went on a party tour boat I went with my friends for a birthday function.
I honestly believed we would be the only people that would be dancing, but I was proved to be wrong. About 20 minutes into the tour, the DJ began to play the cupid shuffle and my friends and I were the first passengers to rush to the dance floor. As I looked around the room, I saw couples that appeared to be around 80 years old dancing, I saw Korean women get up and dance, I also noticed someone who looked like they would rather be somewhere else get up, smile and dance. About a year and a half later, my high school music department decided to go on a trip to New Jersey and Pennsylvania to compete in “Music in the Parks” at the Six Flags in New Jersey. On this trip, we also went on a party boat cruise and by the time we got to the tour, we were all tired and hungry from travelling and playing music most of the day. When we got on the ship, there were many people from different countries. It appeared as though there was more of a diverse group of people than on the Washington D.C. cruise, because there were about 40%
Latinos, 30% African Americans, 15% Whites and 15% Asians. . I was able to hear people speaking Spanish, Hindi, Portuguese and one other non-English language around the boat. When the music began to play, it was a song called, “Lejos de aqui” and everyone, including me, got up and began dancing to the Reggaeton. The Latina teenagers that were there even taught my band friends and me how to properly dance to the music. When they played some American dances that the foreigners did not know, we would teach them how to do them too. The dance floor was so full that people had to go out to the deck to keep dancing, and everyone on the ship was either dancing or singing the songs, wherever they were. One could argue that people have to pay to get on these tours so, they have to get along with everyone or be friendly. One could also argue that adults are able to access liquor on these ships and that the liquor would be an influence on the adults dancing. I also went on a pirate ship in Washington D.C. this past summer with my family and on the ship there were “pirates” as well as an interactive search for the “thief” who had stolen the treasure chest from the crew. They even had a sing along and dances. The parents were divided and the children were divided and only spoke to children that looked like them. There was a point where the children were allowed to shoot water cannons at the “thief” and I noticed all of the minority children stayed on one side and the White children stayed on the other side. On the tour boats I went on, the bars were open for the parents, but almost none of the parents went to purchase liquor. On the Pirate ship, many parents were drinking and many parents appeared to be unhappy. A major impact on most places not being Cosmopolitan Canopies is, voluntary social segregation. In a study on mice and humans, completed by, Jeffrey Mogil, a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, Mogil found that people and mice are similar in thought processes. He also found that the stress of being around strangers on a daily basis prevents both, humans and mice, from feeling empathy towards strangers. On the contrary, mice that lived with another mouse felt emotional pain when their roommate or a familiar mouse was given a painful stimulus. The same was found in humans. This, is one of the main reasons why