Far from attempting to parallel the 'cost' of coming to America now and during the eighteenth century, I would say that it seems unfair now that we are tightening the belt on who can and who cannot come into the United States to gain citizenship; we ask these people who seek the ‘American dream’, as it is so proudly called, for their time and their money. I share Sam’s frustration with contradictory beliefs and hypocrisy in finding the answer to immigration reform in particular. How can we shut the door to people now, who come to this country for reasons no different than people did in the eighteenth century? It seems very selfish. On the receiving end of building a wall on the border between the United States and Mexico is the belief that we should let everyone who wants to come in, do so legally and unconditionally. I could see how some would make the argument that this is illogical, and I suppose I could agree. Like other issues, I suppose that the real intellectual and morally sound resolution to immigration in the United States lies in the middle. We must compromise on what must be done to tackle immigration. I believe in comprehensive immigration reform that is expressed through legislation like the DREAM Act, which was a federal bill considered in the months following strict federal immigration laws that passed in 2006. The DREAM Act “would provide certain undocumented alien students who graduate from US high schools, who are of good moral character, arrived in the U.S. as minors, and have been in the country continuously for at least five years prior to the bill's enactment, the opportunity to earn conditional permanent residency”.

The more I think about immigration reform the more I begin to understand why it deserves attention and why it is so dynamic and difficult to find a solution for. I won't pretend like I understand all the politics and paperwork that goes behind immigration, but I have heard that immigrants who want to become citizens of the United States must wait several years before they gain their citizenship. Just what are these people waiting for? Is this a carrying capacity issue? Are we waiting for people to die off to let others in? Do we wait to investigate people for upwards of five years to insure that they are not going to harm our country before they are given citizenship? Is it like finally getting into Indigo after you've been waiting in line for hours on end? I'm not well rehearsed in the ecology of human beings and the 'consequences', if any, of at this very moment letting all who would like to come to the United States to do so without making these people wait for years on end to not even have confidence that they would gain full citizenship.

Religion is always a sketchy subject to satirize. Recently, Seth MacFarlane was on Larry King talking about this same issue. What he said was that when you're a writer of Trey Parker and Matt Stone's genre, poking fun of religion is a matter of weighing out pros and cons; is this joke so funny and so worth it to make when you know that people are going to be completely offended, and maybe even regard your joke as blasphemous? Members of Revolution Muslim, Trey Parker and Matt Stone are all United States citizens which gives them both the rights to threaten those who mock the faith that they believe in so passionately, and broadcast their 'offensive' cartoon on cable television. Whether or not violence will be inflicted upon the two writers is to be seen.

In terms of determining which stage of racial identity I am in, what I can say with most certainty is that I am not a humanitarian. I have to admit that when I heard what the class would be about Thursday I got excited. I thought it was remarkable when Sam highlighted the definition of the word crusade. It's something that we might not think about often, but a crusade is a "religiously sanctioned war." Campus Crusade for Christ anyone? Its bizarre to me how people can justify war in the name of something, or someone who frankly there is no existence of proving. Perhaps my agnostic atheism is what leads me to be ethnocentric towards all religion. It goes without saying that when I saw the title of the powerpoint that Sam showed us on Thursday, I sat back in my chair, laughed and a huge grin swept across my face. As an atheist, I think I had an advantage over everyone else in the class in terms of letting down what defenses all other Christians had put up upon hearing this lecture, and, as Dr. Mulvey commands of us, listen without waiting for my turn to speak. I was able to grasp what Sam was saying, not about Christians, but about what Middle Easterners might logically be lead to believe about followers of this specific faith. I was able to understand just how deeply rooted ethnocentrism is, in everyone. In myself for not understanding the argument that Sam was making, but for not believing in Christianity, of which so many people are passionate about. I was able to understand, but not justify why greedy Americans citizens and politicians chose and continue to remain in Iraq. I was able to understand the frustration that they must have towards us.

LOL @ the quintessential reference to 9/11. I completely disagree with this man's opinion. Rather than just stating that illegal immigration poses problems economically and socially, I’d like for him to state some real examples. Nor is not practical to consider drawing back all troops to secure our borders at home. More than that, our borders should be not secured to the degree that this ‘solution’ suggests. We need a different approach to immigration, as Congresswoman Linda Sanchez has suggested. As much attention as immigration deserves, our country has other priorities to consider first.

If your parents immigrated to Europe, why did they? The conditions of immigration in the early 1800s is are dissimilar to the ones that we have in present day. But perhaps the reasons why European immigrants, Chinese immigrants and Latin American immigrants who have come to the United States--two hundred years ago and this year--leave their country of origin for the same reason. Just because your family came here legally (at a time where it was easier to do so and the citizenship process was less difficult to go through) and a Mexican immigrant 'doesn't', does not mean that their intentions for coming to this country of ours to start a new life is any different than anyone else's. You tell me that your family came here to start a better life, and I’ll tell you about a boy of seventeen who sacrificed himself for his family and crossed the border to get a steady but unappreciable job (by American standards) of working at McDonald’s just so he could wire money back to his family in Mexico. The perceptions of immigrants is tarnished and could be no farther from the truth about who these people really are. Maybe I have a biased opinion because I live in southern California, and I have had the privilege of getting to know some of these people on a personal level; each of whom came with their own heartbreaking story of struggle. I share Sam’s frustration with hypocrisy, especially in politics and legislative action. Instead of raiding suspicious places of business and deporting hard-working people, consider comprehensive immigration reform. Revive the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act.

I also have a problem with this attitude that we should all speak English. Countries all around have official and national languages. India formally recognizes Devanagari Hindi as their language and style of characters. The United States does not have a national language. We should not all be forced to learn English. This does not mean that learning multiple languages is not beneficial; but being discouraged from speaking your first language takes away from your identity.

Why didn’t this man cite any references to his so-called solution to illegal immigration? Maybe he should have just made a shout-out to Fox News right a the end.

First off, do not assume that all black and brown people agree unconditionally with affirmative action. In all its good intentions affirmative action still falls short in many ways. I find it confusing and hard to justify affirmative action because, in order to level the playing field between white Christian males, some people of color, people of different faiths, and women of all these combinations must, in a way, step on the backs of others to attempt to have equal opportunity. I was peeing the other day in the HUB and I started to read the flyer that was staring me in the face. At the bottom of it, it read: "Penn State embraces affirmative action, equal opportunity and diversity of all peoples." I had difficulty pronouncing "affirmative action" and "equal opportunity" together. I wonder if employers consciously still make the decision to choose white women over male people of color? I could certainly see how this could be the case.
My opinions about affirmative action have shifted. I originally had several doubts about affirmative action, but now I have even more. I see Sam’s point about how this system of leveling the playing field benefits whites more than people of color.
There is something that disturbs me the most about the perceptions about students of color. I believe I have benefitted from affirmative action, but there are many other people of color who haven’t. I couldn’t tell you the amount of applications I received from colleges I did not even apply to; colleges who wanted me to attend them because of my Native American race and the lovely little integer I would add to their underclassman demographic statistics. Don’t let that lead you to make a hasty generalization about the academic performance or privileges that students of color are given in the application process. These tendencies can be combatted by always being conscious of that ever-prevalent percentage Sam showed us in class. Ten percent. Only ten percent of people currently employed have benefitted from affirmative action.
I am a little bothered that white women are chosen for more jobs, or acceptance at colleges not because they are white, but because for some reason we are inadvertently saying that its a better choice to have a woman work under you than a person of color. In the hierarchy of discrimination, does it logically follow that these statistics show that sexism is now less prevalent than racism? I am not advocating for all white women to be fired from their jobs because they are taking jobs away from people of color who are trying to work their way out of the lower and lower middle classes. But if this is the result of affirmative action as we have seen, clearly there is a lot more that must be done to level the playing field.

The standards of job employers are not lowered. Theoretically affirmative action whittles the decision down to two people. These two people are EQUALLY QUALIFIED for the job. Meaning, they meet the often high standards, like, for example, the ones demanded by medical institutions.

If your end goal in life is to reproduce, how is it acceptable to accept sex the act and rearing children and sending them to Sunday School and the long list of things that come with marriage, but ignore the birthing process and the natural and beautiful creation of the placenta that forms every 28 days?

Perhaps this study and the separate times at which it was conducted will show some of us how deeply rooted this issue of racism is. While I watched this sobering video during class on Thursday, I couldn't help but think about the dichotomy of color; not just as race, but as certain wavelengths of light and such. Is it possible, or am I just making another argument for the white team to hold onto like a crutch, that our perceptions of color are fixed by popular culture and psychology. Why was Ursula’s tentacles black and dark purple, but our heroine Ariel’s fin was a vibrant green hue and her bubbly friend Flounder embraced a golden yellow color? Races of characters aside, I think it would be safe to say that the colors of things make us feel a certain way about them. Mood rings, goth kids. I don’t want to take away from the fact that some people will discriminate against others based on race but we have been channelled to believe, perhaps, that dark colors and bright colors code for specific things.
Maybe this problem could be alleviated through educating people at a certain age.

Too many white people jump on the defense when they hear the phrase "white guilt". Guilt is something, bred in our American culture most specifically, to be something that nobody is proud of admitting. Nobody enjoys hearing that they are wrong.
As a person of color, I am not sure how I feel about white guilt. I guess the instant inclination by many, understandably, would be to reject white guilt because people also have a way to feel about pity. Not many people want to be pitied.

ABC is a network that finds its way into any American household with a television and electricity. It is a prime example of what this country represents and it accounts for a large portion of what American culture values.