I feel like the most frustrating part about being a woman is that appearance is the ONLY thing ever talked about! It's absolutely a big issue for women and so many of us have poor body image and low self esteem because of the unrealistic images that are thrown around on runways and in magazines, but we perpetuate the cycle by choosing to discuss it all the time and focus all of our discussions about women on their bodies and appearance and body image. When there are discussions about what it means to "be a woman" appearance is almost always the first thing brought up, but it is not the same at all with men. If we would focus more on other aspects of women- our roles in society, stereotypes, and our different ways of seeing the world we would paint so much of a deeper picture of women. But all the time we're just stuck on the superficial issues and what's on the outside. Even when people, articles, plays, etc are trying to send a positive message- that we're all beautiful no matter what, big or small, tall or shirt, white black or brown, they're still just focusing on outer appearance. There are so many more important aspects of ourselves that we could be focused on, it's a shame to waste so much time discussing appearances!

This was a really cool video to watch... I had no idea what was going on in the day to day lives of Haitians today so it was good to see a glimpse of that through this videos. It's incredible how resilient these people are. If a similar situation happened in America, I don't think you would see the same resilience. It's incredible that just a couple months after a life shattering earthquake they seem hopeful, have established makeshift cities and businesses, and are carrying on with life using what little they have. It's surprising that businesses like salons can still have any customers there! You'd think that people would not want to be spending their money on luxury services like manicures and pedicures, but it is great that they are because that at least gives some boost to the economy. If everyone was being stingy with their money, there 'd be no way up. But as well as they seem to be holding things together for now given the circumstances, I wonder how long that can last? The video said these people may be living in their tents for years?! At some point, everyone is going to be running their own business out of their tents, the competition will be even worse, and all the money is just going to be circulating within each tent "neighborhood"... I'm not really sure how long that kind of system can go on, but hopefully schools will be re-established soon enough and government jobs can be up and running again.

Wow, this was a pretty moving letter. It is very obvious as Sam said that this man is quite "evolved" and has come to a deep understanding of the things he has done in the past and who he is as a person. I'm sure not all criminals and certainly not all "lifers" have come or will ever come to that point, but it was awesome to hear words from someone who has. Ever since Sam and Laurie brought up visiting the lifers in class, I've wondered about it. As a criminal justice major, I hear in all my classes about the correctional system and prisoners, but you really only ever hear the negatives about them. Obviously they're locked up for a good reason, but you never get to read in textbooks about the mental and emotional processes these men (and women) go through. If they accept the fact that they will remain in prison for the rest of their lives and are open to the fact that they now have all this time ahead of them to simply come to a greater understanding of life, it only seems natural that they can undergo some great transformations. I truly believe that even the most hardened criminals don't ever lose their humanity. It may be buried pretty deeply but everyone has a heart and everyone feels (psychopaths aside) and it's an intrinsic part of all people. It's funny because how many of us would go over to someone we saw crying on campus and try to comfort them? I don't think I would. And i doubt many people would try to comfort an enemy who was having a bad day. But that this "lifer" says these things are so common within a prison is pretty cool. Everyone makes mistakes- some much graver and life changing than others- but I think it'd be damn near impossible to not be able to find at least one sliver of good in all people. I also thought it was interesting how he talked about being helpless while behind bars in the face of tragedies going on in the world. We take it for granted the little things we can do to help in the face of disaster- simply being able to text donations to the red cross, donating money to causes as we wait at a red light, or attending events to show our support for those affected. Some of us can even fly right to the sight of a disaster and dig in and get to work helping there. I can't imagine being in prison and literally being able to do nothing, feeling completely helpless and like you're not doing "your part." That's got to be rough, and it really reinforces that "us" and "them" mentality. It'd be a cool idea for programs to be set up that allow prisoners to help out in those types if situations. I'm not sure how it'd work, but prisoner, and even lifers, are still human and obviously some of them still want to help their fellow citizens and they should have that chance!

I agree with this post- I don't think it's the best idea to be diverting school resources to learning Mandarin Chinese... English is rather dominant in business and I don't see why this would be changing any time soon. I think it's a lot more important for American children to be learning Spanish. First of all, certainly not every kid is going to go into business. But no matter what field you go into, Spanish is going to be extremely useful because by the time the children today are adults and practicing their professions, the demographics of the United States are going to be very different. And by the time they're kids are grown up, it will be even more different. I think to be able to take four years of Spanish at least is going to be extremely necessary for the coming (and current) growth of the Hispanic population. Granted, much of the Hispanic population growth will probably be from people who are already in the United States today (and speaking English fluently) having children, who presumably they will also teach to speak English, but still I just think that it makes much more sense to be learning a language that you probably will face in daily life, rather than one you just might run into if you go off into international business.

Personally, I agree with the people who said that if that slave went through all of that and suffered to make the second piece of chocolate in front of us, you'd better freaking eat that chocolate and enjoy it so that he didn't go through that all to have the product end up wasted in the trash! Whether you ate it or not no longer had any effect on slavery- it was already bought so it already contributed to the slave economy. However, if you're really never going to eat chocolate again in your life after seeing that video, I guess all the more power to you, but that was a moral decision for you to make in class to not eat the second piece and there is absolutely nothing wrong with people choosing to eat their second piece and enjoy it. I also think people need to learn figurative language- no, I really doubt that there is any actual human flesh in your chocolate. It wasn't meant to be taken literally. But it definitely meant to make you "feel a certain way" as Sam always says and I think the issue did hit a lot of people about how little things we don't even think about twice like enjoying a piece of chocolate all can be contributing to slavery. So I mean, it's awesome if you're going to walk away from that class and give up chocolate forever or (probably easier) buy only fair trade chocolate or just even to just be more aware of what is going on. But you can't really criticize people for continuing to eat chocolate- it's pretty much ingrained in our culture to enjoy some hot hot chocolate on a cold winter day, or for grandma to bake you fresh chocolate chip cookies, and what would Christmas or Halloween or Easter be without those sweet chocolate candies?! So there's really no simple solution.

I completely agree with this post and the questioner... I mean, I think it's pretty much an impossible task to convince many Americans to actually do this, but if you could it'd definitely have a huge effect on the way things are. American consumerism is a huge contributor to the fact that slavery is still alive and thriving today. It rules and affects every aspect of our lives- the commercials we see on t.v., the clothes we want to wear, the music we want to listen to, the cars we drive, the newest phones and ipods that we have, etc. And all of these things seem so critically important to us... But how we live would be a shock to the majority of the world, all of those people who are living on less than two dollars a day (most of us probably spend twice that just on our morning coffee every day!). In our culture we buy new clothes every time we get a little bit bored of the current clothes in our closet and for just about every occasion we can think of , including an entire new wardrobe for each season of the year. Because of deals with cell phone companies, most of us get new phones at least every two years, and we're constantly buying the newest and greatest models of cars. It's sickening to think about in comparison with the millions of people who are starving every day because they can't even afford to buy food, which is why slavery is still around today. People who are desperate and starving are entering into bonded labor just to guarantee a little bit of food each day. So what if we stopped buying new clothes? Not only would we be creating less of a demand for the clothing produced by slave labor in sweat shops, but we would all have a lot more money to spare... which we could possibly donate to charities working in this poor countries? O we could spend more money on ensuring that other items that we buy, for example chocolate and coffee, are fair trade and therefore not supporting slave labor? Just an idea... But in reality, after you've gone through your childhood years, your not really growing that much anymore (unless your putting on the freshman fifteen in college) so why do we need more clothes? What if we all just had the minimum number of clothes necessary to ensure we're not all walking around naked? Because keeping up with the new trends and fashions is the end all and be all of our country, particularly among our age group. It's like we're all trying to display status, wealth, popularity, etc by what we're wearing on our bodies. To really put this idea into action to the point that it would make any difference in the world would require a huge overhaul of our current values and ideals. But it makes sense that if people stopped buying new clothes together, no one would feel the pressure to be dressed in the newest trends and to impress everyone with their outfits. If it seems unrealistic, I think it's just because it really is so simple an idea. But it's simple, easy choices like to stop buying new clothes that can really make a difference.

I definitely can't relate to the questioners experience because I grew up in Chester County, Pa which is 90% white and attended school that were well over 90% white. Throughout all of elementary school, there was never a person of color in my entire grade which was about seventy people. And in high school, there were probably about five colored people in my class, which was a class of 350 people. I never really thought about how badly my life was lacking diversity, I was pretty much oblivious to it. And even in college, I still hang out with a lot of people from my high school and all the new friends I have are white and I'm in a sorority which is predominantly white. So really, racial equality and issues were just something I never had to think about because I didn't see them in my daily experiences. Therefore, I didn't really start moving through the stages at all until I got into SOC 119 and have started seeing that, yeah, there's still alot of inequality out there and it's been interesting especially for me to hear the opinion's of people of color. It's definitely been an eye opening class and I'm not afraid to talk openly about race anymore. I guess you could say I'm in the revisioning stage right now, even though "white guilt" isn't really something I've fully grasped but I definitely have a lot of new perspectives on things.

I love this question because I've thought about it a lot of times myself. I feel like racial and equality and societal issues are kind of like the whole abortion issue- people have STRONG opinions on it and no matter what you say to them, alot of times they're beliefs are just to deeply embedded to get them to change their opinions. I personally haven't had many major opinion changes by taking this class, but I think a huge thing for me has just been opening up my eyes to all of this stuff I didn't know existed and and was still going on today- like about the huge existence of modern day slaves, the study in which they found out a white person with a drug conviction is STILL more likely to get a job than a colored person with a clean record, and affirmative action doesn't just affect colored people but helps women as well. I think alot of these new insights and up and change the way I view the world around me but my basic beliefs remain the same. I didn;t come into this class as a racist person, and I won't leave it as one so there's not going to be a huge effect there from what Sam's talked about in class, but I can see inequality so much more clearly as a result of taking this class. And whether or not Sam's changing people's opinions and having a huge impact on people's lives isn't really important. I think the bigger thing is that he's up there talking about it and encouraging us to talk and think about it. It's been an awesome class and definitely more enlightening than any of the other classes I've taken.

Wow. This is completely shocking and absolutely disgusting, and what is worse is that there are actually people sick enough out there to enjoy this game and probably get off to it. I think we've made a lot of progress in the United States in terms of women's rights and particularly in the treatment of rape victims. We have laws now that protect their identity form the public, prohibit lawyers from prying into their past sexual history in trials, and have resource centers set up to help them. But sadly, even though these games were made in Japan since that is probably the gaming capital of the world, I am sure that their play is not limited to Japan. They're probably being played all over the world, including in the United States. This is a huge step back for women. They compared these games to the pron industry, but I think they're far worse. At least in most pornographic movies, etc the women are acting as willing participants and enjoying themselves and whatever and that's their prerogative. I'm sure there are some exceptions to this, I can only imagine that there are some "rape fantasy" pornos out there but to have a whole line of video games with the sole purpose being to stalk, sexually assault, and rape women? That's just completely unacceptable. And I think the same argument applies to these games as to the violent, murder filled video games- rather than being an "outlet" for sick people to act on their urges in a way that is non- threatening and not hurting anyone, they are probably actually serving to just desensitize people to how horrible rape really is. Unlike in video games, real rape victims have to go on living everyday with the pain of what's happened to them. There are no "power off" or reset buttons in real life. And the injuries suffered by rape victims- both mentally and physically- and real wounds and not just some simulated bull shit. And even worse, for some people who truly want and feel the urge to rape women but haven't yet started to, these games probably make great practice for them- deciding exactly how they want to do it, helping them take everything into consideration in order to not get caught, and creating a sequence of events that they can just play out like they did in the video game. For that "gamer" in Britain to say she didn't have any problem with this game after playing it is insane. It's bad enough for anyone to feel that these types of games are okay, let alone for a woman to think that. Does she have no self respect? And I wonder, if she were to be raped tomorrow would she still be okay with this game? I highly doubt it. If any of the makers of these games- men or women- were raped tomorrow would they still be okay with this product they've created?? I don't think so. I think it's time for people to put themselves in others shoes and stop being asses and actually think about the stupid things that they're doing.

Well I think Sam definitely succeeded in getting people to start conversations about all sorts of things we don't usually talk about- I've never seen soo many people talking about menstruation haha but I agree with a lot of the previous posters. I don't think the big point to get across here is whether or not we should talk about "bleeding" but rather to question why some things are never talked about and why our cultural norms and rules of politeness are what they are. His method was a bit unconventional- asking all of the girls in class if they were currently bleeding- but the point was clear. Our society is completely ruled by these norms and rules and values that were made up by God only knows who and if we hadn't started talking about things that were unconventional, we would never make any progress in this country. People used to not address or deal with racial inequality, and if that didn't change we'd still be a segregated and messed up society. And, not too long ago, people didn't want to talk about homosexuality- it made them uncomfortable and it wasn't considered "polite" to discuss. But that has changed so much in the past couple decades and look at how much our country is changing because of it- laws now protect gay people from discrimination in jobs, housing, etc and we're even taking steps to completely legalize gay marriage. So pretty much without talking about the current state of things, we can never get anywhere and we'll be stuck in that past so I say keep it up Sam- keep making people uncomfortable, because at least your getting people to talk about shit.