Well it depends on what kind of immigrants we are talking about. Did they come here legally or are they in the country illegally? If they are came here illegally, then no. They do not have the right to government run healthcare. They are working under the counter and not being taxed, and it is the citizens and legal immigrants of the United States that are essentially paying for their health care. Is it the humane thing to do? Probably not. I can not imagine being the doctor or nurse in an emergency room who will have to deny a man or woman help because they can not afford it without health care. This is especially troubling if we are talking about life or death situations. But this comes down to the individual doctor. If he wanted to, he could risk his career to save a man without health care, but I don’t think we should just hand out health care to everyone, legal or illegal, just because they are within our borders. They put an extreme burden on the other taxpayers, and they make no contribution to the running of our government or even the enforcement of our military, local police, National Guard, etc. Yes, they work extremely hard, and in some extreme conditions might I add, but it comes down to nickels and dimes. They don’t pay a cent to the government, and frankly every service in this society has a price. We can not just do everything in this world for free or else most people would lose their motivation to work. Most people do their jobs because it pays the bills. For instance, people don’t clean public bathrooms and empty trash because they love to do it. They do it because it pays the bills. Money makes society work. It gives people a reason to work harder and do jobs they normally wouldn’t want to do. It makes people want to obtain higher levels of education so they can reach that next pay scale and live a more comfortable life. We can just go around doing things for free or else it would just tear the basic structure of our society. Also, I would imagine it to be a big insult to the doctor for instance, if a patient came and ask for his services. This doctor put in years of hard work to learn his trade and spent a fortune to pay for that education. For someone to come in and ask for his services for free is just a big F U to the face. So to summarize, I believe that health care should be a right given to people in the United States, but only to those that pay their taxes. Thus, only native born citizens, and legal immigrants should have that right.

First of all, let me start by saying that I know that the media only shows us picture of Iraq that have been devastated by war, and I know that there are regular towns and schools in the area. But nevertheless, when I hear about the Middle East, I really only thought about poverty, devastation, chaos, etc. The fact that Sam showed us images of college students celebrating, and kids and families living happy lives, I was really able to realize that they are just like us. Not every person in the Middle East is an infidel. Many of them are just regular people who want the best for their kids and just want to live their lives happily. This is something that the media forgets to mention. We are brainwashed to think that everyone in the middle east is out to get us, and that they are just plain evil and we are there to rescue them. Sam’s experiment in which we were put in Middle Eastern shoes and forced to view the United States invasion of Iraq from their lens really opened my eyes. Those youtube videos that showed news reports from Iraq made us look like the bad guys, and in all honesty, I believe we are. We’re going in to suppress them so we can take their oil that’s located on their land. Who are we to do that? We really do look like a bunch of bullies. On top of that, we have Christian missionaries going in to convert them to our religions. Why? Religion doesn’t belong in a political war. So I am not surprised that the middle easterners look at us like we are Christian Invaders. As an American I know that their opinion of us is slanted, but as are ours. We have the wrong idea about middle easterners. Sam gave us a great example of how there is a radical Christian group located in some small town who are training their young ones to be warriors of God. This sounds similar to some of the infidel groups we hear about in the Middle East, but what I never really thought about was that maybe we only hear about these infidel groups because they are so radical and make for great news. No one wants to hear boring news about the everyday life of some ordinary group of people. We like interesting news. So we hear about the radical groups in the Middle East, while they hear about the radical groups in the United States. So I think both sides have the wrong idea of each other. I just want to thank Sam Richards for opening my eyes. Although I don’t support the infidels in Iraq, all I got to say is that I understand.

Of course I would have still eaten the chocolate. It makes very little difference to me if the man who picked the plant that made that chocolate was sitting next to me or not. There is no question that I do feel a certain way for the slaves, but like Sam said in class, if we reject that piece of chocolate, then we should do so only if we reject all things made by slaves. It an impossible endeavor because we have incorporated slave made goods into our everyday life. Most of our shirts have been made by cotton that has been picked by slaves. Our cell phones have pieces made by slaves. Much of the food we eat has been touched by some slave somewhere in the world. It is sad to say, but slavery has become an important part in our lives. If it wasn’t for slavery, then many of us wouldn’t be able to afford some of the things we own. I’m sure you have bought items at Walmart and most likely will continue to shop there because of the great prices. A lot of those items were probably touched by a slave at some point. We can’t reject slave made good entirely. It is unrealistic. It would involve a change in one’s entire lifestyle, and even if you changed, it would do nothing to the slave industry. You may argue that if everyone follows through with it then we can make a change. When I say everyone, I mean the entire world, because nearly every economy has slavery involved at some level. So to get everyone to follow along with this boycott of slave made goods is also unrealistic, but let us imagine what would happen if we all chose to reject slave made goods. For starters, there wouldn’t be much purchasing going around, and we all know that our economy strives on the idea that we spend our money, and not put it in savings. So by us not buying most of the goods out there, many stores will have trouble getting rid of the stuff on their selves, and pretty soon they go bankrupt due to a lack of customers. When these stores go bankrupt, they begin letting go of their employers and pretty soon we have a very high unemployment rate. Now, not only are the slaves living in bad conditions, but we are destroying our own lives. Yes, I know we won’t be as far gone as the slaves, but boycotting slave made goods is not the option. If we want change, then it has to come from the other end (the producer) not the consumer. To do this we would need government intervention. So let’s get back to the main question. How was I able to eat that second piece of candy, knowing what I know now? Well, I reasoned that to throw away that piece of chocolate (or that man’s “flesh”) would be far more insulting then to simply eat it. Throwing it away would not change things, and would also mean that all those hours of hard work by the slave were wasted. I might as well enjoy it. It is the least I could have done.

I would have to agree with the statements that he made in the video. I think affirmative action is just a special number that places need to hit in order to satisfy the political correct agenda of today’s society. Affirmative action only gives a person an edge because of their race. The only thing that should matter in a selective process is their credentials. Whoever has the best credentials wins. That is it. Race and gender should not give anyone an edge on someone else.
Due to the increase in use of affirmative action in the workplace, I feel that it will only have a negative effect on the business. One is that the quality of people working there has the possibility of becoming worse because people are chosen over others only because they are a minority. Another negative is that because of the almost complete integration affirmative action has in our society, businesses who have a very low quota could be looked at as racist or prejudice and lose business just because they do not have a certain amount of minorities. Affirmative action seems to hurt the business more than it intends to do.
Affirmative action has also caused in some sense to allow for prejudice remarks to flourish. I can remember when I was going through the college process and some of my friends who were minorities got into really good schools and my white friends would make a comment about how they only got in because they were a minority. It seems that white people only see affirmative action a reverse discrimination process. They feel the minorities don’t need to work hard in school or in other aspects because they already have the advantage. This downplays the need for qualifications and further enforces prejudice ideals in our society. It also gives way to the feeling that minorities in general only get their jobs because they are minorities. White people begin to feel that Affirmative action is just a free pass for minorities and whites have to work two times as hard to make their qualifications seem more qualified than the minorities. This is another major reason why Affirmative Action has no place in our society.
Affirmative seems to just attract more negative attention than positive attention. I think that the effects of it have more of a negative impact. It seems to also promote discrimination rather than equality. Qualifications should be the only thing that determines a position. Affirmative action just exacerbates the problem of equality. Equality should just be that the best qualified person gets the job. There should not be anything else that goes into the decision for the position.

Sam, I couldn’t agree with you more. From day one of SOC 119, I have viewed you as a crazy hippie who just ranted his crazy ideas. Most of these ideas seemed hypocritical at times, but for once, I feel you are truly looking outside the box and are talking like a sociologist. Though this is a race relations class, and the topic currently at hand is a bit unrelated and unconventional, we are finally getting to something interesting. We are digging deep into our social behaviors and defining why things are the way they are. The whole idea of not being able to talk about your wife’s menstruation cycle in front of a large class such as the one in 100 Thomas, and then calling it “bleeding” just shows that our society is not very open minded. Why can’t we talk about natural bodily functions? One of the strongest points I felt you made is that menstruation is just as natural as cutting your finger and that bleeding, or the fact that everyone’s hair grows. These things happen literally everyday and we talk about them like there is nothing wrong with it. The only way I can try to explain this behavior is the fact that we avoid talking about topics that bring discomfort in some way. Take for example, menstruation. From what I have heard, it can be very unpleasant for women. They have to put up with the mess, the cramps, the mood swings, and so on. That alone is something that would deem a bit of silence. It might be that idea that if we don’t talk about it, it won’t happen. Also, since this is a man’s world, the men may have conditioned society to not talk about it because man found it unpleasant. When a woman menstruated, the man had to put up with the mood swings, and other things that went along with it. They could have found it a bit disgusting simply because during that time of the month, intercourse can be unpleasant for the male. Seriously, who would want to stick their genitals into a bleeding hole? Because of all the negative things that are associated with menstruation, over time, people were conditioned to avoid the topic as much as possible. It became a topic only to be shared by very close individuals with whom you felt you can let your guard down. It’s like flatulence. It is considered rude to fart in front of others because of the awful smell associated with it. So when you are alone or around some very close friends, you are not afraid to let one loose. What I am basically trying to say is that we simply avoid things that bring discomfort. If we really want to be free, we need to be radical. We need to break down these social walls so we may be able to talk freely without offending anyone. That is, when it comes to things natural that we all do.

I picked up on this too. The big “racist” comment that put everyone in an uproar was when someone said being white meant “dealing with loud black chicks in the computer lab.” Such a statement can be offensive, and since a white person said it, it is taken as racist. Even Sam Richards was taken back by the comment and requested people refrain from making such racist comments. However, when the tables were turned and the black students in the room were given a chance to answer the question, many of them made comments such as being white meant “being stuck up” or “throw out the uggs.” Such comments were taken with humor and as far as I recall, Sam did not say anything in defense of the white team and say that was racist. There is clearly a double standard in the works here. What makes “dealing with loud black chicks in the computer lab” any different than “being stuck up.” Are they both not offensive? To say that being white means to be stuck up is a negative comment that generalizes the white team. Not every single white person is stuck up. Not every single white girl wears uggs. These comments are stereotypical, yet they were taken as less offensive than the stereotypical comment on black women. To say that black chicks are loud in the computer lab is just to make an observation that holds some truth to it. I have been in plenty of computer labs here on campus that had black women being obnoxiously loud when they shouldn’t be. I’m not saying that every black woman is guilty of this act, but there is some truth to the statement mentioned in class. There is also truth in the statement that white women should throw out the uggs. A lot of white girls on campus own uggs, but not every one of them do. So all the comments mentioned in class seem to hold some truth to them, and they were just statements. So why did the comment towards black people hold more weight to it than the comments towards white people? It seems that this is usually the case. I think our white guilt is the root of all of this. We see any comment directed towards the black race that may be offensive as a large step backwards in the road to equality. Yet, the white people don’t say much when black people direct offensive comments towards them. This is actually another step backwards in the road to equality because now a double standard exists where white people have to be careful about what they say to black people, yet the standards on comments made by black people are a little less regulated.

I disagree. I’ve been to quite a few themed parties throughout my college career, which accounts for about 4 years of experience, and I have never been to a party that stereotyped black people. But let me give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that maybe I am just in a unique and narrow group of friends that hasn’t been invited to such a party. From my point of view, the idea behind having a party with a theme is not to insult any particular group of people, but rather spice up the social scene with something new. Parties are great, but over time, they can get to be repetitive. So what better way to bring new life to a party than to give it a theme? I am a white male, and I am trying to put myself in your shoes. My best guess is that you are putting too much emphasis on the theme itself, rather than the actual purpose of the party. When it comes to parties, at least at Penn State, the purpose is to celebrate, bond with old friends, and make new friends. I would like to think that we don’t throw parties to simply insult a particular group of people. And if we did, then we have made fun of just about every group of people including ourselves. I can’t think of what it is called, but there are themed parties where you find an old school photo of yourself and try to dress up exactly like it. If the point of the party is to insult a group of people, then many of us who have participated in the school photo party have insulted ourselves. There are also tons of other parties that don’t even make fun of a particular group. For instance, highlighter parties are very common at Penn State, as well as all over the country. What is the point of a highlighter party? Does it actually make fun of any particular group of people? The answer is no. It was just some cool idea someone came up with to help spice up his/her party and make it stand out from every other party going on that same night. A party is a party, whether it is themed or not. A party is just an excuse to gather friends together and have a joyous time. Adding a theme to it is just to switch it up from the regular once in a while. I think to say a party is insulting to a particular group of people means that you’re missing the main reason for having that party. I pity those who misinterpret the meaning of a party and take offense to it.

I agree that it is important to learn more about the Native American history, and it’s sad that almost no one has heard about the greatest genocide on United States soil. However, I don’t believe there is room in the curriculum to teach the history of the Native Americans. There is so many things missing from our typical school curriculum that I really think should be added, but it would be impossible to implement all these things into a typical school year. This is what college is for. In college we are given the opportunity to design our own course schedules and learn about the “extra stuff” that didn’t make it into the basic curriculum that we have in grade school and high school. Overall though, I think the standard curriculum that we have in grade school and high school is very flawed. There are so many courses that I spent countless hours studying for, and in the end, I will never use that material ever again in my career. The fact that I am an aerospace engineering student, I really don’t think that it was beneficial to learn the anatomy of the human body, or the classical literature of William Shakespeare because I will never apply it in my professional career. In my opinion, as an engineering student, I think that I was ill prepared for college in terms of mathematics. I really think that I should have been taught more calculus at an earlier age so that I would be more efficient at it at this point in my life. There was so much emphasis on classes like vocabulary and art, and I will probably never use that stuff ever again. I would have rather spent that time being productive and learning about engineering principles like moments of inertia, or torque. As a whole, the United States education system should be redesign. Grade school and high school are teaching the future of America, very broad ideas, and it isn’t until college that we actually learn the important ideas and concepts that we will use for the rest of our lives. I realize it is difficult to know what you want to do in terms of a career, when you are still in grade school, and I can see why the current education system gives students a sample of every little thing just so they can discover what they might want to do, but I feel like a lot of our youth is spent learning useless thing. In the end, we specialize in one field, and we often forget a lot of what we learned in grade school. I don’t know how to fix the education system, but it definitely needs to be updated.

We actually discussed this exact topic in my discussion section this week. The way I define sexual orientation is by what gender you have a sexual attraction to. By sexual attraction I mean you are aroused by someone without the emotional aspect involved. Say you see a girl at a party, and from a distance you are already attracted to her. I see this as a natural instinct hard wired into our biological system. It is something we have no control over. Now there are people who I have found unattractive physically, but after getting to know them, I was intrigued by their personality and started to become sexually interested in. This is no longer biological in my opinion. I see this as a social attraction and not hard wired. In our discussion class we brought up the idea of having a best friend who has all the qualities you see in a partner for the rest of your life, but I see that as satisfying a social and emotional desire. The sexual desire is not satisfied. So you ask where to draw the line on sexuality and love. I think love is when you emotionally care about someone so much that you feel somewhat depressed if they were to leave. A sexual attraction has no emotional attachments. So to have a best friend as a roommate for the rest of your life is to have someone there who can satisfy an emotional desire, especially since we, as humans, are a social species. We need social interaction to maintain a healthy mental health. I can live with someone without having a sexual attraction to and still love them and that we have not effect to my sexual orientation. The only confusing part that challenges my viewpoint is the idea brought up in class where people who identified themselves as straight and still got aroused by seeing gay porn. My only explanation to such an anomaly is that our bodies are naturally hard wired to prepare for a sexual act, and the images of a sexual act trigger our hormonal system. I also think that it may be so taboo that it intrigues us and we are somewhat stimulated by it. On the other hand, I may be completely wrong with everything I just wrote and we really are all bisexual as Sam Richards said in class, at least to some extent. To be honest, this class has completely confused me and now I am completely lost with how I define just about anything in our social lives. What is gay really? I am at a lost. I think we should just do what makes us feel happy, because in the end our happiness is all that matters. So who cares where we draw the line between love and sexuality.

I think you hit the nail on the head. The reason we always go back to black and white is because of the whole civil rights movement. Blacks were the largest discriminated group. I know there were other groups that were discriminated, but they were more or less concentrated in particular areas. For instance, Native Americans have their reservations, which are mostly located in the central to western parts of the US. So the majority of the United States is unaware of their existence. The black community, on the other hand occupied most of the United States because the slave trade brought large amounts of them to nearly every part of the country. They had a strong presence in our society, and when slavery ended, it brought upon a quick shift in their freedom. This shift happened too quickly that the white people felt threatened and implemented many standards that discriminated the black community. Now, I could be wrong, and the education system might be at fault for this, but I have never heard of any other race being required to sit in the back of the bus, or having special water fountains. The black community, I’d say, had it the worst out of any other racial group. At least in the United States that is. Because they had it so bad, and it was on such a large scale, that their civil rights movement went so public. As Laurie stated, we saw their struggle. We never saw anyone else’s. We have a holiday based on the black civil rights movement (Martin Luther King Jr. Day). We also set aside a whole month to pay tribute to the black man’s struggle (Black History Month). So when racial discussions arise, It’s no wonder that we almost always go back to black and white. All we have to work with is our knowledge of black discrimination, but I would like to purpose a question. Is it a bad thing if we generalize all discrimination into black and white issues? Discrimination is simply defined as treating a group differently because of their race. So whether you are on a reservation (Native Americans), stereotyped as being lazy (Mexicans), or automatically assumed to be a terrorist (Arabs), you are none the less being treated differently and black history can be used as an example when the topic of racial discrimination comes up. I don’t personally see it as a problem because it’s the best way we here in the United States can empathize and make sense of the other racial groups’ struggles. I do think, however, that the education system needs to update their curriculum to open the American people’s eyes to other racial discrimination going on in the country so that we maybe more aware, and more empathetic to each individual’s struggle.