First off I do not like this video. I loved the lecture he gave, it was very informative and did make me think but this video was crazy dramatized. I think if a person did not come to class they make actually think this is crazy. Sam’s lecture did help me to understand and I was a person who actually voted that I would consider joining the insurgency. He did a great job of putting it into perspective but as far as this blog entry goes, I hate this video. It does not hit all the points that Sam did in his lecture so to watch it honestly makes Sam look crazy and way too intense. So in conclusion, continue this lecture because it really does open people’s eyes up to seeing a different perspective but please don’t advertise this lecture with that video.

I think this is a great topic to bring up. Like Sam always says, we live in America so we always think America must be the best country in the world. This is a very arrogant way of thinking but at the same time Sam also says the poorest 10% of Americans are still richer than 2/3 of the world. So how could you not think that you are lucky and more capable to help people? I always thought I was blessed and lucky but after Sam’s class it makes me realize how blessed and lucky I really am. So yes some arrogance comes with this. In America we are rich and we are well educated so I think there is some reason to why we think we are better equip to helping people. In counteraction to that though, after the Haiti lecture on Tuesday, as much as yes we do have money and education, sometimes we are not what people need. We can give free hand outs in trying to save the world but what people really need is to be able to do it themselves. If we were to go into other countries and build wells and water systems without explaining and teaching other of how they work, what happens when we leave and the system breaks? The issue I am now realizing is, yes I am blessed and lucky to be living in America and have the education I am having, but that does not make me any smarter in the world as people in third world countries. Even without education people have established amazing things. We may think we are the most capable to helping people in poorer countries but the truth is we may not be. These people may be able to use education but would teach them the same things we learn really even help them. I really do not feel I am better equip to help people in third world countries because to be honest with you I don’t understand all the hardships they have been through. I think the best people to help these people are themselves. Yes we could send teacher over to these countries to help them learn and establish a business and yes we could be free labor that they need when they need extra hands. But as far as I’m the best person and most capable of helping these people, I do not think that is true. I think yes I have the money for it and yes I have been educated in what I need to be educated to be successful in America, but as far as helping someone who I do not completely understand. No I do not think I am the most capable but I hope to try and be an extra hand in helping them establish a life for themselves.

I really appreciate this man has shared a little piece of what it is like in prison to us. I think if more people who realize this and meet more prisoners like this man maybe they would think differently about the death penalty. As a person who does not believe in it, I think it is important for people to see that everyone should have a chance to realize their mistakes. It is almost worse to have to spend the rest of your life in prison. So the fact that some of these men have changed and have realized compassion is amazing to me. I think it is great for this man to really show the good in people even when everyone else seems to be against them.

This is honest amazing. One aspect of my school that was lacking was foreign language. Yes we had it and I even took 6 classes in Spanish but the teachers were American and honestly didn’t care if I spoke in Spanish or not. The class was extracurricular and actually in my school you were only require 2 classes in a foreign language. I find this absurd. I believe that children should be taking a foreign language from the time they start school in kindergarten. Yes it will be difficult at first but starting young is so much better than trying to learn the language in high school. I know a lot of schools that try and teach Spanish at a young age then give up for elementary and middle school days then start back up in high school. This is no way to teach something. I always thought of a foreign language like math, if you don’t use it you lose it. So in order to keep up with this language the students need to be taught every year. I personally think a foreign language should be just as important as math, science, English and social science. I think if a student is keeping up in these four classes they should add on foreign language to their daily schedule. It is just as important to be cultured and able to speak the language of that culture as it is to be able to multiple and divide. I think it is great that these children are learning Chinese too. That is one of the most prominent languages in the world and very important for business and trade markets. I seriously think this is great and long overdue for this to happen. I wish they would have done this when I was a child in preschool. I think it would have broadened my horizons and definitely helped me in future traveling and job interviews. It opens you up to talking to so many more people because it is such a prominent language. I hope that this continues to be a requirement in the future because I really would like my kids to be able to speak this language. It is so important for America to realize that not everyone in the world speaks English and that if we just learn other cultures and languages we could advance in so many ways. I am so happy to hear that this is occurring and I hope it just continues to grow. Mandarin Chinese definitely needs to be offered to all students as a foreign language and I am so happy to hear this is expanding. This is definitely a step in the right directions for American education and if we continue this, maybe we can actually continue to beat out other countries not by walking them and raping their resources but by communicating on more levels than one.

I completely agree that this is probably one of the best solutions not only to help reduce sweat shop labor but also help the planet. Reusing and reducing resources is always the best solution to conserving the planet. The less resources we use the less we use up, but the problem one or two people doing this will not really make that much of a difference. More people need to participate in reducing for it to work and with our society the likely hood of this occurring is slim but it is always worth a shot to keep preaching and trying until you get through to someone. So I hope this word keeps spreading and people do listen.

Although I did not eat the second piece of chocolate, I can understand why people did. We all eat chocolate on a normal basis so how this one piece any different from the rest? I could say I am done eating chocolate but I cannot make any guarantees. The trade free chocolate makes sense to buy though. I feel like that should be more widely advertised to people because to be honest that is now what I will be looking for. But then again what about the things that have chocolate in them, cake mixes, chocolate ice cream etc, how do we know if they were made by trade free chocolate?

Although I think there are people in America that abuse welfare. There is no way I would ever agree we need to get rid of it. With the economy being so bad and the unemployment rate so high, there is no way people with survive without it. After reading the book “Push” I also think that people who need welfare also abuse it but once again there is NO way we could get rid of welfare completely. People need this to eat and pay bills and this can sometimes not be done without a little extra cash. Welfare is also good for the economy, when people get money they spend it on things they need, usually; Therefore stimulating the economy. If they aren’t given the money they can’t spend it.

I agree with this kid completely. I know it may be a self conscious thing that people tend to pick the white people over colored people but what if we could just get rid of that category completely? What if interviews could be completely over the phone or without seeing someone’s face and no one had to check and ethnicity box? In my mind that would be the ideal hiring world. The job should be fully based off of your skills and experiences. The way you look should not be an influence. I know we say that discrimination against race occurs, but I wonder about the studies about people with handicaps or deformities. Do they have an advantage or disadvantage in the hiring world? Personally I completely agree with this person. I want the best qualified person for the job. I could care in the least about skin color. If I have a doctor operating on me, I want the most skilled and easiest to get along with. That is all I need.

To be honest I questioned this at first too. I thought Sam was a really cool guy but just full of shit. But to be honest I think 50 percent of people are full of shit including myself. The thing that really helped me understand what Sam has been trying to say was going to my race relations project discussion group. I am in section 33 so I only got one of these discussion groups and I wish I had more. The group was so interesting and brought up a ton of points. Since there was a privacy policy in the discussion group I have to be limited with what I say but one of the topics we discussed was what Sam means by not everyone is completely straight or completely gay. I thought when Sam said this he was completely just talking by his own opinion and experiences. The truth is after we talked I finally saw what he was saying. Everyone has an attraction to the same sex. We said that there is not a sexual attraction but there is an attraction. Some brought up points about how when you see other women, as a women, you think they are attractive. You never would think of having a sexual relationship with this person but you can think they are very pretty. As a guy you can even think of the same. The biggest point we brought up that made me agree with this statement is that you have an attraction with your friends. It isn’t sexual but you have the loyalty and trusting you have in a relationship with a mate. It has most of the same qualities. That almost proves that you are not completely straight. And vice versa with people who are gay. They have friendly relationships with people of the opposite sex. Basically all of us have relations with both kinds of sex and that makes us all somewhere in the middle of being straight and being gay. Another topic we discussed was how all of us feel uncomfortable being the minority so it makes us take a step back with approaching a group of people in the opposite race. No one likes to be different so it is difficult to approach a person who is the opposite race. So we discovered that subconsciously that most of us were racist. This proves Sams whole point of discrimination and subconsciousness. I did agree with this kid that Sam does get off topic and I don’t see the point in some of the stuff he talks about then, but when he gets on a topic about race, he does know what he is talking about. He is a good sociology professor in my mind and Soc119 is a nice break from all the engineering classes I take all day.

This is crazy and disturbing to me. I cannot believe that this is in scripted into their lives so young. It is hard to believe that these children do not think the world of themselves. Children should think the sky is the limit for them and it is hard to believe these children think their race is bad. I understand that blacks as a majority are discriminated against but to think their own children think they are the bad race. This is a disturbing video to watch and I feel horrible that these children in our day and age still feel the same way. Will this ever stop generations from now?!?!