Well, there are some immigrants who gain US citizenship upon coming to this country--- so yes, I think they deserve the same health care privileges as US born citizens, because we are all citizens of the country and should obtain the same rights. If you mean illegal immigrants, then that’s a different story. I’m not really sure. I feel like if they were in a bad situation, health wise, and they absolutely needed help, are you really just going to let the person be hurt or even die? Although, at the same time if they are illegally coming into the country and seeking better health care than their country, it might not be right. That’s a tough question to answer.

I couldn’t agree more. I though the play in class was definitely interesting to see the role switched where women typically want bigger breasts, but in this play they were in a world where women wanted smaller breasts. I hate that Hollywood and TV have sunken into so many girl’s minds out there that you need to have a certain body image to be beautiful. Everyone is beautiful in their own way and it’s horrible to see and hear about girls who are doing everything they can to change their bodies into something they aren’t… just because they think other people will find them more attractive.

That’s definitely an interesting thought, the problem with that is though, think about it, if every time someone died, or a few people died, or a large group of people died, if we all just stopped what we were doing for even a week, what good would that do? It is definitely very devastating and it sucks to deal with death, especially if it is someone who affected you personally, but life goes on and you have to also. If everyone just stopped what they were doing for some period of time, it would drastically affect our lives MORE than the death or deaths would affect our lives. Would you HONESTLY take off an entire month from school or work, let alone the rest of the year, if someone in your family died? There’s just things in life that can’t be avoided or put on hold for such a long period of time. Of course it would be very upsetting and would take a lot of time to cope with and get used to, but that doesn’t mean that you should stop living yourself. I completely agree that we have to move on. Of course we should be doing everything we can to help the people in Haiti, which there are people over there helping where necessary. I don’t think the point was that we should just forget about it and move on, I think the point was more that you take some time out of your day to mourn, but you also do the things in your life that need to be done. I know that when my grandfather died when I was in high school, I took a day or two off of school to mourn and go to his funeral and everything, but after that I went back to school, I took my tests, I did my homework, because if I didn’t, then I probably wouldn’t be here at Penn State now. You can’t just stop life and put everything at a halt or else the world wouldn’t change and things wouldn’t get better. We’d just be living in a world full of sad, mourning people waiting for the next person to die and mourn to. I understand where you’re coming from, it’s sad to think that after such a devastating event to happen, that people can just go on with their daily lives, it seems like people don’t care, but I’m sure they do. No one can hear about such a horrible disaster and not even care a little bit, there are just some things that need more attention than others. For some people, the most they can do is donate money. You do what you can, and continue on with your life, tragic events like this are always in the back of your mind. It’s not that people are moving on and just forgetting about it, they’re just moving forward and continuing on with life.

I think that’s very interesting, I had no idea that the teaching of Chinese or Mandarin was increasing so widely. I know my high school started offering the class a few years ago. I don’t know that Chinese is a necessary language to learn, but I definitely agree that it could be useful. I mean, China is the most populated country in the world, why should everyone focus on solely learning English, when we can adjust and learn other languages as well. Considering the huge population of China, there are obviously PLENTY of people in the world who speak the language and I definitely see it as a good idea for people to start learning the language and get accustomed to other cultures.

That’s definitely a good though and idea… but realistically it would take a LOT for everyone to do this. There are so many people who would be so unwilling and completely against even the thought of giving away half of their wardrobe and not buying new clothes. Aside from people’s willingness to do it, say everyone agrees to do it; there are other things to take into consideration. What about kids? They are constantly growing and need new clothes—you can’t stop them from buying new and bigger clothes when they grow out of their old ones. Even if they go to get clothes people have given away in the past, there’s no saying the kid will find clothes of their size. Kids would need newer and bigger clothes more often than adults and who’s to say how long the cycle would last? It’s a good thought, but difficult to put into practice.

It’s just like Sam said in class… don’t NOT eat the piece of chocolate just to prove a point or make a stand towards slavery unless you are actually not going to ever eat a piece of chocolate again. I wouldn’t even say that I felt so guilty eating it, as I just became more aware of the situation and where the chocolate came from. I know that video in class isn’t going to stop me from eating chocolate ever again, it is just not, so whether I ate the piece of chocolate in class right after the video, or if I ate it, or a different piece of chocolate the next day, what difference is that really going to make? From a different perspective, it is like someone else mentioned… now seeing that these people slaved over making this chocolate, you are putting their hard work to waste. Honestly, if you were spending days on end laboring over the process of making chocolate and getting abused and no payment or anything, wouldn’t the least you want is for people to enjoy what you are making so at least you aren’t going through this hard work for absolutely nothing? I also feel that even if this video affected one person to ACTUALLY never eat chocolate ever again, it unfortunately still will not make a difference. There are still millions of people out there buying chocolate every day. In order to make a real difference, we would need everyone to stop buying the product, or at least a significant amount of people. I think if one person would make a stand to stop eating chocolate and making other people aware would put their views and beliefs out there—hopefully to impact other people to do the same. Maybe the problem is not even in just simply stopping eating chocolate. More has got to be done if we want to see real changes. I do not know what it would take to make a true impact, but I am sure it would take a lot. There are a lot of people out there, like Kevin Bales, who are trying to make that happen. It is awful what has become of slavery today. Right now, all we can really do is make more and more people aware of the facts and that slavery really is still happening today all over the world. The more people become aware, the more people we can get to make a difference, make a change. Until that day, not eating one piece of chocolate directly after watching that video is not the kind of difference we need. At least by eating the chocolate you are recognizing the hard work and labor these slaves are going through—just be aware and make others aware.

I don’t know that affirmative action really would affect people in the medical field to such an extent. If they have two candidates and one is black and one is white, I highly doubt they would hire the black one if they felt the white candidate was much more qualified and better able to work more proficiently in a hospital. If you’re talking med school, again I don’t see that directly affecting health care. If they accept a black student to med school over a white student, the black student will still be studying to get all of the proper qualifications to do their job as best they can and as well as any other white student in the same program—which in the end is all that really matters.

You know I never really thought about it. Most of the time, I don’t think my opinion changes, because I feel like I agree with most of what Sam says. There are definitely several points that Sam brings up in class that I never thought of in that specific way in which I think he added a different viewpoint or theory to what I already believe. Sam definitely brings a lot of new information to the table. I’m sure that EVERYONE in class has left at least one day, or will leave one day by the end of the semester, with a new argument or something learned that is different from what you’ve already believed on race and ethical issues.

Watching this video was really appalling to me. Video games like those are wrong on so many levels and I do not understand how anyone can play that game and honestly not feel like a creep essentially. The European boy who said that he didn’t see the problem with the game and that it is, in essence, no different from a video game with guns and killing people. I suppose he has a point, but something just feels so much more wrong by having the object of a game be to rape someone. That gets into sexual assault issues. If younger boys start playing this game, they may think it is acceptable to engage in that sort of activity. You could argue that someone could engage in getting guns and killing people as well from those types of games too, which I am certainly not justifying. I feel that killing someone is a much more extreme act than raping someone is because killing a person is taking away their life and will affect every person of their friends and families and school or workplace, where as rape only (mostly) affects the victim. I think MOST people who play games with guns and killing people would not take those actions and apply them to real life situations because they realize the effects of someone dying are so much more severe. In the games with the object being to rape a woman, you turn this into a game that the players find fun. Since I have not played the game, I don’t know for sure, but I would imagine the reactions of the victim in the video game are far less what it would be like in reality to rape a woman. I’m sure in the video game the victim either plays along or has minimal rejection towards the rapist in the video game. If the players of the game find it fun and don’t see such a horrible reaction, it may lead them to believe it is more or less okay for them to reenact the game in real life; not realizing how bad rape truly can be. I think that, especially guys, would not take this video game seriously and think that they are just kidding around and having a good time, but if you continuously play this game on a regular basis, you may not realize some of your actions from the game being incorporated into real life. You may not directly rape a woman, but would be more inclined to sexual harassment like activity. Since the game is already out there, I don’t think that banning it will do any good. There are people who have already been playing the game and already exposed to it. If they’ve been playing the game and enjoy it, banned or not, they are going to find a way to continue playing it. The game just shouldn’t have been created in the first place.

I feel like this question relates to the posting Sam put up about the census and people’s view on the race questions. Honestly I think if you’re multiracial you shouldn’t have to categorize as one race. Check off more than one box that specifies all your ethnicities or fill in the “other” category and say what you are. It’s terrible that society has to make you feel confused and like you have to pick one race to identify with, but you’re NOT one race. There are so many people in the US who are multiracial and there is no way to simply pick one race to identify with and ignore the fact that there is another race in your blood.