SOC 119 has been a great and mind opening experience for me this semester and one that I think that everyone who comes to Penn State should have. It has opened my mind to racial, gender, minority, and international issues, but most importantly it has taught me to think. To think and to question. Many times in class Sam would say something and make me think of something that I always thought to be true in a completely new way. I would leave class and continue to try to work through what I thought and believed the whole walk home until I was snapped back out of my trance and into reality.

I think the discussion groups each week have really helped to open my mind and made me better at discussing delicate issues with groups of people from many different backgrounds. This year my discussion group talked about everything from discrimination, to death, cops, cultures, and even awkward elevator encounters. Together we all discussed our takes on life and these issues and often when I left the discussion group I was again thinking about things in a new way and feeling good about the conversations we had during our class.

Overall I think that my experience in Sociology 119 this semester has taught me many different lessons on many different levels. It has taught me to question what is viewed as authority. Often times in our discussion groups we are left questioning Sam’s statistics and videos that he shows sometimes saying that he is trying to get us to think in a certain way, but the fact that he leaves us questioning his line of teaching in discussion is the truer and broader lesson…to always question. Whether it is authority, or a religious or cultural belief, everything should be questioned because it only makes the real truth stronger.

My time this semester in Sociology 119 has been extremely eye-opening. I am ready to leave this class being more comfortable having discussions about race, culture, religion, and the human nature and spirit in general. Not only am I more open to having these types of conversations, but I am more open to changing my stance and changing my mind after having these types of conversations. One of the biggest problem our society faces today is that they are locked into their own beliefs. This fact is evident in politics, religion, and race relations. Sociology 119 has taught me that you must be open to changing you mind and altering your beliefs to truly learn and grow. That when you come to the race table you cannot come with preconceived notions if you want to have a real and life-changing conversation. This is how our generation will change the world, by being open to changing our minds, and ready to have open and honest conversation about race and culture.

I thought that the section of the class on Tuesday that Sam devoted to talking about fear was very interesting. He opened the discussion with the question about how many children are abducted by strangers each year in the US, and while I did not put down 25,000 like most people in the class I thought it was at least over 1,000 and I was extremely shocked when I found out that it was only 100 children each year.

After my surprise, I began to think about what in my life drives my perceptions of fear. Two of the biggest I considered were my parents and the media. These two authorities provide me with much of the information from which I generate my fear. I think that fear is the strongest emotion other than love, I believe it can be considered more powerful than hate because it is more prevalent. Often times we hate those things that we fear, but before the hate is able to flourish there must be a fear surrounding the object that drives the hate.

Our generation is the product of our parents generation, and all of their fears and loves. As much as we do not like to accept this fact as twenty-year olds, many of our now irrational fears stemmed from the nagging worries in the back of our parents minds as they tried to raise their children to be safe an healthy. I can still hear my mom saying “wait a half-hour after you eat before you go swimming” or “don’t talk to strangers” or “look both ways before you cross the street”. The chances or me drowning, getting kidnapped or hit by a car were very slim at best, but my parents instilled these fears into me at a young age so that they would be in the forefront of my decision-making. As I thought about this I began to imagine a world where my parents were not as open and accepting of other races and classes of people. What if the warning “don’t talk to strangers” was instead, “don’t play with that black boy” or “don’t play with that Jewish girl”. If these were the worries that were instilled in my mind at a young age, my perception of race and ethnicity would be much different today.

Sadly, this type of mental conditioning that generates fear does come from you parents, and more significantly, the media, in much more subtle ways. We are taught to “fear” other groups of people and other cultures by not being exposed to them at a young age. Instead we are exposed to only our parent’s culture and we are told that it is the “right” one. This lack of knowledge can lead to fear of practices between races later in life, and can stifle the race conversation. While, most times children’s parents do this completely unintentionally, the media’s conditioning effects are much less subtle. The term “Jihad” which is a duty and principle of the Muslim religion meaning “struggle” or “striving in the way of God” is thrown around by newscasters when describing the radical Islamic terrorism in the Middle East. It makes people fear the word Jihad, and fear a religion that they believe to be set in violence. This is radically untrue, but because it is so often repeated by a trusted news authority, it becomes true to many Americans and the fear and dissent grows.

Fear is an extremely powerful and prevalent emotion, and its ability to propagate from trusted sources of information makes it a very dangerous emotion. Fear and worry has the ability to make a “mountain out of a mole hill”, but in the more serious sense it has a chance to make a different culture seem evil and acts a wall in the conversation about different races.

Ethnocentrism is a mindset that is inherent to most of the worlds cultures and religions. However, this attitude is close minded and can lead to problems such as war, terrorism, persecution and discrimination. It is nearly impossible to get rid of the mentality of ethnocentrism because people naturally will feel that the country they live in, the religion that they were born into or that they choose, and the culture that they grew up in is the best. The inherent problem with ethnocentrism is that it fosters close-mindedness to other cultures or beliefs. Ethnocentrism is a mindset that is founded solely on personal beliefs, and therefore no factual information can effectively change a person’s mind. When people practice an ethnocentric mindset, this is the point where understanding ends and a lack of acceptance begins.

I think that one of the most obvious examples of ethnocentrism is the mindset that “America is the greatest country in the world” and American culture is the best. From our perspective we see many reasons why this should be true: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, due process of law, the newest and best technology at our fingertips, the strongest military, and a relatively open and democratic country. As Americans we have been taught that we are the best and we have used our “built from nothing” mentality and our history of overcoming obstacles to support our nationalistic tendencies. However, the striking realities are that the United States is ranked 46th in the world based on civil liberties, 37th in health care, and only “average” in education. These harsh rankings and statistics clearly show that we are not hands-down the “best” nation in the world, but instead that we have flaws that need to be addressed. Ethnocentrism blinds us from these facts.

In the same way that ethnocentrism blinds us from America’s shortfalls, it blinds us from the benefit of different types of practices in other cultures and the chance of understanding and accepting these practices. Many people think that their religion or culture is the best and because of this they do not take the time to understand the practices and traditions of other religions and cultures. This lack of understanding leads to discrimination, a type of discrimination that is based solely on belief. Once ethnocentrism becomes discrimination against other cultures the door to understanding these cultures is shut once and for all.

From our discussions in SOC 119 this year I have learned as you gain more knowledge and understanding about different issues, you become less rooted in your own opinions and more open to different perspectives. I believe that the cure to ethnocentrism is understanding and understanding only happens when we are open to other cultures and open to accepting new knowledge that may go against our previous beliefs.

I was also involved in Student Government this year, and though I may pay more attention to election results than most students, I couldn’t help but noticing the same phenomenon in the election results. Though it wasn’t true across the board, many students with black or brown sounding names ended up losing their elections. The fact that these students lost their elections could be a result of a lack of campaigning and apathy, but for me, someone that knew many of the black and brown candidates on the ballot, the name discrimination in the vote distribution was strikingly clear to me because I knew how hard the students with black and brown sounding names campaigned and how hard they worked in student government in the previous year, and it seemed strange that all of their hard work did not pay off while more apathetic white sounding candidates were elected.

Sam has use the resume example often in class, where he places two resumes with the same qualifications side by side and shows that the white sounding name gets called back significantly more often than the black or brown sounding name. I think the Student Government elections this year were very similar to this example.

Close to 75% of the students on the University Park campus are white. Therefore, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to assert that the voting students chose names of candidates (most of whom they did not know personally) based on the names they are more comfortable with. For white people these are white sounding names.

As a member of Student Government I find this very troubling. Some of my close brown and black friends were some of the best members of the assembly this past year, and in these elections they were not re-elected. From personal experience, I can tell you that it was not from a lack of trying or a lack of campaigning. It is extremely sad to think that they were not elected because of a non-white sounding name. As I talked to them after the elections, they were disappointed like most people would be, but even though no one complained that their race or their name was the reason, I think it probably crossed their minds. It is hard knowing that some of my friends did not experience success, not because of a lack of effort, but because of the race their name signals.

This really brought Sam’s resume example to life for me. It’s one thing not to get elected to your college’s student government because of a black or brown sounding name, but to be denied of a job for the same reason is extremely unsettling and angering to me. They say that America is supposed to be a country of limitless opportunities for those who work hard, but in the past few days I have being to question how true this principle really is. In this year’s elections it seems that a person’s name mattered much more than their platform or how much effort they put into chasing that opportunity.

This blog question reminded me of a comment that was made in class on Thursday that really got me thinking about the differences of racial development for whites and for people of color. In class today one student said that when they were learning about the stages of racial identity development for white people she felt that they were superficial or fake, whereas the racial identity development for people of color was more often a clear internal struggle with ones identity. Though I only know from the white side of the picture, I couldn’t help but agree with her on a few aspects of her statement.

I think that both paths of racial identity development are a struggle, which is common when people are trying to understand the injustices and hate that exists in our world. However, as Sam has often mentioned in class white people have the benefit of being in the majority and holding the perceived positions of power in American society. Therefore, when white people are going through internal struggles with their racial identity, they have the comfort and “crutch” of knowing that they are white, and that they are in the majority. There is a constant societal influence reinforcing the idea that “if you are white you are okay”. And therefore I think this adds a level of comfort to the white’s struggle with racial identity development, but it also acts as a crutch and does not push many white people past the earlier stages they feel comfortable staying in.

The racial identity development for people of color is experienced from a very different perspective. Here people of color are not only battling the injustices and hate in society, but these ideas are easily internalized because of constant societal influences telling people of color “you are not okay, because of your race”. In the example with the baby dolls that we saw in class today. Young children of color were saying that they didn’t want the black doll because the black doll is “bad”. I think this really makes a difference on the way that people of color experience these stages of racial identity development.

When you are white your race doesn’t define you. You are able to have your own unique identity while you struggle with the guilt from the injustices that people of your race have inflicted on others. However, when you are a minority or person of color society defines you by your race. I think this is what really internalizes the struggle for people of color in racial identity development. They are not only struggling with their identity as a person of color, but they are struggling with the way that most people of society will view them. A white person doesn’t have to worry about being tagged with the injustices that their race inflicts on others, though they do have to struggle with the guilt. But a person of color has to find the balance between how their race is viewed by others and how they view themselves. For people of color their identity in society is much more strongly connected to their race. I believe that this makes the struggle for a racial identity very internal, and from that perspective, the white person’s struggle to develop a racial identity could be seen as very superficial and not as connected with their internal self.

Sam’s talk on global inequality really opened up my mind even more on the issue and made me face some hard questions about our country and the countries and people in power that I have always ignored, or just chosen not to address. I think one of the main ideas behind global inequality is the idea that the people in power are the ones who set the rules of the game, and they make them so that they can maintain their position of power. I remember in our class about white supremacy, Sam got on top of his desk and pretended to play “King of the Mountain” and he showed that the rules and the systems that the white people have institutionalized in America have kept black, Hispanics, Asians, and other minorities from being able to reach the same power position that whites enjoy. I believe that America sets the rules to this same game on a global scale. As a country with a GDP of our size we largely are the ones who have the power to control the money flow and set the rules of the game.

As I think more about what Sam said about America’s giving in global aid, and their actions towards the Haitian Rice Farmers, I am confronted with some hard questions that I do not have the answers to. Why does America give global aid? And what is their larger goal when providing this aid to other countries?

When Sam discussed global aid he provided us with the following statistics. He said that the total annual United States aid to Africa is $3 billion. This includes $1 billion in emergency food aid, $1.5 billion for technical cooperation, and $0.5 billion to finance clinics, schools, food production, roads, power, safe drinking water, sanitation, etc. Overall this aid seems extremely generous for the countries of Africa and for honorable causes. However, on closer examination, Sam showed us that about $2.75 billion of this aid goes indirectly back to Americans to pay for their efforts in Africa. Only $250 million of this aid actually went directly in to Africa’s economy.

Sam also told us about America’s interference in Haiti’s Rice economy, and how subsidies to American rice farmers allowed these farmers to come into Haiti and sell their rice for cheaper than the local farmers, effectively destroying a large portion of Haiti’s economy.

As I think about America’s actions in the global economy and this type of interference, I cannot help but think why? Why does America need to interfere in much weaker economies for its own advantage? I think it all goes back to the rules of the game. America plays the game in its own best interest, in the interest of staying on top of the mountain. America is the second largest provider of global aid when considering pure monetary size of the aid, falling only behind Japan. I have always calmed my anger towards some of the injustices that America impart on other nations by reminding myself all the good that we do around the world through global aid. However, with the examples from Sam’s class I have come to realize that not all aid is necessarily in the best interest of the countries that we are providing the aid to, and often it is only in our best interest. This is very unsettling to me to think that America may be perpetuating a scheme of global inequality by setting the rules to the game.

This was a perfect week to ask this blog question because as I was reading the readings in Shadowboxing with Race and the online article “The New Jim Crow” to prepare for the exam, the articles dealing with mass incarceration and the way that it perpetuates the Jim Crow laws and the racial caste system in our country really struck me. I was not fully aware of the lopsidedness and injustice of our “justice” system and they fact that it is used to reinforce the racial prejudices in our country.

There are over 2 million people in the American population that are in prison today. This number has increased from 300,000 just 30 years ago, but what is most interesting about this statistic is that the actual crime rate has decreased in recent history and the current crime rate is at all time lows. However, the incarceration rate continues to climb and there are more punitive arrests now more than ever before. Currently 2/3rds of citizens are jailed for drug related crimes, while the other one third is jailed for other criminal offenses. The US justice system’s new “War on Drugs” has some unexpected implications.

Contrary to what most people may suspect, most of the arrests are made for drug possession and not drug sales. The justice system is not searching for the kingpins or citizens committing violent drug crimes, instead 4 out of 5 of the arrests made are made for possession. However, drug use and possession is prevalent in many different races especially with whites, so why, in 2000, did African Americans make up 80%-90% of imprisoned drug offenders in some states?

A lot of this answer has to do with the battle grounds for the “drug war” which takes place in mostly poor communities of color. In fact, in the state of California, a black man of college age is more likely to end up in a state prison than a state university. Should we find this statistic troubling? How about this one: once a juvenile in entered into the justice system through criminal actions, black juveniles are 18 times more likely to get entered into the adult justice system than white juveniles. As we being to delve deeper into the American system of mass incarceration, it begins to look more and more like a means for the perpetuation of racial discrimination in America than a means for corrective justice.

As a political science major I like to believe in the principles of freedom, liberty, and the American justice system. However, learning about mass incarceration as a means for discrimination really shakes my faith in this system. The incarceration system in place today effectively bars 13% of African American men from casting a vote, a statistic which hearkens back to the times of Jim Crow and poll taxes and literacy tests. Incarceration also leads to employment discrimination as well as discrimination when trying to apply for a food stamps or a lease for an apartment or home. This type of “non-racial” discrimination through the justice system infuriates me. It is a poor reflection of the ideals that Americans supposedly stand for and largely goes under the radar because it is our “justice” system that is perpetuating on of the greatest racial injustices in our nation today.

I have a hard time understanding how stereotyping Asians as “smart” and “intellectually superior” to white people is used to discriminate and I would argue is used as a form of racism. The discrimination begins with Asians being stereotyped as smart, and I think that this stereotype can be very wrong just as often as it may be proved right.

From a college student’s perspective, I didn’t really have many Asians that went to high school with me, so the Asians and Asian Americans that I started to see all over campus when I came to Penn State kind of stood out to me. It was an aspect of diversity that I was not really exposed to until I came to college. I think that this is partly where this stereotype comes from. Many Asian students come all the way to America to take advantage of our higher-education system and universities. The leave their country and come to ours in search of a good education for a better life. I think that this is very brave and I don’t think that many students put into perspective the idea that many of the Asian students here have left their home for four-years and come into our country to get an education. I have a hard time imagining what that must be like because I didn’t even choose to leave the state.

People begin to stereotype Asians by saying things like, “I always see them at the library”, there is even an online blog that is devoted to students from different universities around the country taking pictures of Asians sleeping in the library while the blog says that it is not discriminatory in nature, it would not have been created if it wasn’t trying to reinforce a stereotype.

However, there are stereotype about hundreds of groups of people, hipsters, sorority girls, frat bros, even the people who live in North Halls, so in the case of Asians, when does this stereotype of Asians become a form of discriminatory racism?

When Asians can’t move beyond that stereotype. I believe that is the test in our society. Stereotyping is just generalization, something all Americans are good at..(see what I did there?) But stereotyping becomes racism when the stereotypes are used to hold a group back or down play their accomplishments. In class Sam said that racism is associated with power, and that you need power to be racist towards another group. Right now in America, the whites are still in power, and they constantly downplay the achievements of Asians by passing them off as smart. This seems counter-intuitive, but when you think about it, it’s true. When an Asian does well at a game or a test we simply pass it off saying, “It’s because their Asian”. When Asians do well in classes, this is the go to stereotype. We seem to forget the number of hours and times we’ve seen them at the library, and any of the hard work that they may have put into the class gets discredited. Instead Asians do well simply “because their Asian”. If discrediting their academic achievements is not discriminating enough, we keep them forced into this academic cubby of society. This is where the real racism comes into play. This type of racism can be seen by a NBA player like Jeremy Lin. I don’t even follow the NBA and I can tell you that Lin graduated from Harvard. How many mild fans can say where most of their favorite players went to undergrad?? Not Many. This proves the idea of racism against Asians because of their “smartness” or “superior intellectual abilities”. Many sportscasters are alluding to the fact that Lin is a good ball player because he’s smart. Not just because he is a good athlete.

Stereotyping becomes racism when a group of people are unable to move above or beyond the stereotype of their group. When a frat bro becomes a CEO we don’t discredit his work and blame his success on his dad or his connections. No, he moves beyond that stereotype and is able to enjoy his individual success. However, when an Asian American becomes a famous NBA player, he is unable to move beyond the stereotype of his ancestors and relatives and instead he has to enjoy his success with millions of other Asians and the stereotype that his race carries.

I really liked the videos that Sam showed in Tuesday’s class because it really opened up my eyes and made me realize how miniscule we as humans really are, not just in our universe, but on our own planet. The first video really reaffirmed something I already knew, but an idea that is really hard to picture and hold inside your mind. The first video showed us that Earth is one planet of over 6 billion like ours in the galaxy and trillions more in the universe. It is naive to think that we are the only life form in existence and that God is only concerned with us, a small subset of the population on planet earth. That is what the video really said to me. For the people that believe in a type of God, we always question him and ask, “why me?”, “why would you bring this upon me?”. This is a self-centric way of thinking if you believe that God created the whole universe. It also brings new meaning to the idea that people believe they are the “center of the universe”. We really do believe that we are the center of the universe because that is all we know. The first video highlighted the scale that really is the universe, and that we are truly not at its center. And even though we like to believe that we are the center of our earth, the second video showed that that may not be so true either.

Humans have always worked to distinguish ourselves from the animals that surround us, but if you believe in the theory of evolution it is likely that we were at one time these animals, and they are a lot more closely related to us than we think. Sam tried to prove this point in class by saying that humans and chimpanzees share over 96% of the same genome. However we try to distinguish ourselves from these chimps saying that we can decide what is right and wrong and that we can love deeply and think deeply. However, sometimes I do not believe that humans are much different than chimps. We say that we can think deeply and love compassionately, but most of the time humans’ emotions drive their actions and they leave many of their own kind sick, hungry, and dying in the streets. I think that humans have evolved pretty far, if evolving is what we have done, but that second clip did a great job at reminding us of the similarities that still exist between us and the other animal inhabitants on this earth.

I also heard something very interesting this week that ties in well to the idea of humans placing themselves on a pedestal that they don’t necessarily belong on. There is only one other animal in the world that drastically alters their living environment as much as humans do. Do you know what type of animal it is?...Its a beaver. And yet each day and each year we brag about how technologically advanced our society is, but when you think about it a different way we are acting like yellow-toothed beavers. I think what I learned from those two videos and Tuesday’s class is that it is all perspective that really matters. And I think our society needs a real perspective adjustment if we want to start making real changes in our world.

In class on Tuesday and again in his blog Sam conveyed the idea that when you don’t like certain features that make up your body it is like you are saying “God screwed up”. I understand Sam’s thinking behind this idea, but I do not completely agree with it. After learning about the European roots of race discrimination in class this week, I think it is society that screwed up. It is natural for human beings to notice differences and similarities between each other, or at least it is in our society today. However, when the Europeans really screwed up is when they started to indentify differences between human beings or races of humans and “more or less human” compared to others. Until that moment, it was innocent observations such as I have light skin and you have dark skin, or I have a thin nose and you have a wider nose. The change came when people started to think my light skin is better than your dark skin, or because I have light skin I can be free while you are forced into slavery because I am more human than you. When God created us he supposedly created us all in his own image so it is absurd to think that one race or feature could be better than another, but this systematic and ordered thinking is what the Europeans imprinted on the new world. And as society was structured, this idea of racial ordering and feature ordering was institutionalized into our society with it. So no, when people look into the mirror and dislike some of their features such as their skin color or eyes, or hair they are not saying “screw you” to God, but they are highlighting some of the biggest evil that was built into our society from the start. Slowly we need to start deinstitutionalizing this idea of “white beauty” that is plastered over TV and all of the beauty magazines. When white beauty is no longer the standard and instead just a type of beauty as unique as everyone else people will finally be able to look in the mirror and love their bodies just the way they are. When the rankings based on race are taken away that is when noticing differences and similarities between each other will be innocent again. How we will begin this process is a hard question because the idea of classes of race has diffused into all areas and levels of society. Even when girls are young and playing with Barbie Dolls they are being fed the image of ideal beauty. Even though these dolls may be of many different colors, they are all of the same size and shape and similar facial structures. Race classification and ranking pervades even this area of society at a young age. Ranking of features is part of the backbone of our society and the ideas of how to fix it are hard to answer, and for a different blog. But, in conclusion, I do not blame the person that dislikes their features in the mirror one bit, I do not blame God, I blame society. And I hope that we can begin loving ourselves just the way we were made and get rid of the European created evil which is classification and “ranking of humanity” by race. This is what is truly disgusting.