en-us https://www.intensedebate.com/users/1211490 Comments by Buddyruse21 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/06/week-8-lesson-14-affirmative-action__trashed/#IDComment85451561 Affirmative action is a phrase that has grown to something like evolution. Many people see it and instantly get mad. I’ve found that I disagree with affirmative action on many levels, just because we haven’t found a balance that works for everyone. It makes sense to try to help balance people to have equal opportunities, but not when it starts to push someone else out of the path. For example, I’ve found that this has become an answer for some of our differences between our races. It’s like the old image of a race where white people left black people shackled at the starting line. When they were given rights, they were able to start running, but they couldn’t possibly catch up with the white folk. This is where government programs and charities and things like affirmative action are used, but I don’t think that that is right. First off, its too simple to think of ALL of Human history as a single line and a continuous event like a race. I feel like we’re beyond that. In the early days of our country, the society was outright racist and discriminatory. Now it’s a battle that deals with individuals, because our racism and discrimination is mainly done by individuals and how they see their neighbors. When someone passes someone for a job, and it’s based on their race or their ethnicity, it’s a personal choice. This is where we’re having problems. If you want to use the “race”, then in a way, other races are still being shackled, but instead of societal chains they’re being held by individuals at the starting line. The way that people like to stop this is by taking the people that are running ahead of those and forcing them to take a pit stop while the shackled people are given rides on golf carts to let them catch up. One of the major problems with this is the fact that we never feel that we’ve done enough. Should we let them stand side by side with the other races? Or should we give them a little head-start to help make up for what we’ve done to them in the past. This happens more than I care to count. The result is that the balance is lost and is actually flipped. Instead, we have white MALES being held back while everyone else is allowed to gain advantages because they NEED to be assisted. But how is that right? I sometimes feel like if I open my mouth and point out that I’m being discriminated against, then I’ll be seen as a racist ignorant guy. But it’s wrong! I’m all for helping out people who need it, but I think that we need to keep a balance. It’s not right to try to help one race and ignore the one on top. Why can’t we just look at each other as Americans and deal with it that way. If you don’t have the grades to get into school, then you shouldn’t get in with a scholarship. Poor people of all colors should have equal opportunities for scholarships and grants. I may sound racist to you, but I think that it’s more racist to look at race for eligibility, rather than merit. It blows my mind! Thu, 8 Jul 2010 04:43:17 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/06/week-8-lesson-14-affirmative-action__trashed/#IDComment85451561 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/06/week-8-lesson-14-affirmative-action__trashed/#IDComment85451371 I completely agree with you about the school systems. I went to a very poor rural school, and I lucked out getting into Penn State. However, I think that you’re wrong in assuming that they would kill to be in your shoes. What happens in some of these very poor schools is that the kids don’t realize that they are being screwed over by the poorness of their school and education. They just assume that things are as they are and you just do what you have to do. At my school, the kids looked at me weird when I didn’t go to the local school for college. It’s what everybody does. I was wrong because I saw how bad my education system was, and decided to change. Thu, 8 Jul 2010 04:42:44 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/06/week-8-lesson-14-affirmative-action__trashed/#IDComment85451371 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/06/week-7-lesson-12-multiculturalism-lgbt__trashed/#IDComment83632016 I saw the same parallels with my life that you did. My church was very segregated and my hometown is very conservative and tends to shy away from diversity. However, I think that the statistics that Sam used and the way you group people are a little off. I think that its not just the factors we use to describe the people around us that affects their actions. Does that make sense? It was really wordy. For example, you said that you don't remember any people in your Roman Catholic Church that were people of color, and that was probably true. However, I don't think that it's because they're “Roman Catholic” people. I think it's because of the culture of your hometown and the ties that bind the church community together and makes them get together during that hour every Sunday. The same goes for the Republican/Democrat labels. Maybe it wasn't the political party affiliation that your neighborhood identifies itself with that affects their views. Maybe it's their ethnic background, or a union, or a recent event that pulls them together. I'm not trying to argue against your syntax, I'm just voicing my frustration with labels and the fact that we need to look at the bigger picture, i.e. all of Sam's statistics or Census reports, etc, in order to see what really causes people to act the way they do. Thu, 1 Jul 2010 02:50:08 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/06/week-7-lesson-12-multiculturalism-lgbt__trashed/#IDComment83632016 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/06/week-7-lesson-12-multiculturalism-lgbt__trashed/#IDComment83629331 6/30/10 This lecture was really cool. When he mentioned hypocrisy and multiculturalism, I started thinking about where I stand with this. To be honest, I wouldn't be too upset living in a diverse community, but if I had to choose, I would probably want to live around people like me and the people I grew up with. Those people, just by coincidence, tend to be white middle-class country-folk. I'm not saying that there aren't any other races that live in the country, but I'd feel most comfortable with people who remind me of what I grew up with. Here's an example of diversity in my hometown and my reaction. While I was at PSU last Fall and Spring a Mexican-American family bought a small plot of land at the end of my road and built a new house. When I got home, my parents never told me anything about them, and I just found out their background about a month and a half ago when I met their son, who is my age and goes to OSU. It doesn't bother my parents or my family that they moved in, or that they have a different background. It doesn't really bother me either. I mean, I hang out with their son sometimes, but I don't go out of my way to spend time with them and I don't avoid them. I just go about my life. I guess I fit somewhere in the middle of the hypocrisy. My neighbors, on the other hand, hate them. My neighbor, who is the spokesperson for Redneck culture, likes to say that “Them there Mexicans built the house, then all 50 of them moved in”. It's stupid. Let me explain myself a little bit. When I said that I don't go “out of my way” to spend time with them, I mean it literally. I live in the country, which means that we're not as cramped as people are in the suburbs or the city. My redneck neighbor, Shelby, actually lives two miles from me, and the Mexican-American family lives three miles from me, which is FIVE miles from him. How strong is their influence that it's making him worry FIVE MILES AWAY?? I don't understand it. As far as the idea that we, as a culture who welcomes people in and feels comfortable among immigrants, demand immigrants to learn the language and culture of our country, I think that is definitely hypocrisy. I get frustrated when someone tries to interact with me in their language without trying to meet me in some “middle-ground”, but I don't care what they speak at home or when they're talking to another person from their culture. If someone moves in and completely avoids the culture that they've immersed themselves in, then I start scratching my head. Why would you close yourself off completely from something different? But I guess it's just as easy to ask that question of the Americans living around them. Thu, 1 Jul 2010 02:39:37 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/06/week-7-lesson-12-multiculturalism-lgbt__trashed/#IDComment83629331 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/06/week-5-lesson-7-race-and-ethnic-inequality__trashed/#IDComment81168484 I loved what he said about coolness too. I’ve noticed before that coolness is something that deals with how they act rather than how they look or what they wear, etc. Coolness is something that transcends race, and I think that being able to get past the first step of “knowing your race” is a big step for becoming “cool”. When you’re so comfortable with yourself that you know where you stand and what you are, then you’ve come to terms with the differences between yourself and others and you’ve at least starting to develop a list of what it means to be “white” or “black”. I think it was a great point in the lecture. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 03:17:30 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/06/week-5-lesson-7-race-and-ethnic-inequality__trashed/#IDComment81168484 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/06/week-5-lesson-7-race-and-ethnic-inequality__trashed/#IDComment81167899 6/20/10 This week, I enjoyed the lecture like always, but I started reading the assignment for this section, and I can’t put it down. Some of the things she wrote in the first five chapters really blew my mind. The first chapter pretty much defined the problems I’ve run into with these topics. At first, I wasn’t sure what she meant by “your” people or her general “you”. I put two and two together pretty quickly. It’s a little weird to read, as a white person, but I can see how it helps her argument. The entire book is a conversation. When you’re reading it, you can imagine that you’re at the Circle that she mentions. At the beginning she establishes her determination to see this thing through by rebutting all of the common excuses for not talking about race and problems between races. One of the ones that she talks about that I come across often is the idea of trust. People of other races and colors look at white people differently, and they rarely feel like we’re sincere. I’m not trying to make generalizations, but I’ve seen her examples in action. She says that they don’t know us, and they don’t know what we do when we’re comfortable in our white communities with our privilege and our freedoms. I’ve found myself struggling when talking to people of other races, not just from the strain of trying to constantly be politically correct, but from trying to prove that I’m not just putting on a show in an attempt to be more socially acceptable. It only feeds into the stereotype to act like that. It’s frustrating to be honest. I find myself feeling like I just want to quit. It’s almost impossible to fight against this. How do I prove that I’m not the stereotype? Is it my fault? Should I just ignore it? All of these questions popped into my head when I was reading the book and I’m working on the answers. Another thing that caught me off guard was the story she said about her brother -in-law and the joke. I can relate with her brother-in-law. I like to joke with races and stereotypes, and I’ve found myself in those situations before. It’s hard to joke with people. It’s a lot like political correctness; if you go up to eight different black people and asked them what they wanted to be called, and you would get eight different answers. It’s not that the jokes are offensive to everyone. I mean, I have a lot of friends that make white jokes around me and laugh when I shoot something back. There’s nothing behind the jokes and definitely no hate at all. I think that it’s good to joke, because they can open up a conversation. For example, when I joke with stereotypes, I tend to ask people whether they have any real foundation. Laughter makes people feel more comfortable with the topic. If they get offended, they obviously aren’t ready for the conversation. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 03:10:25 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/06/week-5-lesson-7-race-and-ethnic-inequality__trashed/#IDComment81167899 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/06/week-5-lesson-8-stages-of-racial-identity-white-people-stages-3-4__trashed/#IDComment80513268 I think that you bring up a great point with relating this lesson to children. It’s a common idea that children are blind to these lines and distinctions that we place on ourselves as adults, and I think that that is completely true. What you said to the other kid wasn’t racist at all; it came from the celebrated honesty of children. Kids are curious, and I think that that curiosity could help them to see past those distinctions I mentioned before, and maybe become better people. It’s a shame that you were seen as racist, you could have learned some pretty cool stuff from the other kid. Thu, 17 Jun 2010 01:46:54 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/06/week-5-lesson-8-stages-of-racial-identity-white-people-stages-3-4__trashed/#IDComment80513268 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/06/week-5-lesson-8-stages-of-racial-identity-white-people-stages-3-4__trashed/#IDComment80512613 6/16/10 One of the things that really caught me in this lecture was the question about being “Disabled”. My father is disabled, and has been since I was eight. He isn’t in a wheelchair, but he is in so much back pain that he can’t leave his bed for more than 5 hours a day. His condition gets worse every few years when he needs to get another surgery on his spine, and I’ve had to watch my dad slowly lose pieces of his independence. As I watched him with this, it was like I gained a little more of my identity as I grew older. Now, I look at my dad, and I cannot possibly take for granted the fact that I can touch my toes, that I can run or jog down the street, or that I can have a job without worrying that the narcotics I’m on will affect my ability to focus and not make a vital mistake. I’m not the only one that had to go through it. My father lived it firsthand. With every surgery and new pain, my father tells me that he’s afraid what he’ll lose next. He’s learning just what he is, by losing what he was. It’s something that I cannot possibly understand completely, but I feel like I know better than to take what I have for granted. I feel as if I can identify myself as “able-bodied”, and fully understand what it means. I loved the stand-up video. One of my favorite things about comedy is the personas that many comedians have. I think that the reason behind that is how, by picking a persona, the comedian is able to offer a commentary on the characteristics of that persona. For example, Larry the Cable Guy is acting in a caricature of a redneck man. Part of why I think he’s hilarious is because I live in the country. I’m not as extreme as “The Cable Guy”, but I can relate to what he says in his bits. I’ve seen people that dress like he does, and I have friends that have stories much like his. I never thought about what he was saying, but the moment he says it, I laugh because I knew it. The Weird Al video is the same way. Many of the things are classic stereotypical “white” things, and even though I don’t necessarily like all of those things, I know that they are clearly “white” things. The fact that I look at those things and feel connected to them made me realize that there is an “us” and we have a list of stereotypes. This is where I think stereotypes are somewhat useful. We use them as a way of establishing our group and making it unique. Many of them are bad, but there are some good things as well. Either way, I think that stereotypes and jokes about stereotypes help us to go from stage one to stage two much more quickly than we would if we were stumbling around our world with no idea of what it means to be “white”. Thu, 17 Jun 2010 01:39:28 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/06/week-5-lesson-8-stages-of-racial-identity-white-people-stages-3-4__trashed/#IDComment80512613 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/05/week-3-lesson-4-ethnocentrism__trashed/#IDComment79995645 I think that you’ve hit something really big when you mention the media. The media doesn’t realize how much power it has, and we are careless with what we will do in search of high ratings. We’re always trying to be the best thing on the television. This means that if we have 15 stories of positive images in Iraq and 1 really gory image of a soldier torturing prisoners or an interview with a prisoner in Guantanamo telling of how horrible we are, then they are going to pick the juicy stories that will shock the viewers. We are affected by the media without even knowing it, and the power jumps across nations’ borders as well. This projects an image that we really shouldn’t have. I think that’s a source to the problems we mentioned in class. Mon, 14 Jun 2010 03:09:53 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/05/week-3-lesson-4-ethnocentrism__trashed/#IDComment79995645 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/05/week-3-lesson-4-ethnocentrism__trashed/#IDComment79994013 Ethnocentrism is something that is a constant factor in the world today, but we never really notice it. We assume that we’re just avoiding situations where we know that we wouldn’t fit in, but, I guarantee, the real source of this hesitation to participate in the situations is ethnocentrism. Why would we avoid talking to certain people? Why do we just keep quiet when in a group filled with people that are different from us? Why do we hurry past certain tables in the HUB that are filled with people that are different from us? The trick is, ethnocentrism can be stealthy. We have to look into these things that we do without thinking and see where the source for these actions lies. Is it guilt for racism that exists in the world? Is it because we are racist ourselves? Or do we honestly believe that we exist on a separate plane of existence from these people. I’m not saying to run into the HUB tomorrow and plop yourself down next to someone who shares no background with you and become best friends with him. No, what I think we need to do is have a private search for our own feelings and thought processes. If you find that you honestly feel that you are different from them and that you shouldn’t talk to them, then that is your problem. I just think we each need to be aware of the sources behind our actions, whether we can control it or not. The idea of looking into the Arabic thought processes was fascinating in the Christian Invaders lecture. I absolutely loved this lecture. One of the main rules of warfare is to not empathize with the enemy, but I think that if we want to find peace and find a way to fix the damage we’ve done, then we need to do what we did in class. We need to look through the eyes of our “enemies” and see how we look as the “enemy”. I can easily see both sides of the puzzle, but I still know my place in the argument. My understanding of their position doesn’t stop the war. We need to educate the people in America. I’m amazed at how much we, as America, don’t know about Iraq, or any Middle Eastern country for that matter. We can barely find it on the map, but we still wanted to clear Saddam out of there. Uneducated masses are dangerous, and can easily be aimed at any enemy. Knowing this, I feel horrible for the Arabs in Iraq knowing this. But there is hope. We need to look at our enemy as humans. There is a reason why that’s not allowed in war. And that’s because it would end the war, and war wants to continue until only one side wins. I don’t think we need to force Arabs to be the losers. We just need to talk about it, but its too bad America doesn’t seem interested. Maybe if we made it a reality-TV show. That might work. Mon, 14 Jun 2010 03:03:29 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/05/week-3-lesson-4-ethnocentrism__trashed/#IDComment79994013 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/05/week-two-lesson-2-intro-to-race__trashed/#IDComment79965009 I thought the same way you did about Carolus Linnaeus, but I did some research and found that he did this as a way of justifying his idea of categorizing the animal kingdom. He’s the person that is primarily responsible for our “Kingdom, Phylum, Family, Genus, Species, etc” system. I don’t think he was a racist trying to show how he was at the top of the world and the human food chain because he was white, but rather trying to treat humans the same way he was treating animals. He was sorting us by location and characteristics, just as you’d separate an African Elephant from an Asian one. They’re both Elephants, but they’re also different. He was just using the ideals from the time period to analyze humans. I’m not trying to say he was wrong, but I can see where he is coming from. Mon, 14 Jun 2010 01:10:22 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/05/week-two-lesson-2-intro-to-race__trashed/#IDComment79965009 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/05/week-1-lesson-1-whadya-know__trashed/#IDComment79900560 I agree with you about the idea of being Politically Correct. A lot of the people I’ve talked to get really frustrated when I struggle to find a PC term for whatever we’re trying to talk about. I think that it’s becoming an epidemic. If we’re constantly trying to baby each other, we’re just causing more harm than good. I like to push the boundaries a little bit. It just kills me that if I use the wrong word, then I’m instantly a racist, a bigot, or worse… a Republican. I just want to stand on a chair in front of the HUB and scream, “They’re just WORDS!! They can’t hurt you!” But I would probably just be put on the list with the Willard Preachers. Sun, 13 Jun 2010 16:02:14 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/05/week-1-lesson-1-whadya-know__trashed/#IDComment79900560 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/05/week-1-lesson-1-whadya-know__trashed/#IDComment79898732 This class looks really cool. I knew that the test was going to be tricky when I took it, and I guessed that the answer would most likely be the one I least suspected, but I still answered them with my gut so I could see just how much I really knew, rather than just how well I can figure out the test. The answers surprised me. I was right in thinking that the answers would be the opposite of what I thought they should be, but they seemed so far from the “correct” one. The first answer was tricky. I assumed that it would be Irish American, mainly because many of the Americans who’ve ever told me their heritage has used the phrase “Scotch-Irish” to explain the leftover percentages after their main heritage, which was usually English, French, or German. Myself, I know I’m primarily German-American because my family has only been in America for three generations and my mom is the only member of my past who wasn’t straight from the Fatherland. I should have known that the answer would have been German-American, because my grandfather used to always say that you can tell how many Germans are in America by how strong its economy was. Everyone in my hometown is descended from a mix of old German and Irish families. The second thing that caught my attention was what Sam said about suicide. My answer was LGBT youth, mainly because that’s what we’re taught nowadays. What he said about them being “closeted” when it happens makes sense, but I still think its weird that it was Hispanic young women. That really blew me away. I mean, I don’t know many Hispanic people, being from a small rural town just north of the Mason-Dixon Line, but they just don’t seem like a demographic that would show the signs. I really understand what Sam said about social networking. My sister always looks down on people who attempt or commit suicide because they “obviously have no love for their parents or any of their friends or family”, but she never quite grasped this idea. If you have a network of friends and you feel connected to your family, then you won’t do it because of that “love” that she accuses of them not having. In a way, they really don’t have that love at all, because in their mind they don’t feel connected to their families at all. The last thing that I want to note is Sam’s mini-tangent on Native Americans. That blew my mind. I’ve often thought about this idea that we’re living on stolen land. How do we make up for it? We can’t give the land back, unless we gave up our entire country. But if that was the case, then Britain would go back to the Celts and the Britons, France would be Gaul-land and the rest of the world would belong to the descendants of small groups. Life goes on. We can’t be held fully accountable for our ancestors’ wrongs. I mean, I’m German, and my family left during the beginnings of Nazi power in Germany, so should I be held responsible for the First World War and the Holocaust? My grandfather voted for the Nazis. Should I have to pay for his decision? I don’t think so. I think we can find a better way to pay them back. Sun, 13 Jun 2010 15:38:10 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/05/week-1-lesson-1-whadya-know__trashed/#IDComment79898732 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/06/week-4-lesson-6-race-and-ethnic-inequality__trashed/#IDComment79405391 I think that it’s really cool what Sam mentioned first in the lecture. The idea that we are all pulled by strings is hard to realize when we are young. I had a teacher in high school try to explain this to me and my class when we were learning about civics. He would tell us we were free, and that we could do whatever we wanted for a week. So, naturally, we started bringing magazines, cell phones, playing cards, and music to the class. After Friday came, we made plans for a party on the following Monday in class. It was going to be awesome. We came in the class and started the music and got the chips and pop out of our bags, but then we saw the Principle sitting in the back of the room. We had to take the food and the cell phones and the i-Pods and everything to the office. We were blown away! When we got back to the room, really pissed, our teacher started laughing. He asked us why we weren’t still partying. We were “free” but there were still things we couldn’t do in front of the Principle. We thought he was being a hypocrite, but he was really teaching us something important. You can walk naked in your own home, but you can’t do it in the supermarket. Our freedoms and rights only extend until they infringe on someone else’s rights. If you don’t believe me, start blasting your music in your dorm-room during finals week. Its your right, but I can guarantee that your RA will be at your door really soon. You have a right to blast your music, but your neighbors also have a right to a safe and effective study area, and that’s where your right stops. Being an archaeologist, I really get what Sam was saying about luck in geography and how its human nature to play king of the mountain with power and resources. One example is Mesopotamia and Egypt. Both have rivers that bring them resources and power their nations, but in the ancient world Egypt was the stronger one because they “lucked out” with the Nile instead of the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Nile was more gentle than the other rivers and let the Egyptians gain the advantage over the people in the land of the raging destructive rivers. Does this mean that the Egyptians should have shared their land with these people? Its not their fault that they were born in that area, just like it wasn’t the Mesopotamian s fault that they live near the Tigris. As far as the king of the mountain thing, it happens all of the time! Ever since the dawn of time and the dawn of written history the men with the most power and fought to keep that power. Is that any different than politicians fighting to stay in office? What about people of any race fighting to keep their status in a civilization? I don’t think so. Thu, 10 Jun 2010 07:45:57 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/06/week-4-lesson-6-race-and-ethnic-inequality__trashed/#IDComment79405391 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/06/week-4-lesson-6-race-and-ethnic-inequality__trashed/#IDComment79406383 I think what you said about the employers is really interesting to think about. Do the employers realize that they are doing that? I know a place near my house that is run by students, but only people who live in a certain area are even considered for the job. The employer didn’t even realize he was discriminating against everybody else who applied. He was just hiring people he knew from Church because he thought that they would work better if they knew him well. I thought it was obvious that he was discriminating, but he didn’t. What if the employers hired white people because that’s the social norm? I think that its possible that we don’t even know that we’re discriminating against other people because its normal to do what we do. That’s something else that happens when a certain race controls everything. They control the norms and affect everything we do, whether we know it or not. Thu, 10 Jun 2010 03:51:41 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/06/week-4-lesson-6-race-and-ethnic-inequality__trashed/#IDComment79406383 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/06/week-4-lesson-6-race-and-ethnic-inequality__trashed/#IDComment79405555 I think that it’s really cool what Sam mentioned first in the lecture. The idea that we are all pulled by strings is hard to realize when we are young. I had a teacher in high school try to explain this to me and my class when we were learning about civics. He would tell us we were free, and that we could do whatever we wanted for a week. So, naturally, we started bringing magazines, cell phones, playing cards, and music to the class. After Friday came, we made plans for a party on the following Monday in class. It was going to be awesome. We came in the class and started the music and got the chips and pop out of our bags, but then we saw the Principle sitting in the back of the room. We had to take the food and the cell phones and the i-Pods and everything to the office. We were blown away! When we got back to the room, really pissed, our teacher started laughing. He asked us why we weren’t still partying. We were “free” but there were still things we couldn’t do in front of the Principle. We thought he was being a hypocrite, but he was really teaching us something important. You can walk naked in your own home, but you can’t do it in the supermarket. Our freedoms and rights only extend until they infringe on someone else’s rights. If you don’t believe me, start blasting your music in your dorm-room during finals week. Its your right, but I can guarantee that your RA will be at your door really soon. You have a right to blast your music, but your neighbors also have a right to a safe and effective study area, and that’s where your right stops. Being an archaeologist, I really get what Sam was saying about luck in geography and how its human nature to play king of the mountain with power and resources. One example is Mesopotamia and Egypt. Both have rivers that bring them resources and power their nations, but in the ancient world Egypt was the stronger one because they “lucked out” with the Nile instead of the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Nile was more gentle than the other rivers and let the Egyptians gain the advantage over the people in the land of the raging destructive rivers. Does this mean that the Egyptians should have shared their land with these people? Its not their fault that they were born in that area, just like it wasn’t the Mesopotamians fault that they live near the Tigris. As far as the king of the mountain thing, it happens all of the time! Ever since the dawn of time and the dawn of written history the men with the most power and fought to keep that power. Is that any different than politicians fighting to stay in office? What about people of any race fighting to keep their status in a civilization? I don’t think so. Thu, 10 Jun 2010 03:46:30 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/06/week-4-lesson-6-race-and-ethnic-inequality__trashed/#IDComment79405555 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/06/week-4-lesson-6-race-and-ethnic-inequality__trashed/#IDComment79405405 I think that it’s really cool what Sam mentioned first in the lecture. The idea that we are all pulled by strings is hard to realize when we are young. I had a teacher in high school try to explain this to me and my class when we were learning about civics. He would tell us we were free, and that we could do whatever we wanted for a week. So, naturally, we started bringing magazines, cell phones, playing cards, and music to the class. After Friday came, we made plans for a party on the following Monday in class. It was going to be awesome. We came in the class and started the music and got the chips and pop out of our bags, but then we saw the Principle sitting in the back of the room. We had to take the food and the cell phones and the i-Pods and everything to the office. We were blown away! When we got back to the room, really pissed, our teacher started laughing. He asked us why we weren’t still partying. We were “free” but there were still things we couldn’t do in front of the Principle. We thought he was being a hypocrite, but he was really teaching us something important. You can walk naked in your own home, but you can’t do it in the supermarket. Our freedoms and rights only extend until they infringe on someone else’s rights. If you don’t believe me, start blasting your music in your dorm-room during finals week. Its your right, but I can guarantee that your RA will be at your door really soon. You have a right to blast your music, but your neighbors also have a right to a safe and effective study area, and that’s where your right stops. Being an archaeologist, I really get what Sam was saying about luck in geography and how its human nature to play king of the mountain with power and resources. One example is Mesopotamia and Egypt. Both have rivers that bring them resources and power their nations, but in the ancient world Egypt was the stronger one because they “lucked out” with the Nile instead of the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Nile was more gentle than the other rivers and let the Egyptians gain the advantage over the people in the land of the raging destructive rivers. Does this mean that the Egyptians should have shared their land with these people? Its not their fault that they were born in that area, just like it wasn’t the Mesopotamian s fault that they live near the Tigris. As far as the king of the mountain thing, it happens all of the time! Ever since the dawn of time and the dawn of written history the men with the most power and fought to keep that power. Is that any different than politicians fighting to stay in office? What about people of any race fighting to keep their status in a civilization? I don’t think so. Thu, 10 Jun 2010 03:45:57 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/06/week-4-lesson-6-race-and-ethnic-inequality__trashed/#IDComment79405405 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/05/week-3-lesson-5-social-inequality__trashed/#IDComment78859683 I think that this example is better for explaining the differences between individual people and how they react and adapt to different situations in their lives. This is where habits born from how you were raised and the environment that you grew up in. My family was much like this one, only white. My father had a very good job and my family was fairly well off. But then my dad became disabled and we had to start living on half of the income that we had lived on before. Since my father’s accident, both me and my older sister have kept steady jobs to help pull our own weight and pay for our college tuition and books, and my younger brother is also working to pay for his extra things. This long-winded connection shows how people can adapt differently to different situations, and it all depends on choice. I think that the man you’re talking about really was the “black sheep” in that family, but not because he was more pampered than the others, but because he reacted differently and adapted to the situation differently than his siblings. Mon, 7 Jun 2010 03:26:38 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/05/week-3-lesson-5-social-inequality__trashed/#IDComment78859683 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/05/week-3-lesson-5-social-inequality__trashed/#IDComment78857676 I find it difficult to find a reason behind these differences. One part of me wants to just say that everyone is equal, because that makes everyone happy. The other part of me has common sense and thinks outside of ideal situations. In a real sense, I think that the solution has something to do with cultural advantages. I think that certain traditions help to give people the necessary traits for success in different situations. This may sound like one of the ideals I mentioned before, but hear me out. People from a culture that places emphasis on farming and industry, where children have to go out everyday and help out with the family’s livelihood, are more likely to learn habits of hard-work than people who grew up in a culture that focuses on something else. If you can’t already tell, my opinion tends to fall in the “Nurture” standpoint for everything that can’t be simply explained by physical limitations. I’ll give you an example. I’m from a very rural part of Pennsylvania. In Greene County, there is an unspoken rule that has been passed down since the time that the first people came here: Whatever your father does for a living, that’s where you will ultimately end up. All of my friends took this rule as universal. They just assumed that there was no way to break the cycle. So when I graduated from my high school (in a class of 28 people, I should add), only 5 of us went on to college, and I’m the only one that decided to go on to a university that wasn’t within the County itself. Those of us who went to college came from families whose parents had gone on to college as well, and achieved jobs that were outside of the coal mines or factories within the county-line. Going through school, we were always the ones that were highest in rank, we were the only members of the National Honor Society, and we participated in a variety of different clubs and sports-teams at the school. The rest of our classmates poked fun at us for trying to break the cycle. They just couldn’t understand why we didn’t just get our diploma or G.E.D. and then get a job through our dad or mom’s connections at the coal mine or the bank. I fully believe that my choice to go on to college and get an education comes from my parents. My father is a nurse, who was on his way to going to med-school before he became disabled, but he never pressured me to go to college or to become a doctor myself. He simply encouraged me to read, to debate, and to do whatever I wanted to, in order to reach my goals in life. I think that this attitude at home is the source to my traits that have helped me to succeed in life. Sure there may be physical limitations between races, like the Korean/West African runners example Sam used in the lecture, but our cultural helps to form habits in us that give us advantages in certain situations, even over other people in our race that weren’t raised with the same traditions. Mon, 7 Jun 2010 02:58:53 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/05/week-3-lesson-5-social-inequality__trashed/#IDComment78857676