Something that really stuck with me throughout this class was the constant reminder that we are human and have a basic need of wanting to communicate, but are often times afraid to speak up and voice our opinions because we fear we will be judged and criticized in the public eye. I really liked the lesson that we got to talk via skype to people in a different country that we wouldn’t normally get a chance to converse with. I think that the first step really is communication that is how we move passed the notion that we aren’t allowed to say or speak about certain things. I really enjoyed the article that addressed the issues on the issue of racial and ethnic inequality by laying out the central idea of freedom and determinism in a more greater detail. Debating whether or not the fairness of affirmative action is correctly placed was an eye opener. I also learned that it is nearly impossible to weave both the freedom and determinism perspectives together and be able to argue your point effectively for a long period of time and hold your ground on the topic at hand while you are in an intense debate with someone else. Sam informed us that most people are able to keep and steady balance for a short time while debating their issue, but invariably one side or the other resonates as being truer, or we lose our footing by selectively perceiving only certain facts. “Understanding the contours of this debate and the importance of sticking to the middle path are both essential to exploring the issues that are raised in discussions about race and ethnic differences. In fact, at the center of almost every conversation that we’ve ever had about race and ethnicity rests the need to take a position on the Freedom vs. Determinism continuum because, in the end, each one of these conversations touches upon the need to explain the differences in the behavior of members of different ancestry groups.” I feel this is important to know because it is important to know all the underlying themes of your debate. Knowing how the freedom versus determinism debate because explaining those differences in the behavior of members in different ancestry group allows us to effectively have a chance at sitting down and everyone having a voice at the race and relations table as Sam puts it, and being able to communicate and understand effectively. I loved how Sam would put us in different scenarios as well. I think by doing this it gave people a chance to take a look into someone else’s life and reality and in return bring them closer to that particular group. It is hard to relate when you all you have been given in life is stereotypes and generalized notions of particular groups. Sam challenged us to break those stereotypes down and view the people as just that, human beings. When I look back it made me realize how similar we really are.

I feel that interracial dating isn’t the real problem. It is mainly how you are raised and what values you are taught to look for in a person you are trying to date. For instance my family raised me to love someone who is similar in virtue, and also someone who respects me and makes me happy. I don’t necessarily pay attention to the differences on the outside such as skin color. I mainly pay close attention to someone’s character and how it correlates with my morals and heart. With that being said I know this isn’t a perfect world and not everyone is raised to love with the heart so openly.

This is where the problem comes in and people pay attention to differences such as skin color and already have a shield up before they even get to know someone. It’s the pre-prejudices that we learn growing up and see on shows that we can either choose to carry on with us into adulthood, where hopefully you learn how to think for yourself by then, or choose to discover and explore past the comfort zone that you had made for yourself. And for the girl above me talking about the reasons why she prefers to date African American males because they have a way of putting her “back in line” I feel that is not a real answer. One you shouldn’t have to be scolded you are a grow women. And that’s basically saying all Black males are aggressive and all White males are submissive which is totally not the case. Everyone is different like I said your skin color doesn’t determine how aggressive or submissive you are it all depends on how you were raised to handle certain situations. “You also have the factor of what society says. Black females don’t like that white women take their black men especially the good ones but some black men prefer white women for the very reason I think white men couldn’t handle black women. They don’t like their attitudes. Being able to deal with attitude is a big factor in dating anyone. If you can handle me when I’m having an attitude with you then I think that is something I would want. I don’t want a push over I guess. I want someone to be able to be get me back together when I’m out of line.” Again these whole lines please speak for yourself. I am a grown women predominately African American and I don’t need to be in a relationship with my dad…Again I don’t care who anyone dates as long as they are happy I don’t think this should be a problem.

You do have some people who are ignorant but there will always be those certain kind of people who choose to hate for stupid reasons. You just implied that all African American females have attitudes and that White woman do not? I wish you would speak for yourself or do some research but that’s not how I was raised to get attitudes and manipulate through those attitudes and wait for a man to basically scold me and tell me what I am doing wrong. Again this is not skin color related interracial dating would be perfectly fine if people like the one I just quoted in the above comments wouldn’t continue to spread stereotypes. Because I have dated a fair mix of people and until you get to know someone you can’t particularly judge their whole race(even with knowing someone you still shouldn't try to group everyone from that race in a stereotype) and make assumptions because everyone is different and walks a different path in life.

I enjoyed the lecture that we were shown in class, where Sam presented some basic knowledge of the culture of the Arab Muslims and things that we as Americans are not really shown. Though I found the video presentation interesting I felt it would have been even better if Sam had presented the lecture in class instead. Still there was a lot of valuable information that was shown and I liked the whole placing your self in someone else’s shoes scenarios that he performed as well. I felt that by placing myself in those scenarios and by Sam showing us the pictures of the Muslim families and students just living life like we live ours. It’s crazy how we have these religious wars and shun one another’s beliefs simply because we don’t agree. It was a great inciting class. I feel it stirred up a few people’s perception on Arab Muslims and also made me see another side then what they show on Television with all the violence that goes on. When Same asked people after doing the scenario that we were Arab Muslims and showing all the footage of the brutality and harshness of some of the American U.S soldiers, I was shocked how many people said they would be in the Jihad groups. I myself personally am strongly against violence so that’s why I did not raise my hand but I do however see, as Sam said before, from a sociological view point what would drive or force someone to join these groups. The statistic about the 30 innocent civilians needing to die in order for the U.S to call off a raid was a very terrifying and inhumane answer to me. Twenty-nine lives would be ok, but at thirty is when we think it’s the right time to call off a killing? I find that scary that human lives are not being valued. I also found that video documentation of the soldiers ramming someone’s car off the road very disturbing. This isn’t the only disturbing video that has been kept from the American public over the years. There is probably lots of documented forms of torture that people over there have to live with and that we only hear rumors about. I really felt for the people having to be afraid that they are in a war zones, watching their family and friends mistreated by Americans and seeing videos like the Christian warrior videos, why would they think anything less. If I was an Arab Muslim I would probably think that the U.S were just over there to steal my resources and not care if they harm my family and friends in the process, just as long as they get what they want.

See this man Jorge go around without being asked, but out of the pure goodness of his heart was aspiring. He may not be the most selfless person I know because I am sure there are others with just as big if even bigger hearts like Jorge who wish the best for people, and try to help out in anyway they can to the people who are less fortunate then them. Comparing him the Jesus who we believe to be G-d’s son is quite an extraordinary comparison. I don’t think I’m ready to say he is a spitting image of Jesus, because I hardly know the man. I do agree however he might be on the rack track, if he is trying to get through the pearly white gates. People saying he is equivalent to Jesus completely might be taking what the bible said Jesus did for us a little too lightly. Risking his life for us is not the same as feeding a couple of people on the street corner. I’m not disagreeing that it’s not a good thing but I’m not going to all of sudden worship a man doing what any decent human being should and would do. I think someone reminded me that he was an Atheist? This doesn’t change my mind about how I feel about him as a person, he still can be a good person even if he is Atheist, I have met some people who claim to be Christian, and they end up being some of the most ugly hearted people I know. Jorge isn’t doing much better but he still finds the time everyday to find the motivation, which he says is knowing those people are depending one him, to go out and serve those hungry people. For some of those people that might be their only meal of the day, which is really quite sad when you think of how much food you and your family combine throw out and waste. I do respect what he does because I know that can’t be easy. Waking up at 4am every morning to prepare, while still holding a full time job. I don’t know where he finds all this energy. I pray that he is able to continue he good deeds because he really is making a difference in those people lives, and he should be tremendously proud of it. We might all wake up one day to realize that it is time to meet our maker, and he might have a total other set of rules that he had in store for us. You never know, that’s why I think like Jorge I like to live my life from a day to day bases being kind and true to people as best I can. Also trying to help out those who aren’t able to help themselves at the moment, because you never know if or when you might be the one on the other side looking in.

I feel this is very quite simple. Women should be in charge of their decisions regarding their bodies. I have seen both sides of the spectrum from the extreme pro-life candidates to the extreme pro-choice. Even before all the talk about does human life really start at conception debate I have held on to my opinions firmly that women should have the right to chose whether or not to go through and carry out their full term pregnancy all the way to birth.

I feel that each situation varies though, I am all for the preventive measures so that having an abortion won't be as common but ultimately it is up to the individual or couple if they are in it together. I think in terms of rape when someone becomes pregnant through force is it truly fair to them to have no choice in whether they want to keep that rapist baby. What if this mother to be is only 13 is she obligated to have a baby when she is practically a baby herself. We don't need anymore people struggling barely being able to support themselves or their children for that matter.

Life is already hard enough without the added extra dilemmas that could be easily solved. I agree with my classmates about the idea of a women actually being "legitimately rapped". The very notion of this idea sends shivers up my spine. Soon every lunatic will be playing that card. For this man Roger Rivard to condone such a volatile and absurd idea just go to show how we still no matter how hard we fight live in a predominately male chauvinistic world. If you don't have a uterus you don't get a say, unless that child being conceived is partly yours, and even then the carrying of the life form for nine months and birthing of the child, I think the women has a slightly higher vote status in what she should and wants to do.
Saying that women don’t have the right to alternative birthing options is really quite outrageous if you think about it. Especially as I mention before if she was forced and did not have the chance to agree to consent. I am not saying that every case is acceptable though I think women should have a right, there are other forms of protection from pregnancy out there that I think should be further explored and promoted. If we weren’t so eager to cover up and pretend that we don’t have penises and vaginas in our society, and freely be able to talk about in the public school setting about safe sex and education I feel that would also be very beneficial to us.

This is a weird blog this week. Naturally I feel that most people were thinking that the white females looked the most friendly, but that's because they were smiling...and some of the black men in the video were not smiling and or hunching over slightly. I don't understand the point of this, why are you asking us to judge when clearly we know that it's not always best to judge someone at first glance. I am curious to know if you would have had one or both of the females not smiling and looking kind of mean versus one or couple of the other guys smiling if it would have shown a different light...Are you trying to get people to say that they look scary or something? It's more about facial expressions then anything. Clearly someone who is smiling or not shielding themselves is going to look a little more approachable.I think they should have showed more of the African American males smiling. I really don’t understand the point of this video? I am confused in what this was supposed to be teaching us? Like I said you are probably going to be more enticed to greet and be friendly to someone who is warmly smiling and being friendly back that is just basic and simple knowledge. I know I wouldn’t necessarily approach someone if they were mean mugging and looking like they were in a bad and nasty mood, because I choose to surround myself with people who aren’t miserable. Of course we all have are days but if they were strangers to me I think I would just simply pass by them and not try and engage in a conversation.
I am curious in way that all the males seemed to be less happy or intrigued to be there then the females. Like all females are happy go lucky kind of people. We all have our bad days just like we all have our days where we want to smile at the world, I know I do. I think we need to keep in mind that some people are that much of smiley people doesn’t mean they are shifty or up to something. Then again you never know. That girl could be smiling because she just cheated and passed an exam, we have no clue, I don’t like judging people right off the back because the first few minutes is usually a fake impression given the “polite” impression. I feel you really need to hang around and be with someone before you can judge their character and that is only by seeing how that person interacts and handles himself in certain situations, because everyone goes about it in a different way.

Ok so I see the data and I see the effects and all of the above^ but this has really been in our face for how many years now...What are we going to do about it is the question I would like to really know. People who are saying they are absolutely blind to racism or believed that racism is over because we have our first black president are clearly blind to the world around them, and I wish they would stop sleeping on this subject. I would also like to respond to Jamie Lee: "This was a shock [to] me at the time, but now after seeing those statistics and hearing what Sam had to say, my roommates may have had every right to make those assumptions that they did, perhaps based on previous experiences." ^^ I don't think anyone has the right to make assumptions based on previous experience all the time, especially referring to being in a setting like Penn State. If people don't actually take the time to get know someone, who they believe is different from them,(A lot less different then you think, once you get to know people) then they will never get the chance to fully understand someone. We will continue repeat our history blindly allowing it to happen over and over again
It is inevitable that there are always going to be hateful people in the world who are not trying to give up those certain views. We can’t force people to express themselves with kindness instead of hatred. Like I said I don’t think anyone is without fault and has the right to blame or accuse anyone else. Without evening knowing someone how can you place all these expectations and faults on them. I think sometime people are afraid to live up to their own mistakes and take personal responsibility for themselves so it is easier to try and use a scape goat or another person or even race for that matter to sort of blame and cast their stones at. The statistics speak from themselves and they are speaking very loud and clearly. My only real concern is how do we change this. Also I find it troubling that some people even most people can have a bad experience with one person and turn right around and group everyone into the same category and claim they hate the whole racial group entirely. It is shocking actually. Maybe since I was raise to love all shades and that everyone is here on earth for a purpose to do good and help thy neighbor. I think if we put down our swords and actually took the time to communicate we woudn’t have this problem.

I think that we do have a duty and a responsibility to reach out and help those that are less fortunate then us. We have a duty has human beings to be compassionate and not just turn the other cheek. This country throws out billions of dollars worth of food every year! What does that say about us when so many people are suffering and starving, children going to sleep hungry every night and football stadiums of people dying because of malnutrition. I think we are so caught up sometimes in things that are really unimportant that we lose sight of the bigger picture around us. Why is this country so greedy and quick to judge that of other countries when we have millions of problems of our own. I think helping out others is what we are put on this earth to do, we are all in this together and need to reach out our hands if we are able to do so. People are so wrapped up in this materialistic society that we have created that they just muff the sounds of millions of crying souls trying to reach out to them for help. I think America can be hypocritical at times telling us that we can make it if we work hard and them always putting into our heads that we are the saviors and this idea that we are the greatest when in fact we have this higher society owning all the wealth and ultimately running the show, and we have selfish people who don’t even blink at the thought that people go to sleep starving mostly every night. This world is slowly disintegrating and the true face of what this government has in store for us is slowly showing its true colors. I wish people would wake up and take off their rose colored glasses that main stream media and the government has so conveniently provided for you and take actions to not just simply exist but question and go out and research because there is a lot of things we don’t know and probably won’t know, and those that hold the knowledge also hold the power. When it comes down to it, we are all in this together, we might not all be given the same opportunities or treated the same, but you can give thanks to society for making it that way. We all need to realize that at the end of the day we are all human we all make mistakes. The only way to get better is to start making a self-conscious effort to change and try to do what is right. It starts by making that decision that you want to change for the greater good though.

What the guessing game personally says to me is that you can’t judge a book by its cover. I am learning even more now just how little a lot of people really know about how many different types of cultures of people there really are. We have to look passed the basic generalizations that we have come to know so well and force ourselves to learn about the many different types of people in our world. We are so used to taking a glance at someone and sizing them up and judging them before they even open their mouths. This has become a popular thing in our society where we aren’t certain but we presume to think we know anyway. It was quite humorous how wrong some people were while attempting to tell the people where they were from or what their ethnic backgrounds were. This exercise also showed that these race-classifying systems don’t really work. We need to start looking passed outside characteristics and start going deeper and getting to know more people. It was funny how he chose the two students with 4.0 and asked them to identify them, it just goes to show no matter how smart you are it’s virtually impossible for you to size someone up and fully know or understand where they come from just by simply looking at them. It just still puzzles me how we have continued to go about generalizing our population like this. It not only sometimes excludes people but also leaves out a very important representation that may get overlooked and not counted. Everyone deserves to have some representations of their culture and I feel like the little check boxes that I see that ask you to identify yourself are limiting that right and opportunity to do so. It’s time we start saying no to generalization and stop being so damn lazy. Yeah it would make things a little more difficult having to include more or a range of different options but it would ultimately make us better off diversity wise and let us have a chance at actually coming closer to a real approximation of our different diverse brothers and sisters out there in the world. So what does that tell us, not even the smartest person can judge a book by it’s cover and be completely right. We need to stop trying to assume and guess and put everyone in to one specific category. Why does this even exist, when did we get so concern about knowing exactly or approximately how many of one racial orgin was in the world. It’s like we can’t even have a chance to forget about it and just exist because we are constantly reminded about it and it is constantly shoved down our throats.

I am neither a full Christian or a Muslim. I believe that religion simply exist to give people hope and courage when all odds are against them. For anyone to say the hateful and simply ignorant things that I read would be against what I believe personally. I believe that everyone has the right to freedom of speech, but with that freedom I feel it is necessary for you to be your own personal agent and guide your thoughts in a respectful manner, because there are a lot of people in this world and no one is better than anyone else. With that being said I was shocked by the letter, but It is sad to admit but I wasn't that shocked or surprised when I first thought that it was from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, I felt like the way main stream media crafts things puts fear in us so that they are able to execute whatever plans that want. I have not heard one thing good from the news talking about the Middle East and yet we are over there as well killing innocent people and nobody seems to care. We think we have freedom when all a long we are just really puppets mindlessly going along and not questioning anything, because America's so great right? I am not in anyway saying that I am not grateful to be here and be able to have my freedoms but it makes one wonder what else don't we really know about our government? When I found out that the letter was not indeed written by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but instead written by the advisor to the President of the United States, Franklin Graham, a "Christian" man, I was appalled and frankly deeply disturbed. I feel like America likes to play the blame game a lot. But they fail to realize when they point that finger at others trying to reprimand and tell them what they are doing wrong, they have three more fingers pointing directly back at them. I don't know why people were so shocked. They act like we haven't been fighting pointless wars for centuries, just take a look back into history, many of the wars were unnecessary and many people died simply for one thing a greed stricken government. So called Christians have been playing this game for years. We are all brothers and sisters and Christ loves us all when it is convenient. But when I want something, it's ok to go and kill everyone in our paths that defies us because we want God to bless America and pretty much no where else. It is sickening and I for one when I was old enough to see this pattern and understand what was really going on, I stopped letting them spoon feed by bull shit and started thinking for myself. God doesn't want war? Where in the bible does it say its ok to off anyone who doesn't believe in the same values or ideals as you. Aren't we all human beings. I was watching CNN and someone brought up the fact that Religion is becoming a hoax. It's becoming more violent and greed driven, is this really what it is about? I am ashamed that this man is able to be an advisor because it is obvious he needs to take the back seat and reevaluate he ideals, because to call himself a Christian is just insane. I believe in mankind and I believe in being good and virtuous to others and respecting that at the end of the day we all bleed the same.