This class has opened my eye to much more than race issues. The saying does stand true that "the more you learn, the more you realize how much you don't know". I have also realized how closed minded and prejudice many people still are today. I have always known that racism still exists, but I had no idea the extent that it really was happening, especially things that many of us can not really see; such as loans, housing, or jobs. I also never realized how much I am privileged being white. I don't want to say that I feel bad about being white because I didn't choose it just like anybody else chose to be black or brown. I find myself asking a lot more people where they are from or their ethnicity. And I also find myself correcting people for making false accusations about people of certain races. I did it in one instance when I went visiting over thanksgiving break and the girl literally asked me why I was "sticking up for black people when you're not black" and got very offended when I told her that she was wrong for the things she was saying. I may seem like a bitch at the time, but I really don't care because this whole "race crisis" will never get fixed if people just keep their mouths shut and turn the other cheek. It is safe to say that I was proud of myself! If anything, I would say that this class not so much informed me of things I didn't know, but more taught me how to handle situations and say things to people when I think they are acting a certain way about a race or ethnicity. I would recommend this class to anyone because there is at least ONE many eye opening lecture for every person of every race, ethnicity, and gender. And if you do know everything, at least the lectures are never really boring.

Throughout these past couple weeks i have learned the power of repuation, media, and how the hardest things to do and the right thing to do are sometimes the same thing. I have also experienced how frustrating, tiring, and annoying it is to constantly have to defent yourself. Not once would I have ever expected anything like this tragedy to occur at our beloved University. It is very clear that we all felt betrayed becasue everyone who has stepped foot onto this campus has tried very hard to give it a good name, something that all the students and faculty can be proud of. It is amazing how all this snowballed and caused a complete 180 not only on how we view things, but how others view us as well. It is very humbling to see how one rotten egg can spoil wht the rest of the dozen have worked to hard to achieve. If there is one thing that I have seen that has impacted the way I look at the future choices I make, it would be making the right decisions because they are right, not because they are easy. We have seen how keeping quiet about things tht we know are wrong can really catch up to you and bite you in the butt in the end.

There is no doubt in my mind that the riots would have happened with or without any social media, but i am not denying that this social media blows up everything to the nth degree either. I can bet that the riot would have been a smaller scale and perhaps the vandalism may not have occurred to the extent it did. It is one thing to riot and try to prove a point, but it is another to vandalize your own community in the process. Its almost as if people have the mind set of "Well, people are gonna upload this stuff to facebook, twitter, or we will see it on the news so we REALLY better get our point across by any means necessary." Plus, we have to think about how huge this school is.. and lets face it, football is as much part of Penn State culture as eating turkey and mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving is to the United States as a whole. The funny thing i find about Facebook and Twitter is that I dont even have to turn on the news anymore. I dont know about everyone else, but my news feed blows up so fast when big news hits and its super annoying to see 500 posts about the same shit. As much as these social networks can bring about rumors and lies, it can also help us spread the truth. I saw on Twitter that Ashton Kutcher thought that JOE PA raped the little kids?! i was like woaahh get your story straight! This whole this is so messed up because no one knows whats going on. I know everything is all messed up and hectic right now because people are still trying to sort out the truths from the lies, but I do feel deep down in my heart that things will work out in PSU's favor and we will rise from this. As much power as the media has to bring everything down, it can bring us right back up again as well.

Coming from a white person's point of view, I honestly don't know how to react to the thought of whites being the minority. Not that I'm scared, but I haven't been put in a situation where I have been the minority and it has had a negative impact on my life. If there would be one thing that I was scared of, it would be that the majority would feel like they had to give white people what they had coming for them and kind of have a whole "slavery" repeat. I would hope that something like that wouldn't occur though. Whether the whole swap of majority and minority thing will even happen is up in the air. This is because there are still "white" immigrants who come from other countries. And if it were to happen, I feel like it would happen in a gradual manner. I really think it's mind boggling how much out society looks at race and how it defines them. I'm not gonna lie, being in this class and noticing all of the awesome different races and cultures it almost makes me feel lame that I'm a white chick living in the US. Its almost like I'm boring. Then I think again and I think to myself, is race all arbitrary? I mean who cares? Yes in some way it shapes who you are, but then we have to go back and think we are all 99% the same. I think the American society needs to start focusing more on personalities instead of what color their skin is. In my eyes, you can be white, brown, black, purple, or lime green, and you can still be a good worker, a lazy piece of crap, a kind person, a mean person, and all of the above. Too bad we can't go around meeting people while being blind-folded.

I found all the videos that we watched in class to be funny, yet very informative. Now, when it comes to "innocence" we know that anyone of any race can be guilty of a crime such as theft. When we watched the videos about the bike thief, I expected that more people would pay particular attention to the colored kid, rather than the white kid. But I was really taken back when the pretty girl was trying to steal the bike and no one really thought anything of it! In fact, many of them even tried to help her. I honestly feel that society has basically brainwashed everyone into specific race and stereotypes. These probably all come from movies, shows, and even crimes they choose to show on the news and we store them into our subconscious and use them in our real life scenarios. With women, I feel like the image is always "the damsel in distress", so societies just assume that a woman is never committing the crime but rather the crime is usually happening to her. Really, we know that anyone is capable of committing a crime, but these stereotypes that society has etched into our brains has made us all very judgmental and more willing to "jump the gun" so to speak on accusing who is guilty. I really do feel like the racism and sexism has effected the outcomes of various court cases in our country. I do think that we are headed in a direction where we are more open minded as of who commits crimes and look more at evidence rather than the person itself. I'm not sure how long it will take to undo all the years of what we have done, or if it can eve be undone completely, but it is obvious that our society is noticing more and more that something needs to be done.

Some of these videos absolutely blew my mind. I watched ones such as Clorene, the clothing and handbag maker and Figaro, the pastry chef. I guess as an American I never really think of how easy we have it and how we really do take everyday things for granted. These men and women work so hard to keep what little business they have going and if we could just come up with something little that could help them out it would help them in more ways than one. One of the most amazing things I find is that when Figaro said she needed a mixer. Raising $200 for a new mixer would be nothing to raise, especially in a class of 400 students. But she specifically said that she didn't want it given to her, she wanted to buy it. She may not be able to buy it all at once, but through a payment plan she would be able to. That shows how hard working she is and honest she wants to build her business. I bet that 90 percent of the entrepreneurs in America don't have that much honesty when they start their business. I'm not going to lie, I did not realize the difficulty of getting simple supplies and I feel bad that I never have taken the opportunity before to help out in any kind of project like this before, but I am glad that i finally am starting to understand and have the opportunity to do so now. I'm really excited to see what my group and I and also other groups can come up with. I really do feel like the handbag thing can go really far. Not only would they make cool bags for women to own, but they would make awesome gifts! I know if someone gave me a bag that was handmade in Haiti I would be very impressed. So if any project, I would be most interested in that one.

part 2: Obama did mention numerous times that he wanted to change the way things were in our government and I believed if anyone had the power to it would be him. I am actually very interested to see who will be runinng for next election. Just to see if more multiracial men or even women will attempt to become president. But like I said before, just judging on past pricipals, any man, no matter what race will usually end up doing the same thing when being elected into office. Maybe its time for an even more dramatic change and have our first female president.

part 1 :Honestly, President Obama could be purple for all I care. It doesn't matter what color he is, as long as he does his duty as president that is all that matters. Honestly, before this class I would have just gone along with the rest of the majority and called him black, but the more we talk about race and what it truely means and what it looks like, I would identify him as a mixed race. In all honesty the color of skin has no impact on who I would vote for. This is because I personally don't care for politics because i think it is all just a load of crap. It is just a monopoly of lies and empty promises. I do believe that Obama sold his story the best out of all the running candidates, and yes I believe that being of color had something to do with him being elected. I don't want you guys to believe that I am hating on Obama or any of our other previous Presidents, but its more on the system that we follow.

I cant really say that I "chose" my religion because i was taught it growing up just like I was taught how to read and add 2+2. Now when we are that young, we are susceptible into believing what our parents or other adults teach us is the truth, right? I mean, they are our adults so we assume anything they lead or introduce us to is the truth. This kind of thing happens all over the world. For example, we all know that awkward question when kids see a new born baby and ask "where do babies come from?" The thing is, we pull the "stork" fable because they aren't mature enough for the truth. But the truth is a fact. We know where babies come from, we know how they come to this earth. Now when a kid asks "where do we go when we die". Some say "heaven", others say "in the dirt". But how do we know? There is no "fact".

I was raised in the Lutheran Church, which is a category of Christianity and I am not ashamed to say that I am a Christian because it has helped shape who I am today. I do believe that there is something bigger than us somewhere out there; there has to be. We all may be worshiping the same thing just with different names. I believe some people follow religion because we like answers to questions even though we may not know the true answer; it gives us comfort. I've seen people use religion to help overcome deaths of loved ones, drug and alcohol abuse, and even just an abusive childhood in general. I've also known people who don't believe in anything and just believe that you should just try to be a good person and then you die. I don't believe that one is better than the other. The older I get, the more I believe that religion is not just a bunch of stories and rules written down, but just a way to guide people when they are lost on the path they find themselves on.