So i was sitting behind this girl in class and watched her mentally flip out when she thought of this question. I'm all about equality and philanthropy but no country can afford to just let people flood in whenever they want to. If money or security wasn't an issue then Amnerica could have completely open borders and anyone on its soil could be onsidered a citizen, unfortunarly in today's enconomic and social situation that isn't possible. Watching her go nuts about how ignorant people are was comical - her spasms really just reinforced how ignorant SHE is. The world doesn't work the way we may want it to - not everyone is loved equally, people are valued based on power and as of right now America is at the forefront of the race and patriotism is one of the biggest weapons we have. If we forgot about legal immigration and allowed anyone to come in anytime they wanted then the LEGAL citizens would get completely screwed - the economy would plummit, people would be forced to the street, disease would spread and we'd become like a thrid world country! Its just politics. The world doesn't have the financial ability or resources to support everyone. What should happen is Mexico's government should take charge and implement new jobs so that more people can be employed, drug trafficking wouldn't take people to the gutters, and illegal immigration wouldn't be a problem becuase they'd be content where they are. I know that some person who THINKS he or she is a super liberal, hippy, whatever will think this is closed minded but really you're just uneducataed on the topic. We can't care about everyone, borders matter to it's citizens and everyone needs to chill out. And another thing, four hundred and fifty words is just way too much sometimes, I'm only on like three hundred and im already out of things to say, and i still have to write like 3 more of these things becuase i forgot to turn them in originally and i can get half credit for them which is good because it's better than no credit. Anyway, most people in college right now feel like we have to take care of everyone and everyone needs to be this or that or whatever, but look what's happening now! I know a ton of people loosing their job, my father and mother included, forcing many students to work full time and coming dangerously close to dropping out of school, leading to dropped education rates, leading to a fulfillment of jobs with no educational skills, therefore no doctors or teachers or lawyers creating a society of uneducated workers, little money, and so on. This perpetuation will lend us to be just like the ocunty's whose citizens are trying to get into america! Good deal girl, really really smart.

this is really relating back to a little last week and into this monday - i forgot to post this last week and still feel "some kinda way" about it. This topic was uncomfortable for people for many reasons. The men don’t understand it and don’t really need to – I get that it’s a natural part of life like sex and reproduction and that without it life would virtually stop and natural means of reproduction would fail to exist, but in a class focused on race relations I don’t see why it was necessary and for the life of me can’t even remember what the transition between our subject and periods were or if there even was a transition. I know a lot of people left and although it could be seen as disrespectful, it also was embarrassing for many of the women in the class. Although sam argues that it shouldn’t be awkward and I guess that’s why he was talking about it, IT IS. And I think it can even be a little disrespectful for sam to be talking about it so openly at all when he was just saying that he can’t know what it’s like to be a minority because he isn’t one – yet he went on and on about a woman’s period although he has no way of knowing what it’s really like or all about because similarly he isn’t a woman. I’m going to take the next few sentences to see if you guys actually read this. Right now I’m eating some multigrain fiber crisps that I got free at the gym. They’re ok – there’s not many in this little pack and they taste really sugary, not so much like blueberry. I got a piece stuck in my tooth and it’s uncomfortable. I think that that class was both an example of something we should be talking abut (not so much the topic but rather having a discussion on something that makes us uncomfortable, being forced to react to a situation many of us are unfamiliar with yet are forced to deal with in our everyday l ife), yet also very contradictory as he was taking a position on somehting he can’t understand. Maybe he feels a sense of “male guilt” because he thinks its mens’ fault that women get hormonal and sensitive during their week or so of menstration, their lives a living hell already and then being forced over the edge by the insisitivity of their signifigant other. I got the little piece of food out. It was strenuous on my tounge. And then he puta clip of Laurie in a play dicussing “bleeding,” which he writes “is her word, not mine.” That’s different, still. One, she's a woman, and two, it’s a play. Those are not actually her words but rather the words of the person that wrote it, who is probably a woman, and if she isn’t a woman then it is a work of fiction. Anyway we probably won’t be discussing that anymore.

I remember reading about this right when it happened a couple of weeks ago and it was gut wrenching. To imagine that a place is so far behind in social justices is shocking and disheartening – we live under a vague and even wrong assumption that America is free and proud and that anyone can accomplish anything – yet these pretenses are slashed as soon as word gets out about something like this. How can this be happening? IT’s embarrassing for the entire southern part of America as it is living up to its stereotype of being bigoted and unjust toward minority groups. I even heard some chuckles as it was revealed that it was Mississippi that was the state in which this was taking place, almost like “yeah, this would be happening there, I’m not even that surprised. Gay people just shouldn’t live there.” In some cases I see that point. If you’re living in a place that doesn’t respect a person’s orientation, then leave. Make it easy on yourself and just get out. But then I counter that argument and think, what about the people that can’t just pick up and leave? Or better yet, why don’t the people that are uncomfortable with it leave? Or my favorite one, why are they uncomfortable at all? They have put this girl in a terrible position by making her the bad guy – the kids at her school see it as her fault that prom is cancelled which is not right. It was the school’s decision to cancel prom rather than facing a tough social issue. They have made her a scapegoat and possible engrained a negative impression of homosexuals onto the other students’ minds – they could associate the negativity of their prom being cancelled with all homosexuals, instead of correctly associating it with the closed-mindedness and bigotry of the school they were raised in! It’s shocking. I understand that people are uncomfortable with the idea of homosexuality and that some people may even be uncomfortable at the thought of their children going to a dance with people of opposite orientations (I don’t understand why people think this way, I’m just aware that they do), but to cancel the dance all together makes it seem like it’s so evil that the whole idea it was connected to should be wiped out at well, as if everything that homosexuality touches should be burnt and forgotten about. The fact that teachers are impressing this into their students is frightening. They would rather pretend something doesn’t exist, lying about the true nature of society, than face issues head on, promoting an example of strength and open-mindedness to the youth of the area. Although this makes me feel more satisfied with where I was brought up and my education, I think I’ve lost respect for the education system as a whole.

I think I’m going to disagree with this statement. I’ve been to, hosted, and heard of tons of theme parties and none of them are created for the purpose (intentionally or otherwise) of making fun of black people – in fact I think white people would be afraid of hosting a theme party where that’s the theme! I can see where you’re saying they’re aimed at a group of people – CEOs, Pirates, Jersey Shore “contestants” – but I’d say the most racist theme that people are holding is a “white trash party,” for as far as I know that’s the only one that deals explicitly with race. Unless I’m wrong. Which I might be, because that happens. But what I really want to write about is something that was in the USA TODAY on Monday.
On the front page was an article expressing how the US needs to take proactive measures against natural disasters in an attempt to avoid economic and social damage (as has happened to other places). The opening paragraph was roughly: The last major earthquake to hit the USA was a magnitude-9.0 on the Pacific Northwest Coast over 300 years ago – before people and development.
Apparently the USA TODAY doesn’t think Native Americans are people.
So I wrote a letter expressing my disgust for the ignorance of the article and its THREE writers, named several Indian tribes that resided along the pacific northwest coast during the time of the earthquake, and more or less made it seem like the article offends all minority groups residing in the US (also I may have implied that I myself was Native American).
After last week’s class I was surprised to find such blatant unawareness, especially in a news paper! Also it wasn’t as if it was the Pittsburgh Post Gazette or some other shallowly circulating newspaper, but the USA TODAY! I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to write to them on the topic – anyone of Native American ancestry I’m sure immediately noticed the flaw and had a thing or two to say – maybe comparable to my insistence that the paper writes a correction to the article for the following day. I emailed the letter in the evening assuming there was a man whose job it was to look for mistakes like this, taking into consideration the emails sent directly to the “corrections” inbox for fear of being sued for liable or offending anyone, leading to loss of business. My highly romanticized and film-induced perception of the journalism industry was slightly wrong.
The next day I received a stock email, thanking me for the input and urging me to continue reading the “fast, informative” USA TODAY. There was no correction the next day.

I think the main thing we can do is to stop exploiting Native Americans and their lifestyle (or our misinterpretation of it) for commercialized profit. We are constantly being bombarded by symbols, sports teams, and logos trivializing the Indian culture and its practices in order to create a trendy or romanticized idea (of which is fallacious because all we are doing is proving our own ignorance and insensitivity). We claim to be “honoring” these cultures by naming our euro-American “traditions” after the peoples who we genocided. Isn’t it enough that we took their land, massacred their people, and brought foreign and unavoidable disease to their villages, do we really have to also publicly embarrass them by forcing them to be a part of the culture that they no doubt resent? This forced globalization of euro-American (and I say EURO-American in order to emphasize the differentiation between the NATIVE Americans and the EURO Americans, or the people that dubbed themselves American AFTER the native peoples had already been inhabiting said land)culture is wrong and insulting – who are we to decide which practices are right? Are our Christian ideas upon which “America” was founded really being at all injured by the views (polytheistic or otherwise) of a people who pose no threat to us, militarily or economically? We must educate ourselves and others on the practices of the Native American people in order to extinguish or ignorant and empty ideas and opinions of their culture. We focus so much on political correctiveness in education – yet what are our guidelines for this situation? We learn of past genocides and wars, yet the wars occurring now (if you even call these “wars,” they are more unwinnable social battles), continue to progress without public knowledge or a second thought. The Genocide occurring now in Sudan can be compared in this light: it’s an atrocious occurrence that gets almost no news coverage, yet is as bad as any other suppression of people, war, or genocide that has happened in the past and that we put so much emphasis on. Do we not teach these lessons so that the same mistakes cannot happen again? We see ourselves as a world of fairness and equality, yet we ignore wars that are happening in other places, and even the injustices that are occurring in our own country! Education is the main way to escape the perpetuality of ignorance, in any situation. We must take charge of our opinions and inform ourselves on the events not only of the past but of the present, so that we can make an effort to stop them! To reiterate what has been said in class, I do not mean that we should make an effort to help these peoples because we feel a sense of guilt – many of us do not, for we had no part in what happened, however by letting it continue to progress and their civilization deteriorate, we are guilty by way of ignorance.

I find an enormous contradiction when dealing with this question. The “American dream” and the foundations upon which this country was structured all seem to indicate the validity of gay unions and marriage under the construct of the constitution. We must remember, however, that the document was founded under Christian beliefs, and therefore America and its “Dream” were founded under similar principles. I believe I can state with relative accuracy that the founders never dreamed of the extent to which the document would come under such close scrutiny. If we were to analyze it loosely, we could say with certainty that there is no legitimate reason why the question of whether or not gay marriage should be legal is in existence at all; however, the neurotic formalities and inspections of this are due to the fact that the county was in fact founded via theological beliefs, so that influence is constantly hanging over the head of interpreters and have rarely (until recently) come into question by the governmental system. This could be due to the fact that a religious (read: Christian) politician is viewed as more trustworthy than a politician of another religion. I find this interesting because the main religions all maintain the same god and for the most part follow the same guidelines. Gay marriage threatens the linearity of American culture and the idea of perfection we strive to achieve. Morality does not come in play; the inspection is strictly one of rhetoric, focusing not on the ethical aspect of “right and wrong,” for in any circumstance such a matter becomes that of opinion and therefore irrefutable, being legalized, due to interpretations of language. In our present situation the construct of marriage is still majorly based upon “outdated” ideas – that is, the ideas of Christianity and strict interpretation of the Bible. Today’s society (especially it’s younger generations) rarely classify themselves in a strict religious group, which I believe is why such formerly taboo subjects are beginning to come into question. Whether it began as a rebellion from the norm via historical occurrences or influence from elsewhere, were it not for this lack of religiosity or religious identity I believe that many injustices would continue to be disregarded due to the perpetuality of governmental theology, creating a cycle that revolves around itself. Until we can make a solid break from this circle, the question of the legitimacy of gay marriage and many other social inequalities will continue to go unaddressed. We need to continue on our path to break down the government system and diversify it in its religious aspects, for if we continue to rely solely on the Christian belief system, the interpretation of the Constitution will forever remain in content, social stigmas and biases will remain frozen.

I was in shock during lecture. To be honest I almost didn’t even go. I have been planning and planning for my future, of which in my overactive imagination I have made extravagant. I do not come from a wealthy family; my father works as a car dealer and my mother for the most part stays at home with my sisters. Recently, to help out, she has started working at a restaurant her friend owns. Under the bubble of my new college friends and the life they live, I have almost forgotten where I come from. I was taking on life the way my wealthier friends do – I went out to eat with them, went shopping with them, and did everything else with them that cost some money, forgetting that I don't have it to throw away on things like that. When I realized what I was becoming (not that it is a bad thing – it was just a difficult realization to come to, was I living in a false reality?) I had a bit of a breakdown. Who was I to keep taking and taking from my parents who were working so hard to provide for me? I have a job but it is barely anything, especially not enough to justify for the ignorance I had acquired. These false pretences I was living under – that I had the money, and, more disgustingly, the right to act in this selfish and humiliating way – struck me harder that I can explain. I’m that person I used to mock. Listening to Sam in class was almost too much to handle. Who am I to keep taking? Think of all the privileges I have! Even to be here at a University! Yes, I have obstacles, but nothing so much as compared to most. I’m here. I did that much. Now I just have to get further – any foreseeable obstacles I truly feel like I can overcome. But could that self-assured idea get in my way? Could I sit here and think, “I’ll get it done. I can do it. So I’ll do it later,” and watch my future fall to pieces in front of me? Is it starting to happen already? This is just another obstacle. No one cares anymore what I scored on my SATs or what awards I won or who I was friends with. It is my turn now to take all responsibility. My excuses are meaningless and I cannot sit here and cry over the things that get in my way because they make things too hard. What is “too hard?” Is it anything more difficult than my privileged life? How much of a wuss can I be? From now on I will work on toughening my skin. Soon you’ll see me with scales.

I hate this.
It is a damn shame that we need to take such precautions in everyday activities. It has become a world that we cannot even travel without a defensive nature against anyone that is different than the majority. I do not disagree with the action that was taken - the captain was unsure of a situation and he went with his instinct and investigated. Had his instinct been right, he would be seen as a hero, ut becuase it was wrong he is seen as a bigoted, ignorant jackass. He was in charge of the situation and it was his call. In fact I feel it is ridiculous that becuase of this incident people are questioning why he didn't know this. It is his reponsibility to fly a plane and keep his passengers safe - he is not an acedemic and it is not his job to keep religious practices straight. Perhaps that is a job we can employ on such planes. But probably, added to the sign of: no liquids, no shower razors, an no foreign religious practices. That sounds good. I do wish we lived in a more knowledgable world. It would be fantasic if we all respected and understood each others religions, lifestyles, and culture. But we DONT, so I don't understand why everyone is so suprised at this incident! And what if this man was muslim! He would be the victim: the poor man who escaped his awful country to come to the land of opportunities, only to be treated as a terrorist. YES THIS IS AWFUL but it is not the fault of the pilot - it is the fault of out culture, the news, our goernment, and the paranoid head honchoes that influence our opinions. Its a shame that we base the whole on the individual. But its an even bigger shame that we were given reason to.

Now for an anecdote: My best friend’s name is Hayavadan, but I call him Hay. He is straight out of India and at highschool was like the class pet. Everyone wanted to know about him and have him bring in his mom’s chai tea. He was even voted class president. But no one ever wanted to see im outsde of class, and in college he only has Indian friends. He is constantly saying how nice Americans are and how glad he is to be here, and I find that schocking because I constantly feel bad for him, and I can’t figure out who is more ignorant – me or him. Who am I to feel bad for someone, assuming that he is mistreated or misunderstood, when he is unaware and happy? Or does it not matter at all.

Hi

I remember being on a radio show and explaining to my black co-worker how I found it interesting that, while watching a boxing match with my dad, the announcer referred to the two competitors (who were both wearing red short) as the man with hair, and the man without hair, although one was black and one was white. I told her how I thought that was interesting that said announcer refused to acknowledge the color of either competitor. Well, this girl then exploded at me on the air, explaining (to put it delicately) how the announcer should not have said the black boxer and the white boxer because it is racially unfair to distinguish people by the color of their skin. It seemed clear to me, through her explanation, that she felt that being distinguished from another person by color was derogatory, because, in an effort to return to my main point, "black" has in the past been used in a racist way, and "white" has not.