I am sorry but as good and compelling of a lecture as that was. Video clips of a few out of over 90 thousand troops that are in Iraq and Afghanistan can be foolish to believe. How is this any different then saying the peen state people who were rioting represent the entire student body of PSU. I have friends in the military and don't get me wrong they knew this was over Oil but they can give to shits about their bible! My one friend who received the Purple Heart told me when i asked him if he prayed a lot while he was over seas. He said yes because when you’re scared out of your mind a bit of faith that some higher force will help you is a comforting feeling. He wasn't practicing the religion because he was ordered to pass the Christian message to people over seas. He had orders and he followed those orders, none of which correlated with the Christian invaders theory Sam presented. I agree that the war was Oil driven and without a full understanding of how cruel we can be as invaders of another country, we will stereotypically categorize these Islamic radicals as dangerous insurgents. I also side with the fact that if China came here for our coal, hell yeah I would shoot them up and radical on all china invaders! Not because they aren't Christian (which Islamic radicals as we say have signs saying disrespect and we take your head) but since coal is a huge source that drives our economy I will defend it. A stable economy keeps stable jobs, stable health, and stable happiness in my eyes and that’s what I would prefer defending, not religion. I don’t think it was fair to bring religion into that lecture I would have understood the hypocrisy and misleading propaganda without the Christian aspect.

I completely disagree with the soldiers who ran over than mans car for taking wood. But who's not to say that soldier is a straight asshole who knows he can get away with it. Did anyone do any research to see if these soldiers in these videos were charged with any crimes? Because there are a lot of fair say that goes on in the military and consequences to certain soldiers actions on civilian life.

Christian invaders or not, if we weren’t stealing their Oil we would be riding bikes because gas prices would be so high! And society has changed to where we would complain about riding bikes, its not going to go back to “I can walk there, don’t need to drive” so fuck it, peace has been dead for a long time and Christianity is not entirely tied to the war.

The recent events here at Penn State have been interpreted in many different ways. Depending on how they interpreted and their education level they may view us as normal college students in the midst of confusion or child abuser supporters. Sam showed us the headline that expressed we were supporting the firing of a child abuser. Most educated citizens understand that the scandal that took part had little to do with the students who were here when the abuse occurred and now when the victims came forward. To view a Penn State student as an incompetent person or supporter of child abuse is absurd, but also something we will encounter because the world unfortunately is filled with idiots.
The sad part about the scandal besides the poor victims that have to endure the past events and future dealing are the stigmas that Sam explained. Just as I explained above there will always be those people out there who associate the bad part of something that happens inside an institution with everyone involved inside that institution therefore, business and certain people who depend on idiots and stupid people to drive their companies will not want someone from Penn State to jeopardize that. Until this blows over which may take until the end of the school year, anyone associated with Penn State will be stigmatized with very negative emotions and feelings. I hope to god this blows over sooner considering that my job applications are currently going out with hesitation because of the timing.
To get back on track any directly answer your question, I would say that depending on the relationship you have with someone who has been following the scandal will vary. Your friends may bust your balls a little and make jokes like certain media outlets have, but family will hopefully support you, knowing that the emotional ride for you has been hard and difficult on top of your studies. I hope in time and after conversations which will be hard to avoid, will allow everyone to see you as a stronger person for what you had to deal with on top of your studies. This event has struck us all and we need to let people know that events like this can only make us stronger. The way I see it, what company wouldn’t want to hire you they are all prone to some type of scandal or another, and hey, you know how to deal with one now that you went to Penn State and had to deal with bad media, negative slurs, and opinions about you and your school.

I feel that all “documented” immigrants should have access to free English-speaking classes. Lets face it how many of us have been on a costumer service line or ordered something over the counter and spent another 10 minutes of your time trying to understand them or get them to understand you. I read last year that an area in I believe it was California, but don’t quote me on that, were aiming to require their 911 responders and firefighters to learn Spanish. This town had recently been overrun by a large Hispanic population of immigrants and instead of the immigrants assimilating to the culture the town was suppose to adjust to their culture. I don’t think that this is fair for those people in those job positions. I believe that it would be great if we learned their language but they must learn English as well.

For stratification to take place you must assimilate to the culture u are so eager to be apart of. For example I am 3rd generation Italian and when my grandfather came here with his brothers he didn’t speak much English so he learned, why shouldn’t other immigrants? Why shouldn’t other immigrants want to? It will only benefit them in the short and long run! We should help these documented immigrants learn English if they want to, if not well, don’t expect to get any handout from the government. During the years my grandfather and his brothers were trying to get by and learn English with the little educational skills and money they had they worked the jobs they could and never asked anyone for a handout, only an opportunity. Those words have been embedded in my head from hearing the same stories over and over again but even after the first time I heard it, it made sense! The white ethnic Americans who came here like the Irish, Italians and jews, who all faced discrimination, overcame economic, political, and educational barriers because they were eager to work and try to assimilate without having their culture and ethnic values stripped away. This has been harder for the Mexicans for example because of their surface biological features that separate them from the rest of society. So if we look back into history, which is the reason we have it, we could give the advice that learning to language will only help your race relations with the rest of the work socially, economically, politically, and educationally. This will open up reservoirs of resources for you culture to prosper and gain upward mobility.

I would also like to end on reminding us to all think about how uncomfortable it must be for that person working at the other end of the costumer service line or behind the counter.

I like this question for a few reasons. I believe the reason people label another with the term poser is a type of defense mechanism. I feel like the only reason people use the term is to hide their fear of interacting with another group from a different race. I felt this by my white friends when I hung out with black people but also saw a little bit of it from a few black people when I was with people of the black race. I believe that my white friends had a sense of jealousy that they couldn’t be as comfortable around people from another race as I was, and also fearful that they wouldn’t see me the same since I was mixing races within my friend circle. When a black person calls me a poser because I am hanging out with people of the same race as he is I do find that a little bit of a harder time dealing with that. I initially go on the defense because I feel if anyone should understand the importance of integration it should be a black person. That could just be me though I don’t know. I didn’t understand the term poser until I found myself mixing with other groups, but I discovered it had a lot to do with appearance… Growing up I didn’t know who I was I experiences being a hick/jock/skatter/drug dealer… try and mix those up and not have people calling u poser… But the thing is that it all came down to appearance. I found myself being called a poser bc I dressed different getting off my quad than I was the night before and the bar. When I was younger I found myself calling others posers, then once I realized what it meant I stopped.
I’ve always been a little confused about my identity since I was running from it for years. It wasn’t until I decided to fall for a senator’s niece and officially expunge my past and start fresh. Sometimes people need to expunge it whether actually getting it expunged or just finding the ability mentally to start over. Once that happens you can really find yourself and lose the meaning of poser. Next time someone calls you a poser for hanging out with people from another race, looking at that person, you will say to yourself “that kid just doesn’t know who he is yet” and is fearful that he never will… I hope to enlighten people in the future that not knowing who you are is ok and the only way to find yourself is not to let anyone discourage you from interacting with another race and being vulnerable. It will allow you to grow up much faster in life!

This is a good question, but I don’t think that I belong to one stage alone. My experiences in my life have given me a taste of each stage I believe. I would have to say that depending on my mood that day I can be at any stage. I don’t believe that being 25 years old gives me the right to say I’m at stage six, but I believe that specific experiences I had over those years has allowed me to look at the world of race and ethnicity with less ignorance and fear as someone who hasn’t been in my shoes. I grew up in a town where the north side was racist and when I say racist I mean like the keystone state skinheads and the south side was mostly dominated by the bloods street gang which was id say 89% black with the other being white or a mix of white and black. And guess who had to spend time in both area’s based on living situations? It was the worst experience ever. If I didn’t follow the beliefs of one group I was assumed to be a N* lover and well if I was even seen in the area of the skinheads I was assumed to be affiliated with them based on my skin and the fact that I liked to wear boots. To say the least I got my ass kicked a lot! I just feel that those experiences made me who I am today, I am proud of that and have carried many friendships with people of other races. But I still have negative as well as positive ideas of the other races perspective during a situation. For example when Sam set up the table in the front of the class with all the white people and our “Mexican” TA, I realized that those stages could have been swapped at any given moment. Other factors such as the TA’s demeanor, could have made the person in stage six fall to stage 1 if the TA’s demeanor correlated with an array of negative stereotypes with the Mexican people!

I believe that it all depends on the person. I respectfully disagree that the stages are cognitively attainable by anyone, even with years or practice. Those experiences will always be with me and the embedded ideas that lingered in my head for years will always come into play depending on the person. Stereotypes have gotten a hold of every generation and that is the fuel to being prejudice and racist. However, someone who was grown up with a strong value of equality and respect might very well act like they are at stage six. So frankly I think the stages depend on the person and how many stereotypes they are cognitive about!

The Bottom line is that vast amounts of woman that choose to "sacrifice" comfort are sacrificing comfort because of those invisible strings Sam explains. Woman may think they are justifying the reason they form an assembly line to satisfy men by saying it is a personal choice, but lets face it, that’s not the root cause. These forces/invisible strings in which I am refereeing too are those external forces that influence the real reasons women conform to what men want. Everything is controlled by men especially where those final decisions are made, which I believe is the main reason we have come to this conclusion that men dress comfortably. I don’t think men can even find clothing that is uncomfortable, unless of course they buy a size too small. It all comes down to those external forces and those men who make final decisions on what they think woman (consumers) like and want.

I don’t think that this argument has much margin for analysis. Men have ruled this world for centuries, which Is why they are still making a vast amount of the final decisions that influences the rest of the world in one way or another. This evolving style women believe is necessary to portray to be classified as a sexy woman is based on the mans idea of what sexy is. It is actually undoubtedly a direct correlation among the two.

To be completely honest, I believe the only positive in learning about this is so that we are conscious of the correlation when it happens. That’s great but I almost view this as a form of evolution. Sam and Laurie had described mans biological nature for the need as physical before emotional. So I guess if men who were designing clothes searched first for the emotional/caring aspect when creating woman’s clothing the woman might be wearing baggy pants today instead of tight pants, long skirts instead of short, and turtle necks over low cut shirts! Men have taken control of the decisions that shape the world and their biological needs and shape those decisions , which in turn shape how woman portray themselves.

To back up the evolution which is strictly based off what men want, we can turn to why men dress so comfortably and don’t have a care in the world what their appearance may look like to woman. Well, take the 1950’s for example, women were dressing for church every day of the week and men were dressing up everyday of the week. I feel like men those days had the feeling that they needed to impress a woman with appearance and all just to get a peak at what a woman looks like underneath all those clothes. Now days there are woman dressed in clothing that leaves little to the imagination so why are we going to dress to impress?

I believe that race and the ways we view crime are closely associated whether we want to admit it or not. In one of my other courses we watched a video/investigative report on racial profiling. That video alone leads me to believe the speculations I have always carried about law enforcement and others true. I have always felt that law enforcement view blacks in the inner-city as “up-to-no-good” “probably drug dealers”. If you want, you can go around and interview all the police officers that have ever pulled a black person over for what may appear to be racial profiling or“driving while black”. You really can’t blame the officer in 100% of these cases even when it is racial profiling. If you want to stop this then blame the media hip hop video’s that soo clearly indicate what a drug dealer or prospective drug dealer should look like! I mean lets be fucking honest here and stop playing the race card when the race who is complaining about it are the racial group who are personifying the image!
If you see a kid in the state of Alabama blasting David Allen Coe’s country song “move them niggers north” in his muddy pick up truck and has a shaved head, you might presume he is a racist skinhead, right? Well, now think about how we view drug dealers (which is a crime) based on what we see on TV. Now you see a guy driving outta the projects with a twisted baseball cap on, nice car, and blasting a rap song about dealing drugs, you may assume that guy is a drug dealer, no? It’s not the individual who correlates race with crime it’s the media and the way certain race groups decide to label themselves with a certain image. These images need to fade away.
I have a real hard time understanding the entire racial war between blacks in whites in this country! Its racial profiling anyway you put it, yes, I agree with that, but it derives from an image we allow the media to inflect on us not the individual who is performing the racial profiling. If that’s the case we can all be guilty of racial profiling. So whom do we blame, the people who create it or the people who use it as a tactic to prevent crime? I have a good feeling that we all can decrease this associating with crime and race, but it starts with the race and the media stereotypes that amplify that certain persona. Not only must we stop judging a book by its cover but we also need to stop painting that cover so bright that we can’t help but to assume what’s inside. I don’t know exactly how we can do that but I think it’s worth thinking about!

I really enjoyed watching some of the videos on the entrepreneurs in Haiti. I believe that this project, whether it be targeting Haiti or not, is a terrific idea. Of course due to my procrastination this blog is a little late but ENERSA had a few videos that were more like episodes. I feel that Noel, the founder of this company, has a great heart to try and focus more on creating jobs rather than expanding his business for profit reasons only. Unfortunately he appears to be in a dilemma. If he wants his business to grow then he would need to stop using raw materials, but like they said, this would prevent him from training his personnel and opening up job opportunities for them.
Noel’s business focuses on using solar power streetlights. I think that this is a great idea. After watching learning about the business I did a little research of my own on Noel’s business. I saw that “The Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group” (AIDG), based out of Massachusetts, gave Noel’s company fifteen thousand dollars in emergency money to help it rebuild its factory damage after the earthquake that hit Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. I hope that money was able to bring them to where they were before the earthquake.
Another reason I think I am going to choose this company is because I truly believe that solar lights will allow other business’s to strive. Drivers will no longer have to fear traveling at night through certain areas when delivering items to towns. I believe that this project can help a lot of people from Haiti and especially after we spoke about how a lot of the money people send to help a country never really gets to those actual people, rather it stays in the capital. That’s one reason it has been hard for me to trust a lot of these projects. Like I said this “project” is a terrific idea but there is so much corruption a few of the questions I will have for the project representative are going to be critical such as if investors already see companies like Noel’s promising shouldn’t we be giving a helping hand to another company that may not be doing as strong as ENERSA? I want to help people but to me some of these people who are struggling in Haiti and similar to a few company’s struggling right here in our backyard of the United States. I wish I had the ability to help all of these entrepreneurs but I also am concerned in how these entrepreneurs were chosen out of the many people trying to start businesses in developing countries. I hope we can help but more importantly I hope that this project will motivate us to help people in our own country as well.

I agree with the side of his question that touches on “why do we need to be black, yellow, Hispanic, etc”. I agree with him, because it would allow the “humans’ to avoid separating people by the way they look. The only problem with this is that it won’t happen. I am a pretty optimistic person but this is too far away in my eyes to ever change, even the slightest bit. Our country is infested with stereotypes, assumptions, and misconceptions about the humans in this world. To say that its possible to not look at another person with a different skin color and have some of those stereotypes/misconceptions run through your mind would be bullshit. I’m not saying that we truly believe them, but because we allow those unavoidable thoughts infect us, we will always look at people at white, black, Hispanic.

There is also the other side of this question that I think would have certain pros and cons. Once I came to PSU I had already been exposed to the many avenues the world allows you to take and during my journey I met a lot of people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. So, when I meet people at PSU I like when they identify themselves by race or ethnic backgrounds, because I may have met someone during my journey that has similar backgrounds as they do. That has allowed me to make new friends and exchange stories about the things I like about where their ancestors come from. As I said earlier there are different avenues in which our world allows you to take and I believe identifying others by race and ethnic backgrounds, if used in a polite way, shouldn’t be a negative but a positive!

If we use racial identification correctly and try not to attach the negative assumptions the media embeds into our perceptions of race, we can get to know each other on a whole new level. Racial/ethnic identification markers should not be assumed but instead they should spark interest. Soc 119 has already sparked my interest based on how someone can look white but in fact have strong African American background. As a student minoring in Sociology I find the stories behind people like this interesting and telling. It can explain a lot about how they see themselves and what influences affect how they identify themselves!

Over the past six years I have taken all different kinds of racial and ethnic courses. Most of these courses were in the context of how race and ethnicity is impacted by the education system, which brings me to blog entry: I would like to understand the specific ways Blacks and Hispanics are disadvantaged in today’s society. As a future Education Policymaker, I believe that understanding this material will allow me to analyze and develop school policies that will avoid the chance of putting a certain race and ethnic group at a disadvantage. I feel that mass schooling has played one of if not the most important factor when it comes to segregating people based on race and ethnicity. I would like to learn more about how schools have specifically fueled the idea that makes it normal to segregate groups of people based on their color or cultural background. I also think that if I knew what explains racial and ethnic stratification in the united states I would also have an advantage in formulating education policies and or making sure we do not eventually find ourselves with holes in our policies that hurt the minority and or disadvantaged.
Education means a lot to me, and for the past three years I have devoted grueling days in making sure certain reading material in schools and the school structures themselves do not leave cultural identities and disadvantaged youth from achieving what we still call the American Dream (funny huh?), lets be honest its more like the opportunity to achieve not cleaning shit from tolets! I have seen too many school policies at the federal, state, and local levels that directly try to exclude people from different racial groups. And now with charter schools on the raise it looks to me like public schools will be serving mostly those with immigration status and or poor economic status. Therefore learning about what continues to drive civilization to separate one another based on race or ethnic backgrounds is extremely essential for the progress in the education system.
I would also like to learn about the interactions between different ethnic groups. I believe that learning about these different interactions will be extremely interesting. With all the different family values that are embedded and practice in each culture, understanding these may possibly explain why clashes and labeling of superiority within a race are prevalent in society. Learning about hate groups has always interested me. Growing up in an area where I had to fight off skinheads left and right because I played basketball and happen to have black friends! Then I had to fight black kids bc I lived near skinheads and knew them from my neighborhood! Hate groups had an extreme impact on how I viewed whom I hung out with and I think that those interactions play a bigger role than we presumed.