The war in Iraq and Afghanistan have has had my mind and my heart bouncing back and forth on how I view the whole ordeal for years. It started at an all time high of anger and pain after September 11th. I believed going over there to hunt the terrorists was our number one priority and completely correct. As a nation we cannot stand idly by while terrorists wreck havoc on the western world because our ideals and ambitions are different. One of the hardest parts of this war is that it revolves around religion so much. Undoubtedly the Islamic religion is at the forefront because of the religious fanatics that claim they are doing most of their attacks for the will of Allah. This makes many people instantly hate the religion because of the association, when there are actually a billion people that follow the religion is a completely different manor then the extremists. On the other side in a not so highlighted but very apparent way Christianity is very apart of this war because the United States and many western countries involved are predominately Christian nations. Now it seams that the war is the battle of two theologies which it should be because religious conflict is a conflict that will probably never be resolved because there is no right or wrong, it is just faith. When the war transitioned to Iraq because we thought they were working with terrorists and also had weapons of mass destruction, I became slightly hesitant about our intentions. I was still very supportive of the war and I will always be supportive of our troops. We took out a violent dictator that had notoriously killed thousands of his own innocent people. I believe that this was for the better of the world because oppression can never be a good thing for the free will of humanity. I continued to rationalize staying in that region to ensure we could bring stability to the region and not let constant fighting to continue. More and more however, the war became focused on the regions richness in oil, and that the United States was just there to take it. I was very resistant to believe that this was the main reason that we were there, but eventually I gave in because the circumstances were overwhelming. It is a sad thought that this was may have been predominately fought over oil, but I still believe we were able to achieve other good things while over there. Sam did open my eyes up more about the thought process of the people in the Middle East and how they may view the United States, I could so how they could be angry with us and feel like we are invaders. I just still don’t believe like we are on a crusade and we are just there to take and convert. I also feel that the people there know and understand that what the terrorists are doing and how they associate themselves with Islam is completely wrong and atrocious. We should all work in a joint effort to try to alleviate the problem.

The lecture on sexually abused people was a very intense and gut wrenching experience. The most simply eye opening part had to be the idea that there is a chance that one in every five people you meet may have been sexually abused at some point in your life. The first thing that came to my mind when Sam was discussing this was all the weekends that I have met so many people at Penn State. Every time I go to a party I meet many people and even though you don’t get to know most of these people well, you do become friends with some of them. But the point about this that really sticks out is that there is a chance that the person you shake hands with and exchange chit chat with could have been sexually abused at some point in their life and you would have no idea. To add to that, the person that abused them has a very good chance of being someone close to that person, whether it was a family member or a friend of the family. Someone that was trusted or is trusted by that persona and had access to them. That is by far the worst part. The idea that this person became close enough to trusted people in your family and it turned out that they were capable of doing something so abominable to a person they were close too. An experience like would completely change a persons life, most likely very negatively. Then when it came to light, and hopefully for those that it has happened to the found the inner strength to share it so justice could be served, the amount of negative consequences that were endured would be unbelievable and devastating. There is no doubt that people capable of committing such atrocities have something seriously wrong with them, and you can even go as far as to say it is a disease. To think that statistics show that there is a realistic chance that it could have occurred in your own family is a thought I do not care to think about. Of course I don’t believe it has happened in my family just like any person would rationally think, but if it happened, my family would deal with it the best we could. I pray that it never has and never will because I love my family dearly and don’t know where to begin if it were to ever change. These are the people that have surrounded my entire life and have contributed to who I am. Even if I had nothing to do with it, I am associated and will forever have to carry that burden.

For the foreseeable future the image of Penn State has been tarnished. The idea of what has happened will be in the mines of any person you meet when the subject of where you studied comes up, especially to anyone new you meet that doesn’t have any affiliation to the university. There will be many people on both sides. The people who judge you a little more negatively for the events that you had absolutely nothing to do, and the people that I appreciate a little more, or those that know you had nothing to do with it at all, and think nothing less of you for having the misfortune of attending the school during a controversy that could have happened anywhere. Even if someone says that they don’t think anything less of you are your alma matter due to the recent events, the fact is that no matter what the horrific events will inevitably have to come to mind for them because they are so fresh in the minds of all Americans, and that negative though in itself is enough to subconsciously affect people and their views. I like to think time heals all wounds and eventually all the great things that this university stands for and does for society will shine through and lead the way, but for now all Penn State associates whether you are a student, alumni, or faculty, will have to deal with this on a regular basis. I know personally that since we are in it at full throttle right now, I haven’t stopped fielding questions from all of my friends and family that are not up here. Many of my friends do not even realize how tough it is for the student body. They send me jokes that are tasteless, or make completely dumb comments that are off based or fictional all together. Then you add to it the riots. In my eyes it was a huge mistake for the student body to have another riot, in the midst of all the media attention we already have. It just makes us all look dumb and immature. At the minimum it is just not the right response and I know the people here are better than that. I refused to take part in them, and even if you don’t take part in them but you go to watch, it is still many people making the fire grow that the media loves. And that is what people around the country and world get to see and judge based on. Hopefully from here on out we can change that image and do what’s right for our sake and the sake of all of the alums. The kids are the priority and should be the ones that get all the support at the end of the day.

Immigration is a very tough subject for me because I am third generation immigrant myself. My father and I were both born in the United States but my grandparents were born and raised in Cuba. They both cam here in the early sixties legally. I am both very proud of The United States and my culture and heritage from Cuba. The problem arises with immigration because there are so many pros and cons on both sides of the debate. The decision on which side weighs more is very hard to decide and I’m not sure there is an answer or will ever be an answer. On the one side you have people that are citizens that may lose jobs to illegal immigrants due to lesser pay or some other stipulation and on the other side you have immigrants doing jobs that other Americans will not do. On one side you have illegal immigrants that do not pay taxes, but then there are a lot of immigrants that do end up paying taxes with fake identities. Furthermore the illegal immigrants that do pay taxes don’t have the chance to reap the benefits of many of the programs that the nation offers like social security, welfare, unemployment, Medicare, etc. one part of illegal immigration that helps business keep going is tough to swallow because if we get rid of it many business will get hurt, but it is just wrong ethically. We are a nation of immigrants and that is what has made this nation prosper for so long. The freedoms and liberties to do so many things and advance as a civilization. We are able to combine the minds of many different cultures and countries in able to create great innovations. The key thing here is to do things legally. I know that the immigration process to be allowed to come to the United States permanently is very hard and selective in comparison to the very large portion of applicants. It only makes sense that we just cant let every person that wants to come here just come when ever they want. It would be impossible to keep track and the country would be very overcrowded. Not to mention that it is important to screen people that are allowed in because we want good people that are capable of contributing to society. That should go also for people that are born here but regardless of contribution they are given those inalienable rights because the alternative is dangerous to rights. There are many recent immigrants that emigrated the right way and did things legally and it is also not fair to them along with lifelong citizens when people come here illegally. I guess I’m not opposed to immigration, I’m just opposed to doing it illegally, but the solution is difficult obviously because no one has figured it out yet.

It is undeniable that the United States of America was built on some very terrible events in history. There are many things that no American should be proud of. The two main long time atrocities were slavery and the treatment of Native Americans. No real means of retribution have been paid back to these people, and the question now is whether or not there should be something done. Many people that are alive today are descendents of people that took part in these events. But is it their obligation to pay for something they did not do? You could argue that even though they didn’t do some of the horrible things like stealing land from Native Americans or own slaves, they are probably benefiting from it today. I don’t think just simply giving all the land back would be a good way to resolve the matter, but I do think something should be done. I just don’t know what or how. Any restitution that is done now would obviously be very hard in this economy and in the political climate we are in. There must be some way to help make amends, even if it means some other way besides just straight cash. If we did give everything back then we would probably set the country even further back then we currently are. Not to mention tracking and figuring out where goes what and who gets what would probably very hard, costly, and time consuming. For now the best option is to remember what had happened and move forward in the best way by never letting anything like that happen again. After talking about the terrible lifestyle that some Native Americans live in today it is really sad that they are so destitute. On top of that, the violent crimes that occur are astounding. I was shocked to see that there is still some awful racism. But would that get better if we just gave back land? Is it possible that there would be more hostility if other people were punished for the indiscretions of a previous generation? There has been a long history of parents doing bad things that have nothing to do with their children. For everything wrong that parents do should kids have to pay for it if those parents do not? Does that solve anything or is that even fair? I can’t imagine that it would be fair to put a kid in prison to pay for the debts of a parent. The more I think about, the tougher the solution seems to get. There are just so many problems, where do we start? Who gets priority and why? Is it even possible to fix them?

Whether you like it or not race affects the way you see and live in the world. At this point in the semester everyone should know that it shouldn’t matter when interact with other people but it does, and we just have to work towards making everything more equitable for all races. In my experiences through my life my race has played an interesting role from time to time. To start out with, I identify as both white and brown because my mother clearly just white but my father is Hispanic. Since I have lived in Miami for most of my life being brown down there was almost a standard because they are the majority in that city. However this changed some when I came to Penn State because for the first time I was primarily surrounded by white people. For the most part I identify as white because I was born here in the united states and so were both of my parents, making me at best second generation Hispanic. That being said I clearly look like I’m not just white. This makes race a bigger issue because at times I have experienced mild prejudice while going to school up here, but nothing off the charts. This is not the only way race affects my view of the world. It has opened up my view of other cultures and people because I have had the chance to experience both worlds and identify with two cultures. The only time that I have really felt like I was an outsider for being white was when I played high school football. The majority of the team was black and even though we all got a long a race wasn’t an issue per say, I just never got a chance to be friends with a lot of my teammates. Many of the reasons we didn’t become friends was for reasons that have nothing to do with race, but maybe they do I don’t know. I do know that it was hard to relate to a lot of my teammates outside of football. I wish I had become good friends with some of my black teammates. We spent so much time together its strange to me that it never went past football. One thing that was definitely true for me though is that I never changed the way I was around them because to me you shouldn’t have to do things to fit in just because you act differently. Race shouldn’t matter when it comes to the way you are and act around other people. In my opinion race gets to much attention for the way people interact, if everyone would just let it be and not make decisions based on it, wed be ok.

Racial labels are used all the time to represent people in many different ways. All though labels stay relatively constant from conversation to conversation the reasons we use them change. There are many times we use them when we don’t necessarily need to use them and then there are times we don’t use them when we should because we are afraid of not being politically correct. The fist instance that comes to mind is the every day ordinary story about some kind of personal experience one has in their day. They go about describing a situation that they were in that affected them that day and they feel the need to identify the persons race when telling the story. Most of the time this is unnecessary because the race of the person does not add or take away from the story therefore being irrelevant. But many times people add it anyways because they feel that race may have something to do with the outcome because of a societal tendency to believe that race is a bigger issue than it should be. I must say that I am guilty of this too. When telling a story I like to give a lot of details so the listener can paint a total picture of the scenario in order to hopefully completely commiserate with me, and or confirm my beliefs and thoughts on my side of the story. Of course they will never get the other side so it is unfair and biased. Now many times race does not have a direct effect on the situation but I know many people feel that it does. Maybe it’s possible that the person’s race adds to potential cultural and psychological reasons for what occurred but if it does it is not actually about their race, which is inevitably very hard to tell by just judging how they look because they could be a myriad of ethnicities, it is about their ethnicity. I do believe though that a very large amount of the time when I add racial labels when I am telling a story that I don’t mean t use them maliciously only to give you a better idea of an important but not totally necessary part of the situation. Then there are the times that using a racial label is important, such as describing a person to someone because they are the subject of the conversation. Then it just makes sense to use race to single out and specify or else it could take forever for a person to figure out who you are talking about. I don’t think it is so bad to add racial labels as long as you do it without malicious intent to add stereotypes or slanders to the race by doing it.

Being a parent is something that most people plan on at some point in their lives. It is undoubtedly one of the most difficult and rewarding things to do as a human being. There is no clear cut process to parenting and everyone deals with their children differently. Not to mention that every child is dealt differently within a family as well. Good parents do their best to guide their kids through their lives while also providing for them what they need to succeed. I am not a father yet but one day in the distant future I would like to be one. The question of what would I do if my child ended up being gay is posed, and I think the answer on a basic level is very simple, I would completely accept whatever they were no matter what. Of course circumstances would be different and it would all depend on when my kid realized or decided or however it would happen. Either way I would not treat them any differently. What ever he or she wanted to do or pursue throughout their lives I would support them in their endeavors. It would obviously make things more difficult for myself because on a level of relatable experiences it would be hard to always understand what they were going through as well as trying to help them with any of the difficulties that relate to being gay in a straight dominated world. But never would the thought be that I would love them any less than I would a straight child. In any person’s life, good parents would invariably be the biggest influence. To treat your gay kid with any reluctance or remorse would be to complete scar that kid for life giving them a very tough life to lead if not even a parent would love them unconditionally. There are too many unnecessary associations with being gay as being negative. It is not logical to think that person’s sexual preference has anything to do with them being a good or bad person. There should also not be decisions made on the sexual preferences of a person based on the wildly silly associations society has decided to place between genders and other things. For example, just because a man wears pink does not mean he is gay, or if a woman wears baggy clothing she is a lesbian. I don’t see how a color or clothing preference can decide on your sexual preference. These are all points adding to the reason why it shouldn’t matter if your kid is gay or not, and why it would no affect how my relationship would be with my kid. There is nothing wrong with being gay, it is completely personal and does not affect other people.

The Bike stealing video had many different parts with eye opening information. The experiment had three different people trying to steal a bike in the middle of the day in a public park. The three different people trying to steal the bike were a white male, a black male and a white female. The two males were wearing very similar clothing, and all of the actors had the same scripts to answer the common questions they could encounter. These actors were also given tools to use to try to break the lock off the bike. The first actor was the white male. When he was trying to steal the bike in broad daylight most people just passed right by him without asking any questions or even noticing. The few people that did talk to him either assumed it was his bike and he forgot the key. Very few people asked him if it was his bike, and the ones that did when he replied he replied by asking if it was theirs. He never quite came out and said it wasn’t. Finally after a long period of time and many pedestrians later someone tried to do something about it. The next actor was the black male and the experiment turned out very differently because he was immediately questioned and harassed, including a man that tried to take his tools away from him and also called the police on him. It was absolutely clear that the pedestrians immediately went after the black male because of the color of his skin. It is a common stereotype that black people are more likely to commit illegal acts such as stealing. It is unfortunate that people would not think that the bike could have been his or that the white male was actually stealing. There is no reason that any person would be more likely to perform an illegal act completely based on the color of their skin. Even if these people would not be considered ‘racist’ when they decided to classify the person as burglar because of the color of their skin then they were taking part in a racist act. Even in a more progressive era, where there are far fewer racists then at an earlier period in American history, people subconsciously or close-mindedly have stereotypical tendencies towards people based on the color of their skin. There is no doubt that there are people in every race that commit crimes and happen to be apart of a certain race, but that race has nothing to do with the act, only that person does. The funniest part however was the white woman stealing the bike, who was not only never questioned but was also even helped by many males walking by.

The Haiti Project epitomizes everything we talk about and continue to talk about in class. As Professor Richards says every class what happens outside of the United States matters. We live in a very unfair world where millions of people live in very unequal environments. As people living in a privileged country apart of the top twenty percent of the entire world, we should take it upon ourselves to help those people that are so impoverished that they cannot fend for themselves on a daily basis. World poverty has been a problem in the world since the beginning of time. There is obviously no easy solution because if it existed then it would have been put into effect. However it doesnt mean we cant try to help. In this project specifically there are many connections and start points for all the students in the class to help. Many people think sending money to the problem area is the best thing they can do, but in reality it is not always the best option. Any support is good but some times there are better methods for long-term support. There are people in Haiti that have great ideas to get themselves involved in boosting there own economy by helping themselves and employing other people by staring their own businesses. These entrepreneurs have done an excellent job of starting their businesses and showing initiative and effort to get moving in the right direction. They do face challenges of course because they do not have all the resources available to them. Not to mention that if they are doing well for themselves it is hard to upgrade their businesses because they cant make the large leaps in technology because it is far to expensive for their standard of living. This is where we can come into play and give our help. After watching several of the videos of the entrepreneurs there is room for us to do something to give these businesses a little boost. I look forward to brainstorming in my group to figure out how we can help. I believe my group has plenty of smart minds and opinions to do some actual good. If every group in the class does something that helps then we can be a solid force for Haiti. It really puts it into perspective when you realize that there are 1,500 students in this class every year trying to do something for Haiti. That overtime really adds up and could possibly work in many places. Haiti has been devastated many times and they are in dire need for a change of permanent fortune. With purely altruistic intentions, it will feel good to make a difference. Lets Go State!