The reason I believe many white, or Caucasian people, are against affirmative action is mostly due to a lack of knowledge on the subject. People are incorrectly taught or simply assume that the only benefactors of affirmative action are under qualified minorities that are simply taking another person’s position or spot in an organization whether that be the workforce or a school. I know that when I was in high school, most students assumed that only black and Hispanic people benefitted from affirmative action. It was issues of “those people” are taking “our” jobs and “our” spots in getting accepted into schools. I am a black female and I lived in a predominately white town and went to a predominately white high school. When I was getting accepting into schools like Penn State, UMass, John Jay, UColorado, etc. other students were bold enough to ask me what I got on my SAT’s as if I only was accepted into those schools because of affirmative action and not because I deserved it. For starters, I scored very high on my SATs, I had a 4.0 GPA in high school, was the leader of 4 student organizations, involved in various community service organizations, and was ranked 19th in my graduating class. I was the most active female in my graduating class in student organizations from freshman year to senior year which is something the school informs students of. This information is not private at all in my high school because they pretty much make a big show of your overall GPA and your class ranking in the beginning of your senior year so everyone knew where you stood in the class. Students were even more interested in where the minorities in the graduating class stood for obvious reasons. Students in my class knew where I stood before I even started applying to colleges yet they still assumed that I did not earn my way into colleges just like they did. I remember in one of my classes when I finally told them who actually benefitted most from affirmative action, and I only knew this because I did a report during my sophomore year of high school on it. My high school taught me nothing at all on the subject; I had to do research completely on my own to learn more about the program. Most of the white kids were beyond stunned and I had to keep backing it up with evidence and proof to get them to believe me. It is ridiculous that there is little knowledge about affirmative action at even a high school level because I always have to prove that I deserve the things I receive. I got into major colleges and universities; I had to prove that I deserved it. I get a job or internship; I have had to prove that I actually deserved it. It is frustrating that this is a reality in my life, and it is not something that is likely to end anytime soon as long as there is such a lack of a fundamental understanding of the beneficiaries of affirmative action. So I do believe that if more white people understood affirmative action, they probably won’t be so firmly against it as they learn that it is them who benefit the most from it.

I think if the offender in the Penn State scandal were a black or Latino male, this situation might have been handled much differently if race truly played a huge part in the minds of people who first heard of the allegations I ’98 all the way until now. I am not entirely sure what race has to do with the incidents that have occurred but I can come up with a hypothetical answer.
Hypothetical Answer: From the first time the alleged abuse was reported in 1998 that would have been the time the offender was also charged and labeled a sex offender had the offender been of any other race. There is a lot of distrust amongst people once you add crime with people of another race, not necessarily black or Latino. If you look at the media and which crimes have been seen as having the most heinous offenders, it is most often times associated with a person who is white. There is this belief in our culture that heinous crimes among white people is a rarity and is altogether so much more shocking while if a black or Latino person commits the same crime the offender is viewed a bit differently. For example, when murder occurs in a white community people are completely shocked across the nation. But when the same crime occurs in a mixed or minority community with the same socio-economic status as the white community, it is not viewed as something surprising or as an act that would never have occurred in that area. When a black person or Latino person commits a crime, people are often times not really shocked because they think it is part of a black or Latino persons human nature as violent people. It is unfair but that is how it is portrayed in the media and that is how we view it every day on the news. For this reason, from the first allegation, I think there would have been so much distrust that Sandusky, had he been of another race, would have been charged or it would have been made extremely difficult for him to get alone with another child.
However, this is just another view of this if you really take race into account and truly believe it would have a major impact on the situation, which I am not sure it really would have. I want to believe that the situation would have been just as bad and just as shocking regardless of Sandusky’s race.
We need to remember that what is important here is the victims. The race of the offender does not truly mean anything other than how the scandal is played out in the media. Child abuse is still child abuse no matter who commits it whether the person be man, woman, black, white, latino, asian, or whoever. The justice system will prevail here and the victims will get justice.

In my opinion, the reason Mexicans or other immigrants in America will work jobs that the American citizen will not is because these are the jobs that we, American citizens, constantly look down upon as being “beneath us”. There is this idea that the kind of job you have measures your level of success so there are jobs that Americans will not take because they believe them to be a measure of failure. Also, the work ethic needed for certain jobs, like hard labor, is something most Americans do not have. We live in a society where things should come easy to us. Our wants, needs, and desires should not have to come from so much hard work, as it was in the past, because this is the future where technology and machinery should be able to do the hard work our ancestors generations past have done. Immigrants come to this country with a drive, a kind of focus that can not be shaken, that Americans do not really have other than in the sense that we are focusing on success. Most immigrants are focusing on more important things like survival and trying to create a foundation for their family and future generations. American people, I think at a young age at least, will take these jobs as a starter job, like the first job they ever have, very few will ever commit to it as a career. For example, landscaping is a job that is not looked upon by Americans as an ideal job because it requires laboring in the sun and most weather doing manual labor. If you looked at shows or even cartoons that depict the strong, successful people they are the ones in business suits safe inside doing some sort of work in that capacity. I hardly think a person could watch a show like Gossip Girl, where they constantly flaunt that these are successful (albeit screwed up) people, as doing a task such as being a housecleaner or landscaper. Children are shown from a certain age that the most successful people are the ones that do the least amount of work with the most amount of profit. Immigrants are willing to take these jobs because 1. They know the jobs will be available and 2. They have the work ethic needed to be successful in those jobs. Mexicans, or any immigrant group, coming to America for the first time to start a life for their families without much with them are not going to turn down jobs even if they are the ones are society look down upon as being menial. They are willing to work their way, even if it takes generations at a time, to the top and that is what makes them different from most Americans. Most Americans want to start around the middle and jump to the top while others feel they are entitled to start wherever they please so it is easy to understand why an American will not be all that eager to run to landscaping or housecleaning right away.

If immigration suddenly came to a halt in the United States, I believe many things would occur due to the past history of the United States. First and foremost, there would be a loss of different vibrant cultures in the United States. It has been shown that once you remove people by even a single generation, they will start to assimilate more giving up some of their ethnic heritage. Therefore, after a generation or two, the amount of cultures that stand out in the United States would begin to dwindle as they start to assimilate more and more. Also, that uniqueness about America, the fact that there are so many different cultures in our society, diminishes. I can not help but wonder what that would do to the American psyche as it is. It is no secret that Americans can be very ethnocentric and close-minded when it comes to other cultures, so Americans may become even more ignorant about other cultures. After a generation or two, many people probably will not have much experience with many people of different cultures making them ignorant to the differences in the world. Also, not being able to live among side these cultures and different people will help Americans define an “us” and a “them” which can be a huge problem socially, politically, and in international relations. It is also interesting to note that in the criminal system of the United States, crime has always decreased during periods of high immigration and increased during periods of low immigration. Somehow, the influx of these new people with their new ideals, dreams, hopes, and aspirations lowers crime in the United States. I can not even begin to imagine what the crime rate would look like if immigration were to then stop. I am not sure if they ever found out what the correlation between immigration and the crime rate was, but it is a fact that crime decreases with an increase of immigration. International relations would also take a big hit because Americans would not know how to interact and embrace people of different cultures. In a United States with no immigration, would they care to help the people of a third world nation end genocide within that nation? I can not help but think no. Would we come to the aid of countries in need during times of war as we did in World War I and World War II? Again, I think not. Immigration is one of the best things about America because it opens us up to different cultures, different peoples, different ideals, and different ways of understanding one another. The United States would lose it vibrancy if it were to lose its diversity which comes from the immigration that this nation was founded on.

I do not believe that a person hanging out with people of another race is a poser. That type of thinking is just judgmental, ignorant, and uneducated. In my case, I live in a town that is predominately white. I have grown up used to being around white people and being the only black person in a majority of my classes from 3rd grade to 12th grade (I moved to this town the summer prior to third grade). A vast majority of my friends back at home are white and I know they do not view me as being a poser for hanging out with them when we all grew up together. I was also the only black person in my graduating class. The town is not all that diverse but they never made me feel like I should not have white friends because I am black. I think people just make friends with people who have shared interests, similar personalities, and other factors that bring them together rather than race. Coming to Penn State did not seem all that unusual to me due to living in a predominately white town. I think I would have felt more out of place had I chosen to attend a Historically Black College or University. In most of my classes even here at Penn State, I am still the only black person but it does not faze me because of my upbringing. I have never been a person to focus on race when there is simply no need to. Even though the minority population here at Penn State is very small, this is still one of the largest experiences I have had with attending classes with people of other races. I think it is important to remember that race is just another thing that people use to push one another away. It has never been used as a uniting factor unless it is with people of your own race which is just unfortunate. Race should not affect how people go into relationships, whether it be platonic or more, because your skin color does not define who you are as a human being. I hang out with my friends, mostly white, because they are people worth spending time with, they challenge me to be a better person than I already am, and because they do not see me as the black person. They look at me and see another person who shares their interests, their passions, who can talk and relate to them despite our racial differences, and it makes us want to spend time together as friends. Does that make me a poser? I do not think so. I think it makes me an educated person who is not afraid to embrace people of other racial groups and cultures.

It really depends on the girl and what is going on with her I suppose. I mean, I dress very conservatively and I demand to be treated with respect. I am usually always treated respectfully by people I meet and know. I am very secure in who I am and in what I want in life and that may make me seem more confident which might also be a factor in how I am treated if not solely based on how I dress. I dress the way I do because it is what is most comfortable to me and I do not feel like I need to dress differently just to get attention from guys. There are some girls that are just more comfortable with showing their bodies but that does not mean you should not respect her or treat her badly for being confident to show her legs off in a nice skirt or her back in a dress. I do understand that there are some women that it just seems like a giant contradiction. Those are the ladies that wear the barely there skirts or dresses that leave nothing to the imagination but still demand that she be looked at with respect. I get how some guys would have a hard time respecting her just from her physical appearance alone when she has her chest out and a hemline so short you can see her crotch when she walks. I feel like it has to go slightly both ways. If you want to be treated a certain way, you need to be able to treat yourself that way first and make it obvious that you do.

Race does in fact play a huge role in how people are viewed as criminals. It is no secret that racial profiling does go on in law enforcement. I have a cousin who is in law enforcement and he told me that even though it is wrong, it does play a role in what neighborhoods are patrolled more often for criminal activity and what kinds of people are stopped. It does not help that our society as a whole has used race as a way to keep people from moving up in life. Our media likes to portray criminals as people in baggy clothes in low-income areas that are often of a minority race. That kind of stereotype does not just go away once it has been put out there. There was a study done in the early 90’s / late 80’s where sociologists shows pictures of people from various races and told the children to pick out the criminals. What the children did not know was that nearly every Caucasian person they saw in the photographs was serial killers. Not one of the children chose the serial killers as the “bad guy”. They all viewed them as being the “good people”. The children chose nearly every person of a minority race as a criminal because they “looked like bad people”. Not one of them had committed a crime. If children from an early age are viewing race as a way to see criminals, what is to stop adults from doing the same? There is even a famous criminologist or sociologist who had been chosen to speak on behalf of the prosecutors in the cases of people committing heinous crimes and he told the jury in all of those cases that white people are more likely to be rehabilitated than minority people as minorities are dangerous. He was talking in cases up until maybe 3 years ago. When there are people like this perpetuating the stereotype that minorities are dangerous it cannot really come as a surprise that race plays a factor in how we view criminals. There used to be a television show on that showed how race played a part in how we view actions of the people around us. They had a group of young actors, white children, bullying and throwing things at a minority child in the park. Couples would pass by and look on but did absolutely nothing to help the minority child. Then they had a group of young black children do the same to a white child and it was just shocking to see the results. Later they asked all of the strangers who got into the middle of the “fight” and those who called 911 why they jumped in. One of the responses was that “those children” are dangerous and could have hurt him. What about the minority child? No one saw the white children as being dangerous they just said well boys will be boys. We have a long way to go before we can stop using race as a factor in how we view other people but it is something that is very present in our society today.

I went through the initiatives page and read many of the entrepreneurs’ pages and feel like I have a better understanding of the many issue that are affecting Haiti today. I was really interested in the video about the woman named Euclid who creates beautiful garments but does not have enough quality material to match her great sewing skills. I also read the pages about the Christian Partners Hospital Project and Pastor Richard Hileur. I am very interest in both of these entrepreneur projects as they are both programs that give directly back to their community. The school that Pastor Richard Hileur is working to create is something that particularly interests me as an education major and I feel like donating resources for his school is something that many people can easily contribute to. I especially found it touching that he is building this school in a rather dangerous area to help discourage youths from joining guns and participating in other illegal activities. I felt like this program had the most amount of information available about it, at least out of the ones that I looked at. The Christian Partners Hospital Program also interested me as the conditions that are described that the patients are expected to recover in are deplorable. I think that it is inspiring to know that most of the money being raised are coming from Haitians, and not the most wealthy ones either, and is going right back to help their fellow countrymen and women. I like that they are not just about trying to get the money and resources from outside of their country but that they are trying to solve the problem as best they can on their own as it only goes to show the strength and heart of these people. Haiti represents a great opportunity for all people to be able to contribute and make a difference in the lives of people who are really trying to overcome so many obstacles. I am very excited to be working on this project and I look forward to hearing what ideas my group has to offer.

I strongly believe there has to be a mix of the two at the same. I can't fully believe in free will and i can't fully believe in just determinism either. I believe that yes we are granted with choices in our everyday life that shape our future and help determine where we are going in life. But i also believe your backgrounds and circumstances play a large factor in whether or not those choices are options for you.

For instance I grew up in a wealthy suburban area with an extremely high graduation rate. It wasn't a choice I was going to graduate as much as the people around me and the system I was in that determined I must graduate. I'm sure in some sort of way college was an "option" but due to my circumstances in the area I was living in some things are predetermined for you. It wasn't so much a choice but what was expected of me and an obvious reality. The same goes for if I had lived in a poor urban area with a poor graduation rate. College wouldn't have been as much expected of me. Especially when only a small percentage of students attend college. For all I know the environment could have been grooming me for work after high school not college. This would not be so much a choice as it would have been a decision determined for me. For reasons like this, I can not lean just one way or the other.

I identify President Barack Obama as being a person of mixed races- because he is a person of mixed races. His father is African and his mother is white, therefore, he is of mixed race. His race has absolutely nothing to do with him as US President, a world leader, and as a political figure in general. His race, and the races of the other candidates, plays absolutely no role in how I will choose to vote in the next election. Anyone who votes solely on the basis of race is clearly very ignorant and does not understand the idea behind being able to vote for a political leader in the first place.

When choosing to elect a political leader you should look at what that person stands for, what their positions are on the issues you care about most, and their past ability as a leader. Race has no place in that process because your race does not make you unable to inspire people to reach for more or unite people under a common goal. Likewise, what party you are in should not be the sole reason you vote for a candidate. You should vote for the person who best stands for what you believe in and who you think should do a good job, not because they are Republican or black. When President Barack Obama won the election he did so based on his politics, his stance on the issues, and his past ability as a leader. The fact that he is of mixed race is not something that should have played a role in voters’ minds because that would have just been a very uneducated vote.

The fact that he was a frontrunner for the 2008 election did make me look at this election differently than say the 2004 election. It is also shows that we have come very far from a past marked with hatred and violence to being able to elect a person of mixed blood (or black as some people insist) to be the Leader of the Free World. I think in 2008 America finally decided to look beyond skin color and judge him by “the content of his character” and that alone made the difference.

Maybe the people I associate with are just more involved with what is going on in politics and in the world, because during the time leading up to the election we used to have serious debates about all of the candidates. Race never came into play because we were all just about the issues, and the bottom line is that President Obama represented most of the issues that we felt were most important at the time.