en-us https://www.intensedebate.com/users/4229622 Comments by ChrisErtle http://www.worldinconversation.org/2012/04/17/voices-from-the-classroom-151/#IDComment343593341 Well first of all I think it would be completely obvious as for the reasoning as to why it would be harder to come out of the closet if you had straight parents as opposed to if you had gay parents. Clearly the gay parents would be completely understanding if this were the case because they themselves are gay as well. It would be easier to talk about something with somebody that you have something in common with because they can understand what you have to say in a completely related and and understanding sort of way. If your parents were gay then obviously it would be much easier to have this type of conversation in general. In opposition to that, if your parents are straight and you decide, or are thinking about, coming out of the closet to them, it must be so ridiculously nerve wrecking. First of all, there is no way they will possibly be able to understand the magnitude of this type of ordeal regardless of their reaction to your claims. The overall thought of you telling them such a thing would be impossible to guess. Even the nicest parents may react in a way that may be out of the realm at which your used to. Conversely, there is the possibility that they may be completely understanding of such a situation and react in a much more positive manner. There is, of course, the grey area that they may feel uneasy about everything or in fact superficially appreciative of the fact that you came out but yet can't help but feel as if this is a negative or wrong thing overall. There is no way to tell though so the magnitude of thoughts leading up to this initial conversation must be unfathomable regardless of how well you know, or think you know your parents and the way you think they may react towards it. It is actually quite scary to think that the most superficially nice parents,or even parents who are innately nice and have positive outlooks on life may in fact feel very strongly in a negative way against the whole homosexuality topic. It is always a crap shoot none the less and I have the ultimate respect for those that can bear enough courage to come out of the closet to their parents and tell them exactly what's up. I'm sure it must be a little awkward to straight parents when (just say that they have a son) and he is bringing guys over even it is just to hang out in a non sexual way. Also, the new knowledge from the parents knowing about their kid being gay must be a little awkward as well just overall in general under the every day setting. Fri, 20 Apr 2012 18:19:22 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2012/04/17/voices-from-the-classroom-151/#IDComment343593341 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2012/04/10/voices-from-the-classroom-146/#IDComment338391290 I was quite surprised to say the least that there were only one hundred stranger child abductions in the United States every year. I had went on to guess the one thousand six-hundred answer, which I think was choice B which was the next lowest answer to one hundred. However, the difference between one hundred and one thousand six-hundred is absolutely ridiculous when you put it in perspective. It was even more surprising that so many people opted with the last choice which was the highest number. I think this is directly due to the fact that the media puts so much attention on all the negative aspects of society. With all the negative attention, people just begin to see the world in a pessimistic way overall. But hey, could you blame them ? Media people seem to love to just portray all the awful things happening throughout the world. Therefore, the people who pay attention to what they have to say are immediately consumed to it altogether. Otherwise, there would be no way to hear about it, so they listen to what they are told and that's about it. Because unless you see a certain incident happening first hand, there is absolutely no other way of knowing about it unless your told about it by somebody else. Since negative attention seems to take precedent over all else through out the media, that's all people hear about. So when others say that people have such negative points of view, can you blame them ? They don't hear much, if anything at all, about all the good that goes on in the world. I think the media displays all the negatives going on because it is more rare and therefore more interesting in the process. So naturally it is almost inevitable for people to believe that there are terrible things happening all the time as if it were a natural thing. This leads to a completely negative outlook on life. Although this is obviously not a good thing, the logical reasoning for everything takes a completely logical understanding. I recall from our discussion section group meeting when we were talking about this particular issue, one student perked up and said that he has completely lost all trust in other people altogether. If that's not the most pessimistic attitude on life than I don't know what is. I think we as people need to really embrace all the good in the world because I truly remain convinced that is beyond taken for granted altogether. There are good things happening much more often in the world than bad things. Good things as small as holding the door for others coming through is a simple, yet good thing for example. It just seems that when people hear about these negative occurances they dwell on them for much longer than is necessary and this just overall creatives a naturally pessimistic view on the world, something that definitely needs to change. Fri, 13 Apr 2012 20:30:52 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2012/04/10/voices-from-the-classroom-146/#IDComment338391290 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2012/04/03/voices-from-the-classroom-141/#IDComment333560681 This type of question really bothers me so I obviously feel the need to respond. I really honestly disagree with everybody that feels the need to go and say that people from western culture don't respect their bodies. When they say this they are obviously referring to the way women dress more so than anything else. Here is where my problem arises. I dont see how anyone feels the need to point that out, or even say anything to that extent at all for that matter. Since western culture doesn't generally follow a religion or anything of significant importance that dictates that someone has to wear a certain amount of clothing or clothing to a particular point on their body, then what is the problem? I honestly don't see how respecting your body is in the slightest relevance here at all. Sure muslims have rules based on their religion that make women wear a certain degree of clothing, which is perfectly fine... no problems there.. But going ahead to take the initiative to say its a lack of respect by western women to be allowed to wear whatever they want is completely irrelevant. Western culture goes through style changes at an extremely rapid rate. It just so happens to be that more 'revealing' clothing is the new style today. That is not to say there is any lack of respect issue here, it is simply how the style is today. I really don't see any problem with that, every culture has its styles. Dressing a certain way for people in western cultures that is seemingly more revealing definitely helps women to feel more confident in themselves altogether as well. I feel like people from other cultures are in no position to make any comments regarding dress code whatsoever because it is just simply not necessary. It is just part of who the person is and what they decide to wear at the time is completely up to that person alone, there is no need to pass any judgement on others. This statement obviously goes both ways. I say both ways and mean that for example: people from western cultures are honestly in no position to judge those from lets just say Saudi Arabia where the hijab (sp!?) is a law and so all women walk around well covered up. Conversely, those people should also not be able to pass judgement on women from western cultures who go out and wear extremely revealing clothing by their standards either. It is just unfair altogether to make negative comments based on clothing just in the same way that it is rude to make fun of anyone for any other reason completely unrelated to this matter such as lack of athleticism or even not being particularly attractive looking. Everyone is entitled to dress in whatever way they would like to because (aside from laws or religion saying so) there is nothing and nobody saying that your not allowed to. Sat, 7 Apr 2012 03:27:20 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2012/04/03/voices-from-the-classroom-141/#IDComment333560681 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2012/03/27/voices-from-the-classroom-134/#IDComment328113077 I am actually glad somebody finally asked this question. It needed to happen that’s for sure. Because with all the talk about race, racism, discrimination, what should be said, what shouldn’t be said,etc,… there are certain things that people think that they should be mad about but realistically they honestly shouldn’t get mad about at all. Like for instance, when the guy in the video mentioned that black people like fried chicken. Yes, that is somehow a stereotype (and no I honestly have no clue why or how that came about) but for someone to get mad about that is a bit ridiculous if you are somebody who actually enjoys that type of food specifically. So who cares if it’s a stereotype, if you like that food it doesn’t matter whether your black, white, brown,etc – don’t bitch about it because it’s just annoying. For someone to go and say, “ oh that’s racist because you said black people love fried chicken” and then for that person to go and say, “yeah I like fried chicken” is one of the most ridiculous things anyone could ever complain about. That is just a specific example to cite my claims though. There are stereotypes for every group though! In fact, I actually feel like white people have more stereotypes than any other group. I think that is because white is the most common group in the United States, so it is easy to stereotype about white people when there are just more white people in general walking around. The other thing I definitely want to talk about is the sport-related stereotypes about people based on their groups. This sounds vague at first but let me explain… One example is about how black people can jump higher than everybody else, making them “better” at basketball. There is another one about how Hispanic kids make better soccer players. Just because you are of a certain race doesn’t make you genetically predisposed to be better at a particular sport. It is more so because you grew up in that area – an area where soccer just happens to be the dominant sport. Therefore there is a much greater likelihood that a Hispanic person will end up becoming a better soccer player just simply because they grew up with the sport. So naturally if you’ve been playing a particular sport for a great portion of your life, your obviously just going to be better at it. It’s more of your roots rather than your race that makes you good at something. Just the way that Sam was saying about how working class people generally produce working class kids and how wealthy people produce kids who will generally become wealthy to the same extent. Fri, 30 Mar 2012 23:02:07 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2012/03/27/voices-from-the-classroom-134/#IDComment328113077 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2012/03/21/voices-from-the-classroom-126/#IDComment323506503 I wouldn't necessarily say that I grew up in a prodominently white area but I like this question because I can still relate to it. I say that because I had a group of friends that were all white, and all of my acquantances (essentially kids that you know and would have conversations with if you saw them, but not necessarily call them up to hang out) were white as well. Of course I had people that I was "cool" with that were not white but I really couldn't call them my friends by any stretch. My area has a heavy influence of african americans and it would seemingly appear as such that all the black kids would be friends with each other and all the white kids would be friends with each other. Not very often was there any real mix between the two groups. By no means was anybody racist or anything, I really just feel like thats just the way things turned out to be. I definitely feel like there was no line of hatred though for sure. Anyway, when I came to college I was exposed to a completely different atmosphere... My roommate freshman year was from Africa. Two years later I sit here typing up this blog response and he is without a doubt my best friend. I learned soo much about him and his culture, it was phenomenal. Now in college, my friend group consists of possibly THE most variety anyone could ever account for. There are six of us now: myself (white american), a kid from Kuwait, a kid from Bangladesh, an asian american, a kid from costa rica, and my roommate from freshman year who is from Cameroon. The variety within my group of friends is absolutely crazy and despite us all having tons of differences, we are all best friends who met each other thru playing soccer. I think the x-factor that brought us all together as a friend group is definitely soccer, the most popular game in the world. We are all very avid soccer fans and have a deep love for the sport. So essentially, to wrap things up, I grew up with almost one extreme entirely, and now I have the most diverse friendships out of everyone I've met so far. I genuinely hope to go visit each and every single one of them to see what its like in their respective countries and really get a feel for everybody's culture because I am now absolutely fascinated with it. I never would have expected something like this to happen at all, and now I am more than happy that it did. My eyes have been opened up to a much larger variety of cultures and just in general, types of people throughout the world. I couldnt be happier about the people who I've met so far in my life and who have really opened up my eyes to new experiences. Its pretty crazy how someone living in a completely different culture with different religious beliefs is essentially the same exact person as I am with the same likes and dislikes, style, habits, interests etc... Sat, 24 Mar 2012 16:09:56 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2012/03/21/voices-from-the-classroom-126/#IDComment323506503 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2012/03/15/voices-from-the-classroom-123/#IDComment318007541 I was actually extremely pleased with the overall discussion of the war in class on Thursday. Sam provided the class with a lot of extremely relevant points that we should really consider. His main emphasis was definitely on empathy and how we, as people, should all take the time to step in to another person's shoes and just try to understand their point of view. If we could just understand simply their thought process, it would go a long way in the basic understanding of other people and their cultures altogether. Although this is a simple claim to make, it is rather difficult to actually enact as a whole. Like the old cliche, easier said than done. Trying to understand the enemy altogether is an extremely difficult thing to do. This is especially true because of a natural hatred we develop for whoever our hatred may be for. So say for instance we are at war in Iraq. We as a whole, generally speaking, are just naturally inclined to develop an absolutely loathing hatred for their people. Think about it, if one of your friends is killed by the enemy, you'll just naturally start to hate the enemy for something that is extremely unfortunate. But hey, that is what war is all about... Naturally people are going to die in war, that is just the way things are sadly. The overall understanding as to why people are doing the things that they are doing is often for the same reason that we are doing the things that we’re doing. Its because we are told to do it. A higher power, in our case the government, tells us that it is our job to defend our country as soldiers. That is our job to do. Another relevant point Sam made in class was about how every culture has reasons for doing what they do. I really enjoyed the conversation with the man from Iraq. I thought it was especially interesting to actually sit down and enjoy a simple non-argumentative conversation with someone who is from the region of the world that a lot of people feel inclined to hate just due to war. I think it was interesting listening to his opinions. It was interesting to hear that he thought that the United States came in and … not ruined, but created a fair bit of chaos in their country, and left (more so are currently leaving) without fixing it completely. In war, there are good outcomes of course but it definitely is unfortunate that it is the true reality of the matter that bad things do come from it as well. This is just one of those things that we’ll simply have to accept as a whole . Sat, 17 Mar 2012 02:27:35 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2012/03/15/voices-from-the-classroom-123/#IDComment318007541 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2012/02/23/voices-from-the-classroom-115/#IDComment313146525 I find it to definitely be a fair bit weird in a sense that I never even thought of the fact that I may be at an advantage just for being white. I guess it's something I just subtly took for granted? Anyway, I feel like that's a great thing for white people to take advantage of the "system" but you can't help but feel bad or guilty for black and brown people because this "system" consequently works against them. Having thought about this though for a brief amount of time, I can absolutely see how something as simple are your name could either increase or decrease your chances of getting a job. This is an awful thing but it is also the true reality of the world today and I highly doubt things are going to change at any point soon just realistically speaking. It's funny that your name which serves as a personal identifier can also be used in a much broader sense to identify a person and their race, ethnicity, etc... (generally speaking of course). It is one thing to side against people with tattoos all over their body, piercings on their face, dressing like a bum, or not even taking the time to dress appropriately for work, but to discriminate based on a name alone is taking things to a whole new level. My other thought is perhaps based on this 50% chance more likelihood of receiving a job for the simple fact that you have a white name is that maybe it’s because white people hold the title for being the majority in the United States? So perhaps the greater probability lies in the fact that there are just more white people than black people living in the United States so it would seemingly resemble the fact that there is some sort of advantage? I don't necessarily stand by that thought with any sort of distinction its more so that I would just want to rule out any possible variables to those statistics to ensure the most formidable sense of correctness possible. I definitely found it to be crazy that although the black person would receive five points up front just for being black based on an affirmative action policy, they still remain at a disadvantage altogether. So basically, without that five points to begin with it would almost seem as if they hardly have a chance at all of landing a job. Even when someone tries to help out in the case (which is an unfair advantage in itself to just give five points to anyone regardless of race or ethnicity) black people still can't catch a break for a bit of unbiased fairness. Sat, 10 Mar 2012 20:56:18 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2012/02/23/voices-from-the-classroom-115/#IDComment313146525 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2012/02/17/asian-stereotypes-and-the-world-of-sports/#IDComment298702973 The Jeremy Lin story is taking the world by storm. Yes, the world! It as phenomenal story of a completely unknown underdog bouncing around from team to team during his short professional career only to be handed the opportunity of a lifetime and take advantage of it to its fullest extent. The New York Knicks basketball team lost their two superstars due to injury and were desperate to shake things up in order to find the winning combination. As a last stitch effort to shake up the roster, in came Jeremy Lin. Well what are the odds, the kid went off scoring 20+ points and playing absolutely phenomenally. I think this story is especially significant because he is an Asian American from an Ivy League school. The combination of being of basketball's minority racial group and being from a school where most players don't get the chance to go pro makes his story all the more rare. He succeeds while maintaining a humble attitude and hardworking personality while being quick to pass the praise on to his teammates. The sports world needed this! It gives those who typically don't have much of a chance to make it a new thought process. People halfway around the world are waking up early in the morning to watch his games, something they've certainly never done before. However, of course as the media always does, they are quick to criticize Lin at the first sign of a slightly poor game (compared to the standard he's set so far in his previous games). Perhaps their excitement to finally criticize a player who has finally faltered (however slightly it may be) led them to read right past an extremely racist title page of the passage. I'm sure this incident was purely accidental but we as Penn Staters have learned that the media prey on weakness and tried to take advantage of a slightly poor game and were so excited to report all about it that they accidentally overlooked the title. I forget who the person was that brought this up when he said something along the lines of 'if that was a black player, this story wouldn't be as big' but he actually raises a big point. It is stereotypically common for black players to excel in basketball in today's society. However, to put an Asian player into this role completely changes the concept altogether. I think it is phenomenal for the sport though; a new role model of different ethnicity was bound to emerge at some point, and I am glad it did. I think the way that Lin has gone about this success is the true inspiration and general approval of this story. He is completely humble about his success thus far and it hasn't gone to his head. Its easy to cheer for a team player for sure; somebody that leaves their ego (or newly found ego in this case) at the door and truly comes to work to work hard. Wed, 22 Feb 2012 03:58:00 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2012/02/17/asian-stereotypes-and-the-world-of-sports/#IDComment298702973 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2012/02/10/voices-from-the-classroom-104/#IDComment289257415 I feel like you are who you are. This may seem like a vague statement at first but plain and simple, if you're white then your white and if your black then black! You are the person that your parents are and there's no way to ever change that. But with that being said, that doesn't mean you have to act in any particular way. In no way am I racist in any way but it sometimes seems as such that some black people try and act like they're from the streets and act like tough guys. But why? I honestly don't see what the point is of trying to act a certain way and act "hard". Just be yourself. Societal standards dictate that it is "cool" to act like your from the ghetto, but I don't understand the reasoning as to why. Just be yourself, that's what's really cool. Individualism should be the most important thing here. On another note, race is something that you innately are, you can't change that. Your ancestry is not all of a sudden going to change in any way, that's just physically not possible. So with that being said, embrace the person that you are because its never going to change! I am white but I am extremely curious as to what my true ancestry is. I am told that I am Hungarian from my mom's side and Italian from my dad's side. However, there is also a source of human error as far as the relaying of information throughout family generations so I am quite curious as to what my true background is. I actually at one point over Thanksgiving asked the question and I found out that nobody could even agree on our background as a family, something I found to be humorous at first but then soon realized that it's also a bit embarrassing. Basically, I don't know the person that I am at my very core. Although of course knowing your background isn't exactly a matter of life and death, I feel that it is really important to just overall know where you came from. What's really cool is nowadays, there are so many mixes of people who have different blood within them as we had seen in class. It is almost rare at this point to find a person who is 100% Italian or Irish or whatever it may be. It is really interesting to hear the individual mixes of backgrounds people carry around. There are almost infinite possibilities at this point in the year 2012 and being mixed is probably a general thing to be. But overall, embrace the person that you are because that is never going to change. Sat, 11 Feb 2012 01:29:23 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2012/02/10/voices-from-the-classroom-104/#IDComment289257415 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2012/01/24/voices-from-the-classroom-91/#IDComment275397283 I am actually quite pleased that this question was raised by Sam. In all honesty, I was completely unaware of how often incidents of child sex abuse occur in today’s society. I can realistically say that I thought this issue was completely misunderstood as a whole in such a sense that my mindset was of the opinion that this would be considered rare to occur if such an incident came across my path. I think this is such in that generally speaking in the media when you watch the news on FOX, ABC, etc. they typically report on very pressing issues such as murder, homicide, arrests, and matters related to this field. Why? Well based off of Sam’s opinions I guess it would be such that these types of things (child sex abuse) occur on a seemingly routine basis yet remain unreported. But then my next question would be: If something so traumatizing and awful altogether was taking place so often, then why the hell is no one doing anything about it? This question however, brings me back to my initial point – because not everyone is aware of it! So this brings me to my next thought; what are we going to do about this? Well, I think for starters it would absolutely be helpful to bring this type of issue to the limelight of the media and really try and expose it in more of a mainstream scenario. Perhaps by providing knowledge to others we could help to cut out a certain percentage of these types of incidents from occurring in the first place. Reducing the amount of cases involving child sex abuse will command a monumental decrease in statistics of occurrences which is the result we’re all after. The point of attack here needs to be focused towards the aggressors realistically. Of course it is sad and quite unfortunate that the victims would have to live through such a terribly horrific incident. This is something no one should ever have to go through. Obviously we feel bad for the victims; that should go without saying but it should still be clarified. It would definitely be beneficial for aggressors to seek some sort of counseling that is private and helpful for them to deal with their problems though. Hopefully aggressors will try to deal with these “urges” I guess you could call them before they act on them. By raising awareness to this issue as well, hopefully this idea will prove to be more than wishful thinking. It would be seemingly positively correlated that if this type of issue was fed into the eye of the public much more so than it is now, these aggressors will be less willing to act on their “urges” and this will result in a statistical decline of these incidents occurring. Thu, 26 Jan 2012 23:36:21 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2012/01/24/voices-from-the-classroom-91/#IDComment275397283 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/12/02/voices-from-the-classroom-89/#IDComment269933129 Despite my agreement that sacrificing state patty’s day would prove beneficial to Penn State as an institution, I can’t help but feel as if its too much of a long shot to ever pull off. When Sam first mentioned this, my roommate and I turned to each other almost in unison to voice our agreement that despite all the fun that state patty’s brings, that this would be a smart idea. Of course state patty’s is an enjoyable weekend; a “holiday” weekend that has been created out of nowhere by the student body, holding off one year may prove to be the most intelligent move while Penn State still captures the eye of all major media companies both locally and nationally. The Penn State scandal is still something being actively discussed everywhere where the public generally no longer hold our school in as high of regards as they previously had before. On another note, I actually find it funny that there has to be a sizeable profit amongst the stores/restaurants downtown who remain open while students drink throughout the “holiday’s” entirety. Apparel is sold by stores like Mclanahans who actively promote the green t-shirts, beads, “das boot” drinking mugs,etc. When you think about it, these places must be making a sizeable income despite the madness. This actually goes to prove that State Patty’s is stimulating the economy quite some bit in itself especially when you factor in how much alcohol is being bought. Every single fraternity of the 40+ fraternities stock up in excessive amounts for this holiday of pure insanity as well. You have to also factor in that many people from other schools come up for the weekend to the extent that the population in State College triples. This is one of the main reasons why State Patty’s has already gotten to be too big of “holiday” to be stopped altogether unless somehow and someway, the current Penn Students as a whole would be convinced to ditch this holiday altogether. Every current Penn Stater would then not have as many friends coming up to join in on the festivities, and in turn this holiday would just turn back into a typical weekend. I highly doubt this would ever happen to be completely honest though. There are way too many people who are guilty of essentially being careless towards the school’s reputation that they would be easily willing to engage in a weekend-long binger at the expense of the school’s reputation. On the other hand, there may also be the case that it be too crowded and chaotic for any media to bother trying to cover the scenes just on account of how crazy it gets out there throughout the day. There is no real way to be safer about this type of event other than for the police to maintain their routine weekend jobs in making sure nobody is falling over completely, urinating, puking, etc in public and most importantly making sure NOBODY drives after drinking. DON’T DRINK AND DRIVE. PLEASE. Fri, 20 Jan 2012 22:06:33 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/12/02/voices-from-the-classroom-89/#IDComment269933129