Of everything that I have learned in this class, the thing that I resonates most strongly is to not rush to assumptions about people. In a narrow sense, this applies to racial stereotyping, etc. But in a larger sense it applies to our interactions with people in general. This has always been something that I have personally struggled with, not racially, but more trying to quantify people as best I could, and to try and make assumptions about their character. While this may not be a very socially correct course of action, I had always felt that while I was not always correct, I was right enough to have making those assertions be beneficial to my interactions in general. However this was forgetting about the people themselves, which is the same problem that racially stereotyping holds. While it may be correct to make an assumption, it is not fair to do so until a person exhibits it personally. In a sense, it dehumanizes them, and counteracts any benefit that making an assumption may give. I think that this class has really helped me to work on this problem, and I definitely think that I will be better at it in the future.
Beyond this, Soc 119 has just helped me to widen my horizons in general, and to think more about different perspectives. Specifically, I really like the small group discussions and hearing what my classmates have to say about both mundane and controversial topics. In my group I am lucky enough to have people from all walks of life and several from different countries, and it is interesting to see how they view American social issues from an outsider’s perspective. Overall I thought that Sam did a very good job at making us think, which more so than a limited view of race appeared to be his primary goal for the class. The thought that we are a “now” society sits very well with this, because too often, as I have stated about myself, we jump to conclusions. This is a very major fault in almost all of us, and a lot of our social problems would be solved if it was rectified on a large scale. Unfortunately I feel like a narrow segment of Penn State students take this class, not because of lack of interest or the material but because of their fellow classmates. This is even considering how left the student body is in general here at Penn State. While people in the class were taking it to be more enlightened and understanding, they close their minds to other issues, issues that are not addressed. I think this is a big issue for reaching a more diverse student conglomerate, but at the same time I’m not sure how to best go about solving the problem, so I’ll leave it at that.

After listening to the “Needy Penis” lecture I would definitely say that my perception of the issues addressed have changed, as in all honesty I never had previously considered the topics addressed; the main point being that our intimate lives are a product of our patriarchal society. After listening to the lecture I think it is pretty easy to see that this is true, as we are indoctrinated with the male ideal of sex, and rarely are exposed to what in class was defined as the female version. I found it very interesting to put myself in the shoes of a woman, and to think about what sex would look like if our perception of it was based from their perspective. Sam also produced a number of interesting figures regarding female orgasms during sex, and how even though women are built for multiple orgasms, only a quarter of women who have sex will reach one. I would say that Sam’s calling this a “national tragedy” was a little overkill, but the point remains. I would be very interested in seeing how the rates compare between married and unmarried women, as I think the results, whether they are the same or not, would be very interesting.
Sam said that he felt that if the most intimate part of our relationships is controlled by men, then pretty much everything is. While I agree that we are in a patriarchal society, I think that with relationships it is a little more balanced than he makes it out to be. In particular, as women know very well, most men are pretty much always ready to have sex. It is the woman’s decision as to if and when. I would also assume, though I wouldn’t know, that women are more attracted to guys if the present themselves nicely. I think this goes back to what Sam mentioned about what men and women think about them having sex. For guys the woman is unimportant; a necessary tool to get them to where they want to go (in a collegiate or bar type scenario). However women, not craving sex, look at is as more of a relationship builder; and if you are trying to build a relationship with somebody a good way to do it is to give them what they want. So really men are taking advantage of women, but at the same time women are allowing men to take advantage of them. I think it is not completely about us being indoctrinated with the male version of sex, I think it is because men and women want different things out of it, one side being self serving while the other helps them toward their goal.

I found the video lecture presented during Thursdays class to be very interesting. In particular trying to fit myself into the mind of a middle eastern and being asked who would join the army to fight these “Christian Crusaders.” First off I have to say that I think once again Sam blew things out of proportion in class in order to get his point across. And once again he essentially made the class lecture a speech against Christianity. In the sound clips and interviews we have from terrorists, you don’t hear them speak of a war on Christianity; you hear them talk about the war on the West. As the poll you showed us earlier in the semester tells us, the number one thing Middle Eastern people dislike in the west is not Christianity but the moral and ethical decline of our culture. For a people for whom honor and morals are held to very high standard, this is a very big deal. Sam has said several times that he is not “anti Christian,” but only after making remarks negative enough to warrant it. He has taken on multiple occasions the views and actions of very small segments of the Christian population, and not views supported by Christianity and presented them as if they represented the entirety of Christendom. It is not much different from saying that the race difference in prisons proves that Blacks and Hispanics are inherently bad, or saying something corresponding about Islam; which he has not done. It is frustrating to me that he does this, but I suppose it is to be expected, for if I was teaching this class I would not be able to hang up my personal morals and ethics for the purposes of the class, which he has managed to at least do in other areas. Going back to my original topic, I can see what he was getting at, because I do think that it is all too easy to watch these videos and assume that Christians are at war, and to assume that they are at war with you. I get this from the videos, but while Sam showed these pieces, he did not explain the true context of some of the videos, such as the ones detailing the bible camp out west and the European newscast about radical evangelic Christians or whatever they called them. From their perspective, I can also understand the anger at thinking (or knowing) that the European powers were only there for oil, and that you had to watch your friends and family die in order to fuel somebody else’s civilization. With this matter I can understand why some Middle Eastern people might turn anti American, though I don’t think if I was one of them I would resort to fighting fire with fire.

When answering whether or not Jorge follows close to the model of Jesus, the short answer is no. There is no way for any person to be sinless, so nobody can be like Jesus. However I would say he is doing very well, at least by human standards at following the guidelines Jesus calls us to follow. When watching this video in class it was very moving to see someone willing to give of themselves so selflessly, and this is a big part of what Jesus calls us to do on earth. In the bible it is said that it is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. We are to give ourselves and our wealth to the benefit of others, and Jorge exemplifies this concept very outwardly. However there is much more to following what Jesus asks us to do, more than one can infer from this video. There could be other aspects of his life where he seriously falls short in following Jesus’ example. It is just as important to have true and honest intentions, and to follow the commandments. It very well could be that he is spiteful towards his mother, as pretty much any son is apt to do, or that he committed adultery in a previous marriage. Not that I would ever say that he had, but I can be sure that he has committed others. It is extremely commendable that he does try as hard as he does, and it is all any Christian can do to try and emulate his example, but his actions do not make him like Jesus, they simply show an attempt to be more like him. Effort is very important, and at judgment day it will be understood that perfection is not a possibility, but we must try our utmost every day of our lives to be even when we fail. I think that Jorge understands this and is doing a very good job at striving towards it. I wish more of us Christians tried to follow in Jorge’s footsteps, but that path is a difficult one, one that I’m sure he will be rewarded for in heaven.
On a connected note, I do not agree with the way that Sam talks about Christians, and he does it in a way that is very different from how he approaches other issues. He twists facts about Christianity to make it seem like it is something that it is not, and does not approach it from the other end of the spectrum like he does other issues. I understand that this may be because of his own religious beliefs, but I disagree with the premise of it. There are lines that should not be crossed, such as talking about the foundation of Islam being to kill Christians, or say, to purposefully mispronounce Allah’s name. I seem to remember there being some heated argument just a few short weeks ago when something similar to this happened, so why does he feel it is okay to do so in reverse? I understand that Jesus’ pronunciation may be different than it used to be, but the same can be said of Allah. And while other cultures may pronounce it differently as well, this was not merely an attempt to “raise awareness”.

I feel like there probably are some very mild negative effects felt by Asians for the stereotype outlined above, but I don’t think it affects Asians any more than smart Africans pare say, though in different ways, and I think that most of the pressure they feel comes from inside their own race. Many Asian Americans come from households where they are more or less forced to do well academically, and I believe that this incubates problems on a social level as well as in athletics. When growing older, these differences ostracize them from the majority of American students, but I don’t think that it is a stereotype that causes negative effects, but how they personally act. In my area there were a number of Asians were fit in perfectly with the rest of the social system and I never once heard anyone say anything about them being Asian in regards to their academics. There were several other Asians who came from families that fit into the stereotype mentioned above, but it wasn’t outside stereotyping that ostracized them, but how they personally acted. Returning to my example mentioned above, if an African American student in my area tried to break out of the social norms set forth by other African Americans and worked hard in school or cultured themselves, they would be made fun of, not by Whites or Asians but by other African Americans. What I am getting at is that while Asians may be getting pressure from their own race, I don’t think it consequentially affects them negatively in a wider social atmosphere if they are not smart. Sam tried to say that this stereotype hurt Asians because of undue expectations, or maybe because people do not like to hire people seen as smarter than themselves, but in the grand scheme of things I don’t think that this is that big of an issue for Asians and I would be happy with the expectations to do well, because it would encourage me to do so. Everybody is seen in ways that both help and hurt them, both racially and in other less obvious ways. I suppose Sam was trying to say that Asians don’t have it easy either, which leaves for the purposes of classroom discussion White males as the only group who supposedly has everything easy. Back to whether or not this hurts Asians, in the one article from the second quiz several studies were conducted to see how students fared against each other when presented with the expectation of racial stereotype and when not. The evidence given by this supports the idea that this stereotype helps Asians, which supports my position that while it may cause some extremely mild negative effects, they are hidden by the positive effects.

I wouldn’t have really had a problem approaching you before the lecture, so the lecture did not affect me very personally; however I know this has not always been the case. Growing up as a young child in a very rural town, I did not come into contact with African American culture until late elementary school when I moved to an area with a significant African American population. Unfortunately, in this area a program was enacted in the eighties to bring in drug addicts from philly to rehabilitate. The problem was that many of these drug addicts decided to stay in the area after they were released and became the majority of the African Americans living in the area. This led to extremely inflated crime and drug abuse rates, and has caused a lot of negative sentiment among the public. These drug addicts and now their children feed a stereotype that is altogether unhealthy, and most people in my area completely understand this, but it has made inter-racial relations more difficult in my area. This is not to say that there were not white drug addicts who were sent or that they are not part of the problem, it is just to say that they are a small minority of the white population while African American addicts accounted for a majority of their populace. There are plenty of African Americans who come from decent families that share our sentiment as to how these people have caused so much harm, and they are very easily distinguishable. It is just that when referring to African Americans in a general sense it is hard to escape the way the majority of them in our area act, and it does make it more difficult for many people to approach people based on the way they look. It is very obvious however that you are not one of these people, just by how you carry yourself and by what you wear so you fit into the category of the African Americans I have grown up with who weren’t from philly. One of my friends from high school (used to) have hair like you and he was one of the funniest guys I have ever met, and just because you have his hair I find you more approachable. Sam’s lecture did lend some valid arguments as to why we should not ever be afraid of approaching people, and for me I can much better apply this to people who are mentally handicapped. I have not had the chance to be in close contact with many people with mental conditions, and it unnerves me to talk to them, so I can better apply this lecture to these interactions.

In Tuesday’s class we talked about how Native Americans were kicked and pushed into tiny reservations, and whether or not they deserve their historical land back. As nice as it sounds to say that we should give them back their land, this is outside the bounds of reality as there are three hundred million people living where they used to. Because of this, giving them back the full extent of their former land is not possible but I do think that it should be required of us to give them more then we currently have, and not just geographically. We have pretty much taken from Native Americans all we can while maintaining our “dignity” and have not looked back at the people we have left to rot. As Sam has stated, Native Americans are the poorest people in America, and while giving them back the land they once controlled may not be a reasonable venture, there are things that we could do to help them out and to give them a small part of what they deserve. The first option, and the one that I think is the easiest and most practical is to give them ownership of the rest of their reservations. It is really sad that we have only given them ownership over three percent of their already insignificant reservations. Of any future plans regarding the empowerment of Native Americans I think this would be a good starting point, as it would give them control over the resources in the area that our government and other businesses, such as resorts, are stealing from them. These said resorts and other businesses should, in my opinion, pay a percentage to the Native Americans as part of this first step so as to both account for their presence on Indian Territory and to provide a means of cash, even if it doesn’t turn out to be that much for Native American reservations.
A big problem that faces Native American reservations is that they are, as we had originally intended, in pretty much the most remote parts of our country. That being said there are far fewer jobs needed in these areas then there might be in other parts of the country, and this is a contributing factor in the unemployment rates that Sam showed us. Though it would be very unlikely to occur, giving them the option to move to a more suitable area of the country, or an area where they lived historically, might give them the opportunities and hope that they need. Regardless of what might be done to help “make up” for what we have taken from them it is a travesty that we took this land and their heritage from them in the first place, and it is just as sad that we have still done nothing significant to help them once again stand with pride.

It is my belief that affirmative action fundamentally destroys the ideals that it is tasked to actualize. Starting with its formation, I do understand and agree that we should have helped bring minorities and those in previously depressed social states up on to a level playing field, but the fact that “their people” were previously repressed should not be an excuse to give a minority student that was not alive when these events were taking place to be given priority over say, a white student. The pendulum of society has swung too far in favor of minorities at the cost of the repression of many whites. You would think we would learn that holding back the top to let the bottom catch up is not a good idea, but we keep on deciding to do it anyway. For an example, take NCLB. Taking a page from my experience, I was severely held back through grade school because I was forced to wait for students that lacked basic skills to catch up. My teachers spent eight months of the year on PSSA prep because I was in what the “state” decided was a failing school. This was not the way to bring us out of our slump and the teachers knew it, but the state mandated that we focused on PSSA objectives to “bring us up to standard.” Applying this same logic to another area, if a soccer team spent their preseason bringing their worst player up to the level of the rest of the team while forcing everyone else to sit by and wait, it is a pretty safe bet that they wouldn’t have a very good season. There has to be a point when we tell that player that if he wants to get playing time he needs to work on his own time to get better. Just like we can’t tell the top to keep giving more and more to the bottom in the hope that they’ll eventually decide to stop taking essentially free benefits to do stuff on their own. Minority student’s advocate for affirmative action blindly and why shouldn’t they? They are being given social advantages over the majority of the populace because of some wrong done against their people. Should we say that all ethnic Germans have to pay a tax to all French and Polish Americans because of what happened during World War II, even if their family has lived here for hundreds of years? It doesn’t make sense, but we are doing the same thing with minorities. If an African student’s family moved here from France they would be given social advantages over many Americans just because they were born Black. This is the same wrong that minorities accuse whites of committing; the one that they use to justify these free advantages. It is a flawed system and one that needs to be removed. A black person should not have any advantage over a white person just like a white should have no advantage over a black. A better option would be to say colleges can’t ask for race, but a preferential quota? Affirmative Action defies its own logic, and it is a system that I believe needs to be removed.

I think that we should be willing to help those that are less fortunate than ourselves, but I do not think we should be held accountable for not helping them; nor do I think we should be forced to help them in the first place. I say this because I do believe that we should do everything in our power to help those that have not been given the advantages we have, but at the same time, many of the problems in destitute countries and populaces are brought upon themselves. For an example, look at population. If you look at the most impoverished areas in the world, there are critical shortages of many basic requirements such as food, medical services, and housing. Yet those areas increase in population three times faster than more developed areas of the world. This correlation does not make sense if those areas in question wish to dig themselves out of the hole they are in. In my area, there are families with next to nothing who live in two room apartments and struggle to pay their electricity bills every month, yet still decide to have six to eight kids. This is negligence on the part of the parents and is disastrous to both their future and their children’s. (As Sam stated low income children have correspondingly low SAT scores.) This all ties in to another of the questions on the blog, relating to the wealth gap. If you look, the races at the bottom of the wealth chart are the races that tend to have more children. Looking at the top, American Asians tend to have more than American Whites, but many of the highest paid Asians come from China; where the number of permissible children is controlled. Smaller family sizes allows for more money to be spent on each child, and a more focused upbringing. I think this is an interesting point to consider.

I added the second point in my opening sentence because more and more so recently we are being forced to provide for others. If a person has a serious problem that prevents them from having any job then I think that we should provide for them, but I am more focused on the people who could work and don’t, or who have chosen their economic positions. An example is a couple like one mentioned above who struggles to keep their heads above water, yet still chooses to have six kids. I don’t think it is right for them to do something like this, and then still be allowed to collect welfare for those children. It should be their responsibility to not bring another life into the world unless they are able to provide for it on their own; not on the backs of others.

**I am not counting Native Americans in any of this because I do think we are responsible for their plight, and for that matter should be responsible for fixing it.

I thought that this exercise was very engaging and really made you think about how we are different. Why it is that someone who claimed to have not been very cultured with other Asians was so capable at determining where other Asians were from when someone from a white background was so pathetic in comparison? I think it is safe to say that the results would be fairly similar if we lined up a group of Europeans and asked an African to pick their country of origin. So why is this? We can’t really say that it fully has to do with experience and being “cultured” when the person who did well said he had not been exposed to many Asians. So we have to assume that it comes to us on a deeper level that we are able to identify and individualize those of our own race over those of other races. This is really interesting to think about and makes us think about why we have had so much trouble bridging race gaps in our culture. Since if we have trouble telling a group of people apart they start to lose their individuality as they are blended into a mass of people who we all view as looking similar. Sam’s point was that you can’t judge a person’s race based on appearance and this demonstration did help to demonstrate that idea; however the fact that the uncultured Asian was still so much more capable than a white person really gives you room for thought in a different direction. Is it just that we are more used to looking at ourselves so we grow accustomed to more subtle differences in appearance? Or is it engrained in the fabric of our beings that we identify closer and more individually with people who are most similar to us? Sam has talked and I believe has written extensively on how there are no racial groups, and while this very well may be true, I would be very interested in hearing how he proposes that people of one race are “innately” (for want of a better term) more apt at identifying those that are closest to them; in this case, racial differences as identified by region.
Given all of this, I think that certain other white would have done better if they were more cultured. While I would have not been able to distinguish someone from the Philippines from someone that comes from Laos, I was able to pick out those of Japanese, Chinese, and Korean descent pretty easily, and for several others could tell what region they came from, even if I didn’t know specifically what country they came from. I’m sure others could have done much better than me, since while we have a large African American community in my area, we do not have many people of Asian descent.