en-us https://www.intensedebate.com/users/2431888 Comments by LeahMBlasko http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/19/why-does-society-dislike-immigrants-and-why-are-they-portrayed-badly-119-blog/#IDComment145155930 Society dislikes anything that is different from what we are used to. Change comes but usually not easily. As a whole, society acts negatively towards immigrants because they are different. These people dress different, speak a different language, eat different foods, and sometimes even smell different. We aren’t used to it, we want things to stay our way and only our way. Ignorance is the bliss we cry out for and the kind of lifestyle we wish to live, unfortunately due to the time we live in and country we come from this is nearly impossible. Immigrants usually know all about our country before we get here. Everyone in the world has an obsession with America. This is part of why we have such a hard time getting other countries to accept Americans. Because they spend hours hearing our news and listening to our facts and learning things about us. Then they meet Americans and we are ignorant to their culture. Imigrants have very strong ties to family, religion, and customs from their country of origin. Especially those from the first and second generation these ties are very strong. A personal example is my family from Czechoslovakia. I'm 50% Czech. My mother's father and mother both came from this small, no longer in existence, country. My grandfather is the youngest in his family, the first generation born in the states, and was chosen to be the sole grandchild to learn Slovak. My mother used to know some of the language but has forgotten most of it due to lack of practice. In fact, my grandfather met his second wife (who moved here from Prague when the Nazi's invaded her home) by speaking Slovak in a bar. In regards to immigrants, language is what confuses me most. Americans spend years learning to be bilingual or trilingual using programs like Rosetta stone or spending tiresome hours in classrooms. Yet we scorn those who start with another language and wish to keep that language as well as English in their lives. We should welcome these people to help us in our endeavor to learn other languages and practice speaking with them in multiple languages. Finally, immigrants are looked down on because they don’t have a lot of money. Money is the big status symbol in America and these new transfers are creating a whole new life so they don’t have much of it. The ludicrisness of this should escape no one. America is full of people who, at some point, were immigrants too. People who came here, fleeing from oppression with little more than the clothes on their backs to come make a new life. This is the land of the free but teaching your children to be rude to the new wave of people doing just what your great-grandparents did, is hypocritical and a little sad. Fri, 22 Apr 2011 16:30:06 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/19/why-does-society-dislike-immigrants-and-why-are-they-portrayed-badly-119-blog/#IDComment145155930 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/14/why-did-the-white-students-tell-the-story-differently-than-the-mixed-or-black-students-119-blog/#IDComment143232349 A difference in how the different students told the story? I don’t think there was one. I understand where you are coming from but you have to think about it this way those students stood up infront of the class and had a hard time remembering things and I was afraid someone would draw that line. When really it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I did not notice a trend in how anyone told the story. I mean there was a black student who nearly forgot to say that it was an African studies course. Also the first student was thrown off guard because his name is in the story and he was shocked by the reactions of all the students. A reaction like that makes it even more difficult to tell the story. These students did not know this would be a story about race. They came into this thinking they were playing a game, in fact he did not even warn the first girl that she would be telling the story without the projection on the wall. So she didn’t know she needed to commit everything to memory. She was thrown into the shark tank and confused and scared because here now she had to tell a story in front of 650 strangers, and what about the other guys? I mean honestly I didn’t notice a shift between the white and black students but if there was. Then you also have to address the difference between the female and male students and how they told the story different. Would you say they changed the story just because they're male or female, no that'd be ridiculous. I understand latent prejudice, I really do and I see that is what you are trying to say that this is. However, it really isn't. The degeneration of the story was natural in a game of telephone. The example was to show us hate crime and how they get twisted and turned and become things they weren't before. How people who really were just reacting end up taking all the blame. This is ridiculous. The point of the story was not that they were black or white or that those telling it were black or white, the same story could have been told about An Arab student starting an Arab studies class or an Asian student starting an Asian studies class. What the minority is that does not matter. What matters is that we understand to not believe all that we hear. The lesson was to teach us to go out and investigate before making any decisions or taking any sides. The professor who was speaking wanted to make us aware of how stories become distorted over the course of being told. Not how they change based on who is telling them and honestly EVERYONE tells EVERY story a little differently. Fri, 15 Apr 2011 22:09:04 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/14/why-did-the-white-students-tell-the-story-differently-than-the-mixed-or-black-students-119-blog/#IDComment143232349 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/05/do-you-think-sam-was-right-in-saying-this-will-be-the-best-lecture-of-the-year-119-blog/#IDComment141054896 Sam calls every lecture "really cool" but never calls anything but his Christian Invaders lecture, the best. I can see why. I took Sam's soc 001 course last spring and we had the same lecture (basically). We talked about everything from the point of view of middle easterners. It is really eye opening. Seeing the world from a different point of view changed a lot of things for me. As a white, catholic girl I'm not used to oppression. Not used to being told that I can't do something. This class in general has made me think a lot about what if I was a minority…instead of the majority. A reality that I may actually have to face seeing as I want to live and work in Los Angeles where whites are already they minority. So this exercise allowed me to feel like that for once, and it felt weird. It is probably one of the most eye opening lectures you can attend in Soc 119 from an perspective. While Sam told people to come to hear his lecture on "the needy penis" I invited my friends for "Christian Invaders". It has changed my opinion on a lot of things. I used to fear terrorists and wonder how people could ever imagine doing things like terrorist attacks to other people. Then I learned about how awfully some of the people in the Middle East have it. How people come in and ruin their lives when they're living normally. How these men and women have simple lives, all they want is to worship their god and to live their respective lives. Until Americans and other western countries come over to "help" them. When really all they want is their oil. Western civilization is bullying around millions of defenseless people so they can take their resources and use them as they wish. Obviously this makes the Middle Eastern society angry. What would we do? We would do the same thing. So it makes me wonder, how can we fix it? This is, I think, the best part of the lecture. Teaching us to think about how we can make our change in the world. It sure makes me want to buy hybrid cars, or do what I can to become less dependent on oil so we have less people terrorizing the Middle East. So the Middle East can be less afraid, and have less terrorist groups (because there will always be at least one knuckle head out there). Making sure there are less terrorist acts. The only way to really ensure our way of living is to more fully understand other people's way of living. That is the beauty behind the "Christian Invaders" lecture and why I believe it is in fact the most life changing lecture Sam gives. Fri, 8 Apr 2011 18:15:17 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/05/do-you-think-sam-was-right-in-saying-this-will-be-the-best-lecture-of-the-year-119-blog/#IDComment141054896 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/05/do-you-think-sam-was-right-in-saying-this-will-be-the-best-lecture-of-the-year-119-blog/#IDComment141054124 Sam calls every lecture "really cool" but never calls anything but his Christian Invaders lecture, the best. I can see why. I took Sam's soc 001 course last spring and we had the same lecture (basically). We talked about everything from the point of view of middle easterners. It is really eye opening. Seeing the world from a different point of view changed a lot of things for me. As a white, catholic girl I'm not used to oppression. Not used to being told that I can't do something. This class in general has made me think a lot about what if I was a minority…instead of the majority. A reality that I may actually have to face seeing as I want to live and work in Los Angeles where whites are already they minority. So this exercise allowed me to feel like that for once, and it felt weird. It is probably one of the most eye opening lectures you can attend in Soc 119 from an perspective. While Sam told people to come to hear his lecture on "the needy penis" I invited my friends for "Christian Invaders". It has changed my opinion on a lot of things. I used to fear terrorists and wonder how people could ever imagine doing things like terrorist attacks to other people. Then I learned about how awfully some of the people in the Middle East have it. How people come in and ruin their lives when they're living normally. How these men and women have simple lives, all they want is to worship their god and to live their respective lives. Until Americans and other western countries come over to "help" them. When really all they want is their oil. Western civilization is bullying around millions of defenseless people so they can take their resources and use them as they wish. Obviously this makes the Middle Eastern society angry. What would we do? We would do the same thing. So it makes me wonder, how can we fix it? This is, I think, the best part of the lecture. Teaching us to think about how we can make our change in the world. It sure makes me want to buy hybrid cars, or do what I can to become less dependent on oil so we have less people terrorizing the Middle East. So the Middle East can be less afraid, and have less terrorist groups (because there will always be at least one knuckle head out there). Making sure there are less terrorist acts. The only way to really ensure our way of living is to more fully understand other people's way of living. That is the beauty behind the "Christian Invaders" lecture and why I believe it is in fact the most life changing lecture Sam gives. Fri, 8 Apr 2011 18:11:05 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/05/do-you-think-sam-was-right-in-saying-this-will-be-the-best-lecture-of-the-year-119-blog/#IDComment141054124 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/05/do-you-think-sam-was-right-in-saying-this-will-be-the-best-lecture-of-the-year-119-blog/#IDComment141045967 Sam calls every lecture "really cool" but never calls anything but his Christian Invaders lecture, the best. I can see why. I took Sam's soc 001 course last spring and we had the same lecture (basically). We talked about everything from the point of view of middle easterners. It is really eye opening. Seeing the world from a different point of view changed a lot of things for me. As a white, catholic girl I'm not used to oppression. Not used to being told that I can't do something. This class in general has made me think a lot about what if I was a minority…instead of the majority. A reality that I may actually have to face seeing as I want to live and work in Los Angeles where whites are already they minority. So this exercise allowed me to feel like that for once, and it felt weird. It is probably one of the most eye opening lectures you can attend in Soc 119 from an perspective. While Sam told people to come to hear his lecture on "the needy penis" I invited my friends for "Christian Invaders". It has changed my opinion on a lot of things. I used to fear terrorists and wonder how people could ever imagine doing things like terrorist attacks to other people. Then I learned about how awfully some of the people in the Middle East have it. How people come in and ruin their lives when they're living normally. How these men and women have simple lives, all they want is to worship their god and to live their respective lives. Until Americans and other western countries come over to "help" them. When really all they want is their oil. Western civilization is bullying around millions of defenseless people so they can take their resources and use them as they wish. Obviously this makes the Middle Eastern society angry. What would we do? We would do the same thing. So it makes me wonder, how can we fix it? This is, I think, the best part of the lecture. Teaching us to think about how we can make our change in the world. It sure makes me want to buy hybrid cars, or do what I can to become less dependent on oil so we have less people terrorizing the Middle East. So the Middle East can be less afraid, and have less terrorist groups (because there will always be at least one knuckle head out there). Making sure there are less terrorist acts. The only way to really ensure our way of living is to more fully understand other people's way of living. That is the beauty behind the "Christian Invaders" lecture and why I believe it is in fact the most life changing lecture Sam gives. Fri, 8 Apr 2011 17:28:42 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/05/do-you-think-sam-was-right-in-saying-this-will-be-the-best-lecture-of-the-year-119-blog/#IDComment141045967 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/05/do-you-think-sam-was-right-in-saying-this-will-be-the-best-lecture-of-the-year-119-blog/#IDComment141045926 Sam calls every lecture "really cool" but never calls anything but his Christian Invaders lecture, the best. I can see why. I took Sam's soc 001 course last spring and we had the same lecture (basically). We talked about everything from the point of view of middle easterners. It is really eye opening. Seeing the world from a different point of view changed a lot of things for me. As a white, catholic girl I'm not used to oppression. Not used to being told that I can't do something. This class in general has made me think a lot about what if I was a minority…instead of the majority. A reality that I may actually have to face seeing as I want to live and work in Los Angeles where whites are already they minority. So this exercise allowed me to feel like that for once, and it felt weird. It is probably one of the most eye opening lectures you can attend in Soc 119 from an perspective. While Sam told people to come to hear his lecture on "the needy penis" I invited my friends for "Christian Invaders". It has changed my opinion on a lot of things. I used to fear terrorists and wonder how people could ever imagine doing things like terrorist attacks to other people. Then I learned about how awfully some of the people in the Middle East have it. How people come in and ruin their lives when they're living normally. How these men and women have simple lives, all they want is to worship their god and to live their respective lives. Until Americans and other western countries come over to "help" them. When really all they want is their oil. Western civilization is bullying around millions of defenseless people so they can take their resources and use them as they wish. Obviously this makes the Middle Eastern society angry. What would we do? We would do the same thing. So it makes me wonder, how can we fix it? This is, I think, the best part of the lecture. Teaching us to think about how we can make our change in the world. It sure makes me want to buy hybrid cars, or do what I can to become less dependent on oil so we have less people terrorizing the Middle East. So the Middle East can be less afraid, and have less terrorist groups (because there will always be at least one knuckle head out there). Making sure there are less terrorist acts. The only way to really ensure our way of living is to more fully understand other people's way of living. That is the beauty behind the "Christian Invaders" lecture and why I believe it is in fact the most life changing lecture Sam gives. Fri, 8 Apr 2011 17:28:28 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/05/do-you-think-sam-was-right-in-saying-this-will-be-the-best-lecture-of-the-year-119-blog/#IDComment141045926 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/31/women-what-are-your-thoughts-on-dressing-up-while-men-dress-down-and-did-they-change-after-this-lecture-119-blog/#IDComment139206003 I find the practice of girls dressing up to go out demeaning and disgusting. When I came to Penn State and saw my roommate getting dressed for her first frat weekend I thought there was some sort of joke. Her dress was short and her heels were high and it took her almost an hour to straighten her beautiful black kinky hair until it was as straight as mine. She looked nice but nice in the sense that she looked ready for a semi-formal or a nice dinner at a slightly upscale restaurant. She did not look like she was going to frat row. She did this nearly every weekend and, though I no longer live with her she probably, still does. The first time I went out, I wore nice jeans and a nice, feminine, top and I was the one who I looked out of place. But the boys, they would come in anything. Usually jeans and a polo but occasionally one of them would dress up in nice pants and a button up shirt or dress down and pull out a t-shirt with their frat letters blazed on the chest. The most awful part is what these guys expect us to get dressed up to do. They expect us to wear high heels and short skirts or dresses in weather that is approximately freezing. Then they want us to walk all the way down to where they are (no man picks a girl up anymore) and spend hours in their dirty, dank, nasty frat house and love it. They serve warm beer and wear backwards baseball caps while ogling, and usually spilling drinks on, their classier dressed counter parts. Sometimes, if we're lucky, they'll let us go into the basement where there will be music and dancing or something like that. Dancing to them is just a precursor to hooking up, which is really all they want from us. Not to mention, the men need us, no not in a sexual way (though they do need us like that usually too). They need us because otherwise, they can't get into the "awesome" frat parties. Though I haven’t been out to frat row since they changed the rules, it used to be that in order to be let in at most frats a guy needed to be accompanied in a 2:1 ratio. Two girls for every guy to walk in the door. How sick is that? This is what drives me the craziest, guys want us to dress up so we look the nicest we can. Then they take us out just so they can score free beer and hopefully hook up with some overly drunk girl who will not remember him and have to take the walk of shame, frigid, because no one EVER wears a coat out. Unless they go back to her place, then come 10 AM the next day he'll walk a little different he'll take the stride of pride with an overly inflated story and smug smile to accompany it as he walks around in yesterdays clothes. Fri, 1 Apr 2011 21:52:40 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/31/women-what-are-your-thoughts-on-dressing-up-while-men-dress-down-and-did-they-change-after-this-lecture-119-blog/#IDComment139206003 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/18/where-do-the-messages-come-from-119-blog/#IDComment135894050 When thinking about the messages which say dark skin is bad and light skin is good its easy to know where the messages come from. Everywhere. As children we are impressionable and are suseptable to every factor and force around us. Now, it would be nice to blame it all on the parents tell them that they need to teach their children to love themselves for who they are more. Then we are forgetting though that these parents were once children and had the same sorts of problems. Its all a vicious cycle. But what started it? Could it be the minute amount of black, relatable characters on TV and in movies? Could it be that there are hardly ANY black main charcters? And those that do exist, like the Cosbys, basically act white? The different images we face everyday are a lot of what make us believe what we believe, without us even realizing it! These children are a prime example. Some of them may not even realize they are black yet. We all think we are all the same as kids, not just with race but also gender and behaviors and likes and dislikes. Only when we tell children of differences do they really notice them. Black children get the message that white is beautiful from the television. These images come at them from commercials of girls playing happily with white dolls. Never black ones. They see white kids on cartoons with their dogs like Scooby doo or Jimmy Neutron. They see white kids in commercials for EVERYTHING but the amount of black children they see? Very small. Then their parents don’t help. They complain about their dark color, or try to lighten themselves using creams and ointments and medicines. Then they only buy their black daughters, white baby and Barbie dolls. The black ones left on the shelves. Obviously then the kids think there is something wrong with being dark or being white and not looking like everyone else. This then follows them throughout their lives causing them to use lightening creams and teach their own children the same flawed ideas. Ironically I have personal experience with this, even though I am white. Growing up I played mainly with white baby dolls. Until a family friend starting buying me only black baby dolls. Being a small little blonde girl I loved the dark skin and hair of the dolls and even started buying black and Hispanic looking Barbie dolls for myself later. These simple actions can be taken to show children we are all beautiful. If one white woman can buy a white child a black doll, why can't anyone else? It teaches them so much with a simple action. Imagine if a white girl brought a black doll out to play with and a black girl brought a white doll, they would subconsciously learn things. It would help them grow, and maybe it would help the black children realize they aren't bad or ugly but beautiful too. Fri, 18 Mar 2011 19:36:43 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/18/where-do-the-messages-come-from-119-blog/#IDComment135894050 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/24/why-are-black-and-brown-people-more-expressive-of-their-problems-than-white-people-119-blog/#IDComment132534024 This is an interesting question and one we must consider fully and in order to do that we need to expand it. The expanded question is: why are black and brown people more expressive of their problems and why are women more expressive of their problems than men. Both of these questions have similar answers and reasoning which is why they should be put together or at least thought of at the same time. First and foremost white people were never oppressed. They were never held down to one station in life and told that they were worth less than any other person. Their "white privilege" has always buoyed them to the upper levels of society…or well upper compared to a lot of black and brown people. They feel guilty for not meeting what in their eyes is their full potential bestowed upon them by their white forefathers. Black and brown people have had issues with oppression since we first noticed the differences in our skin colors. A Similar issue is the idea of complaining between men and women. Men have long griped about women complaining, but why do women complain. For the same reasons minorities complain because women were treated very similarly to some minorities in history. They were denied the right to vote. They were considered second class citizens. They were told they belonged in the home and nowhere else. Men on the other hand were given ample opportunities for everything. If they wanted to play sports, they could. If they wanted to be in math club, they could. All in all men were freer to express themselves. So similarly to how white people feel in comparison to black and brown people that is how men feel in comparison to women. They complain less because one they are socialized that complaining is a woman's and second because expressing problems means having problems and most white men like to admit they have problems about as much as they like to admit they're lost and need directions. These two questions make a good couple for a lot of reasons. I think the most obvious is because people forget women are oppressed. Unless it is put right in your face people forget women are not usually seen like men are. The best example of this is in the field of business. While more and more women have entered the world of fortune 500 companies men still run the majority of them as CEOs and Vice Presidents. Women have a very thick glass ceiling because when being hired people think they are weak or that they may want to leave their job to have families when oftentimes women want to have careers just as much as they want to have jobs. I suppose I took this question off on a tangent and I am not trying to say white women of affluent class have it as difficult as third world country black and brown people. I just feel like it's something we need to discuss in our class. How prejudice isn’t just about skin type. I mean we've already seen that it's based on religion like Judaism but it’s also based on sex and I hope someday we can get into that. Sat, 5 Mar 2011 03:27:55 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/24/why-are-black-and-brown-people-more-expressive-of-their-problems-than-white-people-119-blog/#IDComment132534024 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/10/how-can-we-make-major-decisions-so-quickly-119-blog/#IDComment127408923 Personally, I do not make decisions on a snap-shot of anything. I answered "I don’t know" to both questions when he presented them in class, but this is not a paper about me and my sociological mind set (which truthfully only exists because of my sociology professors). This is about us, as a public, and how we think. We think we have all the information, or atleast we did in class. We think we know best because this is how we are socialized. We are taught from a young age that we are the smartest, that we are the most knowledgable, that we are the best at something. But what sociology teaches us is that we are not that smart, no or we even that free to think we are that smart. Each decision we make is made based on how we think, and how we think is based on how we are socialized, and how we are socialized is based on the society we are born into and the family and the place. Sam calls them the invisible strings that come down and attach to us. They pull us without us knowing it. They teach us, form us, and force us to think in ways that we never really realized aren't our own thoughts. That’s what sociology is about. Sam put the questions up there as a sociological experiment to show us the difference between what we think and what is actually true about people who are conservative or freedom and determinism. Because after first glance we think we can make a decision about a situation right away but the honesty truth is there is no set answer. There is no set way of thinking. Because you can never fully understand a situation until you think fully about the factors and forces in that person's life. We thought "Black woman, jailed for sending kids to white school" was a racist headline because it is. The headline was crafted to catch the attention of a reader. Being a Communications student I had to study these things in my COMM260W class last semester. The idea of a headline is to catch a reader's attention and get them invested in a story to read it. The headline was chosen because people would be outraged and want to read more. Sam knew that, he wanted to see how many people had caught the gist of his previous lessons by testing us with this headline. It worked. Personally, I have had him before and knew that there was missing information so like I said I did not fall into the trap but it was a clever trap and a perfect tool for the lesson in question. As for the decision, the decision was not the point. We make decisions like we do because we're taught to make them one way or another. We think we're infallible, but really we're just monkeys. Fri, 11 Feb 2011 21:18:31 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/10/how-can-we-make-major-decisions-so-quickly-119-blog/#IDComment127408923 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/01/do-you-describe-yourself-differently-in-other-countries/#IDComment125949730 I believe we all do exactly what you are talking about and I don’t get it at all. I understand the desire to want to fit in but yet be unique. Americans all do. That’s why we say where we are from even though we are all Americans and most of us were born here. Our families tell us that we are a certain ethnicity and that is what we are used to. That is what we believe. We say we are Irish, Scottish, Italian and everything else even though most of us know nothing of the heritage. We couldn't point it out on a map if you paid us. We don't speak the language. We don’t wear ethnic clothes. In all senses we are completely American-ized but the second ethnicity comes up we bring out our heritage like a trophy, shine it up, and show it off. Suddenly the kid from Punxsutawney is Irish. The girl from Philly is Samoan. They're Americans, they know that, yet they also want to lay claim to "the motherland" or wherever theyre family originated. That is because we are socialized to see where we came from as something of major importance, though often times it is not. The past, is just that, passed. It is over and what matters now is what's happening now. We all need to look at ourselves and realize if we are to claim our heritage fiercely, then we better begin to celebrate it fiercely. All the time, not just when someone asks about it. As for the other part of the question. When Americans leave these 50 states and travel around the world they never claim to be Irish or Italian. Always American, but why? This is really simple. America is the land of the free, the home of the brave. Forget all the things people SAY that foreigners believe about Americans. The truth is, they love us just as much as we love ourselves. They care about our politics, our country, our sports, our natural disasters. Its like a car wreck, they know they should pay less attention but yet they cannot look away. We say we are Americans because we are proud of that. Just like we are proud of our past we are also proud of our present. We know when we say "American" in just about any language people will look at us. Whether with interest, confusion, or disgust it is hard to say but we know we will get their attention and not just that, we will keep it. No we are not attention seeking. Its not like we plan to get attention and that’s why we say we are Americans. No it’s the pride in our nation. Finally, when people say other countries hate us or don't like us. Usually its not for the reasons we think. They don’t think we are stupid because of anything other than a misunderstanding. Just as I have said before, everyone is obsessed with America. However, other countries then expect us to treat them the same. It's when we don’t that they get upset. Americans, though, don’t pay as much attention to international politics, because we're so bogged down in our own. It’s the epitome of a vicious cycle. Fri, 4 Feb 2011 17:14:07 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/01/do-you-describe-yourself-differently-in-other-countries/#IDComment125949730 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/26/why-cant-we-just-be-human-119-blog/#IDComment124420529 In class, Sam always asks us what we think about race and how it effects us. I cannot think of a more accurate way to show how crippling of an effect race has than in our lexicon. We use words like black, white, Asian, Indian, but never just Human. But why? Well there's one REALLY good explanation. When the white settlers began to use other races for slave labor they had to put a differential characteristic between them and those enslaved. Thus began the process of calling people black and white. They would call these men and women Black and would by association be calling them stupid or sub-par. The same thing occurred with Indians. Indian isn't even the correct term! It came out of Columbus thinking he was in the West Indies. Then they began to call them even more derogatory names like Savages and this further distanced the settlers from the indigenous peoples. This was not a practice which died easily, because using terms which demeaned this people lead to the mentality that these lower classes were in fact deserving of their lower status. This made it more difficult for them to climb the ladder to social equality. The practice was not just instituted for blacks and whites though. White people began to demean other members of society with the same skin color just with different backgrounds or countries of origin or even religion. Poles, Irish, Italians, Slovaks, Jews these are all examples of different people whose background turned into a name which turned them into nothing. When each ethnic group made its way here labeling them by their ancestry made them easy to pick out and easy to discriminate against. This discrimination caused the ethnic groups to join together in small parts of cities Italian Villages, and Slovak Communities. Where everyone was the same ethnicity and no one was any better than everyone else. This cause more ethnocentrism so that when the next group to settle their way into the Americas comes along it happens again. So the Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Indian, and other Asiatic peoples come. They're faced with even more issues as they don’t even use the dominant writing style in current practice. They dress different and eat different foods. What do Americans do then? They call them names like Chinks and force them into their own little Chinatowns. Another rift in society. The viscous cycle continues. Finally we're here, today, the 21st Century. Finally blacks are gaining ground and more equality. Finally we are stopping discrimination by country, instead we use religion. Sadly, this is true. The newest wave of immigrants are Muslims. These poor people are discriminated against due to their different religious beliefs (which require praying multiple times a day) and their unfortunate association with zealot groups. We cannot be humans because we won't let ourselves. Because if we were all humans, then we'd all be equal and we would be forced to look at the atrocities we have committed throughout history more closely. Fri, 28 Jan 2011 22:14:58 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/26/why-cant-we-just-be-human-119-blog/#IDComment124420529 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/14/why-dont-we-know/#IDComment122421764 Why don't we know? Well I think, though it may be a little counter productive in the general case of sociology, to think about why individually you didn't know first. The short answer is because you were never told. But why were you never told? Because you never asked. Its the same for most people. In most cases we think about what we want, not what we have. We want new shoes, we want a new jacket. Then we get these things and we don't think about having them or how they came to be, we are on to the next thing we want. Its common, this phenomena, when living in a capitalistic society, and it is called insatiable want. We are driven for the things we want and not the things we have. We do not bother with smaller details and the little intricacies, such as who makes things or how we get them here from where they are made. Another major reason is because the large corporations that hire this cheap labor do not want it publicized. They don't want us knowing about them or them knowing about us. Because we may choose to fight for their rights, or even worse they will pull a page out of a history book and begin to demand labor unions and other things that we have here which have caused the companies to go over seas. Thu, 20 Jan 2011 03:41:54 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/14/why-dont-we-know/#IDComment122421764 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/10/last-name-%e2%80%9cb%e2%80%9d-%e2%80%93-intense-debate/#IDComment122420187 Soc 119 Thu, 20 Jan 2011 03:31:20 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/10/last-name-%e2%80%9cb%e2%80%9d-%e2%80%93-intense-debate/#IDComment122420187