After the lecture on illegal immigration, I found myself questioning my own beliefs on the topic. I will admit it I am one of those people who can't look past the title. Illegal is in the name therefore those aliens are breaking the law and there should be repercussions. I feel that it is not unnecessary to deport illegal immigrants that we come across. Obviously we cannot find all illegal peoples living within our borders but we have to have policies in place to rid our country of illegal people that we find. If immigration or La migra agents drive to a Home Depot and round up all the illegals I agree that they should be deported. Sam briefly brought up the fact that we are all descendants of immigrants which is true. The kicker is that my great grandparents came from Ireland and entered this country legally. Meaning they passed all required tests, got a real social security number and paid taxes. My great grandparents proceeded to get jobs as cops and housekeepers. I agree that people should have the right to try and make it in America if they enter the country legally. I am not entirely passionate about this topic because living in a middle class neighborhood in the northeast, the extent of my contact with illegal immigrants is limited to the occasional gardener or kitchen employee. They aren't taking employment away from me or my family nor committing violent crime in my neighborhood. This is not the case in the south. Many poor whites have their jobs taken by cheap labor and neighborhoods can be taken over by Mexican immigrants which is cause for concern. However, it was interesting that Sam brought up the point that immigrants who work salary positions pay into government services their whole life and will not see any of those benefits. The media paints this picture of illegal immigrants as parasites sucking off of the federal government and acting as a burden to the average taxpayer. I can relate to them I have been paying into social security for the last four years and I know that I will never see that money again. Also as a college student I have become a huge fan of how cheap everything is at Walmart. Large corporations like Walmart can have such low prices due to illegal labor. Like Sam said it's ridiculous that we can pay a dollar fifty for california pears here in state college. Overall while I think illegal immigration is wrong, I now recognize that our entire economy is dependent on illegal labor and that even the poorest Americans won't work for such low wages. Maybe if we help the Mexican government improve Mexico so that so many people will not need to illegally enter our country.

When I first heard Dr. Jones say that schools today are more segregated than in 1970 I was a little shocked and slightly skeptical. However, the more I thought about it, the more it started to make sense. The seventies were right after the civil rights movement had taken place and legislature that was passed to end Jim Crow and repeal the separate but equal ruling by the Supreme court in years prior. This means that the ideas of equality and trying to integrate were new and fresh. Schools and local governments actively tried to bus students in from black communities to go to white schools and in some case vice versa. This is all fine and good and maybe those kids would graduate elementary school or middle school in that particular district but then as the years went on fewer buses would take kids to different neighborhoods and people just assumed that integration has happened and there is no need to maintain it. The fact of the matter is that after the initial success of integrating schools in the seventies, it just started dropping off. This is because of certain laws put in place that govern public school districts. If you do not pay property taxes in a certain neighborhood, then your child cannot go to school there. Since only schools were integrated, not neighborhoods, many people are stuck going to schools in their own town. Many areas of cities in particular are separated based on socioeconomic status and consequently race. Black people live with black people while white people live with white people. Therefore the white kids will go to one school while the black kids have to go to another. Its an example of structural racism. No one racist group is desegregating schools, the system just does not promote the integration of schools. I have first hand experience because while I grew up in a basically all white neighborhood, I live only five minutes away from trenton. New teachers want jobs in my school district, not the ones in trenton where there are metal detectors and armed security at the elementary schools. Therefore, some people commit fraud like the one example Sam gave, they write down a fake address in one apartment complex, drive their kids from trenton to the apartments and wait for the bus every day. So their kids can go to a better school illegally. So now that I think about it I am not surprised that schools are more segregated now than in the seventies. There is no one in washington drawing a significant amount of attention to this issue so most people just ignore it. On paper schools are supposed to be integrated but the way neighborhoods are set up, its hard to get diversity. White people like to live near other white people while black people like to and are sometimes forced for financial reasons to live near black people. Its not racism just a matter of comfort. Its not the schools, its the lack of enforcement and certain laws that seem to go around anti-segregation laws.

In opposition to what Sam believes, I am a patriot and I have a strong allegiance to the United States of America. Therefore when he kicked out the question whether we would take up arms against the Chinese oppressors, I found myself responding hell yes I would. Give me a gun and some ammo and let me go. While I disagree with the Muslim Extremist ideologies, it pains me to say that I can't entirely blame them for attacking U.S soldiers. Put in the same position I would do the same thing; however, there are many things the middle eastern terrorists do that I would most certainly not do. One thing I strongly oppose is killing thousands of my own country men. The Taliban are not only hostile to the United States but to Afghanistan as well. Warlords rule the lands and control the poppy fields which are basically Afghanistan's only source of income and force nearly all citizens into abject poverty. They rule the lands through fear and brainwash individuals who carry out suicide bombings that kill civilians. If I were defending America I would welcome any support that came my way, but I would not actively seek to corrupt children to become suicide bombers. My opinion hasn't changed drastically about terrorists. About four years ago, my father was sent to Afghanistan to assist the armed forces as an intel specialist. He is able to get information from both people and electronic devices. He would send pictures and Skype my family as often as he could which gave me a more in depth look into the true state of Afghanistan. I spoke briefly with one of his interpreters who was an Afghan citizen that lived through the Soviet occupation. He had nothing but good words to say about America and fears that if the U.S pulls out of Afghanistan, then things will degrade back to the way they were. He, along with the majority of Afghan citizens condemn the actions of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The middle eastern terrorists have no regard for human life and have been brainwashed into believing lies. Muslim people have proven that the Koran verses quoted by Bin Laden and the Ayatollah are misinterpreted and that Muslims should be accepting of other peoples. Though I would take up arms if my country was in jeopardy, I still think the terrorists are wrong and evil people that should be stopped. My fathers base was attacked by an attempted suicide bomber. The soldiers at the gate of the base were able to prevent the man from setting the bomb off and evacuate the immediate area. As they were evacuating, the truck packed with an estimated ton of explosives destroyed the front gate and several buildings including my fathers barracks. My father interrogated the bomber who was an old sickly man who tried to bomb the gate because the Taliban threatened to harm his family if he did not do it. This is disheartening and shows that these people have no souls. There you go Nathaniel I opened up a little about my personal life.

With the economy in the state that it's in, jobs are becoming more scarce and there is more competition then ever. Therefore, it is paramount that you do everything that you can to make a good impression on employers, and make yourself more marketable. One of the best ways to set yourself apart from the rest of the applicants is having the ability to speak a different language. As more and more nations industrialize and begin producing products, the United States must do all we can to keep up with the global market. This involves building positive relations with foreign dignitaries or business executives. Foreign companies are far more willing to do business with you if you can speak their language. This allows them to be more comfortable and shows that you care enough to accommodate them. This can lead to long lasting business partnerships. Since I am a criminal justice major, it is almost necessary for me to learn a new language, or at least be able to get by in another country. The FBI and CIA are looking for the top candidates with special skills. If I don't go to law school, but I learn to speak mandarin, then I am in greater demand because positions are opening up in China. Therefore, I would gladly learn a new language if it meant that I would get a job. Learning a new language doesn't cause you to lose your own culture, but it may open your eyes to another world that you never knew existed. Recently I have decided that when I graduate from college, I want to go to another country and live there if possible. Unfortunately if I start working for the federal government, I wont have too much say in where I am stationed but, for example, if I am fluent in German, I will be sent to Germany or one of the surrounding countries. Another point I would like to make is that children in the United States are sheltered far more than European children. During grade school while learning their own language, European children are taught english at the same time. Therefore, by the time they are graduating college, they have been fluent in english for several years. This puts American kids at a disadvantage because rather than sending Americans to represent businesses in foreign countries, the company or government can just hire foreign nationals to work for them. I certainly don't want to lose a good job because I don't know another language, that would just be silly. So, not only will I begin learning a new language this summer, I urge my peers to try to learn a new language if only for personal betterment. Learning a different language will be necessary for me to guarantee a job out of college so it looks like I will be buying Rosetta stone in the near future.

This discussion was particularly interesting to me because recently I had had a discussion about dating outside of particular races. I feel like being a member of the “white team” makes it much more difficult to date outside of your race. For me personally, off the top of my head I can remember two families in my neighborhood who were black and one family that was asian. Recently an Indian (not cowboys and indians, the real thing) family moved in down the street but since I'm in college I haven't had much contact with them. These families either had children that were much older, or much younger than I, so there weren't many opportunities for me to find potential dates who were of a different race than myself. Even in school there weren't many people of color. I should have prefaced this post saying that I grew up in a middle class extremely white area. By the time I got to high school and there were more people of different races, I had become so used to dating and associating with white girls because thats all I had. So through my awkward years of beginning to like girls, all I had to go for were white girls. Also I feel like the older white generations look down upon other white people who date or marry outside of their race. I remember one football game this year an interracial couple was the victim of racial intolerance. The old white people sitting in the section didn't take kindly to the couple and made poor comments and forced the couple to leave. It is terrible to say but situations like that are a big deterrent for me. I also come from a big Irish catholic family so there is a lot of pressure on me to find a nice Irish girl to keep the bloodline on it's current trajectory. Im sure it would be fine if I married an Italian woman but someone from indonesia would just be ridiculous. Personally I couldn't care less who other people dated or married. I guess the social stigma associated with interracial couples is a strong deterrent. Plus I would not hear the end of it from some of the older members of my family. Another thing getting in the way of me dating outside my race is that I tend to gravitate toward white people. Like the foreign students on campus, I just feel more comfortable with people who look and have the same background that I do. To be perfectly honest though this isn't a huge issue for me at the moment because the last thing I want in college is a girlfriend. I don't know how I will feel two years from now after graduation and I may be looking for potential wives, I could meet a girl of a different culture and really hit it off. Plus this college is like 75% white so if I want to get lucky its probably gonna be with a white girl cause I'm just playing the odds.

I personally have been waiting for someone to ask this question. Some may ask, then why didn't you do the flip cam? Well what can I say, I have a busy schedule and need to roll out of class. That is however beside the point. I personally believe that affirmative action had good intentions but has become one of the biggest failed social programs that this country has ever tried to implement. Affirmative action is designed to help minorities compete more in the job market as well as in school. This is an admirable goal because latent prejudice and structural factors have kept minorities down. It is extremely difficult for someone who grew up in the ghetto to go to college and earn a degree let alone finish high school. In california black males are more likely to be in prison then in college. Minorities are certainly facing an uphill battle when it comes to being treated equally in society. This has however led to animosity in the workforce. Most white people look at affirmative action negatively because what they see is jobs being taken away from qualified white people in order to satisfy certain diversity standards. To an extent this is true. Personally I know that the NCIS admission test has been changed because not enough minorities were able to pass it. This means that less qualified people are being offered positions. This should be a cause for alarm. Can you imagine if medical school worked that way? I would certainly think twice about going to the doctors because I would be running the risk of seeing a doctor who did not get a job based on merit but based on skin color. Rather than putting ridiculous quotas in place the government should focus on changing the structure. Offer incentives to new teachers to teach in lower income neighborhoods. The disparities in minority representation in the workforce must be solved from the bottom up. If you improve the schools and get young minorities to take pride in their neighborhoods, that will improve things quicker than giving jobs to unqualified people. It was interesting in class when Sam talked about white affirmative action following WWII. I never really thought of the G.I. Bill as being a way to keep minorities down while building up the white middle class. Im sure most of us in the class would have different lives if our grandfathers did not receive grants after their service in WWII. Without that money I'm sure my grandfather would have had a tougher time raising a family. Also middle class neighborhoods popped up in the suburbs that were designed for white people in mind. This left only the cities for the minorities. There are structural obstacles put in place to maintain some form of segregation. However, I do not think that affirmative action is the proper response.

Before watching this flip cam video, I thought that I was the only one who thought of this. It seems like every time dateline or other news outlets do an expose on poverty, the person they interview either came from a large family or they themselves have many kids. Tammy was one of twenty two which is absolutely ridiculous. At what point do you realized you should start “wrapping your tool.” All kidding aside, twenty two is a ridiculous number. I am one of three and my father has a good job working for the government. Even with steady income, I have to take out loans to pay for school and we don't live too lavishly. I cannot imagine how my parents would even clothe all of us if I had nineteen other siblings. Therefore I do feel that it is not necessarily selfish but extremely irresponsible for people living in poverty to have more than the standard two and a half children. Having more kids with fewer resources just perpetuates poverty and leaves each generation poorer than the next. Therefore we see that poverty levels are rising, and it should not come as a surprise because poor people are having more children then there are parents adding thousands of children to poverty statistics. This is particularly bad because these children really don't have a future. The way that our world is set up, these kids get stuck in a rut and it is almost impossible for them to advance at all. These children have almost no resources meaning rather than starting at the ground level, they start in the basement. There is no hope of them going to a good school which means they can't get a good job, meaning they can't leave their home town. The only people to blame in all of this are the parents. In having so many children, the parents are setting their kids up for failure. After that rant I would like to change gears and look at some special circumstances where the parents are not to blame. In poor rural communities, there is less policing and therefore crime is more rampant. If a woman is raped and doesn't have the money to get an abortion, that could be a reason for having more children than they should. Also many rural relationships can be abusive. Many of these women have nowhere to go so they are stuck in a relationship where they are forced to have children. Another example could be poor access to health care. If one of the parents dies, then one parent has to care for the kids. This is what one could call making a bad situation worse. Therefore it is not always the parents fault, but a vast majority of the time it is poor peoples irresponsibility that leads to the exponential growth of poverty.

I liked the king of the mountain example that Sam used in class. Not only did it break up the class, but it had a strong message, and I'm sure made many people reassess what they though about how people gain power. The exercise was unique because it explained a pretty powerful racial issue, and put it in the concept of a child's game. This took a controversial and somewhat elusive concept and put it in easy to understand terms. Many of Sam's examples do this which I find extremely helpful and in fact more thought provoking than when he just lectures. I cant really say that the exercise drastically changed my opinion on the subject of racial inequalities but it was interesting to ponder. It makes sense that when one group gains power, they will do everything they can to remain in power and help their own people thrive. The first question that one must tackle is whether or not the people who are in power gained it by working hard, or through blind luck. This can be tackled on a case by case basis. Throughout history people who are phenotypically white have been in the metaphorical driver seat. This leads one to question how they came to power? When you think about it, the groups of people that led to Europeans left Africa after many tribes were established and upon leaving Africa it can be argued that they were equal developmentally to the Africans that remained. Then why was it that the European group took power and advanced quicker technologically. Were they a product of their environment? Were they presented with more tools that helped them establish permanent towns made of stone and invented weapons? Many including myself would argue that yes they were presented with different opportunities, but they also faced many challenges. They left the warm climates of Africa and moved to the cold north they needed to adapt to the climate and learn how to survive. So, it can be argued that the European “tribes” took a major risk and it paid off. So its hard to say whether the development of oceanic travel was a result of blind luck or the result of those people being more driven. When the White people gained power, they wanted to do anything to keep it. This makes sense because almost anyone can be corrupted when given power. So it also makes sense that the people in power will give the power to their own kind rather than allowing other groups to share the power. In king of the mountain, Sam gained power of the mountain, then was able to handicap the other participants so that he could keep power. If you look far enough back you can see that hard work certainly goes a long way but there is still an element of luck. You have to use what you are given and capitalize on opportunities.

As I watched this video I began to look back on comedians that I have seen perform over the years. One of my favorite comedians is Dave Chappelle. For those of you who don't know Dave is a black comedian from D.C. He had a very popular show on comedy central until he went a little crazy and went to Africa. I liked his comedy because he was relatively fearless and would tackle issues and poke fun at all people of all races. One of his popular sketches involved a white family whose last name happens to be the N word. I watch this video and laugh pretty hard but I feel if it was a white comedian who wrote the sketch I don't know if I would be as accepting of it. Jokes about stereotypes are usually funny. The vast majority of white guys I know look pretty funny when they try to dance, so a black comedian making fun of a white guys lack of dancing skills it is funny because it reminds me of people I know. White comedians usually have to hold back or they can make fun of other white people. It seems that white people are way more concerned with not coming across as racist when compared to people of other races. This is a result of past human history. White people have more often than not been the oppressors of people of different races. Examples are the colonization of America, trans atlantic slave trade, and even the Holocaust are examples of white people oppressing people because of differences. Race is also a very sensitive subject for most people and it is awkward when they hear someone talk about another race. Even if a comedian is just poking fun at someone else, it can still cause a great deal of pain to the person on the receiving end of it. With comedy and the media, it seems that some people believe that either it is all okay or none of it is okay. Poking fun at silly stereotypes usually will get a laugh but white people joking about slavery is too touchy. White people just have to be more carful when they make a statement. One thing I don't like about comedians is when they focus on race too much. Comedians like George Lopez and Carlos Mencia (if you even want to call him a comedian), would not have careers if they were not latin. After a while making fun of the same stereotypes gets boring and I lose interest in their comedy. Comedians like Chris rock get big laughs because most of the time they will say something that everyone in the audience may think but don't have the courage to say. That is how I perceive the racial divide in comedy. Comedians should be allowed to poke fun at other races but know which topics are off limits.

Following the civil rights movement, people of different ethnicities have begun interacting with one another more frequently. Since our nation is relatively fresh from an era of segregation and extreme ethnocentrism, there are still questions that remain. One pressing question is what do we call one another? Now I know some people will try to feed everyone some bs and say that we are all just people. The truth is as long as people look and act differently, we will try to categorize or label them. This labeling has led to the concept of political correctness. I personally feel that political correctness is a ridiculous concept and achieves the opposite of what it intends to do. When one tries to be politically correct, they are trying to avoid being racist or emphasizing differences between themselves and the person they are referring to. The fact of the matter is, trying to be politically correct makes one hyper aware of differences, and sometimes it seems that it is forced. I am a white guy and my ancestors are all from Ireland. After thursdays class, if someone of a different race called me caucasian, I would give them a funny look. Ill be honest before thursdays class I had no idea what caucasian meant and now that I do I find it way more offensive than calling me white. I liked when Sam talked about speaking spanish in mexican restaurants. Im sure a lot of latin people would like someone to order and converse with them in spanish. On the other hand some latin people who have assimilated into the “American” culture would think that he was patronizing them. Its always annoying each Saint Patrick's day when everyone asks me if it is my favorite holiday while they disrespect my culture. I am not terribly offended because I consider myself an American above anything else but it is still annoying. Sam's other point was that there really is no one term that is correct. What people like to be called or how they identify is very personal and based on the way they were raised and past experiences. What is right for one person may be offensive to another. That is one of the main reasons why I don't agree with or subscribe to the concept of political correctness. There are so many people in this world so no matter how hard some people try, it is not possible to appease everybody. Also life is short, you shouldn't spend your time worrying about what other people think of you. I feel that white people feel more pressure to not come across as racist. As long as your not spouting recognized racial slurs or refering to someone in a derogatory way, you can't really be called a racist. In other words people need to just move forward and speak their mind. Like Sam says, it doesn't matter because your gonna be dead anyway.