This letter hits home with me...it makes me think about how there are “actual” people in prison, something I have given serious thought to recently. We dehumanize criminals, our enemies, foreign peoples… There is no doubt that our justice system has its flaws. I think Charles Manson deserves life, but in most cases – or at least a lot of cases, it is hard to say someone deserves something like life in prison. Who am I to judge that you have done enough to merit torture and punishment? I didn’t create the universe. For me the death penalty is out of the question. How hypocritical can a system be which preaches the message “you kill someone now we kill you.” I’d like to think we’ve evolved since Hammaurabi’s code. Although I will hopefully never know the true answer, a friend and I were talking and thought life in prison would be more painful than execution anyway.

Like the example of punching someone who then falls over and dies, this all reminds me that you have absolutely no idea how fragile life is until you are an inch (or centimeter, for the rest of the world) from loosing it. If only there was a way to deem people like this man “rehabilitated.” This sounds scary – like A Clockwork Orange when the main character is caught for all the heinous crimes he has committed and the government decides to “fix” him through basically brainwashing the man, or kid, until he is on the “correct” wavelength. You can’t have a society that has no consequences for things like rape or murder, but what about the cracks in the system? What about the case of the innocent person on death row? It is inexcusable to settle for on “well, it has its flaws and we must live with them for the greater good” because that simply means that you have never experienced being the unfortunate exception, the uh-oh child that gets the raw end of the deal and a “life’s not fair, maybe next time” pat on the back. It makes me feel like there is a person in there!, like that 1 in a zillion chance of getting anesthetized for surgery but instead of going unconscious you are fully awake and paralyzed for the entirety of being carved with scalpels and bone saws.

I cannot help but think about the author of this heartfelt letter’s thoughts about the readers of his message. I he was probably thinking about the audience for this letter, Sam’s Soc 119 class, people getting a college degree to earn a respectable income and support a family. He was probably thinking about how our lives are going to consist of reading this letter from what we call “the inside,” his only side, and then finishing this class and semester, walking through the streets and maybe going into a pizza shop to get some food, visiting relatives or going to the beach with family or friends. We are in completely different universes right here on Earth. I hope I extracted enough of the true meaning behind this letter from his perspective to take a piece of this man’s mind with me and be eternally grateful for every day I can wake up and decide whether to go to Sam’s class, go for a run, cook a meal, or pack up a car and see what my world looks like.

Yes there is. Directly below this entry on there is a video question someone asked how those who ate the second piece of chocolate could stomach eating another human’s flesh. To her my only response could be that I ritualistically practice cannibalism for one and also I get off to it. I was really moved by the video but I still ate the damn chocolate. Why? The piece of candy was already purchased and those who profit from the flesh of others already got what they wanted. Congrats honey you just wasted nothing – at least I can admire her moral conviction, however (can I get away with this?) teenaged it may be. Time to get real, this is a problem, I dare say a cancer to the human animal. We can (and should!) change these conditions because we have the free will to do so. There is the obvious option of making everyone in the world pinky swear to give up chocolate foreber and eber, but I think that is pretty dumb, especially when you consider your starting point is the rich fat kid on the block with the melting fudgesicle in hand and pinwheel hat…

Here’s my step two – the Vietnam “war.” Congress never declared war which means it wimped out on disallowing LBJ and Nixon astronomical dollars to deploy troops which sounds vaguely familiar – I digress. What makes Vietnam pertinent to my diatribe is the most powerful phenomenon of the 20th and 21st century – the Media! Television was for the first time introduced to the battlefield taking the gore and carnage into every American’s living room weeknights from 5-6 pm local time thus causing a public reaction – ah – the most unpopular war of the century. Vaguely familiar. Step two is to bring the atrocity of what is happening right now in this world directly in the face of everyone so they can go through step 1 – feel something. I guarantee enough people will say “I like chocolate but I don’t like how it’s made.” So now that everyone is tuned in to what is going on step 2b can happen – here comes the change.

The thing keeping these ass holes in business is the market – as much as I’d love to go Brad Pitt from the last scene of Fightclub on that I don’t have enough nitro glycerin. The solution lies within the system – to win you have to manipulate the bad guys’ profit margin. There are a number of ways to go about doing this. The root of the problem is that the farmers have to resort to slavery to get by because chocolate prices are too low for them to make any profit. Now we can take two approaches. The first one is by making fair trade chocolate which is more expensive and still has to compete with regular chocolate which probably tastes the same. Good luck. Another one is by getting governments to crack down on these slave-driven farms. They’re already trying – slavery is illegal everywhere so what more do you want? Another law? Here’s my suggestion for the majority of the people reading this who are claim to be capitalists and may have been offended by my earlier radical Weathermen-esque comment. Nestle et al is keeping the prices low to compete on the market so real capitalism is over anyway (cause we all know it means open and fair trading – this is not happening obviously if an institution such as a corporation or a government is controlling market value). Instead of allowing the market manipulation to favor slavery we should force it to create an inhospitable environment for said wrong-doings. How? Write to your Senators and Representatives – tell them to support favorable legislation or they lose your vote and the votes of everyone on your petition. Draft a bill and submit it to your legislators – don’t forget to threaten them with votes! If you feel that our government is inadequate and inefficient then our founding fathers gave us another option which is always available and guaranteed more efficient – blow them up. How do you think we became a free nation?

Hey bloggers, here’s the problem: a lack of appropriate education. Not stupidity, ignorance. I think I am a fairly smart individual, however I was definitely at the Awakening/Revisioning stage and now after taking a few sociology classes I believe I am Revisioning/Reversal/Pseudo Communitarian on the white fish scale. This could not have been possible for my development as a person unless I had the access to the information that I do as a college student. In my meager 20 years of experience as an American if there is one thing I’ve learned about this country it is that we have the capacity to be the most beautiful nation the world has ever seen and sadly, one of the ugliest in recent history. We were founded by a bunch of freedom junkies (Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Monroe) on paper, however some of our culture is grounded in our puritanical roots. This is not bad in the least bit, however when people take this cultural identity too damn far you get the KKK and other hate institutions, which stems from fear of the unknown or ignorance of the truth. Either way the result of either fear of the unknown (lack of exposure) or ignorance of the truth leads to overt cultural problems such as hate groups, and undercurrents that promote the status quo – good for some things obviously, we didn’t become one of the greatest superpowers the world has ever seen for no reason, however we need to know when to cut the umbilical chord sometimes and what I specifically mean in this case is our education system. So we fixed our healthcare system – finally. I am a strict constitutional conservative, what is on that paper is almost sacred to me and on those pages states that all citizens of this country shall be gaurnteed life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness. Ok so we have life, now how about the last two? Our education system is beat, at best. We are the wealthiest nation in the world and yet we are scraping the bottom of the barrel when compared to the industrialized world on statistics such as high school dropout rate (17%) and those without a bachelor’s degree (76%). Tying this package together for you the issue is that we need to stop being so inert and use the healthcare momentum to start a reformation of our lacking educational system. Education is without a doubt the key to a better future and I can speak for all of us in Soc 119 with confidence that this class advanced us on the continuum of racial awareness. To me at least, this is a giant leap for mankind. About 1000 people take this class each semester and Sam has taught this class for 18 years. That’s 2000 people times 18 years. 36,000 people or 1/3 of Beaver Stadium, to put it in PSU-friendly terms. Race and sociology permeates into our interactions with people, out daily activities, and even our thoughts. This is a big deal and your actions affect the actions of others and the other’s others, etc. I disagree with some of Sam’s bullshit and I kindle my thoughts with some of his intellectual nuggets but there is not arguing that this guy is changing the world in a real way. The only important sentence in this: race problems like little kids identifying themselves as ontologically “bad” will go away faster if we choose to put education as a top priority. It’s really not that difficult to grasp.

I understand Sam made everyone uncomfortable on Tuesday with his “bleeding” rant. Some people were able to see his point but felt he went too far…he made them uncomfortable. Let me begin with a story, then I’ll tie it together for you all. I was sitting in race relations class today – the topic was dating. The exercise was to pair up with someone else (same or opposite sex/race) and then explain to the group how your parents would react. I am a guy and my partner was a girl, so when the circle came around to me I didn’t have a whole lot to say (my parents would not have any issues with a girl from the opposite race). If I was gay they would be ok with it but be shocked a little at first – I was blessed with progressive parents. The couple before me was a white guy and a black girl. She said her parents would not care in the least bit whatever race her boyfriend was. She went on to explain that she had had one black boyfriend who she brought home amongst a spectrum of other race boyfriends. After her explanation the TA asked what her friends would think and here is where the apple hit me in the brain. She said she occasionally had friends in the past who had issues with the race of her boyfriend and the way she dealt with these incidents was to tell the friend to either accept it or fuck off. Her rationale was how weird and wrong it is to let other people influence aspects of your life so deep as a romantic partner. Wow.

So Sam’s example in class to normalize bleeding was your hair growing or having to brush your teeth. Ok maybe he was a bit overly enthused with how he was making the point by 99.99% of the class’s standards but if you argue that you “get it, he was just over the top” then you really did NOT get it. Sure you can vocalize the concept he was trying to present however if this did not smack you upside the head with the brute force of you need to drop your preconditioning for one second and think (please) about the really, really huge implications of this. Menstruating is a bodily function, just as urination, maturation, defecation, your toe nails growing, coughing, yawning, sleeping, scratching the itch on the top of your head whilst peeling your banana – have I made my point? In America, breasts and boot-ay are seen as sexual but maybe you have never heard about Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries where the female ankle is a symbol of erotica. If you felt the least bit squeamish in Sam’s lecture it is because “your friend” (society) has influenced a very intimate part of your life. YOUR MIND. You are not as free as you think, especially if you think about it (think about it - haha). Socialization of one’s culture is so engrained in our minds it stretches into our unconsciousness. Maybe I am taking crazy pills…but it really bummed me out that it seemed to me that no one really got it.

I think the problem lies in the above intense debate topic of “white guilt.” Obviously the jack off who said something rude about the “black/brown” team doesn’t care and probably doesn’t experience this phenomenon of “white guilt” like others. That being said the folks who gasped at seeing racial stereotypes on the board were not all black and brown. I think that white folks are (in some cases) hypersensitive to making sure no one rocks the boat and that everyone plays P.C. On the other side of the same coin, when black/brown folks ripped on white people I noticed some gasps however to me (and know that I am white) it did seem like this behavior was less of a “no-no.” This is better than where we were say, 50 years ago however we need to get beyond this if we want to progress in the ongoing race relations dialogue.
I can understand where this phenomenon originated from. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that hundreds of years of oppression that did not end after the civil war but continues in different shapes forms to this day by the dominant race group’s sociopolitical legacy from yesteryear – I am talking about the white people. I myself felt more uncomfortable at the sight of people from my “team” taking shots at black/brown folks than offended at black/brown team members returning fire. I am sure that in all the white folks who felt this way it came from feeling as though black/brown people were taking kicks while on the ground – as if they are the underdog and need extra assistance. I think this line of thinking is implicitly racist and dates back to hundreds of years of European philosophy which asserted that black/brown peoples needed the guidance of white people. On the same token, when receiving jibes from the black/brown team, just over the line of consciousness I felt that maybe “we deserve it” for our ancestors’ wrongdoings. I think the culmination of this happening is pretty bad. It lends itself to the problem which to SOME extent is a problem of labeling. What I mean by this is that part of the race relations problem comes from BOTH teams’ labeling techniques of the problem. Obviously there are still problems in out society with racism, but for those who are not blatantly racists themselves, some issues arise from this attitude that people on the white team have to feel like they personally should feel guilt for something much bigger than themselves. Sure one’s everyday actions have consequences, however this has been a problem for centuries and it is no one person’s burden to take on the weight of the world. I think when people on either side of the table make jibes at the other it takes away from the dialogue equally. White people are afraid to come to the table for fear of the perceived risk of being labeled a racist and what happened in class the other day is a perfect example. It is as if white people think that certain people at the race relation table deserve special speaking rules which is the farthest from the truth as I have come to learn it. Within the confines of the race relations dialogue everyone should be given the same channel of openness. It is only through honesty and a true yearning for change on both teams that we can make progress. To the white folks: stop wasting your time with focusing all of your energies on what went wrong in the past. Acknowledge it, remember it, but then move forward.

My race relations discussion group actually centered last week’s discussion around this party and I left feeling that that was the most enlightening discussion session I had attended this entire semester. I feel extremely lucky for being in the group I am in – we have a very diverse number of perspectives, easily disproportionate to the actual PSU population. Last Wednesday a TA in our group started the discussion introducing this “Compton Cookout.” It was a fraternity party where the guests were encouraged to dress “ghetto” and the girls were encouraged to go so far as to act “ghetto.” They were told to move their heads around in an exaggerated manner, snap their fingers, grunt, and use words that sound real but are not. As a white boy with a lack of experience with racial diversity (my hometown area is very diverse, however my high school was strictly white and asian kids. We had two black kids and they were dating – I am not kidding) I immediately starting thinking like the CNN journalist “Oh my God, how grossly insensitive,” which reminded me a lot of a few passages in Mulvey’s book pertaining to the topic of white people who try to make things better and really want equality however since the lines of communication are not very strong between races on the individual level, “we” (well intended white-folk) don’t know what is ok, where to start, what language to use, etc. After my discussion group and watching this interview I think the problem with white people today is that we as a group are not as up-to-date on the current race relations status and therefore do not know how to approach it effectively. A lot of white people in race relations dialogues are 1) tremendously afraid of offending someone of a different race and shaping their end of the conversation skipping around perceived land mines that I am coming to find are not even usually there and 2) misinformed with out-of-date information from another era of race relations. I have come to find that in my experience thus far well intentioned white communities think of the Civil War and the 1960’s when they think about “race.” Some immediately feel the guilt of the centuries of slavery, most feel empowered by the bravery and exemplary behavior of the black community picking themselves up by their collective bootstraps and overcoming an overtly racist system to plant the seed of equality – a value that is above all others in my America. The problem lies in that today it is 2010, half a century later but with the same approach (by white people). If the lines of communication between groups are taken as the first priority in this issue, every step taken collectively as a nation will be more effective in taking all of us to the end-point which is the same for every group, unification and a “tearing down” of the sociological Berlin Wall in America.

I cannot agree more with the first video’s appraisal of American culture. If a community of people witness racism and do nothing about it the culture which fosters the racism will continue into the future. It is a known fact that racist tendencies are learned. It is also (almost entirely) accepted that racism is bad. So why is it still prevalent? Because of complaisance in American culture! We have some serious growing up to do as a society, I as the skuzzy unkempt college hippie that I am think we need to take RESPONSIBILITY (weird right?). What do I mean by this? First off in direct response to the lecture on Thursday with the example from ABC news, by saying “it’s not my problem” you ARE the problem. Our country rose to the tipidy top of the world powers in the shortest time any country has risen to power in history, largely to our highly individualist philosophy. Sweet. The major drawback to this is our sense that we are all self-reliant satellites in our own bubble, which may explain things like we as a country have one of the largest wealth gaps in the world and have some of the worst percentages of people attending college out of the industrialized nations. In an overpopulated world stepping into the first rays of the dawn of the information age and a globalized world, it’s time to reappraise the way we as a culture handle certain things.

As mentioned before “it’s not my problem” is a pathetic excuse which perpetuates something that you know is wrong, unless you think racism is good. I hold a strict originalist interpretation of the United States Constitution which states that all citizens are created equal and are guaranteed life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to better yourself, your family, and your community. If you don’t like those things you can, as they say “get out of my country.” Another poor excuse of a lack of responsibility in the country is television. Parents who complain and file lawsuits against channels for bad language, etc, etc and demand stricter censorship. Here’s a thought – if you don’t like the language or content of a program don’t let your kids watch it! Parent your child and don’t expect the government to do it for you. This sends an implicit message to your kids about thinking “it’s not my problem” which IS the problem. We live in a society where no one wants to take responsibility, it is always someone else’s fault for something and therefore we shouldn’t have to deal with it.

As you all know Joe Dado’s life was cut short earlier this school year. This truly is the definition of tragedy – someone with so much that suffers such loss, especially so early in life. It struck home with me more so than most people reading this because I knew those guys in that group that was out that night personally. For most of us we are basically kids, life is just beginning, however we can vote for public office and stand trial as an adult – we have responsibility over ourselves. I personally have issues with how the situation was handled after Joe was found. Joe and the rest of the guys out that night consumed a pretty large amount of alcohol at a few locations, one of which was a frat house. It doesn’t take a genius to know that underage drinking occurs regularly at those places. I feel that Greek Life as a whole was hit unfairly hard with sanctions, etc which is 100% due to the social politics in America dictating that we must blame someone. It is not his fault for putting an alcohol beverage (or many) to his lips for the sole reason that we cannot blame him – he is dead. Since the last place he was seen at was a frat we blame ALL of the “Greeks” because he died of alcohol and when we think frat we think booz. Burn the witch! Had he overdosed in his room from blowing too much cocaine we would have no one to immediately think of to blame – the drug dealer maybe, well by that logic OUTLAW CIGARETTES.

I would like to agree that there is a difference in acceptance between lesbian couples and gay (male) relationships, however I would like to suggest a psychosocial cause. In our society the female sexual identity is much more relaxed than the male sexual identity. This is kind of piggy backing on the comment by emc5178, how women are more caring and tolerant, however I feel the previous student's post misses a key part of the argument. The topic posted was asking why female homosexuality was more culturally acceptable than male homosexuality. If women are more caring, nurturing, accepting, etc then why is it that men are just as much if not more in favor of only female and not male homosexuality? If the female sexual identity is less rigid in comparison to that of the males', then I believe that could account for these differences in belief and in the statistics Sam showed us in class illustrating the phenomenon of reportedly almost twice as many occurrences of gay men as gay women.
What I mean by the "sexual identity" is the group of characteristics people in a society use to define themselves based on their sex. This is referring to the previous post’s comment on the “macho man.” I believe our psychology of identities and roles is affected by socialization and that women seem to have more positive (affirmative) qualities to their culturally determined sexual identity in our society like how to act (as the pervious post noted a caring, nurturing personality) rather than men. It seems to me that so much of the “macho man” persona is determined by being the opposite of female characteristics. REAL men don’t cry, they don’t talk about personal topics, they don’t eat certain foods, they don’t partake in certain trends or activities, etc.
Let’s examine a popular commercial that has been on the airwaves recently. It was an advertisement for the Ford F150. Ford was advertising their truck was a smarter buy compared to the competing Chevrolet because the Ford did NOT have a step-ladder in the back to get up on the flatbed. The ad was a group of burley-men who (in paint-stained denim, work boots, and rugged facial hair) were at I think a tailgate (the only acceptable time for manly men to cook, exception: other outdoor bar-be-que – friendly events) and ended with all of the F150 owners laughing at the Chevy owner for having a “man step” on his truck. The first time I saw this commercial I was at a friend’s apartment and he immediately looked over at me and started laughing. Not only was it an ad that pointed out a deficiency in their product in comparison to the leading competitor, but it used the other company’s convenience factor in their product and used the “macho man” coolness factor to take something you would pay MORE for in any reasonable universe where regular laws of economics apply. In this one we see priority given to not being labeled as un-manly by a single commercial and by the sad herd of millions of people who will probably take this information as Gospel and make a $20,000+ investment based on a message that says you should pay the same for less from us because we say so and so does everyone else.

As a product of mass media and Disney children’s movies the topic of the White Messiah is not a foreign concept to me and (I am assuming) most everyone else reading the Avatar blog. John Smith and the “savages” his people tried to “civilize” and “save” Pocahontas and her tribe with European philosophy and culture rings a bell. While on the surface its intentions are well-to-do and the moral of the story (friendships, loyalty, and a cross-cultural brotherhood of humans) teaches acceptance and a little cultural relativism, the mode of presentation does imply one group’s superiority over the other. The stories in question were written by Western people and therefore are held to such societal standards. It is apparent to me that in the White Messiah storyline the main criteria which are used to objectively evaluate cultures are technology (usually weaponry), written word, imperialism and societal “dos” and “don’ts.” While I am not proposing a boycott of the movie industry I am proposing the implied superiority of certain types of cultures over others in our mass (world) media and I am affirming as I did in my last blog response that a lack of critique of these “loud voices” in society is the worst “drug” of all. If people blindly follow and never question, even if the message is from someone with whom you identify the effect can be mind-numbing and serious yet seemingly infinitesimal details can slip between our mental fingers and ferment for years.
Some of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century planted their intellectual “seeds” in the idea that maybe the scientific method was not as great as we generally regard it so. While it seems to work wonders for things like math, physics, chemistry, the natural sciences, it becomes shall I say sketchy with things such as psychology, sociology, and philosophy itself. Why is this? Since the advent of “rigorous” science we have tried to quantify everything as an objective way of presenting and analyzing information. This became the hip thing to do and as such (and perhaps rightfully so) certain fields that were once a mix of science, art, and philosophy such as medicine and psychology tried to keep up with the in crowd. The problem arises in that certain aspects of these fields are not so easily quantified and neatly packaged into our idea of a hard science (although now with things such as “telepathic” brain-wave technology and other massive technological advances of the 21st century these problems are being drastically reduced, however that was not the case in the early-mid 20th century http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6661974/). So how was a solution to this problem proposed? A critique of the methods of the day that resulted in a different approach to the same real-life problems. I firmly believe humankind’s intentions are rarely malicious, however evil is spawned from ignorance and the lack of a reasonable and necessary questioning of currently acceptable structures, whether they be sociological, methodological, cultural, metaphysical, etc.

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