When people feel inclined to indulge me with their tales of great pride and justice and filler words, I tend to at least attempt to remember to take it with a grain of salt. I'm well aware that people have shit memories (please note I'm not exempting myself from this group, we all do) . I'm also aware that some people like to lie for the sake of lying, some people lie without even thinking about it, some people stretch the truth to make the story more believable, some people just flat out make shit up. You can't really just believe a story someone tells you. The very first girl in the thing on thursday is an excellent example of the first one, that they have shit memories. When she relayed the story, it went from this elaborate thing, that had an actual conflict, to a thing where a black kid has a racist school and his room gets trashed. It took one person to get to that. I mean, I realize that that was likely the point of the exercise, but to only have taken on person? Shit. As for the other ones, there was this kid I knew in high school that was a compulsive liar. He would always just tell stories, and some people believed him. People that didn't know who he was back when he first started just took it and spread it as fact. For instance, he started talking about how he saw this one kid buying heroin. The word spread that Ryan was a drug addict, it caused some problems between he and his girlfriend, got him called down to guidance to talk about the problem. Once there, he (quite naturally) denied the entire ordeal. I mean, it wasn't remotely true, after all. His parents came in. He was hysterical at this point, getting this shit pushed on him like it was nothing. All because Brock didn't like him for whatever strange reason Brock chose not to like him. He didn't need a reason, really, the dude was just messed up. Anyway, eventually the whole ordeal was settled out because Ryan eventually talked sense into everyone. The piss test didn't hurt, either. But absolutely none of this would have happened had people just used critical thinking about things, realizing that Ryan was a good kid, he wouldn't do that, there was no real proof that anything was happening except for the awe inspiring power of word of mouth. It fooled even the "professional" adults that were present. So take heed from this story, and don't just take people's stories for truth. Including this one, because it was entirely made up if you couldn't tell by how terribly it was written. I figured a creative writing exercise would be the best way to tackle this week's blog. But hey, at least I actually remembered to do it this week.

I grew up in suburbian township with my white family, my white neighbors, et cetera. There were a few black people, a few hispanic people, maybe an Asian or an Indian here and there, but as you can see there was not very much in the way of ethnic diversity. There were a few German exchange students, but they blended right in. Probably because they spoke better English than some of our native classmates. But, I digress. I feel like I probably entered Stage 2 when I got here, because I was never sure what I am "allowed" to say to and or around people. In my almost 2 years of college, I've probably progressed to stage 3. I was disgusted by the state of white supremacy in our society before this semester, with the glimpses I have seen of it and what not on the internet, or in newspapers on the one or two times a year I look at them. I will say that I definitely don't enjoy the fact that merely by being born white I was given a "gift" of not being discriminated against, whether it be by outright racists, people who just simply haven't realized and recognized their subconcious inclinations to prefer white people (including the very people who are being discriminated against due to societal norms). Then I enrolled in this very sociology class that I'm completing an assignment for and my beliefs were perpetuated by the facts and experiences presented to us in class. The tester studies on who gets a job exist. Those images with the black and white baby dolls where the black one i9s the "bnad" one and the "ugly one, whereas the white one is the "pretty" one and the "good" and "nice" one. It's saddening to see these social issues at play in such small children. Growing up as a white kid in a white area, I never had to experience these pressures, these tensions, or these issues. I just kind of went about my day, as an oblivious stage one cracker. In fact, I would be willing to bet that my whole high school graduating class of 400 some were all stage one white people at the time of the commencement ceremony in 2010. Now, I would imagine that most of them moved on to the latter stages of the transformation upon moving out of north huntingdon township, and probably for the better. I'm not really sure what else to say. I went for a bike ride between two of my classes today. It was fun. Then I sat around at home for a while, until my girlfriend and I went on a 4-mile run at about 10 o'clock. I've never run farther than 2.9 miles, so that was cool. I'll end on a quote. "You've finally reached 450 words" - Abraham Lincoln.

I think this is great. As a straight guy, I'm happy to see that this kind of thing is okay to happen now a days. Honestly, if anybody's that extremely happy to see some other person, that's great. I don't see why it should be controversial. Sure, it's gay, and that's "unnatural" to some but people who think like that need to get over themselves. And luckily, they are. I was reading a thread online the other day that posed the question, "Older people, what is one thing about the current generation that is positive?" The answer was overwhelmingly that we're more accepting of differences. And then my dad expressed a similar sentiment to me today when he asked me how my roommate was. You see, my roommate came out of the closet to us in October. It's something that I could tell has been weighing on him for quite some time, and when he finally revealed it, I was happy to see that we, his roommates, accepted it with open arms. He was significantly happier after those days. Honestly, I was shock

ked a bit by my own acceptance of it. I had never really encountered anything like that in my life, so this was a new experience for me. I've since had conversations with older, more closed minded members of my family and was disgusted by what I heard. My second cousin (I think he's about 45-50) told me he would never be friends with someone like that. I asked if someone who he was best friends for years and years came out to him, what would he do, and he told me he would stop being friends with him. I told him that that was bullshit, and stopped talking about it. I'm just happy to know that that way of thinking is making its way out the door, as seen by the repeal of dADT (Don't Ask Don't Tell).

I think this is great. As a straight guy, I'm happy to see that this kind of thing is okay to happen now a days. Honestly, if anybody's that extremely happy to see some other person, that's great. I don't see why it should be controversial. Sure, it's gay, and that's "unnatural", but people who think like that need to get over themselves. And luckily, they are. I was reading a thread online the other day that posed the question, "Older people, what is one thing about the current generation that is positive?" The answer was overwhelmingly that we're more accepting of differences. And then my dad expressed a similar sentiment to me today

I'd say people get annoyed about that kind of stuff because it's basically the embodiment of ignorance. As a white dude who can trace his ancestry back to Scotland, Italy, Germany, Lebanon, Serbia, and Poland, I can't really say I've faced that breed of ignoramus directly. However, I do know that they exist, and boy do they not know or care what they're talking about. Generalizing all asians as "chinese", all brown people as either Indian or Arab, or assuming all black people are of the same lineage happens quite often in this world. You can't just assume all "asians" are chinese, because there's a decent chance that they're not. Those cultures vary so radically that it's honestly kind of a dick move to say that kind of stuff. It's like saying all people from North America are Mexican. No, silly, we're not. We're not all Mexicans, we're not all like people from Quebec, we're not all californians, we're not all british columbians, we're not all southerners, or pacific northwesterners, etc. You get the point. Differences between all of those groups are abundant, and most of them are more similar than Japan is to China is to North Korea is to South Korea is to Bangladesh, etc etc. It's annoying.

The way this question is worded kind of fucked with my head a little bit. "Why do Asians dissociate themselves with other Asians" or whatever it was. maybe because they're not? If I was Japanese, I wouldn't want to be thought of as Chinese. There's a decent bit of bad blood between the countries.

If I haven't beat the dead horse enough, they dissociate because they're different. And people want to be proud of their heritage, which is something i don't get all together. I mean, yeah, my ancestors lived other places, and I was born in the USA, but why is that something I should be proud of? I mean, yeah, I'm happy that I was born here, and probably wouldn't have switched that for anywhere (except for maybe Switzerland, Austria, or the UK, but hey). National pride just rubs me the wrong way, because it hinders our ability to all be humans together. meh

This is an interesting thought to me. It's only natural to want what you don't have, and personal appearance is no exception. We can sit back and say black girls straighten their hair to make themselves more "white", or that white girls straighten their hair to be more "black", but come on. Let's be serious. People aren't that simple. Maybe that kind of thing factors into it, but you can't say that's why people do what they do. People factor tons of things into every decision, whether they know it or not. Maybe they want to change their hair because they're sick of the current style. "Proud" of being black, or white, or hispanic, or whatever else out there aside, people tend to like variety.

We can sit around and talk about how shit is the way it is because of white supremacy, or we can actually dissect the issues to get the facts. Sam brought up the skin whitening cream, and how it's supposedly the most widely sold cosmetic product in the world. Honestly, he basically led us to believe that its only use is for black people to make themselves feel white. Meanwhile, people are rubbing it on moles and freckles, on spots of their body with vitiligo (unevenly distributed pigment of the skin). According to WIkipedia, people rub that shit on their genitals because they're a darker area of the body. Some asians use the stuff because it does something weird to their face that they like. People are inherently self conscious. You're this, but want to be that. Now you've worked towards that, and you want to be this. Sure, maybe "white supremacy" plays into the whole thing, but let's not get all worked up.

White people go tanning all the time to look darker. If we "won", why the fuck would that be a thing? AFAIK, tanning booths have been around since the 70s. Come on, Sam. I enjoy your lectures, but sometimes we need to cut out the BS and actually talk about the issues.

Also, I can't find a source on skin whitening cream being the "top cosmetic product of the world" or whatever.

Before the class, I hadn't really thought too much about immigration. I mean, I assumed I was opposed to "illegal" immigration because that's just what we're taught to believe, but I never felt strongly about that or gave it too much thought. I'd say I think that they should go through the process to actually become a citizen. At the same time, though, if they choose to be undocumented and settle for a shit job with shit pay, I don't really see why deportation should occur. Nobody that lives here already is going to sign up for that, so it's not like they're stripping away opportunities from "real" Americans. That's just the surface level analysis. When you incorporate the fact that America as we know it only exists because of something you could draw a corollary to illegal immigration, you really can't be mad at these people. They come into land that's not theirs, find a job, and try to feed their children. Granted, there are plenty of bad seeds that commit crimes and whatnot, but as a whole, they're not a murderous bunch. When Europeans showed up to the Americas, things were a bit different. Our ancestors took the land right out of the natives feet, proceeding to gradually commit one of the most atrocious genocides that the world has ever seen. You can't use the "This land is our land" argument against immigrants, because when it comes down to it, it really isn't. It's stolen. That's like getting angry if someone takes a ride on a bike that your dad stole for you. You can say that's your bike, but dude, you only have it because your dad stole it for you. Don't get self-righteous about it. Immigration is part of human life. If you don't like where you live, who's to tell you you can seek out greener grass and higher tides? Why should a government. It makes me think of a line from a song I heard the other day. "Society's just another word for let's all pretend we're not skeletons". Everybody's just trying to be happy until they die, why should we (as fellow human beings) tell them no simply because they were born on the wrong side of an arbitrary line that's imagined on the land? Immigration issues are just another piece of evidence that humans, as a whole, are doing it wrong. We don't like each other for petty, mostly man-made reasons. We argue politics, whether it be about immigration or any topic. Most people take that stuff seriously, but the foundations of it were made up by people who have been dead for years and years. I'd say we should turn our attentions to accepting people regardless of how/where/why they were born, and once everybody's cool with each other, we can continue learning about ourselves, the universe, why we're here, etc. Instead, we kick people out of parts of the world that we don't think they belong in based on the dead guys' rules. It's annoying to me, and I'm just rambling at this point. So i'll end on that.