en-us https://www.intensedebate.com/users/762034 Comments by aga5044 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/04/south-park-off-the-hook__trashed/#IDComment69974840 At first, I did not really like South Park that much. I thought it was really stupid humor and not worth my time to watch it. However, last year I started watching it, and I realized I was completely wrong. I love the show now. It has definitely changed over the years. I feel like a lot of people like the older ones more, but I really enjoy the new ones. Matt Stone and Trey Parker do a great job of looking satirically at all of the top stories in the news. I used to think that they just cursed off a lot and talk about really weird topics, but they really touch on all of the big current events. I guess radical Muslims do not watch South Park because if they did, they would know that Stone and Parker do not give a shit about anything or anyone. They are not racist or unfairly critical because they rip every person, political party, religion, etc. apart equally. I think it is awesome that they do it because a lot of the time they write into their shows what everyone else is thinking. I also think it is funny that they use children to portray their messages. I know that radical people, whether they are Christian, Muslim, or a part of some other group, are not very logical. I understand that you cannot reason with an illogical person and me trying to understand them is sort of useless. I just think it is so interesting that radical Muslims are so mad about this. I really want to try to understand what and how they think. It just does not make any sense to me. First it is just a cartoon. I do not think anything said in a tv show or cartoon should be taken very seriously. Especially if it is one that made its name using satire. It is just humor. Also, they did not even show Muhammad. I know that they made it seem like they were going to, but they used a censor bar. I read that the Muslim radical group was upset because putting Muhammad in a bear suit was highly offensive. This is pretty stupid though because it was not even Muhammad in the bear suit. It was Santa Clause. Finally, I guess radical people are very serious about their beliefs, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but could they not see that other religions were also made fun of. Vishnu, Jesus, Moses, and Joseph Smith the Mormon prophet were all in the episode. These religions are maybe not as serious as Islam in not portraying their prophets or something, but I am Christian and did not really mind seeing Jesus in an episode. It is just harmless humor. I just don’t understand the radical mindset of wanting to kill or harm people because they mentioned your main prophet. They didn’t even make fun of Muhammad. Fri, 23 Apr 2010 19:53:21 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/04/south-park-off-the-hook__trashed/#IDComment69974840 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/04/christian-invaders-the-turnaround__trashed/#IDComment68324096 To be honest, I was getting kind of bored with this class like some other people. Discussion groups have stayed interesting to me because every week we get to hear a bunch of different views from a diverse collection of people, but the lecture topics have been somewhat repetitive. However, Sam really did bring it today. After Tuesday, I was hoping that for an interesting class but expected an overhyped class. You know, “the best class ever” but then it ends up being like all of the other ones. This time he was not lying when he said he was going to turn up the fire and challenge us to think. I thought it was the best lecture of the semester. While nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoers, nothing is more difficult to understand them is an interesting quote. It really touches on the reason why I thought this class was so good. I never put myself in an Arab Muslim’s position. Never have I thought from their point of view. For most of the topics in this class, I have thought about them on my own before, and in no way am I saying that nothing in this class has affected me. I thought the lecture on American Indians was pretty moving. I really have enjoyed the classes that you can tell Sam is extra passionate about. Obviously it is his job to teach, and I am sure that he enjoys all of the topics he lectures about, but lectures such as today’s, the one about American Indians, and the LGBT one had different energies to them. Back to today’s lecture though. I took a world culture class in high school and I really liked it. We learned about religions from across the globe. After taking the class it amazed me how many people argue about religion when they do not really know the differences between them. A lot are very similar and their pillars preach peaceful activity. I am well aware that not all Muslims are radicals. It just bothers me when people say that religion causes wars and conflict in the world. It is sad that crazy people can twist and manipulate the good beliefs of religions into commands to instruct uneducated, unaware people to kill “outsiders.” These people are the problem, not religion itself. I guess I am kind of going on tangents but I really enjoyed the lecture because I think like an American and today forced me to think outside that box. I always thought it was weird and crazy to be a suicide bomber or be an insurgent. However, like Sam said, I can now understand it. I do not agree with it but I get why some Arab Muslims might think about doing it. If I was over there and only saw the negative things about Americans on the Internet (unbelievable political comments, a few bad apple soldiers, etc), I would not appreciate them coming into my country. Also if I thought that foreigners were coming to change my religion, make me worship a “better God,” and take the natural resources that belong to my country, I would be unhappy. Basically, this class opened me up to the other side of the story over in the Middle East. I now understand the evildoers instead of simply denouncing them. Also I was really happy Sam called out the sonics jersey kid. Fri, 16 Apr 2010 04:51:49 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/04/christian-invaders-the-turnaround__trashed/#IDComment68324096 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/04/i-really-want-to-know-also__trashed/#IDComment66468415 First of all I guess I am one of the bullshitters sitting a few rows in front of you because I sit next to the jackass with the question about nepotism and genetics. I thought about caring about the comment because it basically states that I bullshit around all class but then I remembered that this class does not mean that much to me because I am going to be dead soon enough anyway. Just kidding I really didn’t care at all. Pretty much I go to this class so that I can be exposed to some cool topics and to get participation points so I ultimately get an A. I was told by a couple of people that this class was on the easier side as long as you did the readings and attended the lectures and discussion groups and that it was interesting, so I was excited to take it. I really like the discussion groups because I like hearing opinions from a diverse group of individuals, but I am getting kind of tired of the lectures. I think Sam is the man and a very good professor. It is just that I think my expectations for this class were too high. Then couple that with the fact that the first couple of classes were awesome, and I guess I have set myself up for a little disappointment. I think this class would have the biggest impact on a really close-minded person who has never tried to look at the world in a different way. This is what Sam is really good at. He forces people to think outside of their box, and I like that (minus the bleeding). It is just that I feel like a lot of the topics should have been thought about already, but I guess I overestimated the amount that people think about things or something. I know that Sam is not here to change people’s opinions or force his opinions on us. He just wants people to consider other ways of thinking. Hopefully he is successful. Personally, I have just gotten a little bored with some of the repetitive topics. Either way I would say Sam is doing a good job. Some of the topics that made an impact on me were the lectures about Native Americans and the video of the young children and the white and colored dolls. I thought those were the most powerful messages/topics. Also I don’t really think this question was intended to be rude. It was just a question that obviously, based on other responses, was shared by other classmates. Having said that I still wouldn’t have asked it. Either way, he was wearing a red Shawn Kemp Sonics jersey so hopefully no one takes anything he says seriously. Wed, 7 Apr 2010 21:53:25 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/04/i-really-want-to-know-also__trashed/#IDComment66468415 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/04/is-quality-the-question__trashed/#IDComment65622138 First I guess I will talk about the topic of affirmative action. I have never been a big proponent of affirmative action, but I do understand it though. Everyone starts on different levels, and it is quite obvious. For example, I was lucky and fortunate enough to be born to a good family in a nice neighborhood. My life has been relatively comfortable. I have had to overcome issues but I am sure that they do not even compare to a person who was born to a large family with a low income in north Philadelphia. I do not feel bad or guilty about being born into a good situation but I do recognize that I did not do anything to deserve it. For this I always stay grateful and I am all for helping the disadvantaged. However I would like to solve the problem not just use a quick fix. I guess affirmative could be a good thing in the short term. Giving someone a little help due to race or something is not always fair to another person of the majority group who may be similarly qualified but since we are starting at different levels, if the level of qualifications is comparable for a minority and a white person, I do not mind giving someone a foot in the door. It is giving a little benefit to minority groups, which is better than nothing because at this point we are not going to take money and land from majority people and give it to these groups. Having said that, I think that affirmative action is not the best way to go about that. I think that we should work toward closing the gap between starting positions for different groups. Yes it would be very hard and would take a long time but I think that if we spent more money for the health and education of minority groups we would slowly increase their starting point. They might not start equally with the majority group but I think it would help more than ten percent of minorities getting some kind of effect from affirmative action. But since affirmative action is how we give some groups benefits, I do agree with the comments in the video. I think that affirmative action should not apply in specialized, post-undergraduate education. Giving someone a foot in the door (when they were probably closely qualified anyway) to college is one thing, but after four years of undergraduate study, I would like to think that people are on close enough levels. So I do not think medical schools, law schools, etc. should use affirmative action. In response to nepotism, I disagree with what was said in class. I feel like everyone has their stories about someone being given a job that had no business getting it except for the fact that their dad or uncle or something is the boss. However I think those are the extreme cases. Nepotism is not fair but neither is life. I do not really think that nepotism can be fixed either and when people are similarly qualified the boss is going to hire the person that they are familiar with. It makes sense and that’s why you network. I would like to think networking is like a tiebreaker between two applicants. Maybe it happens a lot more than I think but I do not really have as much of a problem with nepotism. It is not always the best way to go about things and is not fair but at the end of the day it is the person who is giving out the job’s choice to give it to their qualified nephew or a random person who is a tad bit more qualified. Fri, 2 Apr 2010 21:24:44 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/04/is-quality-the-question__trashed/#IDComment65622138 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/03/if-men-could-menstruate__trashed/#IDComment64227575 Ok first I am going to say that I really dislike this topic. It has nothing to do with the video but more with the topic of periods in general. Actually sometimes I do not really get this class anymore. I feel like the topics get kind of dumb and belabored. I understand what Sam is doing and I like it. I like that he is challenging people to think about topics that have been simply accepted without any deeper thought because I believe that a lot of people do not stop to think about or question anything. They just move through life accepting everything. However I feel like a lot of people get the period example and just do not want to talk about it for more than one class. Now I guess moving on to the video post. Thanks for offering up a question because it gives me something to respond to. For the sake of writing four hundred fifty words about any of these topics I guess I will just comment on each part of the question. Both parts of this question are kind of quick to answer so sorry for dragging it out. First let’s start with the part about talking about menstruation. Obviously talking about women’s periods would make this topic less uncomfortable for men. It is the simple fact of desensitization. More exposure to an abnormal or awkward topic would make it seem more normal and less awkward or whatever. It is just that our society has programmed us to believe that it is just a gross thing to talk about. Due to this, it is not acceptable conversation matter. When men are not forced to be exposed to a foreign process it makes senses that they would not like it. Personally I have no problem with talking about menstruation. I do not really like blood in general but that is a different topic. Menstruation is a natural process and I do not get why men act the way they do when confronted with the topic. Maybe it is because they are immature or maybe it is because they are acting in the way that they feel like they “should” because of social constructs. Now let’s talk about the second part of the video post. I disagree with the question at the end about the fact that if men had periods would tampons be free. Once you think about this, it seems a little ridiculous. Our country is driven by money no matter who is in need of the product. Just because it is a “man’s world,” does not mean that products for men are free. For example, men need food and shelter, which aren’t free. Also men do not get Viagra for fee even in a male dominated world. Fri, 26 Mar 2010 18:02:43 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/03/if-men-could-menstruate__trashed/#IDComment64227575 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/03/women-and-sports__trashed/#IDComment63032925 First of all I will say that I do respect Natalie Randolph. She is the first men’s high school football team coach that we know of and she is getting a lot of publicity for it. It is also pretty cool just for the fact that she is obviously so into football. I did not know that they had leagues with women teams. She looked like she could play too. Even though they were just still photos, she looked like she could fit in on the field. If I did not know it was a woman, I would say that the 81 in the pictures reminded me of a young Randy Moss. While this is an interesting story because she is a trailblazer, there are some problems that I could foresee occurring. I hope she knows what she is getting herself in to. Coaching teenage men will be very, very difficult for a woman. First, she will have a lot of trouble controlling the players no matter how badass she is. I can’t see male players respecting a young woman coach. Also, it will be tough for her to relate to the players. Yes she played the game, but a lot of players create bonds with their coaches and feel comfortable going to them in times when they do not want to talk to other people. I would have no problem talking to a woman coach but it would be interesting to see if high school players would. Finally, how could she give a locker room speech or deal with locker room issues? I am sort of kidding, but I doubt the school would want a young woman coach going into a locker room full of teenage men. In the last part of the blog I wanted to address a trend I see in male sports. I feel like the athletic community is trying too hard to look diverse and have women cross into the world of male sports. I am sure that Natalie Randolph is qualified to coach but I just think that it would be better for her to start a women’s team than to coach the men’s team. Also, I noticed that ESPN is assigning women announcers to men’s games. I do not really understand why this trend started. They are not worse at announcing than men, but I just feel like it is forced to have women announce men’s games. This sounds completely sexist but I don’t really care. I guess in general I don’t really understand women’s sports. It doesn’t make sense that there cannot be a level playing field. The top teams in women sports dominate and beat teams ranked close to them really badly. I guess all of the best women athletes all go to play on the same teams but I don’t understand why the talent isn’t spread among a lot of teams. In any sense, I hope Natalie Randolph succeeds. Fri, 19 Mar 2010 20:42:49 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/03/women-and-sports__trashed/#IDComment63032925 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/02/why-is-this-racist-really__trashed/#IDComment60765405 This could possibly be the dumbest idea that I have ever heard. It is overtly racist, and I would bet that nothing Moose says could make me think otherwise. The qualifications for the league are proof enough: Only players that are natural born United States citizens with both parents of Caucasian race are eligible to play in the league. It is just absurd, and obviously Don “Moose” Lewis is doing and saying anything he can to justify that the league is not in fact racist. Sports are an entertainment industry so I am sure that there will be some people who do choose to watch some ABBA, I mean AABA, games even if it is just a watered down talent league. I do not know who would want to pay to watch less talented athletes play an awesome game when the NBA is the greatest basketball league in the world and takes place in this country. Besides, if you go to watch an AABA game it is kind of like supporting the racist nature of the league. While I do not agree with the idea of the league, I do agree with some of Moose’s quote: “With players on other professional teams carrying guns, attacking fans in the stands, and going through the motions of playing the game, fundamentally sound [W]hite players are a vanishing species.” The NBA is filled with great players, but it does need to finish cleaning itself up. When guys like Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton are brandishing guns in the locker room and Ron Artest is going up into the stands to beat up fans, it just gives the NBA a public relations black eye, and I am sure it’s not helping to win the support of racist fans. Another thing about the NBA is that the players do seem like they go through the motions until the game matters. The end of games and the playoffs are the only time when I feel like I see all of the players playing to their full potentials. Some like LeBron, Kobe, and Dwyane Wade play hard at all times, but the same cannot be said for the whole league. The final part of his quote is the main reason this stupid league is being set up, but it is true. Last year my friends and I went through every NBA roster to see how many white Americans were on each team. I think only a few had more than one and some had zero. I thought that this was pretty interesting. Something has to be said about this. There were white Europeans on teams but when you go through the league there really are no difference-maker white American players. I don’t know what the explanation is but to me the black athletes are more athletic and just better. By the numbers it just seems like it has to be a fact. I don’t know why there are successful white Europeans. Maybe because they work very hard on skills from very young ages so they can make it to the NBA. Basically the point of this blog was that Moose is an idiot and a racist but I am sure people are still going to watch some of the AABA games and that it is pretty interesting that white Americans are being eliminated from the NBA. It is not in a racist way. It is just do to talent. No more are the days of the Pistol Petes and Larry Birds. I would like to see another star white American in the NBA but I would never go watch a league full of mediocre ones that weren’t good enough to make an NBA roster. Tue, 9 Mar 2010 18:10:18 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/02/why-is-this-racist-really__trashed/#IDComment60765405 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/02/native-americans-question-four__trashed/#IDComment58889822 What happened to the Native Americans is a disgrace. Obviously immigrants to this country walked in with their advanced technology and fought an unfair fight. I am probably a descendent of these immigrants so I’ll just use we. We pushed them off of their own land, killed them, and set up our own communities in the new United States of America. The “barren” land that gave the persecuted Europeans new opportunity is really a red land that we stripped from the first peoples. It might have been done by my really, really distant relatives, and that does not make me feel good at all, but what happened is in the past. Hakuna matata. There is a problem that worries me though. A lot of people who live in America today do not ever think about the Native American population. They are a forgotten people to most of the citizens of this great country. I completely understand why this is a bad thing. However I do not think simply accepting what some of our ancestors did to the Native Americans does them enough justice. I have already accepted what happened, but that does not do anything for their population. I also do not think that educating Americans about the genocide that occurred here on our own soil is enough. Teaching young kids in schools about what truly happened to the Native Americans would be helpful. Maybe the future of this country would acknowledge the Native Americans, and they would know what actually happened. This does not mean that these kids would grow up wanting to do something for the Native Americans. People would still be starting on different levels. If people were educated about the stories of the past but took no action, then people might think about Native Americans differently but the Native American population would still be very poor, less educated, and contain negative behaviors such as heavy alcohol consumption. Sure, Native Americans would be more content though knowing that the rest of the country is cognizant of the fact that centuries ago their relatives stole land forcefully from the Native Americans. This still does not accomplish enough for the present Native Americans. It won’t change their situation. Even if the government gives them more resources or better land it would not help enough. I think that the government has to help the Native Americans by providing a higher quality of education for the young Native Americans. They could probably do this by creating incentives for teachers to go to Native American reservations. Increasing education for Native Americans could address some of their other problems too. Increased education is positively correlated with income and socioeconomic status. Also, with more education, hopefully Native Americans would become less dependent on alcohol and would decrease their numbers of suicide. Overall, I believe that more can be done than just accepting what happened to Native Americans. I think we can be more active and do feasible things to increase their chances of succeeding in the world. I might never see an even playing field for all races in my lifetime, but we should be able to do things to at least close the gap. Fri, 26 Feb 2010 23:39:17 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/02/native-americans-question-four__trashed/#IDComment58889822 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/02/lgbt-class-question-one__trashed/#IDComment57567747 I never stopped to really think about a lot of the questions or topics that were proposed during class and here on the blog. I do not consider myself a homophobe or intolerant, but I just do not know many gays or lesbians. Therefore, I have not really been too exposed to these types of issues, and because they did not affect me directly or indirectly, I never really worried about LGBT problems. The only time I would hear about them was when I would see stories on the local news or in the newspaper. Whenever I thought of the words gay or lesbian I immediately thought of gay rights or gay marriage. Those were the only issues I really associated with the LGBT community, and yet being that provincial in my thinking, I never even looked into them. Also, I never talked about homosexuality growing up. I don’t know if people close to me avoided the topic or if it just never came up because everyone in my family is heterosexual. Having said all of that, the little bit I did think about the topic was based around the fact that I thought men were meant to be with women and vice versa. Why else would that be the only way that humans can achieve the goal of procreation? Even though I didn’t think that homosexuality was natural (I thought of it as more of a choice), I respected everyone and agreed with the fact that lesbian and gay couples should receive the same rights that heterosexual couple’s get. We are all people, and if you love a person of the same sex, you should be able to get married and have the same rights as a heterosexual married couple. A lot of things in class made me change my views on homosexuality, and I think it is just because I never hung out around gays or lesbians. When Sam asked how many people have asked a gay person if he or her chose to be gay or if it was just a natural thing, it made me think. It made no sense for me to believe something about homosexuality without being gay or at least talking to homosexuals and hearing their stories. Hopefully my discussion group will talk more about these topics because I think they are interesting and will lead to some better debates, but back to the actual question. I do not think there is a difference between a gay male couple adopting a child and a lesbian couple adopting a child. If anything, people have a problem with gay people in general adopting a child because they fear that the child will have a higher chance of also being gay. This is a pretty ludicrous thought because even if they do, there is nothing wrong with that and data shows that the thought isn’t true anyway. The only important thing is that children have a safe environment and supporting parents whether that’s a dad and a dad, a mom and a mom, a mom and dad, a single parent, etc. Any type of sexuality can be a capable parent. Fri, 19 Feb 2010 03:06:28 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/02/lgbt-class-question-one__trashed/#IDComment57567747 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/02/swinging-past-the-other-end-of-the-ideological-spectrum-on-the-way-to-the-intellectual-gray__trashed/#IDComment56589931 I really appreciate someone expressing his or her true feelings. I doubt that everyone else in a class of seven hundred has the same opinion that this was an unbelievable lecture. Having said that, this post is a little too intense for me. I do have to agree with the fact that this class was not as interesting as everyone is making it out to have been, but I do not think that anyone who thinks in the opposing way is “an utter piece of shit” like sterlingb13. I like Sam a lot as a person and a professor and this is a very important message, which he did do a good job of explaining, but I also believe that the topic of freedom of choice versus determinism could have been delivered in a different way. Instead of using this as a topic for an entire hour and fifteen minute class, I think it could have been talked about for a shorter duration of time. I just feel like the class started to drag on and got boring because we were belaboring the obvious. To me, it seems obvious that both free choice and determinism are at work when figuring out how a person got to the place in which they currently reside. Apparently though, not everyone believes this, so maybe the entire class period was needed to force people to think about these concepts. I think it is a topic that some people have seen a lot though. Personally I have seen it in classes such as english and biology. In english I had to write a paper on whether I believed in fate or free choice, and in biology, a major ongoing debate is over whether it is nature or nurture that is more important to a person’s development. Nature refers to a person’s genes that are determined, and nurture has to do with a person’s environment and could include what choices they make or the choices other people make for them. Just like Sam said in class, I stay in the middle of free choice and determinism. I know that I have not gotten to be here at Penn State based on all of my own choices. I also believe that my entire life up until this point has not been predetermined. I have made good choices along the way to improve my chances of getting here, but I have had a lot of helpers too. I was born into a good family. My neighborhood and school systems were also very nice. And like we talked about in class, I receive help from my parents. If it was all up to me and my choices, I know I definitely would not be here right now. Good thing it’s a mix of choices and determinism and not one or the other. I would also like to thank the academy. Sat, 13 Feb 2010 03:22:43 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/02/swinging-past-the-other-end-of-the-ideological-spectrum-on-the-way-to-the-intellectual-gray__trashed/#IDComment56589931 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/02/negros-of-the-world-unite__trashed/#IDComment55537587 Stories like this one tend to frustrate me. If only the citizens of the United States could go through a couple of classes of Sociology 119 with Sam. It is just annoying to see people get all worked up about something that does not even matter. It seems like sometimes people just look for something to argue about. I fully understand that the rest of the country does not necessarily get that race is just a social construct and should not have any weight placed upon it. However I just do not get the problem with words. When people who are racist use derogatory words to cause harm that is one thing. In this sense, Negro being placed as a choice on the census should, in my opinion, be viewed as inoffensive. It is an outdated term in America in 2010 for my generation, but I doubt anyone associated with the census is using Negro to refer to part of the black community in a negative way. If some black people did not still identify themselves as Negroes, I’m sure the term would definitely not appear. They do though, and by keeping the word on the census to fairly accommodate them, we run the risk of offending someone else. You cannot please everyone. This is one of the annoying things about political correctness. If one does not identify him or herself as a Negro, I feel like it would be pretty easy to simply move past it instead of getting offended by a word that a lot of people don’t even use anymore. As far as race questions and the census goes, it would be really nice to take race questions off and view our country as three hundred fifty million plus Americans, but for health reasons it is sometimes important to know who is making up our country. Certain populations are at a higher risk for specific diseases and also there are disparities in health care. These problems could be attributed to socioeconomic status differences more than race but right now we are not entirely sure so it is important to see who makes up our country so that health disparity statistics have more meaning. As long as race questions are going to show up on the census, it is a positive that we are aware enough to realize that white, black, and brown do not cover everyone. America is very diverse. As the article said, we have added more terms to the census. Allowing people to choose more than one race is very good. Whether you think the census should have race questions or not, it is still going to be distributed in order to obtain statistical information. At least it keeps improving, and its nice to see that we are measuring the characteristics of the American people as they wish to be known instead of forcing them to fit into a given set of choices. Fri, 5 Feb 2010 22:40:16 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/02/negros-of-the-world-unite__trashed/#IDComment55537587 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/01/racism-looks-pretty-good-on-this-side-of-the-atlantic__trashed/#IDComment54429089 First of all, I’ll start off by saying that I’m pretty sure that my response will be very similar to a lot of other people’s comments but I don’t want to find a similar comment to respond directly to. It was a crazy video though. I really do not like listening to Jeremy Schaap because I think he is really annoying and I could definitely do his job, but in spite of him, the piece was very good. I remember hearing about FIFA being a little worried about certain issues before the 2006 World Cup, but I was not sure what issues they were and why they would be worried since it was going to be held in Germany. Even if I did hear that the issue that FIFA was worried about was racism during the games, I probably would not have believed it. I guess I was just being naïve in my thinking that racism to that extreme would not exist in so many people during the twenty first century. The acts of racism and hate were ridiculous in the video. Racist chants and things like throwing a banana at a black player are just stupid and embarrassing. Having said that, they did work I guess at getting in the heads of the players and throwing them off their games but there is obviously still no place for that. It amazed me to see that the games best players were not immune to the acts of racism. Thierry Henry was one of the world’s best soccer players in the world at the time and it was not only fans but other managers too that were racist to him. I guess it is a little different here than Europe but I couldn’t even imagine going to a Sixers game and hearing the fans chanting a derogatory comment at Kobe Bryant (even though I’m sure people wouldn’t put anything by Philadelphia fans). I did think it was pretty cool that Henry took it upon himself to do an ad campaign with Nike to fight back against racism. FIFA’s actions were probably successful too especially if they included the fans again. Being threatened with the three points of a win would constitute a moderately harsh penalty. I believe fans of these European clubs would stop the racist acts if they were going to cost their teams valuable points. The final thing that this story made me think about was how hard it must have been for the first non-white players to break into the major professional sports. The most famous person like this would be Jackie Robinson breaking Major League Baseball’s color barrier. I’ve read stories about him and it definitely had to suck to deal with all the racists in the US at that time. Thanks to him for doing it too because half of my favorite baseball players are non-white. Sat, 30 Jan 2010 01:55:08 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/01/racism-looks-pretty-good-on-this-side-of-the-atlantic__trashed/#IDComment54429089 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/01/last-name-begins-with-a-e-g-brian-anderson__trashed/#IDComment53933013 lebron Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:47:12 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/01/last-name-begins-with-a-e-g-brian-anderson__trashed/#IDComment53933013 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/01/haitis-calamity__trashed/#IDComment53489254 Obviously the disaster in Haiti has had devastating consequences for the people of the country. It is such a shame, and the people of Haiti are in my prayers. They were an underprivileged country even before the earthquake dealing with negative things like high levels of poverty and civil strife. It just does not seem fair or make sense that they would be the country to be hit by a powerful act of nature. However, I was raised a certain way and feel that I am religious. As hard as it is to understand or trust, I believe that this somehow falls into God’s plan. I do not really get why or think that people have to die in a plan from a Higher Power, but I believe that something positive might happen in the long term. Religion is really blind faith that will not be proven by science. As Proverbs 3:5 says, trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths. Having said that I completely agree with the end of this post. Even without religion, the simple gesture of holding the anguish of another in our mind’s eye can transform us. Seeing the mess down in Haiti, whether it is the physical rubble or people with no food or shelter, is deeply saddening. It is very hard not to be affected by those sights. At a time like this I remember not to take anything for granted. I try to be thankful for everything that I am blessed to have, but because we live in such a great country and can afford many special things, I do sometimes lose sight of gratitude. It is not until something like this happens to remind me that nothing in life is guaranteed or owed to me. Like these events in Haiti have refocused my perspective on life, a vacation to the Dominican Republic had previously done this. The Dominican Republic is not as poor as Haiti but it definitely is not wealthy. When we were there, we left the resort and the island was a completely different place. I just remember these kids playing baseball with a big stick and a worn out ball on the beach. We decided to buy new balls for them, and when we gave them the new balls, they were so happy. It was like we had made their week just by giving them some baseballs. We have it so good compared to other places in the world that it is hard to relate. Seeing anyone that is not as fortunate as me is very eye opening. It is not like I did anything to deserve to be born in an affluent neighborhood in the United States instead of a small town outside of Port-au-Prince. Religion really does not have anything to do with this. Hopefully, if people are able to help with the situation down in Haiti, then they will. Haiti needs a lot of help. Sat, 23 Jan 2010 01:58:02 +0000 https://www.racerelationsproject.org/2010/01/haitis-calamity__trashed/#IDComment53489254