It’s sad and scary how much war has been integrated into our human nature. We have this mentality where if someone has something you want and they won’t give it to you, simply kill and steal until you can get it. That seem too simplified for some but it’s true -especially here in the states. We’re a large machine. Large machines need larger quantities of goods and resources. Unfortunately, because we have scarcity it constantly pins us in a competition at a disadvantage. We have to work harder to get where we want and feel entitled to be. So a lot of times what do we do? We cheat. But we cheat good. We’ve figured out how to cheat and still be the good guys. We do it under to guise of democracy and freedom. We’re not here to steal your resources for our machine, we’re here to set you free…and get a little something for ourselves as a reward. We want to instill our great democracy system because it will make people happier…not because it’s much less volatile and can be more easily controlled.
This seems so dark, and in some ways it is. But the gray area here is that it’s necessary. If we want to live here in the states and consume beyond our means like we have been for the past fifty years we have to pay the price. Everyone could look at the first paragraph and say “yea, the US is a big bully, we should stop doing that”. Easier said than done. Once gas balloons to six dollars a gallon and it ruins your vacation to myrtle beach because you were planning on driving there…then you might opt to look the other way and let America do it’s think. You might decide that it’s better for the machine to be full than wanting. I think that’s what this class has taught me. How much gray area there is in the world. Sometimes there just is no right or wrong, just opinions and different ways of doing things- and that, my friend, is a pretty scary concept

There are a bunch of reasons. First, though I don’t think it’s the biggest contributor to the hate, is job security. Americans are worried that they will lose their jobs to a lower cost immigrant worker. This is especially infuriating because we American’s feel some type of entitlement simply because we were born on this specific portion of dirt. For some reason we think that just because someone was born outside of our imaginary borders that they don’t deserve the same opportunities that we have. Americans think these jobs are specifically American jobs. In actuality, the employers, for the most part, don’t care one way or another who’s doing work for them. They’re more concerned with profit than patriotism. I think that if this is the main reason that one hates immigrants then they should clearly redirect their finger pointing towards the businesses. After all immigrants just want to work to provide better lives for their friends and family. Most of us would do the same thing in their shoes.
I think another reason is that it’s just rooted in blatant racism. As a result we’ve made all these stereotypes to justify this hate. We say that Mexicans are lazy with their siestas and coronas, we think that all Arabic people must be terrorist etc. etc. Many of us don’t even realize it either. How many of us get pissed off when we hear other people carrying on a conversation in another language? I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve heard people mutter to themselves or say to me “This is America, speak English!” Where do we get off telling people how to communicate and more importantly why do we even care? People will always find some reason to justify the hate they have. There’s really no legitimate reason to hate an immigrant but people wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if they saw it this way.
I think many people are also afraid of being forced out of their comfort zones with a cultural change. People think that America has an established way or system about it. This is because they only look at the small picture. Though we may not see it day to day, part of being a melting pot is that we don’t have a definite culture. It’s consistently changing and has been since the inception of the United States. The American culture is a collection of cultures. Just look at New York. In one place you have China town, Queens, and a whole plethora of different cultural influences. I know it’s cliché to even bring up but it is pretty ironic that a bunch of immigrants are getting pissed off about immigration.

There will always to be ways to discriminate against people. Transgender people are just the next frontier of discrimination. For whatever reason just the thought of a transgender makes most people feel uncomfortable. Because we care more about our own comfort than actually trying to understand people most of just shove them away. I believe that the biological person and the physical person are two different entities; most of the time these two entities link up, but sometimes they don’t. From what I’ve heard and from the gay people I actually know it has never really been a choice. They’ve always sort of known that they were different. Why would anyone choose to be gay? It doesn’t seem to have too many perks in our modern day society.
Since people don’t have a choice in the way their body chemistry works why not give them the choice to decide who they want to be. If you feel like a male trapped in a woman’s body then I think you should be able to identify yourself as male. Why not? It’s not hurting anyone, it’s just a title. Think how much it benefits psyche of the person who feels that way and how little it affects your everyday life. With hormones and surgeries most people wouldn’t even notice. I took a gender studies course last semester and we spoke with a transgender, female to male. He (That’s right he) was growing facial hair and everything. Afterwards I noticed that he was in one of my forum classes. He was carrying on conversations with the guys next to him about football and basketball and they had no clue. Not even an inkling of skepticism.
I just think transgender is taboo because we still haven’t quite gotten over gay people yet and this is like gay squared. In response to this article I think it’s pretty obvious that he got fired on unfair terms. They clearly gave him the job in the first place and didn’t recognize that he was transgender. If the employers that question and analyze potential employees didn’t recognize how do you expect everyday Joes that are just there to piss in a cup and leave are going to notice. The whole “gender is a qualification” thing because people feel more comfortable peeing with someone who is the same sex sort of loses its credibility in that respect.

This just goes to show how the history books truly are written by the winners of war. I can recall learned about scalping and thinking how cruel and grotesque of an act it was. Never once did I stop to think about the reasons why the Native Americans were doing it. I’d be pissed off too if I was just peacefully enjoying my peace pipe; appreciating mother nature and a bunch of white guys came along and decided to mess everything up. Being vastly outnumbered and outmatched I too would probably have to rely on tactics to strike fear into my opponent rather than overpower them.
We forget all these things after the fact because of course we’re never the bad guys. We came to America in search of freedom and to escape tyranny! Pretty ironic that we did it at the expense of the freedom of another culture. But what do we care, they were in the way of our freedom that we for some reason or another felt entitled to capture at any cost. Once the deed has been done we just sweep that side of the story under the rug. Of course we would. How else would we live with ourselves if we thought that we had become the same thing that we fought to escape from? Now white people might even get offended if a Native American feels some type of way about that. White people would then throw out their go to response of “I didn’t do it, I can’t be held accountable for what my ancestors did”. But it’s like Sam said. The key to sociology is empathy. That is the ability to step out of yourself and see through the perspectives of others. If you’re great great great grandfather was attacked and thrown off of his own land his hostility towards the white man would be passed down to his son- then from his son to the next generation and so on and so forth . At what point does it become ok to have that sort of thing happen to you. At what point during that process does the next generation decide that what happened, happened and we should just move on. I think many of us would still be pissed- If not for what happened but by the blatant ignorance of it by the majority of the American population. Hell if I were a Native American I would at least want people to take the time to understand and acknowledge that what had happened was wrong. Additionally I would hope that people would give me the respect of acknowledging my culture after all was said and done. I feel that that would be the least you could do. Instead the majority of Americans have chosen to do neither. I’d be mad too.

I think that it’s clear to see that there are some major flaws in our political system. It’s this type of selfish and self-interested decision making that proves it. Maybe the public is to blame. Maybe we’ve taken our privilege and responsibility of being able to vote too lightly. We’ve given the system away to big business and face a seemingly endless wall of opposition. Now it’s hard for the common person to play the game because the party who is abusing the system is making all the rules. Even when the majority of Americans know that the benefits of cutting oil subsidies far exceeds the costs there’s nothing we can do about it. Even if we do recognize that our leaders’ decision making is being skewed by legalized bribery and we choose not to re-elect him next term where do you think our next candidates are coming from? Regardless of republican or democrat, most likely they had to play the game to get to where they are too. Everyone is cheating and getting unfair advantages. If you don’t join in it’s likely that you’ll fall to the wayside. Therefore we’d just be replacing one cheater with another. We can’t think that just because these people are elected officials that they are exempt from wanting to act in their own self-interest. They just humans just like everyone else.
My big issue is that using oil for energy just seems so primitive. I know there has got to be an alternate way but anything that comes around that could potentially dethrone big oil is bought up and stashed away. We’ve put men on the moon there’s got to be a way to make a car run without oil. We should expand wind and solar but more importantly tap into geothermal energy. I realize that it can’t be an all at once shift but we’ve got to start making bigger moves. The rate at which the population is expanding and the ever increasing demand for energy makes it necessary. Scarcity is was makes big oil powerful. Expanding geothermal, wind, solar, and a slew of others could knock them down a peg.

This was my favorite class of the semester. It just shows us how much our media is skewed to portray a particular message rather than the facts. It’s scary to think that very rarely do we receive true unbiased information – That everything we hear has been filtered or modified in some way. How can we know what is real? Who and what should we believe? What is the real truth?

Most of us don’t care to even find out. That’s not to say that it’s easy. Many times we have to dig deep. We have to question everything we hear. And even when we do try to look at things from the other perspective how to we know that that information hasn’t been altered by some ulterior motive also? Clearly they’ve rationalized a reason to kill us as well. In their minds it must be right, or else they wouldn’t do it. In their eyes they’re the good guys and we’re the bad guys. Their information must convey something completely different than ours. Neither of which may be true.

If we look at it this way it’s hard to really condemn anyone as being evil. We’re all just victims of media brainwashing. Whether or not one should blame people for their own ignorance is a matter of opinion. In America I think we’ve cleverly been deceived into thinking that as Americans we always do what is right. Even once we begin to question we’re faced with so many distractions that many times we are deterred from this quest for truth. Why go around looking on third party nonprofit news sites when I can go home and play Playstation for eight hours straight? Forget about hooking that shit up to high definition 3D flat screen, I might be gone for days. I can throw on some Call of Duty and now I get to take out those Osama lovers myself. I just upgraded my M-16 and I’m dropping people left and right no questions asked.

This is a point within itself. War has become a game to many of us. It’s definitely become a big business. The Call of Duty franchise is the number one selling game franchise is Playstation history. We love shooting terrorists, we do it in our free time for fun! We don’t think about what we’re doing we just want to be the best killer on the net. The more people you kill the better you are. If you get killed it’s ok, you just respawn in 5 seconds anyway so you can get back to more killing. It’s sort of screwed up when you think about it. These people we’re replicating have significant others and children- maybe even a dog who knows. Once you kill somebody that’s it, they’re gone forever. That has a ripple effect that affects everyone that was close to them. It’s odd how desensitized we’ve become to that.

The rich are getting richer, well of course they are. Currency and power have become our modern day survival of the fittest. We’re all beasts at heart, and most of us will claw, scratch, and even kill our way to the top. It’s in our nature; it’s how we even made it to this point. Power is infectious; once you get a taste you only want more of it. In the society that we’ve established money is power. Money gives us this false façade of freedom when in all actuality it acts more as a prison cell. Most of us are slaves to it and very few can harness the power of it. So again, of course the rich are getting richer. Why would the slave owners purposely give up their power and work amongst the slaves.
A really good friend of mine just happened to land a really nice job right out of college. In a couple of months he’s going to move to another branch and he needs someone to replace him. Even though I have no real work experience in the field there is a good chance I might get the job. Granted I am a hard worker and have a pretty solid GPA, I’m sure there is someone out there who is much more qualified than I am. Am I complaining? Not really. See there’s the problem. Everyone things everyone else is the problem and their situation is an exception. Of course I would like to see more equality in our country. Would I give up this job opportunity to someone who may be better at it than I am and who may have put in more work to get to the point where they’re at? I doubt it. Here I’m just one small case, but this is happening all over America. That’s why everyone always says it’s not what you do it’s who you know. That’s why the career center keeps throwing the work “networking” down everyone’s throat. Everyone wants to reach that point of power and stability. They make the rules. If we can tap into the network there is no way we’re going to pass that up. People , for the most part, are looking out for their own self-interest. 90% of Americans will complain and preach about equality until they have that opportunity to be in the top 10%. Then they’ll start complaining about taxes.

My first question is whether or not white Americans will be an actually minority (meaning that there is more of some other particular race) or a comparative minority to ALL other races in the country (like white people make up 49% of the country and the rest is a slew of other races). If it is the latter then white people would still technically be a majority. Regardless, this shift still has some major implications. The mountain is getting a little less steep and not quite as high and this is pretty scary for a good deal of white people.
Along with majority status comes the power of the majority vote. There’s a better chance that the voices of white people will be heard and accommodated for. Without the majority we will have less power to press the needs of the white race. Surely people will begin to say that we’re losing our country and that we need to tighten up immigration laws; Newsflash, we’re all immigrants, we’re just adding a little more brown sugar to our melting pot (haha! sorry). This is not to say that this is wrong or unwarranted either. Any race in the position of the white race would do the same. It’s not easy to give up power, even if it is for the common good. Our entire social establishment is centered around the white male ego and white people are going to fear a crumbling of the system they’ve created. However, if we can use history to predict the outcome of such a shift it will most likely not crumble, rather it will change and rebuild in a new direction. Many white people may not be as happy with the new direction but rest assured there will be no apocalypse.
It’s also not going to be an overnight change, which will definitely make the transition much easier. White people will be forced to interact with people of different cultures and my guess is that many of them will find that a good deal of the stereotypes they’ve attributed to that particular race aren’t true. On the other hand multicultural people will definitely assimilate to a good bit of the white culture and ideals as well. It is only natural that we will influence each other and at the end of the day, as long as you haven’t been hiding under a rock or fighting the transition, I think that many of us won’t even notice the change. We’ll just be eased into it. Eventually we’ll look back and think “Hey! That was pretty weird of me to think this or that about another race in the first place. I’m glad things changed; we’re a happier people because of it”

I’ve been in Catholic schools for the majority of my schooling. Despite that I am now what I guess you would consider agnostic. I believe there’s something going on out there that our brains can’t quite comprehend. I don’t think that thing (call it God or whatever) has a significant investment in what goes on our little rock amongst the vast universe. I know a lot of people that share my same views on this. I think a good deal of it has to do with technological and informational advances. More and more things that used to be attributed to the divine because people couldn’t explain them otherwise are now being explained with science. Additionally the ease and speed with which we can now communicate makes the world a little bit smaller. We don’t hear tales about someone over in another city bringing people back to life and turning water into wine we have Youtube videos. When was the last time you saw a miracle on Youtube? Now there’s no room for wonderment, we just have information thrown in our face. This is making people look at religion a bit more objectively and I think people are starting to realize how cult-like and absurd organized religion really is. I think it’s funny when Catholics go off on how ridiculous scientology is because it’s all about aliens and “science fictiony stuff”. Part of me wants to tell them to look in the mirror, you believe that some Holy Spirit came down and impregnated some woman who later gave birth to the “messiah” who died and three days later came back from the dead… sounds pretty goofy to me. I read something on CNN the other day that said The Vatican proclaimed that the opponents of gay marriage are victims too. Really? I couldn’t help but laugh. And the whole no condom thing? Come on it’s time to get with the program. We all know that eventually you’re going to come around, the same way it took you a bit to accept the fact that the world isn’t flat or that we’re not the center of the universe. I think a lot of religion is just losing its credibility and people are just looking elsewhere to fill the void and to give their life meaning.

There’s a good bit that goes into deciding whether or not to date someone. In the very beginning stages it’s about physical attraction. Once the initial contact is made then you delve deeper into personalities and sense of humor. At this point it’s all about connection and whether you not you like this person enough to shun off all other options for them. For interracial relationships there are a lot of variables thrown into the equation that might disrupt this process or make people not mesh as well. Certainly this is not the case for all people because obviously relationships take place on an individual level. The first deterrent for some may be that they simply aren’t attracted to the features of someone who is black. Many of us, unfortunately, have been socialized to be more attracted to the features of the white European look. The lack of attraction prevents many people from exploring the potential connection you might have with that person. In my experiences it seems that males are more concerned with attraction than females. If you are attracted or if looks don’t matter too much to you there are also barriers that may prohibit you to connecting with one another. Upbringing and culture play a large part in shaping who we become. Many times black people and have very different experiences than white people growing up, and this shapes attitudes, views on life, and even personality. People gravitate towards people who see the world as they do, it makes communicating ideas much easier. When you communicate better both parties feel like they’re on the same page and it strengthens the bond. No one wants to be with a person that they feel like doesn’t get them. The different views and personalities as a result of different experiences may convolute the passage ways of communication and may make it seem like both parties don’t connect. In addition to this there is still pressure from society that keeps people from even exploring the waters of interracial relationships. For me, even though my parents are not racist, I feel like if a brought a black girl home she would have to prove herself or something. If I bring a white girl home it’s just expected, we can all just enjoy each other’s company. In the same way if I visited her parents I would feel like I had something to prove to them. Why is that? That’s some invisible string shit right there. As deplorable as it is, there is just some stigma associated with dating someone of a different race. It’s not normal yet, and anything that isn’t normal people tend to shy away from. That’s one of the major downfalls of the human race.