There are several reasons it would be easier for someone with gay parents to come out. Many times it seems like many homosexuals are afraid to tell people because of the way they are going to react. When having a parent who is homosexual, they have already been through the coming out stage and will know how to react to it. So, someone who has been through the same experience will most likely have a good reaction. They are homosexual themselves so, it would not make sense for them to be disappointed if you are. Many religions are against homosexuality, because of this many people who are religious try to hide that their gay. The girl in the video says that her dad would even be mad if she had a gay friend. Can you imagine how hard it would be knowing your father would not even accept if you had a gay friend and your gay? What would someone do in that situation, because her father is straight he will most likely not agree with it. Rather than someone who is gay, they know that religions are against it, but they don’t care they were born this way. Someone who is gay with gay parents can talk to their parents about anything they may need to about homosexuality. They can ask questions and talk about dealing with certain situations. Being able to share experiences will make them make them have a more comfortable relationship and they can be very open with each other. Someone who is straight may not know how to react to their child saying that they are gay or lesbian. They have never dealt with being in that situation and may not have any idea their son or daughter is homosexual. I think that the individual will feel more comfortable knowing that their gay parent would be more accepting than someone who wasn’t gay. They would know what to say to make the tension in the conversation go down significantly. Overall, I think talking to someone who has been in your shoes is always easier to talk to, so I don’t see why this would be any different. Another way I think it is easier is because of being exposed to that environment. If your parents are gay it will most likely easier for you to decide that you are gay, you will be used to the environment and will not feel awkward talking about your sexual orientation. It’s probably true to say that you have talked about sexuality in the past when you talked about your parents relationship and it would be something that was brought up constantly. You would be used to the idea of people knowing your gay and you would already feel comfortable with the idea.

I was very surprised when we found out that there are only 100 kidnappings a year. I have always worried about my little sister walking to school. I think most of the class was surprised by this fact. Half of us thought there were 10,000 a year. It makes you think about whether you shelter yourself from life. Our society doesn’t do things because we are living in fear. When we walk down the street and someone says hello we sometimes think they were creepy and start to tense up. Sam said that you have a better chance of getting hit by lightening. This makes me think it is silly to worry and fear about things. However, its always in the back of my mind that it could have been me. There is always a possibility and knowing there is one makes us feel like it happens everywhere. In our discussion group we talked about the medias role in all this. Newspapers are constantly writing about the bad things happening. Movies and shows focus on crime and fear. Even the news mostly reports on the negative. When do we really see an article about the person who did the good thing. The media focuses on these things because it makes them get better ratings. People do not want to hear about the good deed someone did. They want to read about the brutal murder that took place. So, why are Americans so skeptical? I think it is a combination of rules, media, and community. We are told, don’t touch that or you will burn your hand. Others do what the other people in the community are doing. For these reasons I do not think American will ever be a trusting country. People are not going to talk to strangers in the street. They are not going to knock on your door for directions and if they did people would think that they were a creep. In our group, one boy said he will not let his sister walk to school. He said he knows it is not going to happen, but why risk it happening. Knowing there is a possibility that something could happen, even when the chances are one in a million. I think we all kind of operate like this. We are worried about the risk of all those things happening. We may know that they are not going to happen, but we do not want to be the one it happens to. We do not want to be that one parent everyone feels bad for. Everyone should work on living a much more relaxed life. A life like peoples lives in the past. The children go play outside till it gets dark and they come back for dinner. We should not keep them cooped up in a house, playing video games.

For many years I have wondered why the Muslim women dress the way they do. After hearing them speak, I have a great amount of respect for their dress. The one Muslim woman said that they dress like that for modesty. The other says she feels it makes people have to know her personality, rather than just looking at our appearance. All of their reasons for wearing the scarves were very good reasons. I would find it very hard to dress that way all the time with the weather, so I give them a lot of credit. It was interesting to see that there were also Muslim women in the class that did not wear the scarves. In America they have the choice to wear their scarves, but in their hometowns it is a law to wear the scarf. It seems crazy to me that there is a law to make sure these individuals remain modest. However, I think that by covering yourself up you make sure that someone is interested in you for your personality. That is something that many people do not pay attention in our society here in America. I do not think that wearing a bikini to the beach is disrespectful to myself or others. We live in a culture that is open with our bodies and we are okay with showing off some skin. Look at the European countries that have nude beaches, does that mean those people don’t respect themselves? When it comes down to it our cultures place the standard of dress for everyone in that particular area. In our discussion group we talked about how people dress different for a fraternity party, compared to class. Most settings have a common dress among all of the people attending. Most of us are not going to get all dolled up for class, but most of us are not going to wear sweatpants to that fraternity party tonight. When going out at night we wanna look good and we want to feel good, so getting dressed up is going to help us feel that way. Were trying to impress and we try to follow the current trends our celebrities are wearing. They wear revealing clothing, so we wear revealing clothing. We know how to dress in certain situations and of course, some take the promiscuity to the max, but there is always someone. So no, I don’t think we wear the revealing clothing and lose respect in doing so. I do not think we think about whether people are going to think we have no respect for ourself. We wear what we wear because it makes us feel good. Modesty is different everywhere and we are just modest in different ways.

After watching the video many people seemed offended by it, personally I thought it was funny. After the one chinese student in our class said he thought the video was funny there were no angry reactions, but as soon as the white male said it was funny, all hell broke loose. There are many reasons why I think that the audience reacted in this way. My first thought on this is that many people in the class assume that all white people are racist. As soon as the man said he thought it was funny, a girl in the back started to really get heated on the subject. She said that no jokes about race are funny, but to go back on her, what kind of comedy do you watch? Most comedians and movies have some sort of a racial joke within them. This just made me think that she was not past the stages of being comfortable. There are all different kinds of racial jokes for every group of people and as long as they are not too vulgar most of us find it entertaining. Its like having the ability to laugh at yourself and make fun of the stupid things you do. That video was made to make people smile, I can understand why Asians may be offended, but I think maybe they are looking too far into the intention of the movie. For the people who were having a fit that people say race jokes, relax, laugh, and stop being so sensitive. Not everyone is out to get you. The reason these kinds of jokes can be funny is because they are about a sensitive topic and sometimes it makes it more comfortable for people. Now, don’t get me wrong people make stupid remarks about race, but that doesn’t mean a joke isn’t funny. The white person seems to always be blamed for anything in society by people who are not white. Its not always true, but very often as a white person during this class I feel as though people think whites are pure evil. This is kind of funny when you think about it because we are then generalizing all whites to be the same and I remember one black women talking in class saying she doesn’t like being generalized with the whole race because we are all different. Its okay to get offended sometimes, but not everything is about putting people down. Overall, I think this video was comical and I would have laughed just as much if it was a white person. It does not surprise me that people reacted the way they did when the white man said he thought it was funny. I expect people to get defensive because they always do.

This situation is very unfortunate and very unfair, but I have to say that I am not that surprised that something like this happened. Stupid things like this happen everyday but many people just choose not to see it. However, the fact that the white man did not go to jail at all is completely absurd. No one should get an out of jail free card after shooting a random person they thought was someone else. It really makes me question our authority knowing that certain people can get away with things. When the man giving the presentation said that if he killed a white child he would get thrown in jail immediately. Just because he was black the police would react completely different and I would have to say I would agree with that. I’ve seen police pick on a certain person they thought was trouble or make accusations, because of the way you dress or car you drive. This got me thinking a lot about how unfair things can be for certain people. In another class I am taking we were taking about searches, one girl said in her high school they did a search and let all of her friends go without being searched. Other children who were dressed in black were searched thoroughly when the others weren’t even checked. Judgement is very common in our society, many of us see someone and as soon as we do we make a judgement about them. Think about it, we all have been the one to make the judgement or have seen someone else do it. Our society is too quick to jump to conclusions and it does not give people a chance. I think that people raising awareness about what happened will get the incident noticed and maybe repercussions will follow for the shooter. However, I do not foresee anything changing in the near future to prevent these incidents. I hope that things will be done to get justice for the family of the young man who had his life taken because of an assumption and I hope that enforcement will notice that things like that shouldn’t happen. Society may never change, but it is important to try. Think about the idea of empathy, put yourself in the shoes of the parents of the victim or the victim themselves. We all need to relate everything to ourselves because most of the corrupt things happening in the world we would not want to happen to any of our friends or family. So maybe we shouldn’t brush it off our shoulders because it was not one of our family, but the point is it could have been. This was a very sad day for many people I’m sure and no one should be killed from someones failure of judgement.

I want to start by saying this past class was a very powerful one that was quite intense for most of us. Arron shared a real story from Iraq and I think that made everyone realize the amount of people who really do get hurt. I know that both of my friends that have went over there are not the same as they were before they left. I suppose we cannot really blame them. I have always struggled with the idea of war because I’ve always thought about the innocent people that die because of it. War is hard for anyone involved or anyone who knows someone involved. After watching the videos of the American men ramming people off the road and running a car over it sort of made me embarrassed to say that they represent our country. I feel as though many times people in the military feel as though they are superior compared to other individuals and do ridiculous things like they did in these two videos. Unfortunately, this gives us a bad reputation along with the good reputation the United States holds. When speaking with the man over in Iraq he said a few things that stood out to me. First, I was surprised to hear that he went through all that trouble to find Sam after he watched the TED video. He must have really been touched by the video to go to such far lengths. Sam brought up the great point of putting yourself in someone else's shoes. We are taught to not to do things to others, if we don’t want others to do it to us or to put ourselves in other peoples shoes; this whole lecture kinda reminded me of the things my mom used to tell me as a child. Putting ourselves in the perspective of others gives us a totally different viewpoint than just looking through, “The looking glass,” with our own perspective. This is a very important thing for everyone in the world to think about. We should all think about the opposite argument and see why the opposite feels the way they do. The man from Iraq also sympathized to Arron for his injury and told him he hopes he gets a speedy recovery, but then continued to talk about how Arron is lucky to be were he is. There are many men in Iraq that go through the same trauma that a man like Arron has, but they do not have the resources to get better. Overall, I think this conversation made me respect the opposite team more than I would in the past and that we should not be so narrow minded when what is happening to us is happening millions of miles away to someone else.

Overall, this whole semester in Soc. 119 has been a big eye opening experience to many people; people who may have once been blindsided by things others make them believe or by our own refusal to learn. Of course, there are still several people who have yet to grasp the ideas that Sam is trying to teach us. In the beginning of the semester one black girl spoke out saying, “ All white people are evil,” and I think that comment has really stuck with many people all semester. The whole point to this class is to get us to open our minds and see that we are all people and we have all fucked up at one point or another. Sam is not being racist, he is trying to get a point across by showing us. So to that young woman, I hope that she will learn that comments like that make her seem ignorant and immature. And in the end, I hope she will leave thinking otherwise.
Picking one topic we talked about that really got my attention seems very difficult. Most of the lectures, I found very interesting and went home I would share some of the ideas I learned. One of my favorite classes was the class about child abuse. I think this class really brought us together and made us think of all the children that were hurt by Sanduky’s idiocy. By telling the class that we could fill up a whole section of the class with people who have been molested or sexually assaulted was mind boggling. I have some very close people to me that have went through this kind of trauma and I still never noticed how often it occurs. In addition, the poem by Arlene a few weeks ago brought us all down to reality. Her strength and fearlessness was outstanding and to be able to share such a sensitive topic with a room full of 700 people was so brave.
Another class that really interested me was the class about interracial dating. Putting people in such a difficult position, such as, picking the darkest person in the room and asking someone who is the most attractive of Korean men was so interesting. People were frantic when they were put in an unusual position and I think that made the whole class realize how sheltered some of us are. Lets not worry about what others think and be honest with ourselves and everyone else.
As for the rest of the semester, I am excited to be challenged. I am excited to be put in awkward situations and to learn more about myself in doing so. I hope Sam brings in some topics that really stir the pot and get people to continue to react.

Discrimination is everywhere in today’s society and has been for a very long time. Yes, the first step is noticing that there is discrimination, but what can we really do from there? Because we are all aware of the discrimination that takes place, and the different places is takes place, we should act upon it. If you’re the manager of a corporation, hire people based on their qualifications for the job. Who cares what their name is, or their skin color? Do what will make your business more successful. When we have children, we should teach them that everyone is the same and encourage them to be friends with anyone. Buy barbie dolls for little girls that are black, white, Asian, etc., and get them used to the people in society. Talk to people and ask them what they think about it, and question their views. People who are racist, why are you racist? What has been done to you to generalize a whole race as bad people? We have to bring peoples attention to the problem and show them why its wrong. Show the white people what it would be like if they were not white. Of course, this is not something that will stop any time in the near future, because it has been a part of the country for such a ling time. We have conservatives that don’t like things being changed and will not open their minds to these ideas. I think the best thing to do is talk about it and make others truly think about it. Make organizations help make society become equal and hire people based on their talents. For an experiment, people could start giving interviews without knowing the persons name and not being able to see the individual. It would be interesting to see who the interviewer would pick. This could be a good idea to show people how they may be more bias than they think. For schools, they could have a variety of teachers with different races, and they could learn more about others backgrounds to learn to respect them better. Yes, the topic of racism is always swept under the carpet because of people being uncomfortable, in denial, or just don’t care; we should make this topic easier to talk about. Just because I am white, and I bring up the topic of racism, doesn’t make me racist, nor should I feel as if I cannot bring up that topic. People are too afraid to be open to new ideas. We are slowly becoming a more liberal society, accepting gay marriage, etc.; why can’t we finally get over the idea of racial discrimination? Lets all stop worrying about what other people think, and lets expose ourselves to other peoples ethnic backgrounds and learn. Believe it or not, you can learn some very interesting things and find many similarities among yourselves.

If I was religious, and someone who doesn’t know anything about my religion thought it was stupid, I would probably think they were ignorant and uneducated. Anyone who is going to comment on anything should know the facts before they open their mouth and give their opinion. So many people just run their mouths without having any logic to why they feel the way they feel or why they believe what they believe. This happens in more than just religious situations and in any situation it is annoying. I believe that people should learn about other religions before judging them and to find out what religion they actually believe. There is so many different religions, and so many different ideas, so to just stick with the one your parents brought you into seems silly. My parents are catholic so I was baptized and had to go to catechism. When it was time to get confirmed, I decided I didn’t believe in the catholic religion, but my parents made me get confirmed. Today, I still have not really decided what I believe in. Religions sometimes strike me as a cult like atmosphere, but I think that is because of my previous experiences with the church. I do, however, think church teaches children good morals, but at the same time brainwashes them. Most of the religions I know about are narrow-minded and seem to just throw their beliefs in other peoples faces. I’m sure we have all ran into the guy standing on the corner preaching his belief, or the people that hand you their religious card and follow you if you don’t take it. The one time I had someone follow me and tell me I was going to go to hell. Everyday outside Willard stands a guy that talks about how sex before marriage will make you go to hell. Who is he to tell me I’ll go to hell? If he was so religious, he would be forgiving of our sins, right? These people just really piss me off and make me lean further away from religion. You should not have to force people into your beliefs, and you should let them decide their own path. From my experiences, religion has left me feeling bitter, and many of the religious people I have met have given me a negative outlook on the religion. As a result, we have families who don’t use contraceptive and have 8 kids that they cannot afford; we have the priests that molest young children and preach to us about God. The people of God are supposed are supposed to be nice and trustworthy, but how often do we find that? Some shun homosexuals and focus way to much on a book that they live their life by. I will continue to look to see if there is something that fits my beliefs, but as for now, I have found nothing.

While in class these past two weeks, Sam put a variety of people in an awkward situation. These awkward situations were based on race, but did not exactly mean that we are always racist when avoiding race conversations. Picking out the darkest person in the room is a question that I think would make anyone uncomfortable. I don’t think it is because of the racial factor, but singling anyone out in a crowd can make anyone feel awkward and uncomfortable. Imagine picking out the heaviest person in the classroom, no one would feel comfortable doing that. I guess I can understand the idea that white people shy away from races more than other races, but that is not all the white population. As a white person, I feel like many other races almost assume that white people are racist. It definitely depends where your from to get you to feel comfortable with different races. If you have only seen one black person in your life you may not know how to act or approach the person. When meeting with our group this week we all talked about different races and how your family and environment plays a big toll in your actions. I think white people are trying not to offend other races, so they try to avoid the conversation. They do not know what to say and if we bring up the topic of race sometimes others may become angry with us. Society does not make it an easy topic to talk about. White people don’t want to be called racist when they bring up the topic of race. It seems like if you say something about race as a white person you are in the wrong. Someone of a different race could bring this topic up and not get the same reaction a white person would get. I don’t think we shy away from the topic because we are racist, but because we feel like we will be blamed for being racist. There has been many times when I have been called racist, for stupid reasons. However, I am not racist at all, which just shows the stereotype white people have been given. If we look back in history white people were blamed for segregation. But its time we realize times have changed, we are not the same society we used to be. As a society, we have become more accepting as the years pass. We are slowly accepting gay marriage and we will continue to be a more liberal society as the years continue. People need to stop being so judgmental, and be more open to conversations about race. The more we talk about it the more comfortable society will become.