I have been wondering why it is such a big deal about if you’re gay, determining if it was by choice or if you were born gay. Why does it even matter? The person is gay, so what? It doesn’t affect you or your life at all. People need to learn to mind their own business instead of involving themselves in other people’s lives.
I have two gay cousins, one boy on my mom’s side and a girl on my dad’s side. Both are in their early twenties. Everyone in my family was waiting for my boy cousin to come out because from a very young age, he had feminine tendencies. When he was seven all he wanted for Hanukkah from my grandma was a fairy costume. She was so torn about whether to get it for him or not and she ended up getting it. My girl cousin, however, is very girly and no one would never know she is gay unless she told you. Both of them only came out to my family in the last couple years.
Although I am a heterosexual, I have no problem with gay people. I don’t love my cousins any less and in fact, when my girl cousin told me she was gay, it brought us closer together because she felt like she could trust me and share things with me. I was the very first person who she told in our family.
I don’t however, like to see PDA in any form. I don’t like it with guys and girls and I especially don’t like it with same sex couples. It makes me very uncomfortable. I also feel bad that I am uncomfortable around it.
Being gay is not a choice, although my grandparents would beg to differ. A few years ago, when he was still living, my grandpa came up to me and said “Make sure you don’t turn into Elana” (in reference to my cousin being a lesbian). I responded by telling him that what he said was horrible, but that I was not gay. They seem to think she is going through a phase. I have tried to explain that she is not going to magically wake up one day and like boys.
I think someone is born gay is shown mostly dramatically in little kids. They barely know how to tie their shoes, but they are already dressing and acting “differently.” There is no way they even know what it means to be gay let alone who they are supposed to like and be attracted to.
No person would openly choose to be ridiculed and “outcasted” by the public and society. No one ever likes to be different and feel as if they don’t belong.

I have been wondering why it is such a big deal about if you’re gay, determining if it was by choice or if you were born gay. Why does it even matter? The person is gay, so what? It doesn’t affect you or your life at all. People need to learn to mind their own business instead of involving themselves in other people’s lives.
I have two gay cousins, one boy on my mom’s side and a girl on my dad’s side. Both are in their early twenties. Everyone in my family was waiting for my boy cousin to come out because from a very young age, he had feminine tendencies. When he was seven all he wanted for Hanukkah from my grandma was a fairy costume. She was so torn about whether to get it for him or not and she ended up getting it. My girl cousin, however, is very girly and no one would never know she is gay unless she told you. Both of them only came out to my family in the last couple years.
Although I am a heterosexual, I have no problem with gay people. I don’t love my cousins any less and in fact, when my girl cousin told me she was gay, it brought us closer together because she felt like she could trust me and share things with me. I was the very first person who she told in our family.
I don’t however, like to see PDA in any form. I don’t like it with guys and girls and I especially don’t like it with same sex couples. It makes me very uncomfortable. I also feel bad that I am uncomfortable around it.
Being gay is not a choice, although my grandparents would beg to differ. A few years ago, when he was still living, my grandpa came up to me and said “Make sure you don’t turn into Elana” (in reference to my cousin being a lesbian). I responded by telling him that what he said was horrible, but that I was not gay. They seem to think she is going through a phase. I have tried to explain that she is not going to magically wake up one day and like boys.
I think someone is born gay is shown mostly dramatically in little kids. They barely know how to tie their shoes, but they are already dressing and acting “differently.” There is no way they even know what it means to be gay let alone who they are supposed to like and be attracted to.
No person would openly choose to be ridiculed and “outcasted” by the public and society. No one ever likes to be different and feel as if they don’t belong.

I think people, by nature, are very skeptical and as time goes on we will only get more skeptical and unfortunately, less trusting of others. I think the most recent start of this was September 11, 2001. We began to question everything and everyone, especially Muslims because there was so much unknown and fear within the American people. Innocent people were targeted and labeled just because of the way they looked and the religion they observed. I thought the ABC News “What Would You Do?” video was very interesting because it portrayed a real life instance and some people’s reactions were just appalling. I can’t believe people today can live in the United States and be so ignorant and discriminatory.
This relates to the topic Sam talked about earlier in the week related to kidnappings in the United States. We are so untrusting of other people, when 99% of people are good, because we have seen a few bad instances and have blown those up and out of proportion to the point where people don’t even want to let their kids play outside in their yard for fear of someone kidnapping their child. When my parents were growing up, people barely locked their doors let alone worried about their kids playing outside or walking to school. I live in a very safe neighborhood and my parents never questioned my sister and I when we were younger and wanted to play outside or go up the street to play with friends. It makes me sad that some kids missed out on that part of their childhood because their parents are too afraid.
I think it is very sad how little trust people have in one another and feel that they have to question and doubt others. I think it is good to ask questions because that’s how you challenge others and grow, but I think there is a fine line when to stop when you are taking it too far and questions peoples’ intentions.
I am most inclined to trust and believe those who I know and am close to. I believe everything my parents and family say because I know they care about me and have good intentions and are always looking to protect me and help me flourish. It’s not that I don’t trust strangers, though. I like to believe that most people have good intentions and are not trying to steer me in the wrong direction or lie to me.
Something that I have found to be very true is that when something good happens, you tell a few people, but when something bad happens, you tell everyone. People love to write bad reviews about movies or restaurants and share of their horrible experience. It is one of the sad but true problems of our society.

I think one of the nicest parts about being an American and living in the United States is the freedom to express yourself however you so choose. You can dress however you want, say whatever you want, and more or less do what you want to when you want to.
My recitation class had an interesting discussion today addressing a similar topic about why women dress the way they do and what it means about them. Personally, I dress however I want depending on my mood or occasion. If I am going to the beach, I wear a bikini. If I am going to a formal event, I wear the appropriate attire. I always want to be dressed for the occasion.
Part of respecting yourself is being comfortable in the clothes you are wearing. If you choose to wear more revealing clothes, it doesn’t mean you respect yourself any less, it just means those are the clothes you want to wear because you like the way you look in them.
The guys in my class argued that sometimes they feel girls send different signals depending on what they are wearing and I agreed with the girls who argued that they mostly dress for themselves in order to look good or dressed to match what their friends were wearing. I don’t consciously dress a certain way in order to look good for a guy. The clothes I wear I do so because I feel good in them and feel that they complement my style, personality, or body shape.
Most of the time all girls care about is taking pictures for Facebook. Everyone wants to look cute and sexy in Facebook pictures. They provide a good source of memory especially after so many nights of going out.
I don’t feel that a girl should be labeled a “slut” just because her clothes are revealing or show a lot of skin. She may be the nicest person with good morals, who just happens to be comfortable with her body.
Men don’t get judged for what they wear nearly as much as women do. No guy is ever called a slut after being with multiple girls, but a girl who happens to be scantily dressed is given a label so quickly.
Part of the problem stems from the atmosphere that men and women meet each other in in college. Several nights a week, especially on the weekends, students go to fraternities or parties at apartments and it is heavily centered around drinking and is not exactly an atmosphere in which to get to know someone on a personal, deep level. It is a party atmosphere and people’s motives are not always so sound. I partake in this too and I’m not saying it is right or wrong, it’s just the way students do it here at Penn State.

I think there were a few problems with that Fox video. It should never have been made in the first place and upon watching it, at first I thought it was a joke, and not something that was actually used in a serious content. Fox was wrong to do it and stereotype people like that.
I think it all depends on who is watching the video, because everyone finds different things humorous. At first I thought the video was funny, but then I realized the people were being exploited for their accents and lack of knowledge about American sports and it made me feel bad about watching it. It would have been less cruel had the people been clued in on what was going on. Instead, they were just put into an uncomfortable situation and were being asked to talk about something they knew nothing about. Asians are known for being book smart and are not as sports-centered as Americans are. The man knowingly targeted people who he knew he could exploit. The man interviewing them was mocking them and their accents and pretending he didn’t know what they were saying.
If I was on the other side and was the one being laughed at by a room of 700 people, I would be very upset and offended that people were making fun of the way I talked as I tried to assimilate into their culture. I would feel very uncomfortable and unwelcome and it would be more difficult for me to try to assimilate into the culture or country if I knew I was the laughing stock of the natives.
I think it is so cool when people are able to speak more than one language. I know if I was in another country I wouldn’t be able to do half as well as far as speaking as most of the international students do here. They will be the successful ones in life because they will be able to work and communicate with a much larger group of people than I will ever be able to.
America is thought of as a melting pot and as accepting of people from all different backgrounds and religions, but then why do we make people who are different than us feel like such outcasts? Anyone who doesn’t look American or speak English immediately gets pushed to the outer ring of society.
I thought it was interesting that people had so many different reactions in our class. Some of the Asian-American students thought it was funny, a lot of white kids thought it was funny, and one black girl did not find it funny at all. I was glad she was able to stand up and defend her opinion because oftentimes I am too afraid to share mine.

As the speaker in class the other day said, we basically live in a racist society. This has been made clear after the recent death of the innocent young boy Trayvon Martin who was murdered by a white man. He was a simple, black seventeen year old boy who was simply walking when he was attacked and killed. If the victim had instead been a white boy, the outcome would have been totally different, no doubt. And as awful as that is to say, it is true. We like to think of America as the most powerful nation on Earth and one that stands behind equality and democracy, but after the recent events, it is very clear we are still far from that. Now I don’t know much about the murder, but I do know the man who killed the boy is seriously disturbed and needs to be put in prison for the rest of his life. He is the definition of racist.
Fortunately, this case has made national news, but if it had been a white boy murdered by a black man, the entire country would have freaked out five times as much. It is so sad that we are in the year 2012 and there is still such a divide between whites and the rest of the world. Why do white people still believe they are worth more than people of color or other cultures? If anything, it makes us look weak, the fact that we feel we have to belittle and hurt others just to make ourselves seem superior. What sick world was that man raised in that he set out to target an innocent little boy? And why did I even have to specify that he was black at the beginning of this blog? I guess, in some ways, we are all slightly racist, without evening meaning to be. The fact that we have to have an entire class called Race and Ethnic Relations just proves how much farther we have to go as a society before we truly see everyone as equal.
If everyone was considered equal, there would be no violence, no war, no poverty, no disease, and no problems. Will we ever be able to live in a world like that? I seriously have my doubts, which is so sad.
If the shooter was black and the victim was white, the shooter would definitely be in jail. The fact that the man who killed Martin was not immediately put in jail shows that there is a serious flaw in our legal system. There needs to be an entire re-evaluation of the law, because when someone commits a crime, he should be punished, no matter what his color, or culture, or religion. One person’s life is not more valuable than another. This brings us back to the rule of 29. The fact that 29 enemies can be killed to spare the life of one American soldier is not just at all. Hopefully justice will be served in this case and that the man who killed Martin will be punished to the fullest extent of the law for his malicious act of violence.

I often complain about how broke I am as a college student. I do not have a job during the school year and my parents don’t put money into my bank account each month like some of my friends’ parents, so I have no source of income. Still, they pay for my tuition, room and board, books, and most everything else. I feel “poor” at times and feel limited by what activities I can and cannot do. I have to decide if I can afford to eat downtown more than once a week and where. And I have to decide if I can afford that new sundress or those cute new sandals. I sometimes like the challenge of having to budget my money because as I get older I will have to do it completely on my own and it’s better that I get practice with it now and make some mistakes now so that I don’t have to make them in the future. It allows me to have a greater appreciation for the work that goes in to earning each dollar.
For instance, I have a Co-op with The Hershey Company from July through December. I will be making good money and my parents decided this will be a good opportunity for me to have to live completely on my own and on my own money. I will be paying the rent myself, buying my own groceries, paying for my own gas, etc. It will be a good learning experience as I will have to set a monthly budget for myself.
Relatively speaking, though, I am rich. I am actually very rich. I am from a white, upper middle class area of Pittsburgh. As Sam has mentioned in class a few times, anyone who goes to Penn State is very wealthy…compared to the rest of the world. It makes me feel pathetic and whiny when I complain about being “broke” and then go to class or listen to the news and learn about all of the poverty and starvation all around the world and realize I just threw away half of my lunch because I wasn’t very hungry. We, as Americans, are such a wasteful society. We are so ungrateful for everything we have and the opportunities we have just because we were born in this country.
One of the students today in class shared with us that while he was in Iraq he sustained a massive head injury and Basam commented how lucky he was to have been in the US Army to receive such good medical care because many Iraqis who had the same injuries were not able to receive that kind of care, if any at all.
I never before gave much thought to how much inequality there was in the world. But now it makes me feel bad. I don’t know what practical things I can do to make a change. My family donates money to lots of different organizations in need, but does the money really make a significant difference in the lives of the people who need it the most? I never get to see the end result of those donations so I will never really know.
In my discussion group we talked about the importance of open dialogue and more and more I believe that is the key to solving some of the world’s biggest problems. People need to be more open-minded and start talking to one another to hear everybody’s point of view. It is the only way to start working towards a solution.

First of all, I am absolutely in love with this class. I have never taken a sociology class before. I have never really discussed race before. Each time I go to class and the weekly recitation, I learn something new.
I had no idea how severe racial inequality in this country was. I had no idea how severe income inequality was. I grew up in a mostly white, upper middle class area. These things were never discussed because they never seemed to be an issue. Rich versus poor, black versus white, and everything else outside and between those never really occurred to me. I am white. I had never before really thought about what that meant and the certain advantages and disadvantages I would have in my life because of the color of my skin.
Each week in my recitation, we have very interesting discussions. I have learned a great deal from my black classmates about their different backgrounds as they have shared some aspects of their pasts. Some things are the same, but there are a lot of differences.
Today, for instance, a girl, who is black, talked about the extra measures she takes in a job interview, which included changing her voice to sound more white. This blew my mind. I had never heard anything like that. She said she feels that it helps her in job interviews. As a white woman, I am coming to realize more and more, how much of an advantage I have because I never have to think about things like that, just for being white, which is something I had no control over.
When Sam asked in class if any of us wanted to switch to another race if we could, to be honest I thought, hell no, I like being white. I like not having to worry about getting a job, or a mortgage, or any of those things because of the color of my skin. I never think about what it means to be white, until I am part of these kinds of conversations. But I like them. I like being challenged and being posed new ways of thinking. The bubble I come from is fairly small, not much diversity. It is all white and upper middle class, from where I am from in Pittsburgh.
I want to know more about what my classmates and I can do to fix some of these problems. We are the ones who have time to do something about it, to make a change, an improvement for ourselves and generations to come. It is all well and good to talk about it and raise awareness to some of the problems facing society, but that will only get you so far. What actions can we take to eliminate peoples’ awareness about differences in race, fix differences in equality, fix differences in education, fix differences in income, fix differences in religion, and differences in just about every other aspect of life?

To me, racism is singling out a specific group of people because of the way they look and act. It is unfair and definitely keeps society from improving and growing and making the world a better place. Until most people are able to put aside racial differences, we will always be held back from learning and growing from other people, cultures, races, and ways of life. There are too many people, even if they claim they are only joking, who make racist comments and slurs all day, every day. They fail to recognize how hurtful and inaccurate their words can be.
There is a huge stereotype against Asians. Most people expect them to look and speak a certain way. Most people expect them to be smart. They are expected to be good at math and science. They are expected to get good grades in school. They are expected to attend good colleges and then go on to get good jobs and make a lot of money as doctors or engineers. Sam has showed us many statistics in class that show Asians making the highest incomes in the country and scoring the best on standardized tests.
He also mentioned that Asians get bullied the most in schools, which was unfortunate to learn. They probably get made fun of most often for doing so well academically, but failing socially. If someone comes straight from an Asian country, most likely their English is hard to understand which would make it more difficult to integrate into American society.
I had never heard of Jeremy Lin before taking this class, but I think it is interesting that so many people have so many different opinions about his recent success as a basketball player. Why shouldn’t an Asian be able to play basketball and do well at it? Why do people make such a big deal about the fact that he’s Asian? I think that is racist, that people freak out when someone who is not typically associated with a sport or activity is good at it and gains popularity. It’s nice that he seems to have a lot of followers and support, but rude that so many people make comments about his race and playing abilities.
It is always interesting to meet an Asian who doesn’t fit the stereotype of being really smart. It makes me wonder about the way they were raised at home as a child. Did their parents not stress the importance of education like most Asian parents do? My doing that, however, is not fair. It’s almost the same as assuming all black people grow up in the ghetto which is definitely not true. Sam has explained that most black students in class are middle class or upper-middle class.
I think part of being racist is just pure ignorance and the only way to combat it is education. Hopefully not too far in the future racism and stereotypes will be less of an issue as more minority groups gain a bigger presence in the United States.

For most of my life, I was raised to be conservatively Jewish. I went to Hebrew School and Sunday School twice a week until my Bat Mitzvah. After my Bat Mitzvah, I was confirmed. I observed all of the holidays and followed most of the rules, but none of it ever really meant much to me. I was just going through the motions and doing what I was told to do and expected to do. I also just believed in what I was supposed to. I wasn’t thinking about any of the history or trying to make sense of it and connect it and bring meaning into my own life.
Looking back on my Bat Mitzvah which was two days after my thirteenth birthday, I didn’t appreciate any of it: not the fact that I was becoming a Jewish adult, nor the fact that after studying for six months and working hard to prepare the service, I would present myself to all of my friends and family. I wanted it to all be over with. I was more than stressed out and felt so much pressure to do well and not mess up that I was not able to enjoy any of the processes leading up to it or the actual weekend itself. I really wish I had now. It was such an important day in my life. It was a coming of age ceremony filled with all of the most important people in my life. You only get one Bat Mitzvah like that and I wish I had taken advantage of what it really meant and what a special time that was.
I am, overall, very religiously ignorant. I know virtually nothing about my own religion or any other religion for that matter. I don’t understand anything about the Old Testament or the New Testament or anything about Jesus except that he was Jewish. I don’t know any Hebrew past the words Shalom and Amen. I now only go to synagogue for the biggest holidays of the year. If anyone ever told me to read their religions’ text, I have absolutely no reason to say no. I need to become more knowledgeable about other religions and ways of life. My view is so small and narrow and shallow and is virtually meaningless. I’m Jewish by default. I’m Jewish because I have to be, because my parents are. Don’t get me wrong, I like being Jewish, but I have no sense of what it is like to observe any other religion. And as Sam mentioned, I fall into the category of those people who do things just because their parents did. I am politically ignorant as well and vote the same way my parents do solely because I trust their judgment, not because I know anything about any of the candidates or even the political parties for that matter. I need to begin to form my own opinion about things such as politics and religion because I don’t want to go through life like a zombie and just follow the pact because that’s what has always been done and is what is most familiar. I also want to raise my children to be Jewish and it is important to me that they know, understand and are able to appreciate their religion and heritage. This will only happen, however, if I and my future husband make a point to educate them and expose them to their religion.