The first part of my classmates question is “why does society dislike immigrants”. To answer this I first have to say that I think it should be said that I do not think people dislike all immigrants, I just think they have different opinions about illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants technically have no rights in America and some people believe that they should not be here and others believe that they should be offered some protection by the country. My father’s parents and grandparents immigrated to America from Poland. They were able to move here legally and do not understand why others do not obey the laws about coming into this country and being a legal citizen of the country. I think one reason society may not like an illegal immigrant is because they depress the wages in the community. If a person is working for minimum wage and illegal immigrants will come in and work for even less, they may lose their jobs. Another reason people may not approve of illegal immigrants in the country is because immigrants use hospitals and emergency services instead of going to a doctor because they do not have insurance. This complicates things for hospitals especially in areas of high illegal immigration. I believe illegal immigrants also may make people afraid because of certain political attempts to remove them from the country. Especially in states like Arizona and New Mexico, legislation has been a little crazy lately and a little hysterical which makes other normal people become hysterical about the topic as well.
The second part of the question is asking why illegal immigrants are portrayed badly. I believe that this is mainly due to the fact that they are here and could be here legally by going through the proper channels. I also think another reason for this might be that comedians and people often joke about illegal immigrants and immigrants of any sort. I think that this leads people to get overly generalized impressions of these types of people. Documentaries and segments like we saw about the man feeding immigrants meals and how they do not get meals a lot are not what we usually see. I also think another reason illegal immigrants are portrayed badly is because people who came here legally are not proud of the illegal immigrants and they try to purposely sabotage them sometimes like Sam said in class. Another reason illegal immigrants may be portrayed badly by society is because they cannot really stand up for themselves. They do not want to be identified as illegal immigrants for the most part so they are less likely to stand up for themselves and dispute the claims that are made against them.

My classmate asked, “do you think you would actively try not to benefit from nepotism if the situation presented itself” and I have to answer “no.” I have benefited from nepotism in the past and although it does stink for whoever else may have been qualified and who did not get the job, I have been the person who did not get the job in favor of other people in certain situations. The summer after graduating from high school I applied to so many different jobs near my home in Albany, NY. However, I was not hired anywhere I applied to. By June, my family and I realized I probably would not be getting hired. I did not have the strongest resume and I did not want to spend the summer before college without a job and without some extra spending money for once I got to Penn State. My dad formerly worked for the state in the office of children and family services, and his position put him in contact with many childcare agencies in New York, mostly for problem children and instituted children. My father sent out an email to some of his work buddies who worked at childcare centers in Albany and I was able to get a job at one of them. I worked there the summer after senior year of high school and had an amazing experience in the preschool at this institute. The next summer, I returned and was a teaching assistant for the older, more problematic girls. I would never have gotten this job if it were not for nepotism and my father’s connections with people he knew through work. So was I unfairly chosen over someone who may have had better qualities? Probably. But once I got there, I proved I could do a good job and did a good enough job that I was rehired no questions asked. My boss asked me to return again this summer but I will be spending the summer in England so I cannot return. I think nepotism certainly has its disadvantages especially if you aren’t receiving the benefits. However this is the way the world works and if you turn down an opportunity just because you may have been given it unfairly, you might be missing out on a great experience. Someone can sit here and say they would not benefit from nepotism if they knew it was happening, but as I have benefited from it and as so many of my friends have, I know that is how the world works. I work now in the office of annual giving for Penn State and I talk to alumni who often say they look to fill openings with Penn State students first, before they even open up this opportunity to others. Isn’t this one of the main reasons we all chose to come to Penn State? The world we live in is all about networking and connections so those who say they would reject nepotism if the opportunity presented itself may have a difficult time thriving in this world.

My classmate asked the question, what do you think of the ratio of 29 civilians for 1 bad guy and what number would I choose? I’m going to start with the second part of the question first because I think it’s the easier one to answer. In an ideal world, soldiers and people fighting would lead to absolutely no civilian deaths. However, there is no way for this to be possible. A student in my suggestion suggested warning civilians of attacks, but very often the line is blurred between civilians and enemies. We cannot warn a whole country of civilians about a planned attack without risking one or two of those suspected civilians to actually be plotting against the U.S. It just is not possible and would make attacks completely useless and would kill innocent people for absolutely no reason. It would also cause a country to live in fear waiting for an attack even more than these poor civilians already are. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Also, I highly doubt that the armed forces got to the number 29 randomly. I’m sure they have had a lot of input from a variety of sources and it was decided a group of less than 30 is worth it to take out a terrible, terrible person. They know a lot more about combat than any of us do, so I trust that their number 29 has a pretty solid foundation behind it.

At this point I should say that I am fairly against the war in Iraq. I can understand why other countries hate the United States. We are a big bully. We tell other countries what they should do, and the only reason we care is because we want to profit off of it and we do not want our well being coming into question. Am I happy to have the lifestyle I currently have? Of course. Do I realize that it partially comes from the things the U.S. does to other countries? Yes. But I can put myself into others’ shoes and realize how annoying as a country we must seem. I do not like the idea that 29 people have to die for us to take out 1 person we deem ‘bad’. However, I can rationalize an idea like this. In my discussion group I posed the question in the terms of someone we know to be evil: Adolf Hitler. I asked the group if we had known Adolf Hitler was going to be meeting a group of people at a certain time and we wanted to take him out, would it be wrong to kill 29 people to make sure Hitler did not continue down the destructive path he continued? I do not think it is. I realize there will always be collateral damage in any decision we make, let alone a decision that deals with killing of other human beings.

So to solidify my position, I’m not really okay with the fact that 29 innocent people can be killed for 1 extremely evil person to be exterminated, but I recognize that this is an issue that will not go away.

The idea that women dress up while men dress down and that's okay was brought up in the needy penis lecture this Thursday. I think it makes sense that in a male centered world women would have to dress up while men don't. I should mention that I rarely feel the need to dress up and the only time I do is when my other girl friends are dressing up. I think it's interesting that the male standard for how women should dress and look has just been accepted by women over time and has become what is normal for girls to do. On one hand, women can now wear pants when years ago, women were forced to wear skirts and dresses. I think women now feel more liberated and feel like, "well, I can wear pants and look super cute in a miniskirt" but when did a miniskirt become the super cute ideal? Nothing that sam said about this was really surprising except for when he pointed out that a magazine supposedly catered towards women is more catered towards men. I never would have thought that men would control womens magazines. It's curious to me that men have controlled that part of our lives as women as well. To be honest, I will probably continue dressing up because that is what all of my friends do and I don't want to be out of place amongst them. If I could be comfortable all of the time I definitely would do that instead.

I think in a perfect world for a guy, every girl would look put together all of the time, and I think that is what the ideal would be. However, I think the ideal for a women would be much different. I think the ideal would be a lot more comfortable and a lot less dressed up. Dressing casual is a lot more comfortable but the male centered world does not tell us to do that.

In a female centered world, sexuality and outfits would be a lot less dressed up. The ideal would be comfort and happiness. In the male centered world, women are supposed to look put together and attractive at all times. This is not the easiest thing and often leads to women looking dumb and getting made fun of by other college guys. This getting made fun of is ironic because women do not know if they should live out the female ideal or the male ideal and get made fun of by other males.

My opinion hasn't really changed a lot after this lecture. It has just reinforced the ideas I had before and continued the things I believe about the male dominated world and the people who control the society today.

The student asked, “what factors in your race make it difficult to date outside of your race?” I have never dated outside of my race thus far in my life, but that’s not to say I wouldn’t in the future. However, one of my friends recently broke up with her boyfriend because they were fighting. Her boyfriend was black and her family would not allow her to date him. She tried to ignore her family and continue dating her boyfriend, but conflicts would come up due to the fact that her family did not respect him or their relationship together. I think this is one of the biggest barriers to interracial relationships. In my household, I believe my grandma would not approve of me dating someone who wasn’t white but then again she also wants me to only date good Polish boys. Now that interracial dating and interracial marriage is becoming more and more popular, less people in our generation care. I know some people here at Penn State who have even said that they would never date someone from a different race because of the problems that it would create within their family dynamic. One of the reasons family members may not be tolerant of their children dating outside of their race is because they grew up in a more racist time than we live in now. They may be remembering what happened to people in interracial relationships, but it is very different today. Two of my best friends in high school were dating. One was white and the other was black. Although originally her family did not approve, he worked to gain their approval and eventually did. Is this fair or the way people of different races should be treated? No, but it seems to be the way it is handled by people older than us. Some people are very attached to their culture and dating someone from a different culture, not even race, is often extremely hard. The person they are interested in may have grown up in a completely different setting and may have no interest in transforming into the others culture.

This video that this girl did for a school project was pretty effective. The group of girls that were interviewed all had pretty negative effects about their skin color and attributes of their appearance that pertain to their race. However, I don’t really think that this was the extremely emotional part of the video because all teenage girls have issues. My mom has asked me before if I am really going out with my hair looking like that just as one black girl’s mom said.

I was never taught that being white was ideal, when I was growing up but then again I don't think white people need to be told that to believe that. I was very much so surrounded by white people my whole life but my best friend growing up was a girl who was adopted from South Korea, and she looked very stereotypically Asian. I never thought she was weird or not as good as me, she was always just my best friend from Korea. However, I’m not sure if I was 3 and someone asked me which doll looked nice, and there was a white doll who looked like me, and a black doll that did not look like me that I would not pick the white doll. Growing up I had American girl dolls, because they were all of the rage. There was only 1 black American girl doll and 1 Native American girl doll and 6 or 7 white American girl dolls.

The reason I believe this video is so sad is because it shows extremely young kids who are uncomfortable with their own body image. The past two summers I have worked at a preschool in Albany, NY. Most of the children are either special needs children or from low income families in Albany. To think that some of the little girls and boys I helped to teach would say that they are not beautiful or they are bad would be extremely sad. However, one of the little black girls that was in the preschool was obsessed with Cinderella. She compared every pretty teacher to Cinderella. I believe this could be a part of the effect of media. Disney had no black princesses until this past year, so she was familiar with all of the Disney princesses and picked Cinderella as her favorite. I do believe that media plays a role though. If all you are surrounded by is white people, you will be used to seeing white people and will think that they are the ideal and you are the outcast. However, I also believe that their parents are not telling them that they are beautiful and that they are perfect the way they are.

For some reason, this video was very interesting to me. First of all, I can agree with the statement that the young man makes when he says just because he’s white does not mean he has a bunch of money laying around. I think it is often assumed that white people can pay for college and therefore don’t need the scholarships. Then the host went on to say that she believes his motion means that the minorities (women, and people of color) are becoming the majority of college students. I do not agree with this. Maybe it’s because I go to Penn State, where a majority of the students are white, but I do not think that the college composition has completely been altered from whites being the majority to people of color holding the majority. I do agree with the idea of a scholarship for young white men. I do not understand why white men who qualify for need would be purposely excluded from the process. This would not be acceptable if it was allowing white men to get into college, however it is only aiding them once they get in. If the only requirement for the scholarship was being a white man and the dollar amount was exorbitant, I would understand the controversy. However, the students need to show a dedication to their studies, and an excellence in their community – which is more of a stipulation than some scholarships for people of color, women, or special needs students. The fact that there are exclusive scholarships for every other racial and ethnic group points in the direction that this is not discriminatory and there should not be a huge controversy about this. As this young man stated, he is just trying to look out for white men who cannot afford college and who do not qualify for scholarships. It is interesting to me that they can afford to give out scholarships based on donations alone. The idea that you have to be careful who the donors are is especially important when dealing with a scholarship that targets a particular race, but I believe all scholarships that pertain to a certain race would have to deal with checking the backgrounds of donors. As long as the donors and the non profit organization giving out the scholarships continue while proving they do not have an agenda, I do not see why this scholarship should be an issue. If there is a scholarship for white females only, black females only, black males only, and literally every single other race and identify of people, why should there not be one for white males? There is a part of this interview that I do not agree with. He says, “it’s time, things have changed.” Although there are significantly more women and people of color in college now, I do not think that everything has changed. College is often unattainable for many people and those people usually are not white, as we have learned in class. It is easy enough for this young man, who is less than 30 years old, to say “things are different!” because he sees himself struggling and sees people of color in the college, but I do not think he is seeing the whole picture.

Growing up, I never really thought I had any similarities with anyone other than people in the northeast. I have to admit I always thought countries even as close as Mexico and Canada were so foreign and completely different. I did not really think that little kids in other countries would be watching Disney movies and Barney and taking naps just as I had done. The first time I actually thought about what other kids in other countries did was when I was in 7th grade Spanish class and we watched a Disney movie in Spanish. The whole class was so excited that our favorite childhood movie was in another language. But why had we not expected this from the start? I think that growing up we do not even think about what others in the world are doing, and this is the time when we begin to think all others are different than us. I am sure if we grew up hearing, “and right now in India, the little kids are watching this movie too!” we would be more tolerant and accepting of those who are different than us. However, we grow up thinking we are the only ones who live the way we do and no one ever tells us to think differently. While we are beginning to learn foreign languages in 7th grade, we find it ridiculous that not everyone in America speaks English, yet most of us do not know a second language.
One of the reasons I believe we think people are so different is because we do not take time to learn about the cultures of the world and different languages and religions. Part of this is due to the fact that public schools do not really spend a ton of time on world religions and private schools do not talk about it at all. It is much easier to understand people once you understand parts of their religion and what their culture is all about, yet we do not teach people in schools so they graduate without ever really learning about another culture, unless they put themselves out there to do so.
Many people in the United States never get an opportunity to go abroad and learn about different countries and experience different cultures for themselves. Until they are able to do this, I am sure they will always think different cultures and people who do not look like them or do not speak like them are completely different than they are. We always expect our lifestyle to be unique because we are from the United States and have a different way of doing things. As proven by the fact that McDonald’s are throughout the world, every time we stop and think what we are doing is unique, it probably is not and there is probably someone around the world from us who is doing the same exact thing.

After hearing my classmate ask the question, “do arrests of minorities occur because of racism or because of police in urban areas?” I began to think just as I had in our discussion group after the lecture this week. Although this question can be answered and supported with statistics given to us by Sam, I believe that it can also just be answered using common sense. It is easy for me to see that arrests would be higher in a city than in a rural area. Cities are more populated by definition so the chances of catching people committing illegal acts are more likely to occur. Similarly, cities are also places where it is not unusual to see lots of people out at night, when crimes are more likely to take place than at lunch time on any old Wednesday afternoon. People who live in a city have a different way of living than people in rural areas as well. In the cities, most people do not have cars so they would be walking around with drugs, guns, etc. where as people who live in rural areas drive from place to place and are less likely to have their car searched. People who live in urban areas also typically live in apartments or rented homes with landlords who can give permission to the police to search the apartment in question. It is much easier for someone with a house to tell the police they have to wait and come back when they have a warrant and get rid of the drugs, or whatever they have in their house than it is for someone in an apartment to be able to hide things from the police when they have easy access to the building with a cooperative landlord. Landlords are more likely to be cooperative in cities because they do not want people living in their buildings that partake in criminal activities whereas if there was a rented house in a rural area, the landlord may be more likely to trust the tenant.
I do believe there is racism in this as well though. First of all, the reason more minorities are in cities is due to discrimination in housing years ago and continuing on today. Discrimination takes place still today. I have heard from my friends in minority groups that people will still follow them around stores to make sure they aren’t stealing. I believe the racism that is in the judicial system and within the police force is not individual racism but societal racism and discrimination. The police officers aren’t taught to target people who are minorities, but society teaches us that these are the people who commit crimes, even though that’s not true.
In conclusion, I believe that the population density in cities lends itself to having a high police presence which leads to more arrests. But I also believe that racism and discrimination throughout society plays a large factor for the high number of minority arrests.

The first question proposed by this student is “how would you interpret these names?” First of all, I have never heard the term “twinkie”, which may only show that I do not socialize with enough people who have Asian ancestry. However, I would know how to interpret the term “Oreo” or “ut oh Oreo” if I heard those terms. Oreo, as in the cookies, “black on the outside, white on the inside” is a term given to people who look black but “act white”. Whenever I have heard this term, it was never when someone was doing something illegal or immoral. It is ironic how the stereotypes of white being ideal has carried over into comparing people to cookies. My friend Robert is from Jamaica and he has very dark skin. He classifies himself as black. However, in high school people would say that he “acted white”. He was in all of the honors and AP courses throughout high school and wore Polo Ralph Lauren. So does the fact that he was smart and wore expensive clothes make him “act” white? Apparently it did to many kids I went to high school with. The interesting thing is, they did not mean this in a bad way whatsoever. It somehow made him a better person because he was a good student and had money, which apparently only white people are thought to do. If I heard the phrase of being an oreo; black on the outside, white on the inside, I would think it pertains to kids who are black but are not engaged in the hip hop culture. It’s unreasonable to assume all people who have dark skin also like rap music. Not everyone who is white likes country music after all. I think that everyone who lived in the U.S. and know what the stereotypical white culture is as compared to the stereotypical black culture would have a similar idea when they heard the phrase Oreo. By no means am I condoning this, I just believe there is a stereotypical version of white people. The fact that we have made stereotypes for races all the way down to the clothes they wear and the music they listen to is not a pleasant thought. A phrase I have heard in a demeaning way is “ut oh Oreo”, the cookies that Oreo came out with a few years ago that are vanilla shortbread cookies with chocolate filling. For some reason, this “ut oh Oreo” somehow became a way to criticize white people who are submerged in the hip-hop culture.
The second question is one that has stumped me. Why isn’t there a phrase for someone who is Asian but “acts black”? Well, for one, maybe there was no cookie for them to model their stereotypes after. All kidding aside, I cannot even begin to answer this question. I do believe it is probably a good thing, so we can stop throwing around discriminatory Nabisco snack names.