I have a gay uncle and he has been gay my whole life but I never knew until I was about 13 years old. No one in my family ever made a big deal about it and it was never a concern. He had a few boyfriends that he would bring to family parties and things like that but I always thought they were just friends, I guess that was just me being young. As I got older, I just kind of figured it out that he was gay and when I asked my mom she told me he was and that was it. She said that that was the way he was born and he is very happy. Although I am not gay, I feel that if I were, I would have no problem coming out to my mom. Nothing changed for her when she found out her brother was gay and has told me several time that if I thought I was, she would fully support me and not love me any less. My father was raised in a more Catholic, conservative home and I would probably have a little bit more difficulty telling him something like that because I have heard him say derogatory things about gay people. However, I know that if I told him I was, he would still completely love me that way he always has. I think for people who were raised with straight parents, especially parents that have strong religious beliefs, it would be extremely hard to come out to them. I have heard stories about parents trying to convince their kids that they are not really gay and it is just a phase. Or parents that cannot even look at their child the same way once they find out. I think coming out to gay parents would be much easier for someone because their parents had to go through the same thing and know what it is like and how hard it is. They can relate to their child and know what they are going through. I think that gay parents would be much more supportive of having a gay child than some straight parents because they know it is like to be born that way and that they cannot help it. For straight people, they do not know what that is like so they cannot relate. I feel very grateful that I have such an accepting family and that if I were gay that it would not be a problem to come out to them. I cannot imagine having to keep such a large part of myself from my parents because I would be too afraid to tell them because they would not accept me.

I think that the world today is filled with so much more fear than it was when our parents or their parents were growing up. I think that the media has a huge part to play in this. In the past, the media was not as big as it is today and did not have as much influence on society as it does today. The media today pretty much only reports on the crimes and bad things happening in the world; In the news, reports of murder and assault are much more prevalent than good things that people are doing. This makes people believe that there is more bad in the world when in reality there is much more good. This is why when our parents were growing up, they had a lot more freedom than we did. Their parents were not in fear of this terrible world filled with bad people and crime. They were allowed to go places by themselves and walk to school and have a life where they did not fear the worst. But today, with the news and television, everyone fears the worst all the time. Television has greatly helped influence too. In all the cop shows and things like that, they create this outrageous crimes and situations that really do not happen. However, people watch these shows week after week and see murder after murder and things like that and start to believe that this is common and is what are world is actually like. I have to admit that this has happened to me before. After watching some of these shows and movies, I often think “that could happen to me” when in reality, I have a much better chance of dying in a car accident or even being struck by lightening. This can all go back to the Haiti talk and the twitter feed when people were thinking the worst about something that is so good. Honestly, what people were saying really did annoy me and just the fact that they were questioning it to that extent I did not think was necessary. Obviously this project is intended to benefit the people in an extremely poor Haiti and no one is stealing the money, like that never ran through my mind to think otherwise. People just live in a world of fear and skepticism and just have no faith in people. We need to realize that not everybody is bad and that most people have really good intentions and are not trying to hurt anyone. You can’t live in a life a fear; you will never really live. There has to be a point where everyone just has to let go of their fears and believe that the world is a good place and that people are good and start to really live life.

The way a woman dresses is personal choice. However, when it comes to whether they respect themselves or not in their dress, I think it is the intentions behind what the woman is wearing. I think that if a woman is wearing something that is revealing and has the intentions of drawing men’s attention with her clothes, then I do not believe that she is respecting herself. There are other ways to attract men. Guys do not want to date a girl who dresses like a skank, they only want her for one thing. I think our culture has a lot of influence over that though and that most females believe that they need to wear skimpy clothes to get a guys attention. But I do believe that there are a lot of women that wear revealing clothes and things along that line because they feel really good about themselves and actually have a lot of self respect and really do not intend on drawing attention from guys. I have a boyfriend who does not go here and on the weekends I will go out and wear a tight dress or skirt or tight jeans, but it is not because I want to attract attention from guys, my boyfriend makes me feel amazing about myself. And I do have a lot of self-respect and I do not think that just because I am wearing tight clothes or something like that people should think I have no self-respect. But I wouldn’t wear to a frat what I wear to class everyday, people would think it was weird. I would love to wear out what I wear to class but people would just be like what the hell is that girl doing? I feel like a lot of it has to get along with a girl’s actions too. If a girl is wearing revealing clothes and then is acting like a slut, then I would come to the conclusion that that girl has no self-respect. I do think that there is a way to sometimes wear clothes like that but carry yourself in a respectable way, it may be a fine line, but I think its possible. In our culture, especially like at the beach and the pool, it is perfectly fine to wear a bikini and show your body and no one judges you. But if you did that in Muslim culture, the people would think that you had no respect for yourself. I do not think that making it a law that woman have to cover up forces them to have self respect. I think that a lot of women wouldn’t do it if they didn’t have to and would go to the beach and wear a bikini. Dress is a really cultural thing and much of it a personal choice.

I agree with his statement that if the shooter had been black and the victim white, the shooter would be in jail right now. I do not know how our society can move past things like this or when it will happen. However, with the Trayvon Martin case, I do not know what to believe anymore. I did not know anything about the case until Sam brought it up in class last week, then I began to look into it and could not believe that someone would shoot a boy because he looked suspicious because he was black and had a hood on. I thought that it was even more repulsive that this person has not been arrested when people saw him shoot him. But now more and more articles are coming out saying that there was an altercation and that the shooter was wounded first. There are also articles coming out about how Trayvon was the model student that the media made him out to be in the beginning. So now I do not know what to believe. But I do know that we are talking about a human life here and the fact that a young man was killed. I do think that George Zimmerman should be arrested until there is a trial because he is known to have shot Martin. However, with all of these new facts coming out and different stories, I think there should be innocence until proven guilty. People need to learn all the facts and then make their opinions. This is similar to the whole scandal here at Penn State. So many were so quick to make judgments on people when they did not know all the facts. There needs to be proven facts put on the table first then people need to form their opinions.
I am from the Philly area and watching the nightly news, majority of the stories are about people getting shot and killed, many of these people innocent people. Innocent people die everyday in crimes but it does not always make national news. White people are killed by black people and it does not make national news. Before all the facts are even out, people are very quick to jump to the conclusion that this was a hate crime. I personally jumped to this conclusion to by what the media gave me. The media puts out there things that will get people worked up and plays on people’s emotions. As more things come out about this case, I do not know what to believe and want to wait until there are proven facts. However, I do feel that George Zimmerman should be arrested for the time being because he did shoot someone and it is not clear as to why he did what he did, but he did do it.

I agree that children in elementary school are taught that everyone is unique in their own way and that everyone is special. Kids do start to learn about their heritage a little bit and a little about other children’s too. I think that children are just so pure and have not experienced life yet that they do not see many of the differences that are between them. They think being different is being good at math or being artistic or being good at sports. They don’t think of differences as color of skin or physical features. When you look at a playground of kids, you see kids of all races and ethnicities playing together; kids don’t see the differences between them. Young kids are accepting and just want to have fun with whoever they can.
However, once these kids get older and have more experiences, they start to see the differences between them. But then they are taught to not see the differences and not to really talk about it. I feel like this is where the stage of political correctness comes from. People are told that these differences don’t matter and really should not matter so when they are brought up, they do not want to say the wrong thing. So people say what they have been taught is politically correct to say.
My nephew is now 10 years old and has many friends of other races. He knows that his friends are different from him and has no problem with it. I often wonder if that will stay the same as he grows up. Will he still be accepting or will he begin to be drawn to people of only his race, which sometime teens do. I would like to think that he would because this side of our family has many friends of other races and ethnicities, so I would hope he would remain as respectful as he is now. However, on the other side of my family, many adults do make racists remarks and things like that, even around kids, which I heard growing up too. This resulted in many of my cousins being uncomfortable around people of other races and always believing what our family said. And when I hear my cousins who are now older make remarks like the adults used to, it bothers me. I knew from my young age what the adults were saying was wrong because my mother always taught me differently, but my other cousins did not. So, I also think that a children’s family has a lot to do with how accepting they are of the differences between themselves and other children. And as they grow older and become more mature and understand more, their family has even more of an influence over them.

I thought that Thursday’s lecture was extremely powerful and just the fact we had American veterans talking to an Iraqi man in a classroom setting was amazing. I never have really known how I felt about the war and do not know if I do yet, however, this past week’s classes has made me seriously start to think about it. I was very surprised when Sam threw out the ratio of 29 to 1; that we value 1 American soldier’s life to 29 Iraqi lives or others. Just the fact that there is a number value of someone life and that someone’s life could be just as valuable as 29 other people’s just threw me. It makes me feel uneasy, however, when I think of it as someone I love whose one life that was, then that might make me think of it a little bit differently. However, I still do not know if I think that is right or how I really feel about it but I was surprised to learn that this exists.
After 9/11, I saw how American views to Muslim people changed and they started to gain a very negative prejudice towards them because of what just a few people did. Just a few people’s actions changed the way our country saw a whole race of people. So this makes me wonder, what do Iraqi’s and the people in the countries that we are occupying think of the Americans? Do they like us? Do they appreciate that we are there or do they want us to leave? I still do not know if I know the answer to this. I know the war started because of 9/11 and we were fighting against terrorism, but now are we still fighting against terrorism or are we now fighting for oil? Are all these lives being taken because of oil? These are all the questions I still have about the war. I am curious as to now what are we fighting for? I am still also confused about what our troops are currently doing over there. Are they helping to rebuild or are we still fighting? Do we still need to be over there? I really do not know if I will ever know how I feel about the war but there are still a of questions I do not have the answers to.
However, I do know that I support out troops. I have all the respect and gratitude in the world for all of the people in our armed forces. I think that it is the most ignorant thing a person can say when they say they do not support our troops. They are being deported to go and defend our freedom. They volunteer their lives so that we do not have to. They go over their and risk being killed so that the war in not in our homeland and our people are not dying and you are not going to support them? That is just unimaginable to me.

Before Sam brought up that referring to Asians as super smart compared to everyone else, I had never really thought of it as a form of racism. Once he brought it up, it made me really reconsider. I thought about how even though saying that they are extremely intelligent is not a negative thing like most racism, that it is a form of racism against Asians. We are judging them based on their intelligence and their race. We are expecting them to be very smart and good at math and science and those types of things, just like most people who are racists against black people say that they are rude and lazy or things along those lines. Even though being really smart is not a bad thing, it still creates this standard that many Asian people feel that they need to live up to. When people are racist towards other races, it is usually a negative thing and they feel like they need to break these typical stereotypes that are held against them. However with this Asian stereotype, Asians probably feel that they need to be like that because everyone thinks that is how they are and if they are not people say things like, “You are Asian and you are not good at math?” It is like they are not good enough. I knew several Asian people in high school that were not very intelligent at all. Other students often did make fun of them because they were Asian and did not live up to the typical Asian stereotype. This is clearly a form of racism against the Asian race.
It is true, that many Asian people are very smart and do have the most college graduates out of any race. However, I believe that this is highly because of the culture that they were raised in. I have been told that in the Asian culture, education is stressed and getting good grades is a priority. Race is related to biological and genetic factors and Asian’s intelligence is not related to their genetics, but their culture. So to believe that they are intelligently superior to everyone else is being racist against them. They simply just work extremely hard in school and excel because that is how they were raised. Many times in other cultures, kids are able to try to excel at other things like sports and theater and things of that nature, however, I have been told that in the Asian culture, education and school is the most important thing and children are not often given the opportunity to excel at other things. Therefore, we as a society need to stop expecting Asian to be super smart and good at math and science because it is a form of racism. We need to accept them for whoever they are and whatever they have to offer and stop making them live up to this standard.

I believe that unless everybody talks about race and does not take race into account then society will never be able overcome race and the issues that come along with it. I was also very surprised by the fact that when all other factors were controlled, like economic background, previous schooling and location, that different races still preformed differently on standardized tests. I feel that this goes back to the point that Sam made about when people of different races have to put down their race on a test do significantly worse than when they do not have to put their race down. I think that there is just a stereotype against other races, especially black and Hispanic, that they are not as intelligent as someone who is white or Asian. I think that this greatly affects people of those races when it comes to taking standardized tests and things of that nature. I think that they just believe that they are expected to not do as well. I think to move past this society needs to realize that people of different races are just as intelligent as everyone else and have the capability to perform just as well. I think that as more people of African decent and Hispanic decent begin to come into power in society in the world, then people will start to realize this and stop making assumptions. I always felt that a large part of performance on tests was based on economic background, quality of school and parents’ education and income. So it would make sense that African Americans and Latinos did worse on test because they tend to live in the cities where income is low and the education system is not very good. However, when all of this is controlled, these people still perform worse on these tests. I do not really there is much we can do to overcome this fact that performance is based on race. I feel that there will always be some sort of racial discrimination because there are just so many ignorant people in the world that do not even care to understand other cultures and races and then they just pass these ignorant views on to their children and then the cycle starts all over again. Therefore to overcome the views that other races perform worse on tests and are not as intelligent would be very hard, not unrealistic, just not easy. I think that this is a serious issue, the fact that other races consistently do worse on standardized tests and IQ tests than white and Asian people. This poses the question, is there really something genetic leading to this and does that explain it and if so, what is it and do we have proof?

When Sam started to tell his story about the Shaman, the first thing I thought was “There’s no way. That’s impossible.” How does someone heal a high ankle sprain with his bare hands over night? Modern medicine can’t even do that. But then I thought, “Sam wouldn’t make this up. It has to be legit.” And as I started to think about it more, I couldn’t help but question if there were really people out there who transcended into other worlds and talked to plants and learned how to heal people. I feel like as a college student and learning the traditional way it is hard to believe something like that is possible. We are taught that the only way to learn about medicine and things along those lines is to go to college, read books, and do research. I do not doubt that there are people out there that can heal people the way the Shaman did to Sam. However I feel like it will be hard for me to fully believe that unless I actually see or experience it myself.
In our culture, we are taught that the best way to learn is through schooling and books and exams. Therefore, it would be hard for a lot of people in our culture to believe what the Shaman did was real. I think that if going into other worlds and talking to plants and things like that and learning that way works for people and they are able to do it, then they should. I think that if I was dying of a deathly disease or something along those lines and modern medicine had no cure for me but a Shaman did, I would probably go to the Shaman. If it didn’t work, well then at least I tried but if it did, then I live a longer life that modern medicine could not help me with. I feel like I have a little bias towards modern medicine and would have to say that it is better just because I have never experienced a Shaman and do not know if I necessarily believe everything that everyone says. However, if I had an experience like Sam did, I would probably feel differently about it. Maybe I would go to a Shaman for medical needs instead of a doctor. However right now, a doctor would be my first choice. But I do not want to seem ignorant to the Shaman and cultures that believe in the Shaman. If that works for them and they believe that that is the best kind of medicine and it works, then I fully support that. I do not doubt Sam either and his experience, but that is something that I would have to go through myself to fully believe its legitimacy.

I do think that in many or most situations regarding race that white people shy away from this topic. White people are taught about race, as are other races, that race does not matter and it is about who the person is on the outside, not the color of their skin. I think this may be a possibility of why white people may shy away from race because we were always taught that race does not matter so they do not feel comfortable talking about it. I also think that a big reason white people shy away from talking about race is that they do not want to offend anyone. Different things offend different people of different races. You may say one thing about a race and a person of that race may be offended and a different person of that race totally would not care. Therefore, a white person does not know if what they may add to a race conversation would offend a person of that race. Then, if this comment did offend someone then that person might be called racist. I think white people fear being called racist greatly. I also think that white people fear offending other races because it is kind of hard to offend a white person. There is not much you can say about a white person that would offend them. Sam brought up the example of “cracker” in class and some white people did not even know what that meant. And the white people that did know what it meant were not even a little bit offended by it.
Race is something that should be talked about so that other races can understand other races better. However, white people definitely shy away from discussing race. I feel like other races are more comfortable talking about race because white is kind of like the “norm”. White is a race but I feel like when people talk about race, they think of everything else besides white. So it’s easier for people of these races to talk about it then white people. I also think that people of many different other races have grown up in a white dominated culture than white people who have grown up in a culture that is not dominantly white. This makes it easier for some people of different races to discuss it because they have a better understanding than a white person. However I think the biggest reason that white people shy away from discussing race is that they do not want to offend any other races. There are different things that offend different people and it can be a little intimidating when you do not know how that person feels. But I do think that white people should begin to feel more comfortable talking about race because it is out there and not going away and a good thing to talk about.