I think the most eye-opening part of this lecture was the video that Sam showed. I never aware that Native Americans even had a stereotype. Coming from southwestern Pennsylvania, I did not have much interaction with any Native Americans. It was not until taking this class however that I was introduced to the stereotype of Native Americans. I had learned from my Economics courses here that Native Americans were pretty low on the socioeconomic scale; I just never knew why. I had no idea that their stereotype included having drug problems, being drunk all the time, and high unemployment rates. I gasped during multiple parts of this movie. To hear that this city has the highest rate of teen suicide of anywhere in the country makes me want to spread the awareness. I feel like our country has become so lethargic towards cultures outside their own, and it takes some like Katrina or 911 for our country to come together and be colorblind and help the people who can’t help themselves. But during all the days of the year, no one wants anything to do with other cultures. Well here we are, sitting and doing nothing while the first people of country, the true founders of our nation are dying. No one calls awareness or helps; they just sit and allow these stereotypes to come true. I remember learning about Thanksgiving in elementary school and thinking how none of America would be here without Christopher Columbus and how beautiful the first Thanksgiving must have been. Or the first time I watched the movie Pocahontas, and thinking how passionate the relationship was between John Smith and Pocahontas. The song “Savage” sticks out the most now that I know the truth about the Pilgrims. The two groups of people: the English Settlers and the Native Americans sing about their different interpretations of the term “savages”. They see each group as different from their own, all they know is that the other group can’t be trusted. They both sing about destroying an evil race, “until there's not a trace left.” Our nation was built on greed and blood shed. We as a society have completely disrespected an entire race. My ancestors stole land from innocent people because they felt more entitled to it. They killed innocent people and forced religious practices on them. If someone came here today and tried to pull that same act, they would be slaughtered; yet it was completely okay for us to do so. And what continues to boggle my mind is that white people commit sixty percent of the violent crimes towards Native Americans. We stole their land we continue to rape their people. Taunting them with the power we hold over them. There’s blood in water, just as much as there was many years ago.

Until this lecture, I never thought I personally benefitted from affirmative action nor did I believe that I benefitted from nepotism. When asked the question in lecture, I answered no, and then when Sam further explained the definition of nepotism; I changed my answer. I had never thought about how having a mother with her MBA and a stepfather in a higher-ranking military position has benefitted me over the years. For example, this summer I have an internship at my mom’s company. Boom. Nepotism. I want to believe that I got where I am today by a lot of my own strengths and by myself. But the truth is, I have a lot of great people in my life who have helped me read over résumés and form cover letters. Some activities that blatantly scream nepotism, and I would like to believe that I would avoid that temptation and say no. For example, when someone I know has had a class previous to myself, instead of asking for the “previous homework” or work, I’ll just work through it by myself as best as I can. I believe that gives me more of a true sense of responsibility, and I never want to be dependent on someone. I want to go through life knowing that I can take care of myself. I am in no way shunning my connections though, if I get an interview because of a professor I TA’ed for, or a woman I babysat for, then great! But I never want to get a job for ONLY that reason. I want to be chosen for the job because I am more qualified than the interviewees. My mom, my father and my stepfather worked their butts off to make sure my three siblings and me didn’t have to worry about our health and where our meal was going to come from that night. Again, I’m in no way ashamed of my current background. Back in the day, aka the early 90’s, I grew up on food stamps and my mom was on welfare when I was born. I’ve seen my mom do what most find to be impossible. She raised my older sister, who is mentally disabled, and myself while obtaining her masters degree; completely by herself. She is the biggest inspiration to me, and she was able to obtain an internship after graduating her masters program with highest honors because of a colleague of a previous job. My mom worked her rump off to get that internship, but just because she previously knew the guy who gave her the internship it’s considered nepotism. Does it dilute the internship just because of the middleman? To an extent, I embrace and accept nepotism. I work very hard to make as many connections here at State as possible, and if one of those people down the line is able to help me in some way then great! But I never want be GIVEN something because of nepotism, I want to deserve it.

Did the “needy” penis lecture make me feel uncomfortable? No, not at all actually. I was more worried that my roommate and her boyfriend weren’t going to understand Sam’s style of teaching. People have sex. It’s a way of life. I don’t have the balls to talk about my sex life in front of 100 Thomas, but Sam and Laurie are completely ok with it, that’s awesome! They’re both in their fifties and are still having sex, also awesome! I never want to lose the passion in my relationship, and knowing that people can still be passionate at an older age makes growing old less scary. I do have to say though, in all honesty, I wish Sam had directed the lecture more. His responses are witty and keep my attention; whereas, Laurie made me feel like I was in all my other Penn State University classes, where all my professors lecture at me. I felt like I was back in Anatomy or Biology. It was so boring. She started off on fire, I agreed with the whole double standard of the wordy “needy”. When a woman is called needy, it has a negative connotation… “like ya man, she needs me to come over tonight. What a needy girlfriend”.. but then Laurie told the story of how when she presented this lecture to a room full of men, they were all about the “needy” penis. Ya man my penis is needy. But it’s all about language. It’s the way we associate terms with one another. I get it. I get it. And by the tenth time Laurie had said it I had had enough. That hour and fifteen goes by so slow when all you hear is the same thing repeated over and over again. And by no means am I trying to in any way be disrespectful, I guess I just had a hype built around this lecture, that the lecture didn’t actually live up to. But, during its entirety I didn’t feel uncomfortable. I knew that Laurie and Sam weren’t going to go into the specifics of their love life, so I was never in fear of that. I was however extremely intrigued by watching them bounce off each other. I love that Laurie comes to most of his lectures. I love that Sam still smiles every time he looks at her. When he says something and she gives him a look, and he recants his statement and apologizes. How Sam will sometimes look to her for approval of his statements, like “is it ok to say that now?” or “can I tell them?” You can still clearly see their love for one another. That was my favorite part of the lecture. Plus the story about his 4am wake up.

Did the “needy” penis lecture make me feel uncomfortable? No, not at all actually. I was more worried that my roommate and her boyfriend weren’t going to understand Sam’s style of teaching. People have sex. It’s a way of life. I don’t have the balls to talk about my sex life in front of 100 Thomas, but Sam and Laurie are completely ok with it, that’s awesome! They’re both in their fifties and are still having sex, also awesome! I never want to lose the passion in my relationship, and knowing that people can still be passionate at an older age makes growing old less scary. I do have to say though, in all honesty, I wish Sam had directed the lecture more. His responses are witty and keep my attention; whereas, Laurie made me feel like I was in all my other Penn State University classes, where all my professors lecture at me. I felt like I was back in Anatomy or Biology. It was so boring. She started off on fire, I agreed with the whole double standard of the wordy “needy”. When a woman is called needy, it has a negative connotation… “like ya man, she needs me to come over tonight. What a needy girlfriend”.. but then Laurie told the story of how when she presented this lecture to a room full of men, they were all about the “needy” penis. Ya man my is penis needy. But it’s all about language. It’s the way we associate terms with one another. I get it. I get it. And by the tenth time Laurie had said it I had had enough. That hour and fifteen goes by so slow when all you hear is the same thing repeated over and over again. And by no means am I trying to in any way be disrespectful, I guess I just had a hype built around this lecture, that the lecture didn’t actually live up to. But, during its entirety I didn’t feel uncomfortable. I knew that Laurie and Sam weren’t going to go into the specifics of their love life, so I was never in fear of that. I was however extremely intrigued by watching them bounce off each other. I love that Laurie comes to most of his lectures. I love that Sam still smiles every time he looks at her. When he says something and she gives him a look, and he recants his statement and apologizes. How Sam will sometimes look to her for approval of his statements, like “is it ok to say that now?” or “can I tell them?” You can still clearly see their love for one another. That was my favorite part of the lecture. Plus the story about his 4am wake up.

I actually had this happen to me last night. I was in an elevator going to my friend’s apartment on the ninth floor in the Meridian, when a large group of Hispanics walked into the elevator. I’m obtaining a minor in Spanish and trying my best to become bilingual, so I tried my best to pick up on their conversation. They were all agreeing they might have had one or two too many “cervezas” aka beer. In general, they were just light-aired conversation. It didn’t bother me in any way, or make me feel uncomfortable. If I were an international student studying abroad and I was with my friends from home I would speak English, so who I to tell them they can’t speak in their native language. I don’t know, here at Penn State I can’t really think of any situations I would be in that I would feel uncomfortable. I like learning new things, and being able to speak different languages has always interested me. I have a friend who is bilingual in Spanish and we’ll go out to Starbucks and just have conversation. Hearing her speak the language helps me better my accent and feel more comfortable speaking the language to my professors. I could however see someone occasions outside of Penn State that would make me feel uncomfortable. If I was in an unfamiliar area and there was someone yelling an unfamiliar language at me, I would be nervous as hell. You can’t always communicate to someone who is angry. Being unfamiliar I would have to rely on hand gestures and facial expressions to try and dissect their message. I guess any type of hostile situation where I am out of my element with a language barrier would be uncomfortable. I could also see myself getting self conscious, and getting myself paranoid thinking that people were talking about me. That would make me pretty uncomfortable. Sometimes when I’m doing my late night homework in Pollock and there is a large group of international Asian students and they all laugh and then look my way, I check my teeth and hair just to make sure that nothing is askew. On an adjacent topic, I am jealous of people who can speak more than one language. People that are born and raised in Europe speak a minimum of three languages, I think that I absolutely incredible. America, the “melting pot” should be more open to learning and teaching languages. Starting in Elementary schools and such. I would have loved to learn more than basic English in my elementary school, even if it was just simple words and phrases. I would love to be able to make small talk with the students who travel abroad here.

I felt a knot in my stomach the entire time I watched this video. How disgusting it is to think that children are being raised to believe that a skin color is better or prettier than another. Children are supposed to be idolized for their innocence and their purity. To take that away from a child is horrible. To say that white woman are more beautiful than black woman is absurd, and in the same aspect to say that black woman are more beautiful is about absurd. All people on this Earth are beautiful. There are unique features to both cultures that make them different and therefore beautiful.
To watch colored children say that they prefer to play with the white baby doll and that the white baby doll is better compared to the black baby doll brought tears to my eyes. And then the narrator proceeded to ask which doll looked like them. Watching each of those children hesitate to pick the black doll was heart wrenching. I never realized that people of color had to go through things like this. I was reading some of the other blog posts to this, and one spoke about how when this girl was younger she was told to hide her hair. To pull it back as tight as possible to hide the fact that she didn’t have “good” hair. Well I want to know who the hell decided what was considered “good” and “bad” hair. In my opinion, having hair on your head is good. Regardless of color, shape or texture. There are people in the world, white and black, that suffer from diseases where they cannot grow hair at all. They wear wigs everyday to school or to work, and I bet if you asked them they would never say that one hair is better than the rest. As I said before, there are features that make everyone beautiful; different doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
I did however dislike Sam’s rant about the video this week. It felt degrading having him repeat, “do you not feel how deep that is?” It made me feel like I wasn’t smart enough to understand the concept of the video. It diluted the value of it to me. Having him stand there and repeat everything over and over again..
I would be interested to bring this to my group and see if anyone in the group has had any experience with this type of thought. If the white woman only played with white dolls when they were younger and why? Or if when black woman were growing up if they preferred to play with only white dolls or if their parents preferred them to play with white dolls?

This article hits tugs on my heartstrings with more ferocity than any article I’ve read yet. The last few moments of the video, when Frank speaks about people actually getting to know him, I cried. I sat at my computer screen with tears welling in my eyes. The ‘R’ word is just as offensive, as calling a person of black decent the ‘N’ word. They in no way choose to be mentally disabled, and for us to use the word so carelessly and freely makes me sick. It makes me sad that people of such power and authority in this country use words as such. I understand they are normal people, but why would you say anything offensive in public? To someone who is writing down every word spilling from your lips? I find it extremely unprofessional. People with disabilities go through life everyday with the world already working against them. Every day I watch my sister fight up hill battles to be accepted in the society that has accepted me so willingly. This is what I do with my life. I work four jobs in the summer; two both pertain to assisting people with disabilities. From working at a day camp and as a home care provider, I think people in general need to be more educated with the subject. These words have become so engrained into our society, that people either don’t think it’s offensive or don’t even realize they’re saying it so often. They say it as a joke or insult, when they don’t even realize someone they are speaking to could be related to or know someone with a mental disability. I never heard the ‘R’ word in my high school. I think part of it is due to the fact that my sister’s disabilities were well known and no one wanted to upset me with saying the word. However, here at Penn State University, I can’t go a day without hearing the word used in everyday life. Some one explaining how horrible their professor is at teaching by saying, “oh my gosh, Dr (blank) is so frickin r******d.” There are so many other words in the English language that are more profound, and that will explain your frustration with your professor other the ‘R’ word. It reminds me of how people say the word ‘like’ every other word to express themselves. I’ve started to express my dislike for the ‘R’ word towards my friends, and they have significantly cut the word from their vocabulary. Which I believe will help them later in life at a job interview, or speaking to a recruiter. Deleting the ‘R’ word at least cancels out one derogatory word from their vocabulary.

To be honest, I’m writing this on my Spring Break and am just annoyed to do this assignment. Not because it is in any way difficult I just don’t feel like writing it. Okay, well now that I got that off my chest I can tell you my thoughts. Sam said in class that we are harder on our own race as compared to other races. However, in our poll in class we saw the same amount of sympathy for whites and blacks. I personally, don’t feel more for one or the other (my race as opposed to other races). I walk through my city and if I see a homeless black person sitting next to a homeless white person, I’d either give them both of them change, or give neither of them change. I don’t see a race as needing more help than another race. They are both homeless and both in need. Poverty is colorblind in this scenario. For me to judge which person needs the money more is outrageous. Just because the “stereotype” of the black community is that they need money more so than the white community doesn’t necessarily render the truth. White poverty is one of the most hidden topics in America, but that doesn’t mean they need the money more either. I personally do not know anyone who lives in poverty. Perhaps if someone in my family were to live below the poverty line, I would feel more deeply towards one race or the other. If someone close to me was out on the streets then I could form a closer connection and better understand what it truly means to be homeless. As I previously stated, poverty is colorblind, it doesn’t have a prejudice towards a certain race, and it affects every party of the melting pot society we all are a part of. For example, right now it’s pouring down rain outside, for me to feel worse about a white person living in a home with holes in their roof and getting soaked as compared to someone who is black I think to be outrageous. It bothers me to think that people are called racist for commenting negatively on the poor black community, but there is no consequence for ridiculing the poor white society. No one says anything if a redneck joke is told at a party. Is it because they embrace the stereotype? I have no idea, I just hate how separated our society has become… My sympathy goes with whoever allocates their hard earned money properly but still sees no light at the end of the tunnel (whether that be a white or black person). I have zero sympathy for anyone who earns money just to buy drugs or spend it on alcohol.

Compared to the rest of the world, American culture disgusts me. From our love of over-indulgence and constantly being in the mind-set of things we want, people have forgotten how to live. People have forgotten to slow down and take in the things that should truly be important in life; like our family, or our friends, even something as simple as out health. I spent this entire weekend with children who woke up thankful to just do that; wake up. Their lives are in constant jeopardy because of pediatric cancer. Every day for them is a gift. Seeing not only my organization’s THON children, but also everyone else’s THON children always puts life in perspective for me. Then there’s the rest of the culture who goes fake tanning and increases their chances of getting cancer by 88% every time they get in a bed. Kind of ironic huh? We spend all year fighting cancer, and I guarantee some people were in the tanning salons here during THON trying to get tan for spring break. It blows my mind. Seeing that makes me realize I need to be happy with what I have, because there are people every day in other parts of the world who are starving, unsheltered and dying. Our culture is based around appearance and money. If you’re not beautiful then you can make enough money to make you beautiful. I hate how shallow our culture has become. Money makes us happy. Without money, we can go on expensive vacations and we can’t buy better things than our friends. You see it everywhere over Penn State University. Verizon got the iPhone added to their phone collection, and the next day everyone’s status on Facebook is “Just got the new iPhone!” Honestly who the hell cares? Half of the world doesn’t even have the money to feed themselves, and our culture is constantly worried about having the best; because that makes you a more likeable, better person? It saddens me that not only has our culture gained shallowness but has also lost its confidence in itself. Even after watching that video in class about chocolate, people could get a sudden burst of “ya! I’m going to go do good in the world! I’m going to recycle and buy things that are fair trade”… I say to those people, lets see how long that lasts. Recycling will last a week until you don’t feel like picking your empty, plastic Aquafina up off the floor of Thomas. I know some people have probably already forgotten about the video. I’m also curious as to how many people went to the free rice website; something so simple yet not a lot of people have “time” to do it. Even if you are of the poorest people in the United States, you are better off than half the world. I think to help solve this problem, we as a nation need to be more educated about the issues in the world. Also, we as a culture often forget things that don’t pertain directly to use, maybe some type of constant reminder?

I have never thought this issue in this manner before. Now that I’m conscious to this statement, I think it could be a little bit of both. I never wanted to believe that police officers, people who are suppose to “uphold the supreme law of the land”, could see color. Just because someone is darker skin does not mean that they are most likely to be carrying around guns or drugs. Kind of like that 50 cent song 99 problems where 50 cent gets pulled over for “going 55 in a 54”. And then the cop leans in and asks, “are you carrying a weapon on you, I know a lot of you are…” what the hell? That pisses me off so badly, this cop places separation between him and 50 cent because he was of a difference in skin color. I know a lot of YOU are... But back to point, I never really thought about how many more cop cars I see when driving through the city. I rarely if ever see any type of police force in the suburbs, maybe a mall cop every now and again, or at the end of the month when they need to make quota; however, other that than, not too many cops in suburban life. If you look at statistics, more black and Hispanic people live in urban areas as compared to the suburban areas around cities. Today in class, Sam put up some statistics about drug usage; there are so many more white people that use drugs as compared to blacks and Hispanics, yet they’re the ones who are filling up the local and state jails for drugs. From the picture I have depicted in my head, people who go to jail for drugs are mostly black males. Yet, in class we learned that black males are the least likely to do drugs at all. Even when Sam asked the class the majority of white males raised their hand when Sam asked if they had ever tired a drug, but NO black males raised their hands when Sam asked. This leads me to believe that maybe the young black community is just getting caught up that entire scene. Those young, black males aren’t using drugs but getting caught with someone who is a user. Therefore, having guilt by association. You could even go further into this flip cam question and ask people’s opinions about why there are so many cops in cities? Are there more cops in urban areas because there are so many black and Hispanic people, or did it just happen to work out that way? And even then you could ask if the reason there are no cops in suburban areas is because mainly white people in the suburbs. That would be racist.