Before we had the lecture on immigration I really didn’t know too much about it. I know some places had been having a lot of problems with illegal immigrants but I’m from Lancaster so I’ve never really been directly affected by this problem. The little I did know before class was mainly because my grandparents live in Hazelton so I would hear them complaining about the problems they had there. Also, my uncle used to be on boarder patrol so I’ve heard so crazy stories. I think if I would have lived somewhere that had a bigger problem with immigrants I would have known more but being from Lancaster I just wasn’t too exposed to the issue.
After the lecture I felt like I had learned a lot. I was surprised by most of what Sam was saying. Since it’s not a big problem where I come from I had never really given it too much thought so information that might have seemed like common knowledge for some people was blowing my mind. I think when Sam did the clicker question asking if there were any illegal immigrants I figured there would be all no’s. So when the results came in and there were a handful of people that said they or their parents were I was kind of shocked. I think it was really cool to hear Eric’s story about how he came to America. I never really thought about it so hearing everything was pretty cool. I thought it would be a lot more difficult than just driving and running and staying hidden. I mean I’ve only really seen the stuff in the movies so I thought it was more intricate.
I’m currently reading a book called crossing the boulevard and it’s all about immigrants that live in Queens, New York. It tells their story in a very creative and honest way. I think that one big misconception that people have about immigrants is that they just want to come to America and take all of our jobs when that’s really not the case at all. Most of the stories from my book are really stories of struggle and trying to make a better like for them and their families. I think that America is looked at as a safe haven for a lot of people and I think that if coming to America can mean a better life for them and their families then it’s a chance they are willing to take. That being the case I think that most immigrants don’t have much money so they will work for anything as long as they are getting something in return. I think that Americans sometimes like to look down on there people because they are working for so little but if it came down to it I think that most people would take any job no matter what the pay if they knew they had to support their family. I know I definitely would. That’s what I think.

I was shocked by the information that Sam gave us in class on Thursday about the Pine Ridge Reservation. Being from the east coast I’ve never really had much interaction with Native Americans and I’ve never really thought about the topic too much either. I know the basics that were taught in history class in high school but that’s about all the information I’ve ever been given. When I was younger my parents and I took a trip out west. We drove through Arizona and I remember seeing stands set up along the side of the road selling handmade jewelry and other handmade things. That’s the only time I’ve ever even seen Native Americans. I never really thought much of it until class.
I feel really ignorant that I didn’t know the hardships of what they were going through. And looking back on it I really don’t know much of anything about their culture or way of life.
After Sam showed us the statistics I was shocked. I didn’t know about how horribly they were suffering. After class when I thought about what I’d just learned I had a thought; why hadn’t I ever known about this issue? Why was I never taught about this and why have I never seen anything about it in the news? The best answer I can come up with is that our country is kind of trying to hide it. It’s not exactly a shinning star in our country so we kind of just keep it hidden. I really don’t know though.
I’m still shocked that in our own country there seem to be these “pockets of poverty”. I don’t know what else to call them but to me that actually seems like a fitting name. Why is the life expectancy so much lower? This is absolutely blowing my mind! How is it possible that they are expected to die years before when they are in the same country as millions of other people that live so much longer? I just don’t get it. Why do these people suffer so much more than the rest of our country and why aren’t they getting help? I feel so bad for what their ancestors had to go through and it doesn’t seem like they have it much better nowadays. I think the whole situation is really sad and I wish people could be more informed about what is going on.

After class on Thursday I was kind of discouraged and for a few reasons. When asked how many people have witnessed or been victims to racial discrimination a lot of people said they had been. I forget the exact percentage but it was definitely higher than what I thought it would have been. I think even more shocking was the result when people asked if they had seen discrimination against the LGBT community. 48% of the students said they had! For some reason I thought our generation would have lower numbers. I guess I don’t have a realistic view on what’s going on.
I’m Asian and I can say that I’ve never been discriminated against because of my race. Maybe that’s part of the reason that I didn’t think the numbers would be that high. I have however been discriminated against and know many people that have been discriminated again for being gay. I’ve only gotten it once when I saw walking down the street holding hands with the girl I was seeing at the time. It didn’t really faze me because I knew that it was just a bunch of guys being ignorant. I hate to make excuses for people but I think there is a big difference against “sober” Penn State and “drunk” Penn State. The guys that yelled at my friend and I were obviously drunk. I know that alcohol isn’t an excuse for behavior but I doubt that it would have happened had it been a few hours earlier. Other than that I’ve never actually seen discrimination against gays. I think my opinion may be skewed here again because I don’t exactly look like your stereotypical lesbian so most people don’t know I’m gay unless I’m holding hands with a girl or something of that nature. I do have friends that fit the lesbian stereotype and they’ve said that they have been called names. I would imagine that gay men might see a lot of discrimination but again I would say the majority of these incidences probably happen when there is alcohol involved.
I think that if I would ever see someone I didn’t know being discriminated against because of their race or sexual orientation I would probably not say anything. I know that’s not the best think to do but I’m not really one to get involved in other people’s business. If it was against one of my friends I’d kick someone’s ass. There’s no way I’d just let someone insult one of my friends and think they can just get away with it. I wouldn’t actually resort to violence but depending on the situation I would definitely say something to them. I think if there was alcohol involved the situation might be handled differently.

I think a major problem our world is going to face over the next hundred or so years is one of much importance. I think most people don’t realize how crowded our planet is already and I doubt they think long and hard about the resources that we have left. Like Sam said there are already 3 billion people on earth that aren’t getting enough food as it is. The kid in the video said that over the next hundred years the population is going to double, which means that 6 billion people if not more won’t have enough food. If we don’t start to take action about this problem soon it’s going to creep up on us and by then it will be too late.
I think that limiting the number of children people can have is a good idea but I think that it would be very hard to make this possible. I know that China has a system like this. I’m going to be honest I don’t know anything about how it works or how they make sure that it’s being enforced but I know that they do have that as a rule. I think that if you were to try to enforce this in other countries it wouldn’t be as successful. America is the land of the free and putting a limit on the number of children you can have definitely doesn’t seem too free. People would fight against laws like that tooth and nail and I think they would win. This is a little sad because people like the Duggers and Octomom are using their large families for attention when in the long run they’re really bringing more life into this already crowded earth. Not only would people fight against this law but I think it would be extremely hard to enforce, especially in inner city areas and very country areas. Plus what would the consequences be if you had two children. They can’t take them away and just get rid of them. This would also be a problem in other countries., for example some of the countries that don’t have contraception would have a problem with only getting pregnant once.
I don’t really have too many ideas on how we could start saving our resources for the generations to follow. I think that if more people were informed of the problem though then something would definitely change. I feel like bigger problems like the war definitely take our attention away from problems that are world will face in the upcoming future. I think that there’s a good chance that the next few generations are going to struggle with this problem and probably blame our generation for some of the problems that they’re going to face.

I think that people that are in poverty and have a bunch of children can be considered selfish in a way. I think when you’re deciding to have a child you need to take a lot of different factors into account, one of them being finances. If you already have a few children and getting by is a struggle then you should probably wait to have more children until you are more financially stable. When we watched Tammy’s Story in class and she said she was one of twenty-two children I was shocked. First of all I don’t think anyone should be having twenty-two kids even if it is with different women, and I’m just assuming it was with multiple women. Our world is so over populated as it is and having so many children is ignorant to a lot of the problems we as humans are going to face in the years to come. If everybody had that many children our world would be so crowded and that would cause other problems to worsen as well.
Not only do I think it would cause a lot of problems for the world as a whole I also think it causes problems for the kids. I have a friend at Penn State who is the oldest of 6 and she loves her siblings to death but she said she really doesn’t think it’s fair that there are so many of them. She obviously doesn’t blame her siblings but she thought it was a little inconsiderate of her parents. She said sometimes she would have to give up things she would want to do because of her parents couldn’t do what all of them wanted so they had to pick. She also got stuck having to take care of them because she was the oldest. So she had to give up parts of the social life to accommodate her parents.
I also think some people use their kids to get certain things, for example, the Duggers. They have like 2345634 kids and are still having more. I’m not saying their only reason for having that many kids is because of their TV show but I’m sure it definitely impacted their decisions. I feel like that is almost a form of child neglect just because there is no way every one of their children are getting the right amount of attention that they should get. I also don’t think it is fair that some of the older children have to assume the role of caretaker because their parents are too busy with some of the other kids. I don’t think any kid should have to lose parts of their childhood to help their parents do their job of raising their kids.

At the beginning of class when Sam was talking about modern slavery I was sitting in my seat thinking to myself “ I would love to help people and make a difference but I’m just one person. Even if I start buying fair trade chocolate and trying to buy clothing that wasn’t made by slaves, I’m just one person. What difference could I make? Even if our whole class made these changes we’d be nothing but a blip on the radar.” As we proceeded with class my way of thinking started to change, which I personally think is the reason for this class. After 75 minutes of hearing what Sam had to say and watching the video I completely changed my way of thinking. All I wanted to do was sit down after class and think. The last class was really heavy and I guess I needed time to reflect. Now I feel like maybe a lot of people think the same way I used to. There are hundreds of colleges across the country and hundreds are teaching courses similar (but not as awesome) as ours. Penn State students alone might not be able to make a change but if we could somehow gather all of these students the impact would be substantial.
So the question I’m answering is actually the one about how Americans live compared to other countries. I think that we take a lot for granted, first of all. Even people our age. Sometimes when I’m at Penn State I hear people complaining about being here and how school kills their social life and that really makes me upset because a good amount of the people in the world don’t even get the chance to go to college, for example the guy that Sam is trying to raise money for to get him a plane ticket. When Ryan challenged Sam in class saying stuff about Sam not being able to judge him and this situation and all of that I thought the kid was being pretty ignorant. He had a Bluetooth in his ear and glasses on his face. There are people around the world that would be happy with the shirt from his back let alone the college education he was receiving. I don’t think he understands that around the world people are actually suffering. I totally understand the situation of being a poor college student but people have to realize that we are at college and that it’s not something we should take for granted. One kid in class threw out a stat that only 25% of Americans graduate from college. We are those kids, so why don’t we go the extra mile and make the difference to make our world better for future generations?

I want to start off by saying I think the lecture Sam did about free will vs. determinism was brilliant. He showed both sides perfectly. When he was talking about free will I truly believed that was what he believed in and when he talked about determinism I felt the same way. I also thought it was really interesting to see how at the beginning of class everyone was split pretty evenly and by the end the results were different.
So I’m pretty in the middle on the scale but I think I do lean a little towards the determinism side. I think I lean this way because everything in my life has been based off something that someone else has chosen for me. When I was seven months old I was adopted. So you can see how I lean this way. Everything I have in my life is based off decisions that were not my own. It started with the decision to put me up for adoption. Then a social worker picked to put me with my mom and dad and the list goes on and on about the decisions but the matter of fact is that I didn’t choose any of it. Not that I’m saying I would change anything, I’m very happy, but I didn’t pick this myself. I could have been placed anywhere in the country with any random family.
Other than the experiences in my own I think I would still lean towards determinism. I think free will is what you make of it. You can make all of these choices in your life even if people are working against you. I think my question is if you grow up a certain way, for example if someone grew up and no one ever went to college. Like the video example we saw in class. If the graduation rate is only 40% and no one of your friends and family ever went to college that would be the norm. Why would you deviate from what seems normal for you?
Then there’s the whole race aspect. No one chooses their race and if they could I don’t think racism would be a problem but that’s another subject entirely. I think for the race aspect it’s pretty obvious that it’s determinism. The story that Sam told in class about when he would paint houses over the summer and there was a black guy that was doing the same thing but wasn’t doing nearly as well. I think for me that story really made me understand his point. It goes both ways though. Colleges have to meet quotas so that could have been a factor of how I got into college. It’s little aspects like this I’ve never really thought about.

The terms twinkie and oreo are used to describe when black or Asian people act like white people. I think white and black are the two most prominent races in America and they are easily defined by their actions. I know these characteristics aren’t true for everyone but they do hold some truth for some people. Some white and black people tend to speak differently. Slang tends to be a prominent part of how some black people talk. For example they tend to shorten words that end in ER such as loser might be pronounced losa. Just today in my discussion group a black kid in my class said that he gets called the ”white boy” when he’s with his black friends mostly because of the way he speaks. There are many other example stereotypes for how each group acts. I think that because they do have such defining characteristics it’s easy to act like them. There aren’t many defining characteristics for most of the other races. You can’t really act Asian because how would you even act? Would you drive poorly and be good at math? There aren’t as many traits that you can just do.
I myself am Korean and I’ve definitely been told that I’m a twinkie. I was adopted and raised in a white family so it’s not really surprising that I tend to have more white mannerisms. The term has never offended me before and I really don’t think that it’s meant to be derogatory. I mean compared to the few Asian friends I have I definitely have more white tendencies in how I talk and what I wear and other things like that. So I’m kind of okay with being called it. Not that I think people should be compared to food but that’s a completely different topic all together that I’m not going to get into.
Although I’ve never viewed the term in a negative way I can see how it can be offensive to some people. I would imagine Asians that fit the stereotypical characteristics that go along with being Asian might be a little annoyed with the use of the term. No one wants to be classified and judged like that. I personally try to break stereotypes but I didn’t realize I even do it until today. For example the stereotype for Asians are that they are bad drivers so I usually try and drive my friends to show them that it’s not true. In my discussion today I also realized I made it a point to say that I’m actually pretty horrible at math. I don’t know why I do this. I guess just to show people that stereotypes don’t hold true for everyone.

I thought the activity done in class was really fascinating. Where else will you ever get the chance to see something like that done? Probably nowhere. This class is the perfect opportunity to witness something like this. It’s an exercise that really shows a lot of important things that you wouldn’t think about unless you were witnessing something like this. I can’t imagine having to be one of the girls that had to group people. If I would have been one of the people chosen to group I probably would have cracked under the pressure. I feel like people don’t want to appear racist so at times they may over compensate with hesitation to make sure that they are being politically correct. As I was sitting there I thought of what groups I would have made and they were so far from what they should have been. It was interesting to hear what was going through their minds as they were sorting people. When we learned the actual races of the people I was shocked by some of them. I think America provides a lot of diversity so trying to group people becomes more difficult, for example we tend to have a higher percentage of biracial people than we used to but we’re still using older stereotypes. This can lead to incorrect groupings like the girl that was half Korean and half Greek. I thought the girls did a pretty good job, even though they were pretty off with some of their groupings. I learned a lot from this activity, but the most important being that you can’t simply look at a person and assume you know what race they are. People will surprise you.
I thought this activity really showed how prevalent stereotyping still is in America. Being Asian myself I thought it was good that Dr. Richards showed the “All Orientals Look The Same” video. I feel like a good amount of people still have that mindset so for them to see something like that can help change the way they think. I actually heard a girl sitting near me say that she fell into the trap of thinking all Orientals look the same but now she’s going to change her way of thinking. I thought that was pretty cool. Another good example was when the girls that were grouping based their decisions on stereotypical racial characteristics. They did this when they put the Mexican girl in the Middle Eastern group. This goes to show that anyone, even people with a perfect grade point average, has stereotypes that are wrong. So even though people think they aren’t racist they still have unconscious stereotypes that affect their behavior and way of thinking.
I think the activity really made people analyze their own stereotypes that they have for others. If people were more self aware of their preconceived racial views it would help eliminate incorrect stereotypes.

I think this question is one that has been asked over and over again. I personally think the answer is that there is a certain comfort level that goes along with hanging out with others that share something like race and ethnicity. The girl that asked the question mentioned how the international students tend to hangout together and I think it makes perfect sense why they do. If I went to a country that had a different language I would feel so much more comfortable if I found other people that spoke English. I would definitely try and become friends with them and hangout with them. I was adopted from Korean when I was young so I grew up with a white family. Most of my friends are white and I definitely feel like I’m comfortable with them but a few years back I went to Korea and ever since then I wish I had more Korean friends. There are definitely things I can’t do with my white friends that I can do with my Korean friends. One significant thing for me is talking about music. I’m really into Korean music and I like to talk about but my white friends had no idea or motivation to learn about the music but my Korean friends like to talk about the music and we can also talk about the music that’s popular here in America. So I can talk about all of the music I listen to with my Korean friends. Another example is food. My white friends never want to go eat Korean with me because they don’t know anything about Korean food and they’re afraid they won’t like it. My Korean friends are always more than willing to go for jajangmyeon or bibimbap with me. And if the Korean restaurant is closed then we can go get something else. I feel like you get the best of both worlds. I don’t think it’s that people are trying to stay in these groups and not branch out, I think it’s more that people like their friends so why should they change a good thing. I think the main point is that having many similarities is a large factor of how you choice your friends. I think another thing that can bring people together are religious beliefs or just values. You aren’t going to hangout with someone who does things you don’t agree with, for example if someone is beating kids up after school just for fun, there’s a good chance you’re not going to be friends with them. I think race and ethnicity are things that can unite a lot of people because of all the similarities that those people share.