I was raised Catholic however I am not super religious. My parents are pretty neutral on the subject on homosexuality and because of that I am too. If you’re gay cool if not that’s cool too. I never really gave thought as to whether being gay was a choice or if you were born that way. Well, I never thought about it until my mom told me a story one day. We have family friends who grew up with my parents in the same town and went to the same school as they did. The couple ended up having four boys. Three out of the four boys ended up being gay and one of the three is actually now a girl. My mom told me that she knew at a very young age that the transgender was definitely gay and said she was not surprised at all that he became a girl. She said that when he was younger he would always want to play with dolls and dress up in girl’s clothes and had very girly tendencies. Now I realize that sometimes boys go through a phase where they want to play with their sister’s dolls or what not but my mom said that she could just sense it. There was something different about him, his manner or whatever it was that my mom knew that he was gay. After she told me that story how could I not think that you are born gay? A few people in class who are gay told Sam when they knew that they were gay. Multiple people said that they were between the ages of six and nine. That is crazy to me. I mean when I was that age I hated all boys and thought they had cooties and I am pretty sure I didn’t fully grasp the concept of being gay. But for a child of that age to just know that they are going to be with the same sex for the rest of their lives boggles my mind. I don’t think kids at that age have a mind developed enough to choose to be gay, it’s just something that’s deep down inside you. I do realize that there are some exceptions. A girl raised her hand in class and said that two years ago she realized that she was gay and she said that she believes being gay is a choice. However, I think I agree with Sam when he said that a majority of homosexuals are born that way. A lot of the class agreed as well because at the beginning of the class the numbers were pretty even between whom thought gays are born gay and who choose to be gay. At the end of the class a great majority changed their answer to gays are born that way.

Nowadays with social media at its peak, news travels around the world with just a few clicks of a mouse. Analysts have commented on this phenomenon stating that it is amazing how our generation is becoming more in the know about world news and also becoming more involved all due to social media. This is definitely true however; a problem does arise from gaining news from media outlets like the validity of the news story. I used to believe that out of all of the different sources that a story could have originated from the news would be the most trustworthy. Boy was I wrong. After the unveiling of the Jerry Sandusky scandal I lost all respect for the media. News channels would run the story 24 hours a day and about every couple of hours come out with some breaking news or a new twist to the scandal. It turns out that a majority of these stories were so far from the truth that I had to stop watching TV because I would get so mad and frustrated about how the media was portraying our university as a whole. Here is this monster who is the real villain of the story and the media barely talked about what he had done, they focused all of their attention on the Penn State students, Joe Paterno, and any other aspect that would make their story that much more juicy than another stations story. This falsified and exaggerated information that was spread by the media had friends of mine from other schools asking me if Joe Paterno actually molested those boys. Seriously? I would ask them where the hell they got that kind of information and they would say “oh, I saw it on TV.” It blew my mind to see how the media was taking a story and twisting it so much that it was no longer the truth.
In class the other day, Sam showed us figures on abduction rates in the U.S. Nearly half of the class believed that almost 10,000 abductions occurred every year in the U.S. when in fact it was only 100. That just shows how the media shoves all of the negative news down our throats. Never do you see a front page headline or a breaking news special about something that is positive. It’s always negative because that’s what builds ratings. I thought that the news would be the one place we could count on for the real story. I’ve learned that there are always three sides to every story, the victim’s, the villain’s, and the truth. I think now it is especially hard to find someone or something that you can trust in getting the truth of a story. I would definitely believe my family and friends over anyone else but there is still the chance that they received their information from an invalid source making it hard to believe anything you hear these days.

I think this is a great point to bring up because as I’m getting older I’m realizing that although I don’t go to church I feel like I have a closer relationship with “God” than when I did go to church before I came to college. When my sister and I were little my parents made us go to CCD (basically Sunday school) every weekend and then every Sunday morning my dad would force us to go to church. My sister and I hated it. We would never go willingly and we would always be kicking and screaming while my dad dragged us into the car and threatened us that if we didn’t go then we wouldn’t be allowed to go outside to play that day. Every Sunday this ritual would go on and my mom never came with us. Soon my sister and I began questioning why our mom did not have to go to church but we did and demanded that we would only go if she did. Before my sister and I were born my mom was married to a man and had my half brother and they divorced soon after. Because of this my mother technically was not allowed to receive Communion at church and therefore did not go to mass. The Catholic church frowns upon divorce and therefore set up these regulations that as I look back now are ridiculous. So every time my sister and I would ask why our mom did not have to go to church she would sometimes respond that she was not really allowed to go. My sister and I always took that as an excuse and a cop out because if she really wanted to she would just walk into church with us and which I can count on my hand how many times she actually did come with us not including holidays. Anyway, more often than not my mom would always say that she did not have to go to church to have a relationship with God. She said that she and God had their own special relationship. Again my sister and I thought this was a bunch of bullshit and continued to be forced into spending an hour every Sunday at church. However, as I get older I start to understand what my mom was saying. We grow up attending these CCD classes in order to make our First Holy Communion and our Confirmation and we basically learn that you are supposed to go to church every Sunday. But why? Nowhere does it say that you HAVE to go to church in order to have a relationship with God. I honestly can’t remember the last time that I attended mass but I feel like I have a better relationship with God now than ever before. I have my own personal relationship with God and me attending or not attending church has nothing to do with it, it’s irrelevant.

When we first watched this video I thought that it was a joke. I thought that Comedy Central was maybe doing a spoof or something. With this in mind I actually got a kick out of the video and laughed along with a majority of the class. However when Sam revealed that the video was an actual, serious video made by Fox Sports my feelings changed. I could not believe that an actual TV station would allow something like that to air. It made me look at the video in a totally different light. Rather than it seeming like the reporter was a bona fide comedian, I then looked at him as mocking the Asian students and making fun of them intentionally. I think this is what made the video racially offensive. The reporter could have easily got a group of old, senile women to talk about the Pac 12 conference and got the same comedic response because let’s face, it I’m sure that they would have no clue about much information on the matter even if they could let alone hear what the interviewer was asking. Had they done something like this I think it would have gotten a lot warmer of a reaction. However, I think that the Fox interviewer took it too far with the Asian stereotype. There is a very fine line in comedy when joking about race especially if it is a white person who is the one joking about it which is a completely different topic that I’m sure we will cover in class in the near future. Anyway, an Asian girl made a comment on the video in class and said that the interviewer made sure to pick only the Asian students who were obviously not from America and who did not know much about the American culture. Had this been a comedic performance then I could understand why the interviewer would only choose these students because it is meant to be funny. However, this was a serious interview. Why did the interviewer have to pick precisely those students? He makes it look like the only Asians in America are the ones who feed into this stereotype that we ourselves have given Asians which is far from the actual truth. For example I have a Korean roommate. She was born in Korea and adopted at a young age so she is basically American. Yeah she’s good at math but that’s about the only thing in common that she has with the Asian stereotype. She will even go out of her way to do things so people who don’t know her make sure to realize that she is Americanized like pretending to be on the phone while on the White Loop so people can hear that she doesn’t have an accent. She is very self conscious about it and it’s sad to live that way and we are the ones to blame because we feed into this stereotype…she herself is also feeding into it so it is like a vicious cycle.

I grew up in a small town called Elizabeth, PA that is about fifteen miles south of Pittsburgh. My school was filled with mainly all white kids with the exception of a handful of black kids. I not only graduated with the kids from my class but I also received my First Holy Communion and Confirmation with about half of them. The other half went to a Presbyterian Church down the street from my Catholic Church so you can see the lack of diversity in my town. Many would think that for me coming to Penn State would put me into a culture shock and that I would immediately look down upon all other races because of my standardized upbringing. However I feel like my upbringing did not hinder my way of thinking about other races by shutting my mind and body off from other races but on the other hand actually allowed me to come into this experience with an open mind. It made me more curious about other people’s cultures and backgrounds and made me want to investigate further. I have never seen people who were so culturally mixed before that it amazed me. For example one of my best friends, Rob, is half black and half Puerto Rican and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. I have another friend who was born in Ecuador and has been an illegal immigrant up until about two years ago. I have friends who are Indian and Jewish and all other races and I feel like they have allowed me to experience things that I may never have experienced in my life if I had not come to Penn State. My freshman year my Spanish friends took me to a Latino party where instead of everyone grinding to rap, the entire “fiesta” was dancing the salsa and were nice enough to teach me some moves. Just last year I went to my Indian friend’s apartment for a birthday party where a few of my white friends and I were the minority. By the end of the night the entire apartment was performing Bhangra, a traditional Indian dance. It was probably the most fun I’ve had in my three years at Penn State.
I feel like if I had grown up in a town that was more culturally diverse that I would definitely not have had my experiences that I have had at Penn State. In high school everyone is involved in a clique and from many of the stories that I hear in class it seems that the more culturally diverse schools are the ones where the Latinos hang with the Latinos, the Blacks with the Blacks, and so on and so forth. So if I had grown up in that environment then I would have come to Penn State and instead of saying yeah let’s go to a Spanish party I would have said no thanks I’d rather go to a frat. Therefore I think my rather boring high school allowed me to keep an open mind to other races and cultures and I’m thankful for that.

First of all I think that this is a great question. I have lost a lot of respect for the media, especially after the past couple of months. We as Penn State students have witnessed first-hand how the media can ruin the reputation of many by broadcasting false and exaggerated information. The media only likes to represent the juicy information that will cause a reaction out of the general public. This is especially true for the information that is displayed through the media about the war with the Middle East. Sam talked today about how many Americans feel hate for all Muslims. A lot of this is due to the fact that the media only portrays the negatives of the war and the negatives of the Muslim people. The same goes for the other side. Many of the citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan do not think highly of the American people. This is because the media in the Middle East shows negative videos of Americans, like the ones we witnessed in class illustrating American soldiers abusing their power by “bullying” the Middle Easterners. After watching these videos, no wonder the people over there hate us. There was a video that showed a group of American soldiers who caught a few Iraqis looting firewood. Instead of just taking the wood from them, the soldiers threatened them by seizing their car. Not only did the Americans seize their car but they also shot the car several times with their weapons. If this was not enough, the soldiers then ran over the car with their tank, not once but two times! If the soldiers were planning on crushing the Iraqi’s car with their tank then what is the point of shooting it multiple times first? That was embarrassing to watch and I only had to watch it one time for me to have negative feelings about some of the soldiers that we have fighting over there. I know deep down that not all American soldiers are like this and a lot of them do great amounts of good but it only took that one video to make me feel sick. And this is the kind of video that the media shows to the public in order to get a reaction. Both sides are showing negative videos of one another because let’s face it; the controversial videos create better ratings. The downfall of this is that our generation is greatly influenced by the media and we believe everything that we hear on TV. This is causing greater hate for each other on both sides because the media continues to show negative videos which in turn continues to fuel the war. Nowadays I can’t trust anything that the media says however, I still catch myself turning to the media to find out the latest gossip or news which is a sad thing. The media needs to change for the better and start showing positive things that are happening in the Middle East and not just the positives of the American soldiers, but also of the Middle Easterns.

Today in class we had an open discussion to address any and all questions. It was today that a certain topic really struck me. It was the topic of affirmative action and someone stated how white people feel like it is not fair because they get cheated out of getting into college and jobs and what not. Sam then responded that many white people feel this way because white people do not realize the privileges that they already receive just because of the color of their skin. White people, because of white privilege, already have a leg up on life and are just born with benefits.
It was then that I realized that this is very true. Now I am a person who could care less about affirmative action and have nothing against it. I come from a very small town with little diversity. Because of this I feel that I am very naïve to race and the inequality involved with it. Therefore in my mind affirmative action did not really exist and I believed that everyone got to where they were because of their hard work. So the discussion on affirmative action really opened my eyes and made me realize that some people of race do get to where they are with a little help. To some white people this would upset them but after Sam’s explanation of how white people are born with privileges that they do not even realize I do not see how they could be. I never really realized the impact of white privilege. I am one of those people who Sam talked about that is naïve enough to think that I made it to where I am today because of my hard work. However, I realize that at times white privilege more than likely gave me a boost of luck. More than half of the time a white person will get a call back for a job over a person of color. Until this issue can be resolved than we need affirmative action in this country. I feel that the people who claim that affirmative action is unfair are the same people that are forcing this country to have to enforce it. It is a shame that it has to come to this but like Sam said, there is a vicious cycle in the world that needs to be broken and affirmative action is a way to break this cycle.
As far as the rest of the semester goes I hope we dive even deeper into the issue of race (which I am sure we will) and stumble upon more views and topics that make me open my eyes like the topic of affirmative action.

I was brought up in a Catholic home. I am not someone that you would consider very religious at all seeing as that I can’t remember the last time that I attended mass. However I still have my beliefs and that is that there is a God. I admit that I do not know very much about other religions or views of the world. Yeah I know the idea of the “Big Bang” and evolution and I even took a Jewish Studies class about two semesters ago but I only just scraped the surface of all of those topics and did not really delve into them more than I had to. This is not saying that I do not want to learn about other ideas because I actually do like learning about different cultures, beliefs, views on God, etc. I know that there are “facts” out there that Sam was discussing in class and I know that there are other beliefs out there in the world but just because I do not go out and study them does not mean that I think that it “doesn’t matter.” I do not think that I have to go out and study other views just so I do not come off to someone as being “ignorant.” Me not studying these views does not mean that I am not open to them either. I have my beliefs and others have their beliefs. If someone with different beliefs wanted to have a conversation with me about their view on the world I would totally be open to hearing about their views. But this is not to say that it’s going to change my beliefs in any way. In regards to Sam’s question about a person with an opposing view approaching you and saying that they have never read your text and does not want to read it, it would not really bother me. I would not think that that person was ignorant because they do not know about my beliefs nor do they want to learn about it. They have their notions and I have mine. People’s beliefs, especially spiritual, are very strong things in people’s lives and I would never want to call someone ignorant just because they put their own beliefs above all other ways of thinking and do not have an interest to hear the other side. I would not approach an atheist and start hounding him about how he needs to read the bible and experience mass and all of these things because I do not feel like that person had to. He can do whatever he wants to do it is not effecting me nor my views on the world.

I do think that white people tend to shy away from the discussion of race for many different reasons. I think one reason for this is because of fear. Not for fear of being beat up as a student stated after pointing out the darkest person in the room, but for fear of offending others or coming off as being racist. The other day in class Sam said that the biggest insult that can be made to a white person is being called racist because it has a certain meaning and understanding to it. I agree with this because no one wants to be called racist or even be associated with the term because it can truly damage a person’s future. Another reason that white people do not want to discuss race is because as soon as they do other races automatically shut them down and claim that they have no right to talk about it. I mean just read through the Soc 119 twitter feed after a Tuesday or a Thursday. A majority of the time when a white person makes a comment about one of the more “controversial” topics on the feed it gets blown out of the water and different races claim that the person is racist or just does not know what it is like to be a minority. It is true however, white people do not know what it is like to be a minority but no one knows what it is like to be in someone else’s shoes. Like Sam says, race needs to be talked about and there needs to be discussions with all different races. But in order to do this all races need to be open to the discussion and learn how to accept others views. Whites need to learn how to not be afraid of expressing their views and experiences and other races need to learn how to accept these views and understandings from white people. Just because a person is white does not mean that they do not understand racism and are not allowed to discuss it. From Thursday’s activity we can see that just because a person looks white does not mean that they are. Therefore other races should not shoot down discussions with people just because they seem to be white. All sides are at fault here and it is up to all of us to fix this issue and start the discussion. If we can move forward from this we can make a huge impact in the future about how race is communicated between different races of all ages and change the way that we as people view one another. However, it must start with us first and foremost.

I do think that white people tend to shy away from the discussion of race for many different reasons. I think one reason for this is because of fear. Not for fear of being beat up as a student stated after pointing out the darkest person in the room, but for fear of offending others or coming off as being racist. The other day in class Sam said that the biggest insult that can be made to a white person is being called racist because it has a certain meaning and understanding to it. I agree with this because no one wants to be called racist or even be associated with the term because it can truly damage a person’s future. Another reason that white people do not want to discuss race is because as soon as they do other races automatically shut them down and claim that they have no right to talk about it. I mean just read through the Soc 119 twitter feed after a Tuesday or a Thursday. A majority of the time when a white person makes a comment about one of the more “controversial” topics on the feed it gets blown out of the water and different races claim that the person is racist or just does not know what it is like to be a minority. It is true however, white people do not know what it is like to be a minority but no one knows what it is like to be in someone else’s shoes. Like Sam says, race needs to be talked about and there needs to be discussions with all different races. But in order to do this all races need to be open to the discussion and learn how to accept others views. Whites need to learn how to not be afraid of expressing their views and experiences and other races need to learn how to accept these views and understandings from white people. Just because a person is white does not mean that they do not understand racism and are not allowed to discuss it. From Thursday’s activity we can see that just because a person looks white does not mean that they are. Therefore other races should not shoot down discussions with people just because they seem to be white. All sides are at fault here and it is up to all of us to fix this issue and start the discussion. If we can move forward from this we can make a huge impact in the future about how race is communicated between different races of all ages and change the way that we as people view one another. However, it must start with us first and foremost.