I thought the Oprah Winfrey segment was shocking too. I agree that i do not believe that every child has an equal opportunity for education. It clearly showed in that clip. The suburban students had so many more opportunities than that of the inner city high school. They had new and advanced supplies and places to work out, do work, and the use of computers. Almost everything was just "better" than Harper High School. I thought it was interesting to see that the Harper High school students said that they felt "cheated" by this. I can see where they come from, as i would also feel cheated if i saw the drastic differences between my school and another.

Dr. Richards was right. This lecture was definitely the best one yet. I learned so much from this lecture. There were so many things that really caught my attention. The first thing was the Oprah Winfrey video. The percentage differences on the test scores were so eye opening. I could probably have assumed hey would be different, but I never would have guessed such a drastic difference between the 2. Like it almost seems utterly impossible to me that things could be so different. In high school I never took advantage of the different classes I could take and the different things I could learn about and I feel like I really took for granted the opportunities I had in high school. I was not the type of student that felt the need to excel in academics, and seeing the stuff that the Harper High school students did not have, that I did, really makes me regret that I did not take advantage of those things. I think that this is probably the case for a lot of people too, and I just do not think that many of us know exactly just how different our lives could have been, or could be if put in a different atmosphere.
Next I can see what Dr Richards was talking about Nepotism and affirmative action. I know a few people who have gotten a job solely because they know someone who knows another person that owns a restaurant. This person who knows the owner got the other person hired as a waitresses, even though these people were never waitresses. This restaurant usually only considers taking people who have years of experience because it is a highly rated restaurant. Stuff like that annoys me. Some one else could be perfectly qualified, but not hired because they do not know the owner, or know someone that knows the owner. I too am guilty of this. I currently have a job where I work for the company my dad owns. The only reason I ever got this job is because the person that owns it is my father. So, although it annoys me, I am too benefitting from this. I think it is something that is inevitable because people always want to first help out the people that they know, then maybe after all of the people that they know, others that they do not know.
I think that this whole lecture had a lot to do with certain opportunities that people get just because of who they are. Dr Richards named many different reasons for why people get scholarships (American-Italian Scholarship, scholarships for a person with a disability, ect.). I think that no matter what any one says or does about inequality in USA, there will always be instances where things just are not equal, and there is nothing any one can do about it.

I too was touched by the Jorge Munoz story. I could not believe the nice things this man does for these people just from the good of his heart. It was touching to hear him not even know how much money he spends on average on them and that he gets paid by seeing the smiles on their faces. This lecture really showed me the hard things some of these people go through and that they really are not "lazy" at all, and are here every single day, from morning till night, looking for a job to support the family that they left.

I have to admit that I did not know very much about illegal immigration before this lecture, and probably still don’t even after. I think illegal immigration is a hard topic to discuss at times. Its hard to tell where I stand on illegal immigration. As Dr. Richards explained, it is affecting our economy. These illegal immigrants will do jobs that many Americans will and do not want to perform. They will also do a job for less of a pay than many Americans. In some cases, for us, it is positive (like the jobs that many of us do not want to do). In other cases it is negative (the jobs that we want but they get because they will take less pay). What I don’t get about the whole “illegal immigrants” phrase is that everyone living here “legally” right now came form some body who migrated from some where else. So doesn’t that make us all illegal immigrants then? I do not see how there could ever be a stop to illegal immigration either. Just because some thing is drawn out on paper does not mean people will follow by it. I think that it is inevitable that it is going to happen, and will continue to happen no matter what barriers are put in. The part of these 2 lectures that stood out the most was the video of Jorge Munoz. What he does for those people is very kind. I was truly touched when I watched that video. It makes me think about what I could do to help out people who are in situations like that. He really is an “angel”. The way that he did not even know how much money he was spending to buy and cook food for these people, and how he said that he gets paid by seeing those people smile, is amazing. Most of these people are here to make money to support heir family that they left behind. They take coming here, as an opportunity to have a better life and some of us are ignorant enough to think that these people are lazy. It is sad to see that some of these people are living on the streets and homeless, and do not even eat their first meal until 9 at night because they are out looking for a job all day. That is not lazy what so ever. I could not believe that the lady had the Hispanics keep out sign on her door. It was unreal to me. It was shocking to learn that it is mostly about business rather than a political issue. I do not know where I stand on this topic and I don’t think I will ever know where I stand on it, but watching this lecture helped explain a lot of the questions I’ve once had regarding why people do it, and why people have problems with it.

I was too happy that Dr Richards did a lecture on LGBT, as you can see in my comment. Im glad that you explained that parallel between sexual orientation and race. It pointed out a lot of the similarities i now notice between the two. I also support gay rights. through high school I had a friend who was gay. Up until that point i regretfully admit that I did not fully support them but I just did not care for them. Now after becoming friends with her I can see that homosexual relationships are just like heterosexual relationships. I think that having this friend that was gay helped me discover that there are no differences.

Again, another very interesting lecture. For part one of the lecture I wanted to talk about how I though it was kind of cool to see that by 2050 the US is predicting to be almost half of non-European immigrants. I can see how that could be true. It was interesting to see the different encounters most of us have had with people of other races with the statistics that Dr. Richards showed during lecture. The statistic that was most surprising to me was the one where it asked “How familiar are you with a language (besides English) that is native to one or some of your ancestors?” and 13.5 percent are fluent. I thought that more than half of the people would only be able to speak English.
For part 2 of the lecture I could not believe the first information slide; the one with the different laws about homosexuals. Like homosexuals are put in prison for doing sexual acts, and in some places it is just illegal altogether to be homosexual. I do not see why people care if other people are homosexual. I feel that anyone should be free to love who they want when they want. When Dr. Richards gave the statistics of the soc 119 class of fall 2009’s answers on opinions on gay marriage, I was delightfully surprised that 59 percent supported marital rights for gays and lesbians. I think that the society is becoming more open to same sex acts and marriage. I see homosexuality expressed in many different parts of the media lately, which I think is helping the issues. To me people fear what they do not know about and that is why I believe people, in a sense, fear homosexuals. At some degree I can see why some people who are religious do not agree with homosexuality, and that is because they were raised to believe their religion and follow it. When Dr. Richards had the three groups of 2 people walking across the front, and 2 groups were “gay” and the one was “straight” and explained how maybe people are just paying more attention to the gay groups made a lot of sense. I never double take or even stare at a heterosexual couple, but I will admit that I do look longer or even double take on a homosexual couple. I do not have any problem with people being gay but it just is not something I see every day. The part I like about this lecture was how Dr Richards talked about whether or not being gay was a choice. I personally do not think that it is a choice. I think that a person is born either gay or straight and cannot help how they feel towards a specific sex. What really surprised me is the study done on the prisoners. I was shocked with the results that some men who were categorized as homophobes got erections watching gay male sex. Im glad that there was a lecture on LGBT. I think that it needs to become talked about much more.

I never looked at the experiment with the baby dolls as showing majority and minority and symbolizing "good". Reading your explanation on that really helped me realize what that experiment really was trying to prove, and did prove. I too have always grown up having white baby dolls and white barbies. When I was younger, but not too young to know the differences between black and white, I asked my mom why there was only one black barbie in the aisle, and why there was only one colored disney character at the time. Its interesting to see that things like this occur at such a young age and people may not even realize it.

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When Dr. Richards said how it turns into paranoia I could tell exactly what he was talking about. Its crazy to see that stuff like this can cause someone to become mentally ill. Lastly, I wanted to talk about the video of the 101 year old female being beaten and mugged. The response video of the white male was insane to me. How does he know that it was a black male, and why is a he making an assumption like that. They did not say it was by a BLACK 30 year old man, because they do not know if it was done by a black 30 year old man.
In all this was a very interesting lecture!

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”. As the video went on and they showed a few colored children picking up the white dolls when they asked which doll looks good and then the black dolls when asked which one looks bad was shocking. I could not believe the results that they revealed. I can not believe that we are exposed to differences in race, and what is stereotyped as good and bad, when we are so young.
Its interesting to see how people feel about other races. The Asian supremacist and black supremacists was really interesting to me. The one with Kamau Kambon was unreal.

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It shows the stereotypes we have. Then he explained that they are behind much of the computer programs and internet and all the things like that, and it made me realize how stereotypical I am. Next when they showed the video of the teenage girls talking about a standard that we have about what is good hair and what is bad hair was not so shocking. I am white female and I grew up with brown curly hair that I constantly had to put mousse or gel in just to keep it under control. I always though the “good hair” was long blonde straight hair, and manageable hair. Pretty much hair that you did not have to do anything to and it looks nice. I used to have this nice, thick, long, curly, brown hair, and I have dyed it bright blonde and straighten it almost everyday just so that I can look like the “standard”.