. For some reason a person's intelligence and education is portrayed through their ability to speak a language, and here in the United States that is English. So when you have someone come up to America that can't speak English, or at best broken English, they are thought of as dumb and ignorant. Too bad that thinking someone has no intelligence because they can't speak your language in fact is ignorant. If that were really the case most Americans would really be dumb because many of us can't speak any other languages ourselves. In our defense we rarely have to compared to Europeans. So typically immigrants are portrayed in the media as the common villain, in our minds as ignorant and dumb, and as a whole are coming in too high amounts that cause fear to a lot of people afraid of change.
). I mean when you fear somebody, you don't paint a good picture of them in your mind, usually you portray them with some sort of bad characteristic or evil. So with immigrants coming in large numbers, what we see on the news will change. Bad news sells and bad news about a group people dislike or fear sells even more. So when a crime is broadcast on the news which story goes on air? Do you think it is going to be the white man that beat his wife, or the Hispanic immigrant that got caught trying to rob a convenience store? The media just snowballs the bad perceptions that the majority populace has of the immigrant groups coming into their country. Another big point that makes society dislike the majority of immigrant populations has to do with, well partially their culture, and how that is portrayed with education.
I wish I knew exactly why immigrants as a whole are portrayed as bad people. I don't think it is exclusively an American problem though, classifying immigrants as bad people. I feel like it is a problem worldwide, almost fearing the populations of people moving into new countries. So I guess I will try to analyze as a whole why immigrants are portrayed as bad people and see how many I can come up with. On e reason immigrants seem to get a bad name probably is because when they come, it usually is in large amounts or just not noticed. So in the case of Latin Americans coming into the United states, they are all coming in huge numbers. That probably scares a lot of people who are fearing, mostly irrationally, that they are going to come in, take over, and change the culture. And with that, most people fear change, we all generally feel secure in the normal day to day life and culture we grew up with so if they really believe their culture is going to be changed by an incoming group, they would naturally fear them (the immigrants).
Think from the perspective of someone always trying to help out a friend by hooking the up with this or that and they always turned you down, what would you eventually start to think. A lot of people would probably think that their friend is trying to avoid being linked to you, from help, and maybe even that they are conceited and too good for you help. So I realistically think I would not be able to avoid benefitting from nepotism and that most others would not either.
I bet there were a lot of people who told themselves, “I can’t be apart of this, I will only buy free trade chocolate from now on.” How many of them realistically kept up with that goal? Chocolate is a pretty simple thing that you don’t even buy every day, usually. People benefit from nepotism virtually everyday, even in the smallest ways. If you want to not use the advantage given to you by friends and family there is a good chance you will just be left behind in society, both economically and even socially.
. I mean you get your clothes because your parents just give them to you, you did not earn the money to buy it. Everything is based on who you know. How our mentality works leads us to help our people we know, because we care about them. I mean part of the way to get rid of nepotism would essentially become a cold person who does not help out anyone of their friends or family. Doing that would not allow nepotism. Also, most people always want to think of how they can get ahead, either in schooling or work, etc… A great way of doing that is by using the advantages of opportunities you are given through the people you know. Comparing it to other things, think of way back in the semester when we learned about the slaves picking cocoa in the Ivory Coast.
Just learning about the word nepotism, and what it means in class, I think that I would still not try to actively try to not benefit from nepotism. I do not know if anyone would think of me negatively for saying this, but in all reality I believe I am just being realistic. It sounds noble to say, “yeah, I would actively try and not use the benefits brought to me for nepotism.” But really, a small group of people in this world could truly accomplish that. I mean in seriously, who could actually accomplish that. There are so many things you get, virtually anything, that is through nepotism. I mean, literally list things you get from when you are born till when your 18. Yeah it is pretty hard to list anything that has nothing to do with nepotism.
. I also never thought that the Middle East was worried about the Christians invading them, us. I just thought they did not like us because all of our freedoms, and never connected it to our majority religion. I honestly could not believe I missed that for the last, how many years has it been now? I am really not surprised that the war really is mainly about oil, I realize that we pretty much have our country based on it and what goes on in the Middle East really affects us. I was almost amazed to think about how we are portrayed in the Muslim eye, and really wish that we could change that image, but for how religious our nation is that is not likely to happen any time soon.
So the presentation of "Christian Invaders" did interest me, I really liked it. When Sam first talked about this lecture and how we should all show up and bring friends, I was thinking, "Who are the Christian Invaders, was this missionaries going around the world trying to convert everybody?" It never occurred to me that the United States, especially to Muslim countries, is thought of as a Christian nation. I look at it now and realize, yeah we are very religious but growing up and surrounded with my brothers and mother who are all atheist, it never occurred to me that the United States is a very Christian nation.
I personally am not a Christian, I am somewhere between agnosticism and atheism. I am not the stereo typical atheist who is determined to eradicate religion, as I hope no one fits the stereo type of religious fanatic who is determined to advance their religion throughout the world at any cost, but sadly both of those stereo types exist. I was raised Lutheran, a division of Christianity for those who do not know what that is, and it just never caught with me. So now in my life I am actually trying to figure out the "allure" of the major religions, and especially in the United States why they are so popular.
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