I think the reason that our society hates on immigrants is a complex one. I think there are a lot of parts to this answer. First of all, I want to talk about the reason about Americans think that immigrants are “stealing” their jobs. I, personally, think this is not true. Act like Americans would even want to do the jobs that immigrants (illegal and legal ones) are doing. Especially the illegal immigrants! What legal American would want to work for $2 a day from doing manual labor all day? Nobody! I strongly agree with what Sam was saying about how no lazy person would immigrate to the United States. I remember him saying something in class along the lines of “nobody who is going to illegally come here is lazy! If you are a Mexican and you are lazy, you are still in Mexico!” I think that people that come to this country are trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. In attempting to do this, they obviously have to work. The fact that they are illegal limits the amount of jobs he or she could take up, so, naturally, they get stuck with the crappiest jobs. On the other hand, I can see how some Americans believe that some legal immigrants may be “stealing” their jobs. However, I definitely would not call it “stealing”. Rather, these legal immigrants are “beating some Americans out of jobs”. This person would obviously deserve the job because this happens when the immigrants are more experienced or well-fit for the job. So, this isn’t immigrants “stealing” American jobs, this should just be seen as another person beating another person out for the same job. It should not matter if that person is originally from the United States or not. In my opinion, as an all-American white girl, immigrants deserve to be in this country just as much as we (“Americans”) do. Just because a person was not born here I don’t think is a good enough reason to not be able to move to the United States and get a better job and make a better life for themselves and their family. Anyway, I think that another reason society hates on immigrants is because of the whole concept we have been talking about all semester about “people sticking around people who are similar to themselves”. If there are people immigrating into the United States, I think it would be likely that they are not white, or they are not similar to us (Americans). Therefore, I think the reason people hate on immigrants is for the same reason that people hate on people of color or people of another religion, etc. I think it is completely unfair and unreasonable for an American to hate an immigrant. There is a set amount of land in this world, and I don’t think that just because you weren’t born in an area should mean if you are allowed to live there or not.

Before the guest speaker today, I never really thought about school segregation in this way. I actually did not think that schools are more segregated in the school systems today than they were in the 1970’s. I think that the guest lecturer was not really trying to get that point across. I think, rather, they were trying to say that students in today’s society are just not as exposed to diversity (different races, and even religions, ethnicities, etc) as they were 40 years ago. I definitely see this in my hometown, which is a small, rural town (aka Bumblefuck, New York). The majority of my graduating class was white. I could count the amount of Asians in my entire school on two hands. There were some black people, but they all hung out together in a crew and did not really socialize with anyone but themselves. Anyway, the guest speaker was trying to say that after the 1970’s and the civil rights movement with all the new rules (etc.) that some people tried to start mixing races together. I think this was predominantly done by the black people during this time period. However, as a little time went on, people who did not share commonalities like race, religion, or ethnicity started going to school together, sharing water fountains, sitting in the same sections of buses and trains, amongst other things. I think this is what the guest lecturer means when he says that people were less segregated at this time period then now.
In today’s world (and more specifically, in schools), like I said before in the example from my high school, (and from what we’ve learned so far this semester in this class), students seem to be more likely to be friends with people who are similar to them. More specifically, have the same skin color, or look “the same” as them. I am guilty of it too (which I am embarrassed to say) but I think I feel most comfortable around white people (I am a white girl). When thinking of my close friends, from high school and here at Penn State, all of my close friends are white. I am in a sorority where every single girl is white, and we have 1 Asian (out of 90 girls) but she “acts white” so she doesn’t even count as much diversity.
Anyway, I don’t really think that our schools are technically more segregated than they were in the 1970’s. Because thinking back to what I know about the 1970’s, a lot of people did not bring the civil rights movement on with welcoming arms. I think the guest speaker was trying to say that people were more open to the idea of desegregation, but I actually think that in the 1970’s and today that it is about a tie.

After leaving lecture every Tuesday and Thursday, all I want to do the rest of the evening is talk about things Sam said. There are always so many things I want to comment on, and lucky enough for me, I have a good friend of mine named Brian who I can always sit with after class or later in that week to discuss what has been being talked about in lecture. Brian and I ask each other questions about what we think of Sam, how we believe he thinks up these lectures, and we ask each other our opinions about what he’s been saying. When Sam sent out those several e-mails, telling us that Tuesday is a class we do not want to miss, Brian and I were both looking very forward to the lecture. “Christian Invaders.” We thought this would be a lecture that would bash Christians. We also predicted that Sam would say things like, “This lecture is not about bashing Christians, and I’m not anti-Christian, but look what the fuck they’re doing!” and then continue on to tell us how Christians are bad. Sure enough, this was true. I myself am a Christian, so I was very curious as to why he thought us Christians were invaders.
With that being said, I do think this lecture was interesting. Very interesting. When he started off class with that bit about the Chinese, and if it were true, what would we think of the Chinese, etc. I thought it was an extremely powerful thing to do. While I was sitting there listening to that story, I was thinking “fuck yeah I would hate the Chinese!” When he then compared our current situation with Iraq to that story, it really got me thinking. By the end of the class, Sam had me thinking in a way I never have before. I never thought of our conflict with Iraq from the point of view of someone living there. We are taking their oil! It’s theirs! And we’re fighting them! And we’re ruining THEIR land and THEIR people and THEIR resources! It’s ridiculous. I, like Sam, am not anti-war, but this lecture just made me really think about what the United State Army is doing over there. I was absolutely appalled with the video about the corrupted soldiers who ran over that poor cab driver’s truck. They ruined his life basically, and he was innocent. So, to answer the question, I don’t know if I would say this was Sam’s BEST lecture.. but it definitely is the lecture that got me thinking the most. Like I’ve said before, this class is changing my life and the way that I think everyday.

Part 3: Actually, I think that “Do you think the majority of American would be willing to learn a new language for a job?” and “Do you think Americans would be able to learn a new language for a job” and two totally different questions with two totally different answers. So, I take back what I said before. I think that maybe the majority of Americans would be willing to try and learn a new language, but I also think that almost all Americans would get frustrated and eventually realize what a struggle acquiring a new language really is, and I think that most people would quit it. I don’t care how much a person is struggling economically- learning a new language is super frustrating and tougher than you’d think. (Hence, my 8 years of study with not nearly as much progress and I could have hoped for.) With that being said, I don’t think it is fair for a company or someone offering a job to make their employees start to learn another language. I don’t think it is a realistic request, given what I said before about language acquisition becoming more challenging with age.

PART 2:
With that being said, I have been studying Spanish for 8 years now, and I am still nowhere near being fluent. I can’t even understand most things that are being said unless they are said super slowly. Acquisition of a new language is extremely difficult, and in one of my classes on linguistics, I learned that the best time to learn a new language is before puberty. After puberty, the difficulty of learning a new language increases just as age increases. With that being said, it would be very challenging for an older person to be able to learn to effectively communicate in a new, foreign language. That is one of the reasons that I believe that the majority of Americans would NOT be willing to learn a new language, even during the hard economic times that we are facing today.

PART 1: To the first part of this question, I think that I would definitely learn a new language for a job. I have taken a foreign language since I was in 7th grade, and the whole language learning process really interests me a lot. Last semester I took a course in the Linguistics of Spanish (which is the scientific study of human languages.. from the formation of language- grammar, to language meaning, to language in context) and I found it super interesting how language is acquired, etc. Due to the fact that I found the Spanish Linguistics course to be so interesting, I am currently taking an English Linguistics course where we learn similar things, except we also learn WHY English words are pronounced and spelled the way they are. The point of me saying this is that although languages are very complex, they absolutely fascinate me. Therefore, I would definitely learn a new language for a job… because I know that it would be interesting and fun for me!

Interracial relationships. Hmm. This is actually a topic that has been pretty relevant to my life this past year. Let me start out by saying that I am a white girl. I come from a town with very limited diversity. I born and raised in this town, so I am used to not feeling very cultured. Not only am I from this town, but both of my parents were born and raised in this town as well, and therefore they do not have lots of experience with working with other races or religions. All in all, it’s pretty safe to say that looking back on my experiences of growing up, I am fairly sheltered. None of my best friends were black growing up, and I had very few black people in my graduating class. With all of that being said (and please don’t laugh because I’m actually being totally serious): I like black guys. My friends at home tell me I have “Jungle Fever” (sorry to say it and I don’t mean to offend anybody, but you all know what I’m talking about). Some of my friends have even gone to the extent of calling me “Mogli” because he is the character in The Jungle Book. I started hanging out with an older black guy in my town. Not only was he black (when all my friends are white and nobody in our friends group is black), but he was a few years older than me. With the combination of his race and his age and how I met him, to the honest- the jokes directed at me from my friends are numerous and frequent. To all of us, me included, it’s a joke. However, thinking about it right now from the mindset that I have while I’m in sociology 119 class, if anybody who is black were to hear us, I would imagine they would be offended and hurt. For example, a few dyas before Halloween last year, I asked my best guy friend what he was going to be for Halloween. We were in a huge group of people, so I think to be funny, my guy friend said “I’m going to be a black guy. So then, maybe you’ll get with me”. He did it just to get laughs and just because it’s an ongoing joke that “___ likes black people”. Right now I am thinking about this from a very different perspective, and the more I think about the jokes and the unnecessary comments, the more I’m actually getting mad. I don’t consider me or any of my friends to be racists at all by any means, but this is all making me realize- then why are there any jokes at all? If none of us had any feelings of racism, than wouldn’t a guy I liked just simply be a guy I liked, and not a BLACK guy I liked?...

We actually discussed this question in one of our first discussion groups of if we thought Penn State was diverse or not. I was actually surprised when everyone in my section said that they thought Penn State was not diversified. I think that it is very diverse. In order to understand why I think this way, I guess you would have to know about the place I was born and raised. My graduating class of about two hundred people only had maybe 10 black kids in it. Maybe. Whatever the number was, there was a very little black population. To make matters (essentially) worse, all of the black kids hung out. It was as if they were scared to break out of their world and their ideas. I’m embarrassed to say, but when I think about my closest group of boy friends and girl friends from home, not one of them is black. One of them is one-quarter black, but has two white parents, so she doesn’t really count. And to tell you the truth, I don’t know how my friends would react if a black person tried to, say, sit with us at lunch. I never considered myself to be racist by any means, however this class is making me really think about what my views about other people of other races are. I still know that I am not a racist by any means, but I definitely need to be more open to other typed of people. (By the way, in case you couldn’t tell, I am a white girl.) Anyway, back to the question. To me, Penn State seems diversified, but I guess that is just because I am not used to much diversity in my small rural town in upstate New York. There were very few Asians. I’m actually having a hard time thinking of any that went to my school right now. Anyway, did the diversity influence my decision to come to Penn State? No. Diversity was not on my mind at all. I never even thought about it until this question. One of the reasons I did choose Penn State though was because of the number of people that came here. Coming from a small town, I wanted to go to a huge school so I could experience something as different as possible. So, I guess in a way, I did want more diversity. However I never really thought about it as being diversity that I wanted rather than it being more about the amount of people. Since I have been here, I have met plenty of blacks, Asians, and one of my great friends here is from Dubai. I think I am becoming more diversified by coming to Penn State even though I think it is only a small step in the direction of becoming the necessary amount of cultural diversified.

I absolutely, one-hundred percent do NOT think that affirmative action is taking anything about from whites. I’m actually a little confused as to what this person was getting at when asking this question, or if maybe he meant something else. I read a blog about this question below me (he/she was a minority) and they were saying they were pretty offended by this question, because he was a minority. The first thing I thought when hearing this question was that people if minority groups must be offended by this. I hope that minority people that read this do not think that whites think affirmative action is taking things too far.. because I have a feeling that a lot of people will agree with me when I say- not at all! I have a feeling that the guy asking this question was thinking about colleges wanting to accept minorities to ensure they have diversity so can’t be seen as discriminatory. For example, my “white” guy friend from home as a very small amount of Puerto Rican blood, so on all his college applications he checked off the box for Puerto Rican. I guess this is seen as being more impressive: being a “smart” Puerto Rican, or Hispanic, or Black, than being a “smart” White. However, affirmative action is not taking anything away from whites. Perfect example- look at Penn State. Whites make up something like 86% of the campus population. Penn State is a college, and I’m guessing they take some affirmative action by accepting some minorities (whether it be the fact that they are actually qualified or not as qualified) to seem like a more diverse university, however, there is SUCH a small percentage of blacks and minorities- how could anyone think that they are taking away from a whites opportunity to attend school here? When taking these numbers of the population of different races here at this school, there is no way that anyone could really argue the fact that affirmative action is taking away from whites. This is also the case for the majority of people who decide whose job applications are accepted or turned away. The numbers of black people, for example, holding management positions is so much lower than whites. Also, for the blacks (or any other minorities for that matter) who do hold managerial positions, they have to be qualified! Anyone who has a high rank such as that must have certain things about them that make them qualified for the job. Nobody would hire or promote a minority to a management position just because of affirmative action or just because they wanted their company to look more diverse. Affirmative action is not taking anything away from non-minorities.

This might be selfish of me to say this- but yes, I think a lot of the time it is selfish for lower income families to have more kids. As with every claim, there are exceptions, and different situations that would not apply to this, but I believe that overall it is selfish and pretty unfair to have more kids than parents know they can afford. I know a lot of couples who have already decided they wanted to have a child together, but they know they have to wait a few years to save money. Having a baby and then raising that child is expensive! I read a statistic one time that said that the average amount of money spent on raising a child from birth to age 18 was well over $200,000, not even included their college education! And in the earlier years, in the U.S. I think it’s something like $27,000 a year, per child. If a family is not ready for those financial statistics, I think it is unfair to the child. With being allocated less money, it’s not really giving that child an equal chance in the world. They will most likely have to have daycare or preschool that is not as “good” as other children, or kids may not get the same nutrition as some kids because of the costs of organic/healthy foods is usually more than others. As much as I hate to say it, I think that kids who have less money on them will (in the end) have less opportunities and less experiences. For another example, maybe that family won’t have enough money to buy the books that their child should be reading, and as a result of that, the child may fall behind in school. Other students also may make fun of a kid who is in a low-income family who maybe has to wear all hand-me-downs because of his/her parents’ lack of money. I don’t mean to sound materialistic here, and I don’t think that being rich is better for a child, I am just simply naming some things that the child of a low-income family might have to go through that someone of slightly higher stature would not have to go through. If a woman in a low-income family gets pregnant on accident, I do not think that she is being selfish, because it just simply happened. Lower-income families are less likely to be educated about women’s health and sex education, so that may be another reason why low-income families have more children. I do not think these people are selfish just because of a lack of knowledge. However, to me, it just seems unfair to the kid in social, physical, and educational ways, therefore making it slightly selfish of their parents to make such a major decision to have kids.