Before this class I never really paid hardly any attention to illegal immigrants. They never really bothered me and growing up I could not tell the difference. How are we supposed to know if someone is an illegal immigrant just by their outside features without us being prejudice against them? Where I grew up at, there were mixed diversity. It varied from blacks, whites, Indians, Cambodians, and Hispanics, and latino/a. Every one was different but I can say that there was a possibility that some of these people could have been illegal immigrants but I would have never known. I never paid any mind to the drastic rate of incoming immigrants and how angry Americans are that they are here. After being in this class I have learned so much pertaining to immigration. Obviously their lives are not easy but I did not know to what extent. I learned that not every one travels to America as a family, that usually one person from the family comes, then goes back to the native country to retrieve every one else. Reading Sam’s book I noticed that it says that the rate of illegal immigrants coming in to the United States is growing each year. I can imagine that Americans are getting more upset because this is a trending topic circulating through the media all the time. But how can we get mad when all of our ancestors are immigrants. This bothers me a lot because we stole this land from Native Americans. Doesn’t this make us illegal immigrants? There is nothing no one can say about our past because they refuse to acknowledge that our people did the same thing that these illegal immigrants are doing today. They are trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. Most of them are some of the most hard working people in the entire country. They will work a long day just to receive ¼ of what the average American makes. I still believe that the treatment against people searching for a better life is not right. If we could just place our selves in their shoes I am pretty sure that our perspectives will change. They are human beings too. They have two legs, two arms, and a heart just like everyone here. I do not understand why people try to dehumanize them like we are not all equal. Instead of chastising them, we should help them out with building up their money. America is supposed to be the land of opportunity, so shouldn’t we help others attain that? I feel it is our duty and job to make sure that we keep the immigration rate to a satisfactory limit and to make it a better condition for those who are immigrants legally.

I do think that there is a place and a time to use nepotism to our advantage. I strongly do agree with the common phrase, it is not what you know, however, it is who you know. The world today is very based around networking. Sam was right; most people would not be here in college if it was not for nepotism. A lot of minorities for example are here on scholarship provided by Penn State and this is due to nepotism. A lot of us are unable to provide the financial aid ourselves and so we receive scholarships based off our race and our or our parent’s yearly income. I know that I am unable to pay for college myself and so I will not stop applying for scholarships as long as I am in school I will continue to use this affirmative action to my advantage. This is an opportunity of a life time that my parents at my age were not able to cease and so I am going to snatch the chance now while I am young. Some people may look down upon the term “Affirmative Action” but when it applies to ourselves, that when we begin to justify it. People use nepotism (affirmative action) everyday. Getting a job after college is difficult and if networking while I am in college means that my changes of receiving the job will increase, then I am going to take advantage of it as much as possible. There are certain times where nepotism would be inappropriate to use. If a job manger hired me due to my race and gender just to fulfill a quota, I would definitely have to turn the job down. Or if an employer wanted to hire me just because he liked the way I looked, I would feel some type of way because if my credentials, skills, and education background is not what qualifies me for a job then I would not want it. People are so quick to point fingers at others, but at the same time they have three different fingers being pointed at them. They will take a job that a family member them to receive, but on the other hand, they want to complain about people receiving full scholarship to attend a college or university. I strongly believe that people do need help at times, but if there is a situation where I can actively get the job myself then I am going to utilize my skills in trying to get the desired job. I believe that hard work and determination will get you places you need to go in life, but nepotism will make the journey a little bit easier.

defeats our mission. The Americans are not even fighting this war because of retaliations of the 9/11 attack. We are fighting this war because of oil. Innocent people are getting hurt and killed over our nationalistic mentalities. We are plotting to take over their oil companies; acting like bullies. We can not have this: 29:1 people are dying due to our tendencies. By any means necessary is the motto that we go by.

outrageous. The Muslim extremists were the ones who crashed the plane into the twin towers and killed the millions of innocent by standers who had absolutely nothing to do with the issues they were facing. The extremists are the US troops who take their job too seriously and just kill anyone who gets in their way. Watching the video of the US troops destroy the innocent man’s car was too difficult to watch. No matter how right or wrong the person was, he is human. He has a heart that is beating, he has air in his lungs, he has has the right to live his life the way he wants to. The fact that the US troops ran over his truck; his home, and laughed about it, I became outraged and I am not even Muslim or from the country. He is human just like us and we have no obligations to deter an innocent by stander from living a comfortable life. We went over there and are bullying the people. I am saddened by the fact that more people get injured when troops are looking for a single person. This is not the American way to go about defending our country. The fact that they say we are doing this because God sent us to do it really

It is a shame that the U.S soldiers would chose to kill innocent civilians just for one particular person. It is also a shame that we are not informed about what is going on over seas. It is unethical that we go over in to their lands searching for one person, and in the mean time, people are getting injured and killed for the sake of another person’s actions. I had the same reaction to September 11, 2001 when the world trade center was crashed. As years went by, I began thinking, why would they do that, and I would categorize all Middle Easterns into one group. I assume that they do the same thing to us and this is everyone just being ignorant. Since I began taking this class I have began looking at scenarios from an objective perspective, but in no way can anybody justify the actions that the US troops take to find a person while killing others simultaneously. The actions that some of the extremist commit are

Most of the things that Laury was addressing I found that I could relate to. Women are much more complex and boys are extremely simple. I have a boyfriend and we constantly are having a talk about the struggles of being a female. Girls are always and forever going to be affected by the double standard rule. It is frustrating to know that people are always categorizing negative words with females and the guys are always getting the long end of the stick while we get the short end of the stick. The media and word of mouth has caused men to think that they have supremacy over women because they do not go through the different things we go through. Vaginas give birth to the world and have to experience a menstrual cycle every month. Also they endure pounds of pressure by men penetrating it with their penises. So when women do not feel as though they do not want sex, men appear to be dumbfounded and lost to the fact that sometimes we do not want sex all the time. That is the difference between men and women, men want and think about sex constantly on a daily basis, while women may think about it every now and then and may not want it as badly as men. If we could experience and orgasm every single time that we have sex then yeah maybe we may like to have sex however, that is not the case at all. Statistics showed that about 1/3 of women actually experience and orgasm during sex. That really amazed a lot of guys because they are programmed to believe that females experience exactly what the experience. This fantasy is falsely provided by movies and porn. In the porn of course the women are faking orgasms but guys in real life actually believe that they are really reaching ecstasy. Truth be told, this is not true. Most women do not experience orgasms through penetration. Most guys did not know that the way to pleasuring a girl fully is to stimulate the clitoris. It holds the same amount of sensitivity as the head on the penis and is made by the same tissue therefore that is the gateway to reaching orgasm. Sex to men is rough, fast, etc. Sex to women is a totally different thing in our eys. Sex involves intimacy, kissing, touching, caressing, foreplay, slow and sensual sex. Guys do not understand this because in porn, the sex is in the perspective of a man and not from the woman’s. Time and time I have to coach my boyfriend on how to really pleasure a woman because in he believes that we have the same point of views of what sex is expected to be like, same as for other men.

I do not have a major problem with interracial relationships. My culture and race, however, have developed a problem and barrier between people dating outside if their race. I can say that the only problem I do have is when I see a white girl and a black man. It is in a way so cliché to see them as a couple. Primarily black women have a problem with this; I can not speak for white men or other races. The reason black women have a more prominent problem is because we have been battling this dilemma for years in the past and present. Back in the day black people were brain washed in to thinking that white is right. So black men have always gone after white women and abandoned the beautiful black women. When black women see a good black man with a white woman we automatically revert back to the mentality that the white women are taking all of our good black men. In the black culture, dating outside of our race is kind of looked down upon and accepted in certain conditions. For instance, nobody in my family has brought someone home of a different race and introduced us to him or her. The only person to do that was my older sister Nina. A few years back we were at my aunts house for a block party and she brought her boyfriend Tom to the party. We were all shocked to see that he was white and also shocked because she never told us about him. At first we were a little uneasy. I was more uncomfortable than he was. After a few times of meeting Tom we all accepted him into our family and now he and my sister are happily married with children. After a while, I began to look past his skin color and looked at the fact that he made my sister extremely happy and that was all that mattered to me. Other than that, I do not believe that I have a problem with interracial relationships. Many Americans, overall, have accepted the idea of dating outside of race since our country is a “Melting Pot”. I believe that we are much more lenient and liberal compared to other countries. People are always going to be prejudice because we each individually have our standards of what a relationship should be. Instead of judging the relationship based off of the exterior we see, we should not judge at all because whether they are happy or not is none of our business. This is a lesson that I, myself, should adhere to because sometime I can be a little judgmental when I have no place to be that way.

I have never ever felt guilty for being the race that I was born to be. I can not feel guilty for something that God has blessed me with and neither should anybody of any race. I am of African American descent and I am proud to be this way. Nothing or nobody makes me feel ashamed or guilty. My ancestors have been through many triumphs in the past and we have finally embraced the fact that our black is beautiful. I could understand how other races such as white could feel guilty for being who they are because they could realize how other races are being discriminated against and treated differently. However I am not white and I could only base my opinion off of what I know. I can say that I do see other races and people with different backgrounds being discriminated against and I can also say that I fall victim to having prejudice against certain cultures and races. Ethnicities and races such as in the Middle East, I admit that I have latent and regular prejudice towards because I am ill informed about their culture. I notice that people feel the same way and thus people tend to discriminate against them; especially after 9/11. Because I feel sorrow for them, I do not feel guilty for being black. I feel empathy towards them but not guilty for being who I am. My race has and still is dealing with different act of prejudice and discrimination; even in this present day. Everyone knows about our past and till this day we are still battling with inequality. It has taken years and years to build up the confidence that some of us have. But many are still stuck in the idea that colored is bad and white is right. I know that many white people do feel guilty for being white being as though they are more privileged than any other race. If I were white I admit that I would feel slightly guilty for being born in the world where my ancestors have decided that my skin color will be granted more opportunities than other cultures. But when I think about about it, people of different races want to be accepted into other cultures. White people are constantly tanning just so that they could have color in their skin. People of color are bleaching their skin and straightening their hair so that they could resemble the white culture. Nowadays, people do not really feel sorry for other cultures if they are constantly trying to assimilate and blend in to the race. It seems strange to me but this is the world they we live in. People just want to be like other people.

I do believe that the world is eventually going to run low on our natural resources if we as a people continue remain oblivious and ignorant towards these repeating issues. The world is going to over populate if we do not make a change. I can not help but notice how the media is constantly saying that we are coming up scarece on certain products. Well, in my opinion this could all be avoided if the government will intervene and stop people from wasting valuable products that many people are not fortunate to consume. Food is a number one priority that many people waste in their life. I can say that I was involved in wasting food when I was younger because I was aware of the many people who are not fortunate to afford the nutrients I was consistent with throwing away in the trash. Now that I am aware of the 97% of people across the world who are in poverty, my eyes have been opened and I believe that a change has to be made. The upper classes mostly are the victims of wasting valuable items because they know that they are able to get their hands on another thing to replace it. This is the mentality that many Americans have because in a sense I believe that we are spoiled and are ill-informed about critical matters that could impact us. A solution to maintaining the maintenance of our resources is putting a limit on population. If we have a steady population, we would not have to worry about running out of resources. China was up to something when they initiated the idea of up to two kids per family. At first I was amazed that people actually heed the idea but at the end of the day, it was a genius move. China is an extremely large country and if people had the chance to give birth to whatever amount of children they want, there is a possibility that resources could run out. The government implemented a law that there is are a two children per family policy. Maybe if America or other countries could do something similar as such as this, possibly the amount of people without the correct resources needed to live and adequate life would be decreased to a level that we can manage with. However, I believe that poverty will inevitably be around because there is a finite amount of resources that people are exposed to. If we could open up the issue about scarcity of natural resources, then there is a chance that people will take immediate action. It is not really circulating throughout the media about the limited amount of resources because people who are ignorant believe that we have a life time supply of materials. This is not the case and something has to be done about it in order for a change to occur.

It is sad to say, but I do believe that being African American and having lighter skin will definitely give him an advantage compared to someone who is a darker shade than him. I believe that this problem is also circulating amongst other cultures besides the African American race. I was just reading the article in Sam’s book and I learned that other cultures believe that having lighter skin is better than having darker skin. This girl was Latina and Black and although her shade of skin was slighter darker than the rest, she was discriminated against by her own race. I for a fact have had a first hand experience of knowing about discrimination within the same race. I know that many boys around my way prefer lighter skinned girls over a girl with dark skin. Even the entertainers and rappers are forever rapping about light skinned girls. In Lil Wayne’s song, he specifically says, “I like a long haired thick red bone…” A red bone in Black culture is a person who is so light, just their skin could pass for a white person’s skin color. It is mind boggling to know that black people are giving into the idealism that white is right. Not only the blacks, but other people around the world are assimilating to the ideas that were started by Europeans. It broke my heart to hear one girl in class story. She was from India and her mother has a darker shade than regular people residing in the country. She said that her mother’s neighbors basically told her that she was ugly due to her skin color and her daughter was beautiful because she had a lighter shade than her mother. It is a shame that people all over the world are conditioned to think that lighter skin is better. It is also a shame that people like the one in the video are immediately given better opportunities because of his skin color. The people that do have lighter skin also think that they are better than people with darker shade. I know for a fact in America earlier years, freed blacks with lighter skin were more accepted by white people compared to other blacks. The boy in the video also told me that his experience amongst white people was similar. He said that his roommate’s family was skeptical when they were told that he was black. However, once they saw him in person, their perception of him dramatically changed. He had a strange feeling that it had something to do with his lighter skin. Not all fall into this category, but many usually do fell a little relief being around people who have similar color as them because hopefully they could connect better with that person.