I believe that there are at least a few ways that a person can become homosexual. For the most part, a true homosexual person is born that way. A true gay person doesn’t have the choice to do so and often wouldn’t even choose to be gay if they had the option to choose their sexual orientation. It is part of their genetics that they only are sexually attracted to members of the same gender. While this is not a proven scientific fact, I believe this to be true because I know a few gay people who would swear it. Many of them bring up a good point by asking the question, “Why would I choose to be gay?” Why would a person choose to be a part of a minority sexual orientation that is constantly discriminated against? No one truly wants to be part of that and deal with that lifestyle. That would be a more hard and stressful life for no reason if the person weren’t born gay. However, I do believe that some people still choose their sexual orientation and choose another one other than the one they were born with. There are definitely some people who just simply prefer the stereotypical gay lifestyle to the stereotypical straight lifestyle. Even people looking to be rebellious and join a minority in society could choose to be homosexual. There are many reasons that a person could want to switch sexual orientations. Sometimes it’s that the person just wants to be experimental and want to try both and see what they like better for themselves. However I also believe there is another way that a person can end up as a homosexual adult. I think that a person’s surroundings when growing up definitely can have an impact on their sexual orientation in the future. More times than not, this won’t be able to switch a person’s sexual orientation but in some situations I believe it can. For example, if a person grows up with two homosexual parents, or very close to two homosexual partners, they will grow up thinking that this behavior is not uncommon and be more inclined to end up like that in the future. Most of the time, it won’t make a huge impact on a child but I bet statistics would show that a child is more likely to grow up homosexual if he or she grows up with others who are homosexual. This is the same case with many different facets of life, not just sexual orientation. A child is always more likely to grow up similar to his surroundings. The same goes for a child who grows up around anti-gay parents. They are more likely to grow up straight.

It’s funny that Sam used the example of child abductions in class because growing up, that was my biggest fear. When I was a kid my mom would always watch crime shows on television and I would end up watching some of them with her. For some reason, one of the most common topics of each episode besides murder was child abduction. I guess because it is one of the most tragic events and is feared by so many that it draws attention and interest. From a young age I became aware of kidnappings and thought they were not an uncommon occurrence. My biggest fear by far was being kidnapped and if I was given the option to walk to school I probably would have declined. I would have hoped that my parents wouldn’t have allowed me to walk to school by myself because I thought there was always a possibility of being abducted when walking alone. As I got older I realized that the chances of being kidnapped were a lot lower than I had thought as a younger child. Still, I didn’t realize that the statistics were as low as they are. To find out that only one hundred kidnappings occur every year in the United States by non-family members surprised me. That number was much lower than what I expected and I realized how foolish I was when I was younger. Living in fear was a bad mistake and I wish I had known that the chances of child abduction were so low. Like Sam said, you shouldn’t be afraid to live life. I think that my fear of child abductions like many others was formed and sustained by the media. Television, movies, etc. use examples of the most traumatic events because they make for the best stories that will attract the biggest audience. This relates to many other facets of life, not just fears. The media plays a huge role in almost everyone’s life in shaping their views and beliefs even though some may not realize it. This is especially true for kids growing up because they are the most susceptible to ideas. If you see something on television or in the media you will most likely assume that it’s true because you don’t know any better. For example I believed that kids were kidnapped not so uncommonly because I had seen it often on television. The same is true for news stories. While I believe the Trayvon Martin case definitely had something to do with race, I don’t believe that it is only about that. The media spins it to make it look like that because that is how they are going to gain the most readers or viewers. The media tries to manipulate its audience for their own gains, which is extremely unethical.

I believe that the matter of different styles or even amounts of clothing worn by women of different cultures is a completely opinion based topic. Some cultures and religions require that women be completely covered from head to toe in clothing. A couple of examples of groups that follow those guidelines are Muslim women and Orthodox Jewish women. The reason for Muslim women dressing the way they do is because the Qur’an instructs all Muslims, not just women, to dress in a modest way. Their belief is that a person’s body and overall appearance should not be taken into consideration when judging someone. It is not necessary for them to expose any skin whatsoever. It is actually frowned upon and not accepted in some sects of the Muslim religion. Some sects of the religion force the women to dress like that while others just encourage it. It is the same way in the Jewish religion. It is a common theme for them to think very modestly and to not allow anyone, especially women, to expose themselves in any way. Women in both religions also usually wear a head covering, also known as a hijab in Muslim. “Muslims differ as to whether the hijab should be required on women in public, as it is in countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia; whether it should be banned in schools, as it is in France, Turkey and former Tunisia; or whether it should be left for individuals to decide, as it is in most of the world.” While Muslims argue over when and where the hijab should be worn, most women in the western hemisphere have a completely different mindset. Women in America often where whatever they want without restrictions. For example they often parade around in bikinis or very skimpy outfits in an attempt to show off their bodies. Most have never even heard of a hijab and have no idea what it is that Muslim wear on their head or why they do. While neither culture is wrong, they are just the results of the different opinions of different groups. Muslim women try to cover as much of their bodies as possible while American women often try to show off as much of their bodies as they can. Each group was raised differently and looked up to different people. They have different concerns and differ in their opinions of the importance of some things over others. The Muslim culture is primarily concerned with being modest while the culture in America is almost the opposite. Women try to show off to impress other women and to attract men. While I usually prefer modesty, I believe the Muslim way of modesty is too extreme, but that is just my opinion.

When watching the video about the fox news reporter interviewing Asian students at the University of Southern California about the football team, I’m not going to lie I found it pretty funny. It wasn’t funny in a racist way; I wasn’t laughing at the Asian students because they were Asian. I thought it was funny because they were foreign and had trouble telling the interviewer what little information they actually knew about their own school’s football team. Although it may be mean, that is a type of comedy that I find funny as long as it doesn’t go too far and offend anyone too much. I don’t believe the intention of the makers of this video was to make fun of Asians in particular; it was to poke fun at foreign students’ lack of knowledge about a very big part of American culture. It would have worked and been funny with almost any group of foreigners, the makers of the video just happened to pick Asians. It works well with this group of individuals because American football is not big in Asia at all. When they come to America, they don’t spend their time learning the game, even if their school happens to have one of the best teams in the country. They come to America for education so most of them aren’t going to waste their time getting involved in sports, especially one that isn’t big in their home country. Obviously these students aren’t going to know how to answer a specific question about teams moving into USC’s conference. I didn’t even know that happened and I love football, even if I prefer professional. That isn’t common knowledge, its specifics about the game of college football that only people who have a strong interest in the sport would know about. Of course these students wouldn’t know the answer to that or be able to express their opinions on it, and the makers of the video knew that. This “joke” could have worked with almost any group of foreigners whose country was not big on football, especially American college football. For example, they could have picked foreign Indian students, European students, African students, etc. I think the video would be equally funny no matter what the actual race of the interviewees were, as long as they were foreign and had little knowledge of the questions. Even if they were white it would be just as funny to me. While watching the video, I also thought of what if I had been in that situation in a foreign country. Personally, I think that would be hilarious as well. If I were in a foreign country and had little knowledge about their sports and didn’t know their language too well, I can definitely see how it would be funny for a native of that country to find my response to a specific question funny. They would laugh at my accent, bad foreign language skills, and lack of knowledge about the sport. I realize their intentions are not bad and I would laugh if I were in their situation too. People need to lighten up and laugh at themselves once in awhile.

I hate to say it, but I have to agree with the statement made. I am pretty sure that if the boy that was shot and killed had been white, and the shooter had been black, the shooter would definitely have been arrested immediately and sentenced to time in prison not long after. I hate to say this because this is obviously still a huge problem that is going on today in our country. While I have not spent too much time researching this case and do not know all the details about it, it seems pretty obvious that race definitely played a huge part in the whole situation. In an opposite situation where an unarmed, teenage white kid was shot by a black man, or any other minority race for that matter would be arrested without hesitation. It wouldn’t even be questioned and would probably end up just being an average article in the newspaper the next day. I think that even if the shooter were white, he still would have been arrested. I believe it is more about the victim being not white than it is about what race the shooter is. Without clear signs of self-defense, any person caught shooting an unarmed kid should be arrested, no matter what race the shooter or the victim is. It is absolutely mind boggling that the police wouldn’t arrest the shooter at the time because of his self proclaimed self-defense. It should be a crime for the police officers to not arrest the suspect in a murder case. They can’t just take his word that it was all in self defense and not arrest him. No matter what the situation, he should have been arrested and been held for questioning. He should have been held until all the details of the crime were discovered. It was obviously a very controversial decision to not arrest a man with a gun that was standing over a recently dead seventeen year old kid. The police would have no idea whether or not the kid did anything to provoke the man accused of killing him, so it is ridiculous that they would just believe that the shooting was done in self defense. It is hard to imagine that a much older and larger man felt that his life was so much in danger because of an unarmed kid that he had to shoot him to save his own life. Even if he really did shoot the kid in self-defense, there still wasn’t enough convincing evidence that this was the case at the scene of the crime. It is very suspicious that the man wasn’t arrested because I believe if the child that was killed were white, the shooter definitely would have been arrested. It is embarrassing that our society is still so concerned with race that a man that could have murdered an innocent kid wasn’t even arrested.

When the war in Iraq started in 2003, I was only nine or ten years old. At that time, I didn’t know much about the war so I just assumed that the people in Iraq were bad people and we Americans were the good guys just defending our country. I knew about 9/11 and the horrible attacks by terrorists. Like many young people, I grouped the countries and people in the Middle East all into one group of people. I assumed they were all bad people because of the attacks on September 11, 2011. Living on Long Island, the attacks on the World Trade Center were pretty close to me and I knew many people who had lost loved ones because of those attacks. The terrorist attacks certainly frightened me and they hit close to home. I grew up thinking that all people from the Middle East, especially those who practiced the Islam religion, were evil. I used to believe the war in Iraq was for a just cause, like all other wars. I thought the purpose of invading their country was to protect America from future attacks and to take out the evil dictator, Saddam Hussein, from power. This would protect both American people, and the innocent people living in Iraq whom he was terrorizing. Little did I know that the real reason behind this war had less to do with protecting civilians, and more to do with business. As I grew up I learned more and more about the war in Iraq, and realized that, for the most part, civilian safety was not the most important reason for invading this foreign country. The main reason for going to Iraq was for their oil. As the oil supply of the world and America in particular becomes scarcer, the demand for it increases, and greedy government officials and businessmen decide they want to take it from another country. They did this by waging war against Iraq with the excuse of the purpose being to protect America. While they did do this in the process, it was not their primary goal. I don’t trust our government and believe a good number of the people in our government are corrupt, as with almost any country’s government. While I don’t think it was fair at all for America to invade another country mainly for their natural resources, I do agree with the choice to go to war. After being attacked on 9/11, it was necessary to retaliate to prove that we’re not going to allow anyone to attack our country. Hopefully this is what our government was thinking and they weren’t only concerned with the country’s oil. Also, our country was pretty much formed on the idea of taking what is necessary. Europeans came here and took the land and in a sense we are still doing that now.

One thing that was brought up in class that I still think about now is when one African American girl asked a question about “all white people being evil.” Growing up in a very diverse area in New York, I have friends of all different races. I wouldn’t consider any of my friends actually racist, but I know some people that make racist jokes on occasion, usually all in good fun. I have friends that laugh along with these jokes and some that get offended by them. We have had discussions of race but never too in-depth, and certainly nothing like in this class or our discussion group. I was always the person that defended minorities, stayed away from the racist jokes, and despised the “n word.” I also used to jokingly say that white people were the cause for all the racism in the world. Obviously I wasn’t 100% serious when I said this, and being white, I definitely wasn’t racist towards my own racial group. However I used to believe that there was some truth to that statement. Growing up in America, I primarily thought about the racism we face here and the horrors of our past. The thing I mostly took into account was the enslavement of Africans by Americans. This was an evil committed by white people, and being that it is the most recent and sinister example of racism in my mind, I used it as the basis of my statement. I figured that this was just one example of the many horrible things that white people have done throughout history. While this is not untrue, it is not true that white people are the only race of people that have committed crimes only based on race. I was being very narrow-minded in making that statement, not realizing how wrong I was. In recent history or recent American history at least, this statement may be truer. I can definitely understand how some may feel this way, especially a person of a minority race; even I did at one point. Prior to taking this class, I hadn’t put too much thought into it and didn’t think I needed to. I thought that as long as I wasn’t racist like my ancestors may have been, there was nothing more that I could do. But I realized that awareness of racism is one of the most important things. I learned that whites are definitely not the only race of people to commit horrible crimes based solely off of race. While this may be the case most recently and in this country, it is important that all people realize this is not a true statement. White people definitely are the cause for SOME racism, but not all of it, and it is certainly unfair to say that all white people are evil.

I agree that it is completely unfair that some jobs are more likely to hire one person over another based completely on their name alone. I also find it surprising that white people can have up to a three times or even six times better chance over other races to get hired for a job based only on their name. These statistics blew my mind to say the least. In fact, the statistics kind of angered me. To think that people would hire one person over another only because of their name is ridiculous. Even with the same credentials, a person can be more likely to get a job over another person because their name sounds more like a white name. As a white person myself, I was never aware of these facts and statistics. While I knew that there were some instances of racism or discrimination in the job market, I had no idea it is as prevalent as it is, especially in this day in age. I can’t believe that there are still that many racist people in modern day that are six times more likely to give a job to someone because of a name. That doesn’t even make sense to me. If two people have the same credentials, why in the world would it matter what color their skin is or what country they are from? I can understand if maybe the person is directly from another country so they are not as fluent in English or do not have some of the social skills required for the job, but none of that can be deciphered from just a name. You may be able to tell if someone is foreign but that is not grounds to not hire him or her. Although I have an advantage as a white person when looking for a job, I feel that this is beyond unfair and don’t even appreciate having a better chance of being hired. Everyone should have an equal opportunity for a job. In fact, if I were the one deciding who got hired at a company, I would want the workplace to be as diverse as possible. I love different cultures and even think it would be beneficial to have a diverse workplace as some have different advantages over others. While it is usually white people that have the advantage when looking for a job, it can also sometimes work in favor of people of Asian descent. It is a common stereotype that Asian people are really smart and hard working, which can definitely be true. Therefore some companies are more likely to hire Asian applicants, especially in the medical fields. This is also unfair but less light is shed on it because it is not in favor of white people. All companies should give equal weight to all applicants, no matter what their name is or what race they are.

It is definitely true that some sports are dominated by one particular race. One of the most obvious examples of this would be golf, in which the sport is absolutely dominated by white people, with the exception of Tiger Woods prior to last year. The PGA, or Professional Golf Association, is composed of nearly 80% white players. I believe the reason for the surplus of white players and lack of minority players is simple. Golf is a sport that requires quite a lot of money to play. Each player has to pay for over a dozen clubs and tons of golf balls, whether they rent them or buy them. They also have to pay to play on a course and even to practice at a driving range. Some courses even require the purchase of caddies or carts when playing. While all of these items and services have a wide range of prices, it all adds up to quite a large sum to play a sport. Statistics show that white families tend to make more money than other races of families, showing that white children have a clear advantage when it comes to the opportunity of playing a sport such as golf. It also has something to do with availability of playing area. A white family living in the suburbs has much better access to golf courses and driving ranges, whereas it is much more difficult for a minority family living in the city to get to the necessary facilities. High schools in cities are much less likely to have golf teams because of this. The same holds true for hockey. The sport is predominantly filled with white players because of the expenses it requires and the availability of playing facilities. Players must buy all of the equipment and also have access to an ice rink. On the other hand, the reverse holds true for the sport of basketball. This sport is dominated by African American players. Almost the reverse of golf, this sport has almost 80% black players. The only things required to play basketball are a hoop and a basketball. One ball and half a court can have up to ten players playing at once. Not only is this sport very inexpensive, but also basketball courts are pretty easy to come by in all areas, especially cities and even poor areas of cities. When picking a sport to play, a minority child living in a poor area of a city is much more likely to pick up a basketball and play with some friends as opposed to going through all the effort and expenses of playing golf. Being able to play a sport is all about practice and experience, not just talent, so this explains why there are more black players in basketball and more white players in hockey and golf.

Although it is somewhat a generalization to say that white people shy away from the topic of race, I do find that this statement tends to be true. While I am not one of these people, I have noticed that a lot of white people are either more conservative when talking about race or even avoid the topic completely. A few possible reasons for this to occur include fear or even guilt. First of all, the reason behind each individual’s attitude towards racial issues comes from how they were brought up and raised. It is possible that the majority of white individuals were brought up similarly, or just differently from other races. For example some parents might teach their children to act “color blind” while others may tell their kids to be extremely proud of their race. Although probably not that common, some white people are actually afraid of other races when speaking about race. An example of this would be the girl in class that said she felt like she was going to get beat up for picking out the darkest skinned individual in the classroom. While I, along with many others, may find this to be a bit ridiculous and highly unlikely, it is apparent that some people actually feel like this, and the girl in class is certainly not the only one. The reason for this is unknown to me but maybe she and others with similar feelings have been a part of or witnessed a situation in which violence was used during a racial discussion. The reason may be that she just assumed the darkest person in class would take offense to her judgement, although I believe it to be a simple observation. I for one would not take offense to someone pointing something out about my skin color and I don’t think anyone should. That goes for anything similar to that as well. If someone points something out that is not intended to be offensive, people shouldn’t take offense to it and people shouldn’t assume others would either. Some white people may shy away from discussions about race because they feel guilty towards minorities, especially African Americans. This is because in the past white people have treated minorities terribly for the most part. One obvious example of this would be slavery. White people today have ancestors that enslaved African Americans and certainly did not treat them anywhere close to equals. Therefore, some white people today feel guilty for what happened to African Americans in the past and almost want to make up for it. They don’t want to treat them differently in the slightest so they pretend race and racism isn’t even an issue. Whatever the reason is, not talking about race doesn’t help the problem, it only makes it worse.