Before the lecture this week on illegal immigration, I thought that the country’s current policy on immigration was too strict, or maybe a better word would be misguided. After the lecture I believe exactly what I did before. I am not saying I know exactly what the country should do to combat the issues it faces with immigration because I do not know what to do.
I really do not have any issues with people coming to the United States in search of a better life or work. I actually think this would be beneficial for the nation as a whole. I do have issues with people trying to sneak across the border with the hopes of smuggling drugs or trafficking people. I think that somehow there has to be a way for the United States Customs and Border Patrol to put a stronger focus on these two aspects of people crossing the border. I feel like in some ways the government is wasting resources on trying to prevent people coming here for work, and these resources could be better used in preventing the smuggling of narcotics and people.
As for the economic impact of an increase in the number of immigrants, I really do not think it would be all that bad for the United States. I am an economics major and as such have done a little work with the idea of a larger work force. I believe it is fair to say that the majority of the people that would be coming into the United States would be in the low income, low education group, so the country would experience a large increase in the number of low skill labor if the immigration laws were loosened up a little.
Undeniably, this will lower the wages of people already holding the jobs that the new immigrants will be competing for. However, in the long run, this should lead to an overall positive gain in the creation of jobs. Because firms will be paying less for the amount of labor that they need at their current production levels, the firms’ profits will increase. These companies will then turn around and use that increase in profit to hire new workers, albeit at the lower wage.
All of this leads to an overall increase in the economic output of the country. Assuming that tax rates throughout the United States do not change, this also means that the government will be collecting larger tax revenues which can be used for many different things. These include reinvestment in the country’s infrastructure or economy or the money can be used to tackle the ever growing concern of the country’s foreign debt. While there are drawbacks to a looser immigration policy for certain groups of people within the country, there would be an overall benefit to allowing more people into the country that simply just want a better life than what they have back home.

I thought the demonstration of whisper down the lane that he did was very interesting. I knew that the end story would be different than how it was read at the beginning because people always put their own spin on a story even if they try not to. That is after all, why courts have a rule on hearsay from anybody testifying.
I did not expect the story to change so much by the end, especially with how short it got. It was also interesting how people would change one word from what the person before them told them, and it was fine but as the word kept on changing little by little the meaning of what had actually happened changed dramatically.
Overall I am not too sure what the professor was trying to teach us with this demonstration. Perhaps he was trying to get at the root of prejudices and stereotypes. We all have stereotypes of groups of people that we likely have never met before, but we nonetheless believe them to be true with all of our heart. But the information that has reached us and we base these thoughts on has traveled from person to person much like the demonstration, so by the time that information does reach us it is very loosely based on truths, to be generous.
But if this is the really why he did this demonstration, I do not really understand why he did not tell us what he was trying to show us. Maybe he wanted us to draw our own conclusions from it because we are more likely to listen to some kind of conclusion that we reach ourselves then some kind of lesson that a guest lecturer tells us.
Then again, I could be very wrong. He could have been trying to get at some point completely different than what I drew from his demonstration.

I do not really like how Sam said white people will be a minority in a few decades. I think this statement is misleading. When he said that, he showed numbers that said white people will be 49% of the population in the United States. While this is lower than it is today, and under 50%, white people will still be the larges racial group in the United States. Taking that into mind, as a white person I do not think I am going to look around the United States and think of myself as a minority.
No doubt this will have an impact on the social structure of our nation, but I do not think it will really be a major change, even when we project this further into the future where Hispanics/Latinos become a very significant demographic. I do not realistically expect Spanish to take over as the dominant language in the United States. When there were huge amounts of immigrants from the European countries in the late 19th/early 20th Centuries, people initially set up their own little communities where they held onto the culture, including language, from their country of origin. Within a few generations, these people were fully integrated into American society and there really was not an easy way of distinguishing them from somebody whose family had been in America for over 100 years.
While people of Hispanic origin will be able to be identified from skin color, I believe in a few generations the vast majority of Hispanics will be very integrated into the American society. However, we cannot overlook the fact that the large increase of people from Latin America and, more currently, South Asia will change what we currently call American society. I do not know specifically what these changes will or could be, but I do not think that there are going to be severe.
Furthermore, as we have seen in class, the white people hold a disproportionate share of the wealth and power in this country. Certainly white people will not give up this kind of power and money in the next few decades. I believe that the income gap between races in this country will decrease but not by any significant amount within the next few decades when white people are initially set to become the minority.
All in all, as a white person, I do not think that much is going to come out of the current demographical trends towards an increase in racial diversity in the United States. I only see minor changes in increasing the diversity of culture within the country and kind of forcing people to become more accepting of other races and cultures outside of their own.

I think that people believe it would be difficult for them to date outside of their race because they are self concise and too worried about what other people will think of them. A lot of this judgment comes from people of older generations. People are concerned about how their families will think about them if they date somebody from another race. I believe this fear of being judged negatively by family and friends is the single largest factor keeping people dating inside their races.
I am white, and I dated a Sri Lankan (island country southeast of India) girl for three years so I have some personal experience in this. Neither of us experienced any negativity from any of our family or friends for dating somebody across racial boundaries, so the fact that we were different races did not faze us, and it was not something we considered regularly. When we went out people did not really bother us about it. We did, however, get looks from older people, especially the brown ones. I believe this is because, statistically speaking, they are likely to have just come over from India or wherever, and they were still holding on strongly to their traditional values. So seeing somebody that could have been their daughter, dating some heathen that was completely outside of their cultural realm shocked them.
I also think that there are certain races that people would feel more comfortable dating outside of their own. I think that generally a white person would be more comfortable dating an Asian person than a black person. I think that part of this can again be traced to how their friends and family would perceive it. I believe there is more racism towards black people than there is to Asian people, so white people would anticipate a stronger negative back lash from being seen dating a black person.
Another possible repercussion that some white people fear is the unwanted attention from people of their partner’s race. I have a friend, a white guy, who is dating a black girl, and they are often given some kind of negative feedback on their relationship from random black people they walk by. Evidently hardly any random white people comment on this. So white people could fear the constant ridicule of random black people on any given day. Then again, if you are dating an Asian person, would you really be afraid of any kind of public ridicule as you are walking down a street? One of the stereotypes of Asian people is that they are generally quiet, so I do not think that the average white person would even think an Asian person would voice an issue with their relationship.

At times I feel guilty about being white because I know how much better white people have it in the United States in relation to people of color, but I try to put those thoughts behind me. After all, I do not think that this is the way that things should be. I think that what people think of each other should be based on a person’s actions. I know that in this world, that being always judged as an individual is not going to happen, so what I really do hope for is that if people feel the need to judge each other based on affiliations that those affiliations should be voluntary for the individual.
Everybody belongs to some kind of organization that speaks about their character in either a good way or a bad way, and I am fine with being judged/judging along those lines. In extreme cases, while you may not know everything about somebody that belongs to the Ku Klux Klan, you can have pretty good idea about how that person is just through affiliation with the group and what they stand for. Nobody forced this individual to be part of the KKK (unless it is a little kid whose parents are active members), so when they voluntarily agree to go along with the Klan’s ideas, you know something about that person.
On the other side of this, if you know somebody that does volunteer work at a hospice or something along those lines you know something about that person. I am not saying that this person will be the best of people or without fault, but if they are volunteering their time to help people dying of cancer, and their families, you can be pretty sure that this person has some kind of morality.
Both of these are affiliations with a group/activity that people choose. However, people do not choose to be white, black, or brown. They do not choose to be a man or a woman. And in my opinion they do not choose to be straight or gay. I understand that outsiders will associate these people with these groups and their stereotypes, but I do not think that is the right thing to do. So I try not to do and hope that other people do the same. From what I have seen there are vast differences between people of all of these groups. Each group produces both great and horrible people.
I guess what I am saying is that everybody is responsible for their own actions and it is these actions that speak to the character of the person. Perhaps the easiest way for somebody to identify these actions is to see what organizations they are affiliated with, voluntarily, but the groups they are affiliated with through their DNA don’t attest to who the person really is.

I’m personally against affirmative action, but I do understand where its proponents are coming from. It is my belief that if there is a slot for an opening in a job or in a school, the most qualified person should get it. That has always been my position on the issue, but the discussion we have had in class has given me incite to the other side of the issue. However, I think that affirmative action can still be improved upon.
It seems that affirmative action was put in place to try to break people of color out of the cycle of poverty that they are stuck in, but I do not understand why it has left out poor white people. Maybe I could get behind affirmative action if it was just trying to break the cycle of poverty in general.
On a similar note, as mentioned in class, if you are a poor white person trying to go to college, there is very little in the way of assistance that you can get. However, if you are a minority there are multiple options to help put you through college. I am not saying that it will cover all of college, but every bit of money when you are poor helps.
Yet, overall I am against affirmative action because I tend to believe that people have control over their own lives through the choices they make. When it comes to free will vs. determinism I tend to lean toward free will. I have seen a good number of people climb out of poverty that are now extremely wealthy, and they did that through hard work. I have also seen it the other way around, where wealthy people fall into poverty because they made a series of bad choices.
The idea that best sows this into my mind came from my neighbor who went from being poor to the wealthiest person I know. He told me you will never get ahead in life by working forty hours a week. If you want to get ahead you need to work way more, in the order of sixty or more. But you can always get by on forty hours a week, and it is your choice as to what you want to do.
I know that most people do not want to work a sixty-hour workweek, so they will not get ahead in life. I do not think that there is anything wrong with wanting to just get by, but you have to realize that most of the people who are at the very top did it by working really hard. So bringing this back into affirmative action, why should somebody that is working very hard to get ahead be denied a position because he is not poor?

People make quick decisions because often that is what is required for the situation and eventually that becomes habitual for the individual. In our daily lives, we are often required to make on the spot decisions with the information we have. It may not be the best decision, and very often we do not have all of the information to make a well thought out decision, but we have to decide and act. This process of taking in information and analyzing it and forming an action or decision based on this analysis happens so much that people just do it without thinking.
It is only when we are presented with a substantial amount of information, for it is almost always impossible to have all of the information, that we can make an informed decision. If we are not given this amount of information, we are left to make assumptions about what was missing in what we were told. In the example given in class, we were only told that it was a black woman sending her kids to a white school and she got arrested for that. If you only look at that information it is hard to refute that racism is involved. You haven’t been told anything else, so to get to the truer source of the issue you have to make certain assumptions. We knew that this happened recently, so schools are no longer officially black and white. Therefore we know that this is more than a matter of race that got this woman arrested.
When we were given more information and told that in fact she had been arrested for sending her child to a school that they were not supposed to be going to, it changes the situation. Schools are paid for from property taxes within the school district, so while public school is “free”, people are still paying for it. What she did was pay for a school and then send her children to another one. The second school could have been better because it had a higher tax rate and collected more money that way, although the like reason is income differentials. So you could say that the woman was committing tax fraud. So it becomes to look less like an issue where the woman was a victim of racism. However, as pointed out in class, we still do not have all of the facts, so it is impossible for us to say that she was or was not a victim of racism definitively. All we can do is go through the process of receiving information, analyzing it, and drawing our own conclusions from the information. The same process we do repeatedly every day.

I think in the future, not in our life times, race will cease to be an issue and there will be equality in the work place and in sports – except for the rare sports where genetics play a vital role in performance, such as sprinting short distances. I believe that as of now, people make care too much about race for there to be real equality. I think that in order for there to be true equality among races, we need to get rid of stereotypes that people hold onto and everything that provides some means of differentiation, including black history month, Hispanic heritage month, racial quotas in the work place and academia, etc.
There has been tremendous progress in the area of racial relations in the past 100 or even 50 years, and I don’t see why that progress should stop. We have gone from the only people that had any say in the happenings of the government being white men, to having people of all races and genders being able to vote.
In the area of sports, I think that black people have a distinct genetic advantage in a few sports such as basketball and football. I say this, because as discussed earlier during the school year, black people are naturally taller than other racial groups because of how they adapted to their climate. In sports such as basketball and football, a height difference is an advantage. I do believe that the demographics of these sports will become more equal, but there will be a slight majority of blacks.
The current differences of racial groups in professional sports, I believe to be due to social causes, or interest among different types of people. When you look at basketball, the league is predominately black, and I believe that is because in general, the black population has a higher interest rate in basketball than any other group in the US, so they grow up playing basketball. Whereas, hockey is a sport that is predominately followed by white people, so the NHL is predominately white. On top of that, the NHL is largely comprised of people from outside the United States – mainly Canada, Russia, and Eastern European countries. All of those countries are predominately white as well.
I think that in order for the racial demographics of professional sports to reach some kind of equal mixture, people of different races are going to need to take an equal amount of interest in different kinds of sports. Also, there will need to be a higher level of income equality, as discussed in class with regards to hockey especially.
All of this seems possible to me, but not in the near future. I think that maybe two 200 or 300 years from now, we may finally reach a state that being that could be described as complete equality.

I think this is a very valid issue especially with the way races have been mixing in recent times. This can be greatly illustrated by the people of Latin America where people from European, African, and the indigenous population have widely mixed. So how do you classify people that can trace their roots back to these three groups?
Also, why should Hispanic be limited to people of Spanish origin? This term specifically excludes people that can trace ancestry back to Portugal. To make this distinction even more confusing, the cultures of Spain and Portugal are very similar. In fact, many times the two countries are grouped under one term, Iberian. So really the only reason why the people of Brazil are not included in the Hispanic classification is because of the definition of the word itself, and a political boarder across the Atlantic Ocean.
It seems that as time moves on, and races continue to mix, it will be increasingly difficult to classify people by race. If we are to continue to do so, it would seem that we will have to invent more racial categories.
However, in the United States, we continue to embrace the racial groups we have created because they reflect social, cultural, and economic differences between people. People tend to try to hold on to at least some portion of their own culture when they immigrate to the United States. This holds true for the next few generations of that family. While there are differences between different groups within a race, they are often difficult to pick out for people outside those groups. From that, outsiders lump the people together that have similar cultures.
People also embrace their racial categories because of the political and economical pressures that they face. People of color are often targeted by government programs or policies such as affirmative action. In this case, it becomes beneficial for people to claim that they belong to some group other than white or Asian. On the flip side, it has proven beneficial in the work place and the courtroom to be white.
I think that as we move on in time, it will be more difficult to classify people into distinct racial categories and people will start to more so classify themselves nationally. There is undoubtedly a trend toward a world wide skin color that is some kind of brown, and I believe, that culture will converge as well. This can be seen within the United States, where it can be said that finding a true American culture is very difficult because the country has been a melting pot for people around the world. As people continue to travel more, and barriers between people are being eliminated by new technologies, cultures will begin to borrow more and more from each other.

I thought the video entitled “Tan Hong Ming” brought up a very interesting point. As children, people do not hold prejudices against one another. They don’t dislike somebody because of some kind of physical feature such as skin color. They will dislike certain people because they have been wronged by them, or they have seen or heard of them doing wrong. I don’t think we are biologically predetermined to be racist. I think racism is something that people absorb from their elders/superiors in society.
I remember back in the 1960s, an elementary school teacher ran some experiments with her students that prove this point to me. Keep in mind that what she did was highly unethical. She taught in an all white class and was trying to teach her kids that racism was unfair. So she, the elder/superior, told her students that some of the her students were better than others along the lines of physical characteristics.
In her first round, she divided the students based on eye color. She essentially said that kids with green and blue eyes are better than those with brown eyes. She went so far as to tell the students that those with blue and green eyes had all sorts of positive qualities and those with brown eyes had all sorts of negative qualities. To further separate these two groups, she would not let the brown-eyed kids drink from the same water fountains as the blue and green-eyed, and she made the brown-eyed kids wear an arm band to distinguish themselves from everybody else. Rather quickly, the two groups began to divide themselves. Those with green and blue eyes treated looked down on those with brown eyes and even treated them cruelly despite any prior friendships.
After a few days the teacher told her students that she had been wrong, and that in fact it was the brown-eyed kids that were superior to the blue and green-eyed kids. When she said this, the rolls between the two switched almost immediately. Furthermore, nobody from the brown-eyed group, that was now superior, stood up for anybody that was now being picked on as they had been only days before.
What this teacher did was highly unethical, but it proves a point. These kids had no prior existing ideas that one group was superior to the other. Some of the kids with blue eyes were best friends with some that had brown eyes, but when an authority figure told them that one group was better than the other, the kids, who previously had no animosity, quickly turned around and were no longer friends with their prior best friend.
When you extend this idea into society as a whole, you can begin to understand where racism comes from. Some people still holding onto the beliefs that they were taught when they were younger, and they never challenged what they had been taught.