While this is an interesting question to think about, I that it has a fairly simple question to answer. We are all afraid of the unknown. Whether that be a culture or a lifestyle, we always feel more comfortable around something that we understand and know. For someone who was raised by two gay parents, it is a lifestyle that they are familiar with. Their parents have had to come out themselves, and understand exactly how their child would feel if they were also gay. I did not grow up in a home with gay parents so I cannot speak from experience, but it makes sense that they would be more understanding and accepting of something that they themselves have been through. Unfortunately, for someone who is extremely religious and feels that homosexuality is a sin, it is much harder for them to be open and understanding of the lifestyle they are unfamiliar with. If they feel so strongly that it is wrong then the chances that they have ever interacted with someone who is gay or spoken to them is very small. This means that they most likely have absolutely no understanding of the gay community and people. They are afraid to try and get to know something they are so unfamiliar with. Unfortunately, this is why so many people in the world are against homosexuality. They are unwilling to be open to something new to them. If we could all just try to understand and be open to new things then we could eliminate so much prejudice and discrimination. However, we all like to stick to the things we are most familiar with. This is also what causes things like fear of other cultures and races. These are the things that we need to overcome. Most people are unaccepting of someone in their own culture who has chosen a different lifestyle than themselves, so it is not hard to see why it would be even harder for them to try to understand and accept other cultures. On the other hand, I am sure there are many people who are open and understanding to their children coming out, regardless of their religious views. In an ideal world, we would all be that way and we would all accept each other for who we are. Unfortunately, there will always be those people who cannot open their eyes to the world around them. Luckily the world is slowly changing, and perhaps one day we can get to a place where there is no more discrimination and prejudice. I think that if we continue down the path we are on, we can continue to change even more people’s minds and hopefully eventually their actions.

The What Would You Do video was extremely disturbing to me. I could not believe some of the things that the clerk was saying to the young woman, such terrible racist things and nobody was standing up for her. However, when I started to think about it more I really wondered if I would have stood up for her in the situation? The problem is, I don’t know. I would like to say that 100 percent every time I would stand up for someone being discriminated against, but as much as I want to believe that, I know that until I am actually put in a situation like that I will never know what my reaction would be. I think watching this video really made me think about it, and I think that’s what a lot of people need to do. Personally, after watching so many people walk away and not say anything, I realized that I do not ever want to be that person. I don’t want to let someone get discriminated against while I stand by and do nothing. Again, I cannot say for certain that I will stand up, but after this video I promised myself that I would stand up against someone being treated unfairly. I think we are all afraid of confrontation, especially if it can possibly get in the way of what we want. In this video, those people wanted to buy food from the store, and I think that most people did not say anything to him because they didn’t want him to refuse to serve them too. However, by thinking like that they were letting him treat her absolutely terrible. I bet most of those people disagreed with what he was saying, yet they still stood by and did nothing. I think we need to start realizing that sometimes confrontation is a good thing, and it can lead to good results. In this case, what he was doing was illegal and they could have simply called the police to step in. Unfortunately, you cannot change someone’s opinion. That is really hard for us to accept, because we want everyone to think in the same way as we do. Simply arguing with someone who refuses to accept that most Muslims are Americans will not change his view that they are all terrorists. However, discrimination is illegal and he could still have gotten in trouble with the law for this. Unfortunately, most of the time discrimination is not as blatant and outright as it was in this situation, which makes it much harder to stop. But I have decided for myself that I will never let something like this happen in front of me without stepping in to do something about it. Hopefully I’m not the only one who feels this way, and perhaps together we can all do something to stop such acts of discrimination.

I thought the conversation with the Muslim women was extremely interesting and informative. I completely understand what they were saying about women in western culture perhaps not respecting themselves and that relationships are built off of appearances more than personality. I completely believe that our culture is shallow and beauty based, and it is unfortunate but that is how it has been shaped. However, as an American woman, I am not ashamed of myself and I have no problem being open with my body and wearing clothes that some might say are not “appropriate.” I do not think that makes me any less respectful of my body. We have been raised in a culture where if you have what is deemed as a “good” body, then you show it off. That is just how it is in America. I understand why others might think that women who wear skimpy clothes do not respect themselves, and sometimes that is true. There are women who wear clothes to show off their bodies because they are not comfortable with themselves and they want to get attention from others, no matter what kind of attention that is. However, I do not think it is fair to lump us all into that category. I personally am comfortable in my own skin. Perhaps I could go to the gym and work off a few more pounds, but I am perfectly happy with the way I am. I do not think that if I wear clothes that show off my body that makes me disrespectful of myself, in fact I think it shows that I respect my body and I am comfortable with it. However, on the reverse side, I can see how people in other cultures would think that we only care about appearances and that all our relationships are purely superficial. However, that is how we have been raised. If we were all raised as Muslims and told that we must cover up and relationships should be based solely on personality, then we would think our own culture was bad too. But since we have been raised that way it is almost impossible to change our views. I think that we need to understand the differences in culture to really be able to relate. I disagree with the perspective that by showing my body I am not creating good relationships and I am not respecting myself, however I can understand where it comes from. However, I can also understand why they may feel that by covering themselves up they are being respectful of their bodies. I think that if we could all look at other cultures with open eyes we could all get along with each other better and at least understand why they disagree with our culture.

I personally was not overly offended by this video until I realized what the reporter was trying to get at. I do not think the fact that he was only asking Asians was really such a problem. At first it seemed like it was just a normal interview he was doing with people on the street, until I realized that he was specifically picking out Asians. I really think the major problem with this video clip was what he was aiming at. He was trying to get them to say things that he knew they had a problem saying because of their accent, and I feel like he was doing this just so he could make fun of them or joke around. I know somebody said that he was being racist by making them take about sports and reinforcing the stereotype that Asians do not know a whole lot about sports, but I am not really sure if that is really what he was going for. I think I became offended when he would repeatedly ask them to say something they had difficulty saying, and then would try and get them to say it again. I think his intent was to make fun of the way they had trouble speaking English and to me that is extremely hurtful and offensive. Although I am white, I think it is ok for me to be offended by someone else being racist. I think that for me it is not necessarily that I am offended by the racism itself, but by the implications it has that everyone who is white is racist. I personally think racism, along with any other form of discrimination, is absolutely disgusting. And to me, if I see anybody being discriminated against for any reason at all, it makes me angry because I feel we should all be equals and treated as such. I know a lot of African Americans might be annoyed by the fact that white people are offended by acts of racism because we cannot understand what that feels like personally, but to me it is more about the fact that nobody should be discriminated against for any reason. This video did not make me angry because of the racism against Asians, since I personally cannot understand how that feels. It made me angry because he was purposefully making fun of them, and I’m sure we can all agree that we know what it feels like to be made fun of, and it is never fun. I think it is ok for people to be upset about racism if they themselves are not victims of it, as long as they realize that it is the actual act of racism that has upset them, and not the reason that person is being racist.

I also came from a very predominate white community. I am originally from Boulder, Colorado; or as I like to call it the Boulder Bubble. Boulder is an awesome town, but it is very high class and mostly white. However, I never thought that race was a problem. While there were admittedly very few African Americans at my school, I had absolutely no problems interacting with the few there were. In fact, I was friend with almost all of them. I did not have many interactions with African Americans before my high school, but I never felt that was holding me back from being open minded to them. A lot of that may come from the feel of my town. Boulder is a very hippie town, and anybody who is not as open minded is definitely looked down on to some degree. However, I do not think that it is just African Americans that I am open minded about. Almost all of my friends here at Penn State are of a different minority or ethnicity. I have friends from Pakistan, Switzerland, and Kenya. I also have friends of Asian descent as well as Dominican Republic. I can guarantee that there are very few people from Pakistan living in Boulder, and if there are any I have certainly never met or interacted with them there. I do not think that interaction is the only component of being open minded and accepting. I think it is naïve to say that one can only be open to other people and cultures unless they have been around that person or culture. While I am sure that this makes some sort of difference, it is certainly not the only factor. Some people are born more open minded than others, and as unfortunate as it is there are some people whose minds will never be changed. No matter what other people say to them or how exposed they are to other people, there are some people who will not be able to accept others. I think you need a combination of both to really be able to accept others and be open to new people. I don’t think you can be open just by having been exposed; you have to want to be open to them. However, I do think that exposure to other races and culture can definitely help those who have a harder time understanding other people. I had not been very exposed to other cultures or races from the town I grew up in. However, by having an open mind, I was able to come to Penn State and meet new people without judging them based on where they are from or the color of their skin.

The videos we watched in class were extremely powerful to me. I am a complete pacifist; I do not condone war at all. However, on the flip side I would never say anything against the men and women who are out protecting us and risking their lives. While I do not think that people in the army are “bad,” I completely disagree with the abuse of power I witnessed in those videos. Those men clearly did not understand what was happening when Iraqis tried to steal firewood, but at the same time they did not take two seconds to try and clear it up. I’m sure they could have easily found an interpreter to help them clear up what was happening and ask them to stay away and not steal their wood. Instead of taking the two seconds to understand what those men were doing, they automatically assumed that they needed to take extreme action. Running over a car with a tank does not seem like a rational reaction to any sort of violation. I highly doubt any commanding officers in the army would tell their soldiers to purposefully run over a car with the tank. I think this was a clear abuse of power. Simply because they can run over a car with a tank doesn’t mean they should simply for sport. Those soldiers were clearly not capable of empathy like we talked about all class long. I know that they did not understand that the taxi was that man’s sole way of making a living, but it was clearly unnecessary. I completely agree with what Sam said about empathy. If we had watched those two videos about some other countries army who had invaded us or was planning to, we would automatically assume that everyone from that country were terrible people. I think the problem with war is that nobody is willing to think about it from the other side to see how it would feel. If anybody tried to invade the United States simply for oil, we would never believe that they were good people. We would always assume that they were greedy and simply wanted to better their own country and gave no regard for ours. While all Iraqis might not feel that way, I’m sure the majority has similar feelings. And after watching these videos I can’t say that I blame them. I really hope that this lecture helped a lot of people open up their eyes. In the United States it is easy to look at the news and think that we are always the good people and the other side is always the bad people. Unfortunately that is not at all true. There are good and bad people on both sides, as I believe those videos showed. I doubt most Americans in the army would run a truck off the side of the road, but one man did, and that’s all it takes.

I think so far throughout this semester there is one reading that really surprised me and changed my way of thinking. It was the article about the overpopulation in the world and how it is slowly depleting our resources. I have always been very strongly opinionated on the issue of immigrants. I have always believed that it is extremely hypocritical for us to tell someone else they are not allowed to enter the country we originally immigrated to. I have always thought that those who do not believe immigrants should be allowed here were close-minded. However, the article that we read said the exact opposite thing. Granted, it was in a completely different context and for completely different reasons. However, the end conclusion was still that we need to close off our borders from immigrants. This article said that the resources we have on Earth are very slowly deteriorating, and will eventually be completely gone. However, they said that if we do not stop other people from coming to our country, we will only be allowing ourselves to die off even quicker because that way the resources will run out even faster than if we did not allow other people in. This was extremely eye-opening for me. The article also discussed how some people will always want to be generous, like in the case of a sinking ship, but that if you are over generous then you will only cause everyone to sink faster than if you were greedy and kept them off. This was a really hard thing for me to hear, since I have always been someone who wants to help everyone. But in this type of scenario, it really is either save you or be taken over by everyone else who wants to be saved, and all sink even faster. I have always thought that greedy people are the problem in the world, but I never thought about what would happen in a life or death situation. I would obviously feel extremely guilty in a situation like that, but perhaps being greedy is the only way to save as many people as possible. This just reminded me of the Titanic, and I always thought about what terrible people those rich men and women were for leaving all those people behind and only worrying about themselves. I never stopped to think what would happen if they actually had gone back to rescue all those other people. They most likely would have been overcrowded and they all would have sank. I wish the world could all be equal and we wouldn’t have to worry about others “taking: our own resources. However, the sad reality is that the Earth is not sustainable forever, and eventually we will all run out. I guess the question is simply who will run out first and how the rest of the world will react to the crisis.

I think affirmative action is a really interesting topic. So many people who are of the majority are against it because they feel that it is not fair to them that someone else is getting an advantage over them. However, what they don’t realize are the advantages they face every single day just because they are of the majority and are not a minority. I think it is fair for people who don’t get some sort of affirmative action to be a little bit upset that others do because in some cases it can be unfair when somebody of the same qualifications gets something over you because of affirmative action. However, I do think they need to look at the entire picture first before really judging. Like Sam said, every single day people who are the majority get advantages over minorities, things that we don’t even realize we have. We all take them for granted because most of the time we don’t realize it is because we are the majority. We all like to think that our society is equal and that everybody is treated equally. If this was true, all those advantages we get would be due to who we are as a person and our own personal qualifications. And in a perfect world, that would be all that we are judged upon. However, this world is not perfect, and that is not how it works. We don’t want to think that the reason we got a job or a loan is simply because we are white, so we justify it by saying we were just more qualified. I think this is a major issue that people need to start addressing. If we continue on giving the excuse that we are just more qualified, then we are really denying the minorities what they are also entitled to. I do not personally want to be given things simply because I am white, just as I’m sure many minorities do not want to be given some advantage just because they are a minority. However, that is the way society is. And until we can change that, I think white people need to start acknowledging those small advantages that they are given every single day of their life. Until we acknowledge that we are given these advantages, we can’t change them. The world will never be truly equal unless we can admit that right now, things are not equal and there are still people who are treated differently simply because of the way they look. In a perfect world affirmative action would not be needed, because nobody would discriminate against others because of how they look. But unfortunately our world is not yet perfect, and I think until then we need affirmative action to ensure that minorities are given the same chances that people in the majority are given. While it may prevent that one white person who is equally qualified from getting into that one college, in the long run it is nothing compared to all the small advantages that same white person gets every single day of their life.

I am not a religious person at all. My parents were never religious and we never really talked about it. I didn’t go to church except when my grandparents made me, and I certainly never paid attention. I truly do believe in evolution and that we all evolved from smaller molecules. However, I never really thought about the possibility of religion. It never occurred to me that perhaps if I had been raised in a different situation, I would believe in God. If my parents had forced me to go to church or talked about it at the dinner table, maybe my perspective in life would be completely different. I think a lot of time people cling to religion to help them feel better about the world, because it can really be a cruel place. People like to think that there is something that can change their lives or that by doing something good, they will get something in return. And while it is possible that I would think about things differently if I was raised in a different environment, I still think that religion is just something for people to lean on during hard times. Most people who are not religious will suddenly turn to God if they find themselves in a tough situation, and even I have done this from time to time. But I think the real problem I have with religion is that people use it to discriminate and ostracize others simply because they don’t believe in the same religion as them or feel that they are better. This is so hypocritical against the religion they themselves claim to believe in. I guess in response to Sam’s question, I think everything was set in motion, but not by some greater being. And if you truly do believe in a greater being, then where did they come from? It’s a never ending question, but I personally believe that science really is the answer to all. And I do think there are other life forms outside of our galaxy and that it is completely naïve to think that we are the only possible living things out there. I guess in my mind, it is completely impossible to ever truly know what started the universe. So if somebody wants to believe that it was God or some greater being, who am I to tell them that they are wrong? I certainly don’t know the answer. However, on that same page I would disagree with that statement. But, I really have no proof to tell them that I am actually right and they are wrong. I think if everyone could just accept on another’s beliefs and agree that nobody truly knows what started the universe, then we could all get along so much better.

I definitely agree with what Sam said about white people shying away from the topic of race. However, I do not think it is for the same reason that he said. I found it really interesting what he said about we are taught at a young age that if you notice somebody’s skin color then you are “racist”. That is sort of a true comment, while a little extreme. I do think that people feel awkward talking about race because if they acknowledge that there are different races then they feel that they are being racist instead of simply stating a fact. I know that for me personally race is a little bit of an awkward topic. However, I feel more like I can’t talk about it because I do not personally know what other people go through on a daily basis. I come from a white, middle class family. I have been privileged in my life, and I don’t feel like I can really relate to somebody who has been discriminated against. I also don’t want to talk on behalf of somebody who has been because I know that I haven’t been in that position before. For me the issue is more that I am aware of race and I understand that racism is still a large part of society, no matter how hard we try to push it under the rug. Because I know that racism is still in society I do not feel like I can talk on the subject of race because I do not know what they have to deal with on a day to day basis. I think that most white people feel awkward on this subject because they don’t want to say something that will offend somebody who may have experienced racism or discrimination because of their skin color, when they personally haven’t. However, I do agree with Sam that if we just ignore the issue of skin color, we can never get to the problem of racism. We have to acknowledge that there are different skin colors in society and that because of this there is still racism. Until we can fully acknowledge that, it will be impossible to ever try to solve the problem. However, until we feel like we can understand and relate to people who have gone through discrimination and racism, I think that most white people will continue to avoid the subject so that they don’t make someone who has been through it angry by trying to act like they understand when we clearly don’t. Hopefully there will be a day where racism no longer exists, but until then I will not ignore the fact that I am not personally a victim of racism, and I will not try to pretend like I could ever understand how that must feel.