300,000. The number is certainly staggering, but to be frank? I hadn't even taken notice of it until Tuesday's lecture. Numbers are thrown at us constantly, and to me, they've lost their meaning. Numbers can be big or small, far or close, and I still have issues grasping onto them.

This is I don't get about pulling out a figure like 300,000: people die every single day, in countless tragic (and natural) ways. Suicides, gang warfare, natural deaths--they all occur. They're, all just as sad, just as tragic, as any other death. They're all lost life. If we mourned every single death of every single individual, then we'd literally never stop mourning. Now, I'm not saying that 300,000 deaths in one place isn't significant--a number like that completely changes the culture and the lives of the people in that area--but I don't think it's fair to throw a number at us to explain why it's significant. Yes,the deaths are sad, but it's the annihilation of a lifestyle that's tragic. Every single person in Haiti was affected by the earthquake--every single person's life was dramatically altered. I think it's the destruction of the culture that's the cause for alarm.

Yes, it's our job to help them rebuild, but it's not our job to mourn for them. To be shocked, to be sad, to want to help--yes. But to mourn? I think mourning for someone you don't know can be shallow, can demean the process. Rather than mourning a loss that may not be ours, I think we should focus on helping the people who remain.

...but, okay, I have another question about Tuesday's lecture. Do we really just help other people because, ultimately, it's beneficial to ourselves? I've been thinking a lot about this issue recently (specifically in regard to Ayn Rand's philosophy of objectivism -- admittedly, I have never read any of her work and only know fragments of her thoughts, so please forgive me in advance for butchering any of the concepts she presents), and I think it comes down to fundamental ideas about our individual purpose on the earth. Should my goal be to manipulate the system to best serve my needso? To just be happy? Or to give to others--to give myself and to contribute directly to the people around me?

I tend to believe in the last one. I have no idea what'll happen when I die. Eventually, the earth will end (the sun will explore, or global warming will destroy the planet, or what have you). Every single book, every building, every dollar bill, everything physical will be gone. I don't have particular religious beliefs, but the only thing that I think has any type of potential permanence is energy--souls, I guess. So, the way I see it is if I can contribute positivesly to both my energy and the energy of other, then that's more lasting than anything else I can do with my life.

But is it all just about benefiting ourselves, in the end? Is that ultimately why we help others?

I have a very distinctive memory from September 11th, when I was in 6th grade. I remember that evening, going to pick up some dinner with my mom, and asking her if we were going to lose our freedom. I pictured concentration camps, evil dictators standing on street corners and telling us all what to do. No doubt, these images were colored by the books on the Holocaust I had been reading, but regardless, I was terrified. I had never had to question my nation's security before--I had taken it for granted. When I saw that my country could be attacked, and had been attacked, I didn't know what I could count on anymore.

Today, I saw that episode with a new lens.

People in the Middle East don't have anywhere near the political stability (and physical safety) that we have in the US. Some children grow up having no concept of control over their government or their environment--they grow up powerless. Some of these people live in a world where everything around them is so chaotic, the only way they can see to defend their people, their land, and their heritage is to pick up a weapon. I can't blame them.

Today, I was struck by the sense of powerlessness and fear and anger that Arab Muslims must feel. However, I started to ask a question: who fights in a war? Who are the ones who are really battling--what's actually going on? Do wars really represent whole groups of people--are wars really the undertaking of an entire country? Or just the actions of individual politicians--minorities who yield authority, relatively arbitrarily?

I feel like wars exist between the extremes. Moderate, open-minded people don't fight with one another--they entertain that there may be other ways of doing things. That other people have a right to land, or to live the way they want to live. I think there are reasons to fight wars (civil rights being one of them), but oil may not be one of them. ...then again, it's easy to say that on an idealistic level, but putting that into practice? Am I really suggesting that we lose access to oil because it's not nice? Maybe. I'm not sure--this issue is still rattling around in my brain, and nothing that I think seems to be consistent.

Regardless, I used to feel disconnected from the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan--and I still do. My day-to-day life isn't affected by it. But that's because I'm on the lucky side, the invading side. And maybe these wars should be more of a focal point of my daily life, or at least my thought processes. If nothing else, I should develop an opinion, if not an answer to the conflict. Today's lecture brought me back to my 6th grade mindset, where my freedoms were pulled into question. And maybe I should--we all should--stay in that mindset for a while.

If nothing else, Sam raises new issues that I've never considered before--which is his goal, right? I wouldn't say that my opinions or feelings change about given issues, but by being asked to consider those feelings and opinions, I'm at least more aware of where I'm coming from.

I agree with some of the above comments that, at the beginning of the semester, I felt like I was learning a lot. Every class, I felt like I was inundated with new facts. However, these days, I feel like the tone of the class is usually the same. We may be learning new facts, but they all fall into the same over-arching categories, the same general message. Because we see so many numbers and facts, the weight of them feels further away from me.

Today's class on modern day slavery, however, opened my eyes. Obviously, I knew a lot of those facts by reading Disposable People, but I felt like watching the video had a much greater impact on me than the book did. Stories in a book can make me think about some issues, but seeing the scars all over a slave's body and hearing a slave's feelings about the products that he helps create...that was heavy stuff. After watching that video, I immediately decided not to eat chocolate again...and promptly caved about two hours later. I'm a little bit disgusted with myself, to be honest.

But throughout the class, I started thinking about all of the issues that exist in the world. Gay rights, sweatshops, environmental concerns, abandoned animals, modern day slavery...how do we sort through all of these issues? How do we pick which ones to pursue--as individuals, and as a society? I know that I'm a bleeding heart. If you tell me about anyone's hardship, I'll immediately internally vow to help that person out. But I forget these vows a second later, as soon as I'm confronted with another topic. I feel like, as an American society, we're constantly being asked to care about a million different causes, and I have no idea how to sort out which ones are the most important. Do we help where we think we'll have the most impact, or which problem most contradicts our core beliefs? Do we help where it's easiest, or do we help the small cause in hopes that we can help it to gain attention?

I feel like, throughout the semester, Sam's been asking us to care about a million different things. I'm sure that he asserts these extreme viewpoints 1) because he believes them but 2) because he knows that passion can lead to even a little change on our parts, individually. But, quite frankly, I'm getting overwhelmed by the world's problems. The plight of the Native Americans, inequality in the US, and now modern day slavery. And maybe I should be--a lot of them exist. At the same time, is my responsibility to myself, or to the world? What are my priorities, who should I be trying to help?

I'm a firm believer in human rights and human connections--in valuing the people around me and affecting the world positively, even in small ways. I believe that the most any of us can do is love the people we're with, to try to ease the pain of others. I would argue that the social worker who has no time for his or her family has contributed less than the housewife who loves & provides for her kids in an active way. I think, at the end of the day, we have an obligation to better the lives of those around us.

But, now I'm not so sure. Does this mean that, as privileged Americans, we can forget about the rest of the world? I don't necessarily believe that, either.

...well, to answer your question, yes. Sam's class makes me think, and even if I don't have all of the answers, I'm at least trying to figure something out.

A non-white majority. What does that even mean? Why are we always categorizing things into white & non-white, white and people of color, white and black&brown people. Is it fair to lump everyone who's not white all together--isn't that its own form of racism?

Not all non-white people view other non-white people the same way--the videos we watched during Tuesday's class are a testament to this fact. If an Indian man were to walk through a predominantly black neighborhood, wouldn't he feel somewhat similar to a white man in that same situation? How about an African-American woman in a room full of Asian people? Regardless, these people are in the minority--their colors don't matter, just the differences in color.

That's the whole point of culture, the whole point of this class, right? That we're all different. It's not just about trying to get white people and non-white people to get along, but people of all shades and races--of all cultural backgrounds.

So, quite frankly, I don't think articles like this one make sense. The world doesn't exist in two different shades--minorities and majorities aren't that clean-cut. Rather than running an article about a non-white majority, why don't we discuss the increase in population of specific cultural groups that will even out this playing field? Is that more or less racist--more or less politically correct? Are we afraid to tackle news in these terms--will fewer people listen, because it's not as sensationalized?

What also strikes me is how this increase of communication and technology, which is supposedly beneficial to our society, affects our perceptions of majorities. Take pre-colonialism America, for example. The Native Americans were just groups of people--they had no way of knowing if people of their color were "in the majority" on their continent. I'm sure they assumed that to be the case, but it didn't matter. People of other colors were just that--other peoples. Majorities existed in situations, in moments, in context--not as a sweeping rule. So, has this increased global connectivity allowed us to understand each other better, or not?

It's somewhat Hegelian, the fact that we exist as pre-selves who believe that we're all that exists...until we meet another pre-self (the other) and have the desire to consume them--to kill them or make them subservient to us. On a certain level, isn't that what happened to the Native Americans, the Africans, to a number of different peoples throughout history?

Okay, so maybe increased connectivity does better enable us to understand our differences, but I'm still against the whole white/non-white rhetoric used to describe racial majorities. In fact, I feel like keeping tabs of national racial records is somewhat inconsequential. As I said before, majorities exist in a context. Having a majority of Hispanic people sitting in a room doesn't matter, isn't even noticed, until someone of another color walks in. Having a majority of white people in political power, unfortunately, matters...so maybe that's the statistic that's noteworthy. In a political context, maybe it makes sense to look at which racial majorities exist where. But I don't see these demographics affecting our daily lives...at least, not yet.

Thanks for sharing this! Laurie's monologue, and class for the past two days, have opened up some new avenues for thought in my mind. One of the reasons why I value my SOC 119 experience, why I enjoy coming to class, is being challenged to think about topics that have seemed taboo--or may have never occurred to me before. Obviously, talking about women's periods is one of these topics--arguably, for most of us.

However, in class on Thursday, Sam started saying that we all admit to clipping our toe nails and that it's not such a big deal. I disagree. From my experience, I've seen that people don't really talk about taking care of their bodies. It's a touchy subject, one that most people don't feel like they want to approach. Going to the bathroom or putting on deodorant or what have you--all of these acts feel personal, taboo. Things that you do in private to take care of yourself but that no one else hears about. Maybe that's just my experience, maybe other families/cultures/groups of friends don't operate that way. And certainly, now that I'm in college and living in a communal space, a lot of these barriers have broken. But growing up, I never felt like how you take care of your body and what cycles your body may be in was a topic for discussion. That's not to say that these barriers are a good thing--I'm glad to see that, as I've gotten older, I've stopped caring about adhering to some of these social norms. But I think that the taboo of talking about periods extends further--largely to sex, if nothing else.

I'd also never considered the whole living in a man's world thing--how if guys were the ones with periods, our attitudes toward them would have shifted radically. It makes me question a greater cultural standard set by gender--the whole work/family debate. We talked about this topic in my discussion group on Thursday, but our society clearly values work life over family life. Is this because men could contribute most effectively to their family by working & providing, so that became the ideal standard of parenting and adulthood over time?

What's absurd to me is that women who make an effort to reclaim their womanhood, to be proud of it, are often labeled as offbeat feminists, as putting too much emphasis on sexism that doesn't necessarily exist in society anymore. I feel like we've eliminated some of the barriers that exist between men & women--a woman can become the CEO of a major corporation just as easily as a man can. In my mind, the problem isn't inequality--it's the image of the ideal. Women are still seen as weak if they choose to stay at home with their children; they have to compete in the "man's world" to gain their worth. An arbitrary set of values, largely focusing on overworking oneself, has been set upon everyone. Rather than trying to force women to compete in a man's system, why can't we acknowledge & value the differences between us? Why can't a woman who stays at home to raise her kids hold the same social status as a man who works a nine to five job--or even vice versa? Why do we all strive to achieve the same image, competing toward the same definition of self worth?

Looking back at what I've written, all of this can be applied to race, as well. Rather than ignoring differences and setting a standard according to the majority (white males), I think we should strive to celebrate differences--at least on a a personal level. Maybe we can't change culture, but we can make active efforts to rethink our standards of what constitutes exemplary behavior.

I agree with the comment that the way that history books are written for most schools--particularly elementary & middle schools--feed the problem of avoiding the discussion of race issues. From what I can remember from those early years of education, history books primarily focus on the wrongs of white people--at least, to the degree that children can handle it. Kids are taught that slavery is fundamentally wrong; however, as Sam points out, what about the Native Americans? That story is often glorified in the early years, related as a tale of friendship between "Pilgrims and Indians." It seems to me that, while some wrongs are told, others are not--and these stories are told with clear morality. White people were wrong to enslave Africans & other people in the past, period. Feelings aren't discussed, necessarily, just facts.

But how can this problem be fixed? Can children handle to hear all of the ugly histories that exist in the past? How would a white child react to being told that his or her ancestors committed atrocities to any number of prejudiced and hateful acts in recent history? Or a black child? Or a child of any other race? I'm not saying that we should completely shelter children from the truth, but I don't think that burdening them with the crimes of others is necessarily a good idea.

I argue that, in addition to rethinking the way we present history to children at early ages, we should also focus on culture. I think schools should emphasize discussions of differences in culture and home lives of each of their students; schools should celebrate and discuss these differences. I remember that, at my elementary school, we openly discussed our backgrounds. We wrote papers about a holiday that our families celebrate in unique ways (which, thinking back on it, were probably trying to get us to discuss cultural differences). I also distinctly remember telling the story of our ancestors to the class in second grade. To this day, I remember listening in rapt attention to one of my classmates discussing his Ethiopian background. These types of programs should be encouraged in schools and should become part of the forefront of the history curriculum--and, as students mature, the curriculum can include discussing history in more specific cultural terms.

One of the primary difficulties that I see in reshaping early education to cultivate open discussion about race among children is the fact that education is supplemented by, and sometimes overshadowed by, a child's home life. If parents hold prejudice, either openly or subconsciously, the child will learn from their actions. No amount of education can change home life. So, how can we fix this problem? Is this even a problem to be fixed?

Do people have to be older, more mature, and out of the realm of their parents/homes to openly discuss race? I argue that...maybe. Although I think it's important to reshape textbooks, I think white guilt will exist regardless until individuals can begin to think freely in a less controlled atmosphere--like in this class, in college.

Wow, I've never considered the topic of theme parties in the context of race before. As many comments have pointed about before mine, a number of theme parties exist--and typically, they focus on making fun of any general group of people (Jersey Shore or hick themes, for example). Whenever I think of theme parties, I think of the quote in the movie Mean Girls, which claims that Halloween is just an excuse for girls to dress in slutty clothes and get away with it. Then again, girls in State College often don't need the veil of a theme to dress in slutty attire, as can be witnessed by going downtown any weekend night.

So, do I think think that theme parties target black people? Certainly some of them do--"gangsta" socials exist. But I would argue that all themes are targeting a specific demographic and underscoring existing stereotypes. However, most of the theme parties I've attended have been in conjunction with an existing organization...which brings me to another question. Is it true that organizations on campus with largely white populations have more theme parties than more diverse orgs, or orgs with primarily non-white members? I have absolutely no idea. If anyone has an answer to this, I'd love to hear it.

On another note, then, why do some parties need themes? Is it just to give a party a specific identity? To attract more people? Or to cement bonds between people at the party? As a conversation starter? Or are theme parties just plain fun? As much as I may love analyzing issues like this, I gravitate toward the last option--theme parties can be fun. Period. There doesn't have to be a rhyme or reason as to why we do it--we do it because it harkens back to some childish instinct we have to dress up and be silly with each other. However, it is kind of a strange combination, mixing dress-up (an activity reminiscent of childhood) and alcohol.

I think that theme parties are just reflective of our culture. I remember going to themed birthday parties growing up...theme parties in college are just an extension of this tendency. But I am still wondering--do certain ethnic groups tend toward this trend more than others? If so, is it a reflection of the differences in childhoods/cultural norms between different racial groups? I really don't think that theme parties exist as a construct for white people to put other ethnic groups down, but it's fascinating to me that they may be construed that way. And if someone feels that they are a result of white people targeting other people, then there has to be some truth to that statement.

Why are white people so obsessed with "gangsta" culture, anyway? Why do we feel the need to dress in attire we deem to be "gangsta"...why does this particular stereotype speak to us?

Hm.

From a practical standpoint, the question of education is certainly an interesting one. Yesterday, Sam said that if we viewed the genocide of the Native Americans with the seriousness that it deserves, "America would have no soul." Yet the answer we come up with when it comes to righting these wrongs is increasing awareness of what actually happened. Obviously, these two points of view clash significantly--if both are correct, then we have to rob America of its soul.

Personally, I completely disagree with Sam's assessment, that we would lose our soul if we acknowledged these horrors. Look at the education regarding slavery--certainly schools didn't teach children that slavery was absolutely wrong right after the Emancipation Proclamation. Yet, over time, our collective thought process has shifted to enable us to see slavery through a less defensive lens, for white people to acknowledge the wrongs of the past without letting that acknowledgment permanently damage their spirit. I would like to think that the same can be done in regard to the Native American genocide. From my experience, we learned the whole Pilgrims & Indians myth in elementary & middle schools, doing projects about specific tribes and whatnot. But I specifically remember learning about the Trail of Tears in my eleventh grade AP US History class, seeing that the rosy picture I had once believed to be true...well, wasn't. If we can start that realization earlier, shifting the way these stories are told to children (telling stories of the bravery of Native Americans and how they moved forward, as opposed to only telling of the bravery of European settlers, for example), we can soften the blow. We can allow children to come to grips with the wrongs of the past from an earlier age without shattering their hopes. I think it's a matter of shifting which particular stories we tell, of admitting that Pocahontas didn't have a fairytale ending in reality.

Quite frankly, I think Tuesday's class bothered a lot of people--myself included. We were all scrambling to find ways that we weren't connected to the tragedy of what happened to the Native Americans, finding ways to take ourselves off the hook. Sam's right--we're either all on the hook, or none of us are. But people wrong each other--every group of people has been wronged. People hurt each other--period. I'm Irish, and I know for a fact that my ancestors were up against some significant odds when entering the United States. We still are--we're largely seen as the butt of any drinking joke, as opposed to a people with a serious culture and identification. All of our ancestors have been damaged; all of us have been damaged in our own ways. No one has had a glossy life.

I was frustrated with the class, and Sam's comments, because in my opinion, we all need to deal with the wrongs we've been dealt on a personal level. I feel like we got caught up on the fact that the Native Americans have been so historically and significantly hurt that we all felt the need to assert that our people had been hurt, too. And it's true. I wish that had been the focus of the class--that none of us have had it easy. And yet, all of us have. Sitting in that room, we're all relatively privileged. We're getting an education. But we all have ugly pasts, we all have scars and stories that aren't pretty. Our damages differ, but they all exist.

I realize I've gotten a little off-topic...so, I apologize for that. But in the end, I agree that the answer is knowing your own personal history and coming to grips with it. And coming to grips with others' history. There's no way that we can know everything about each others' backgrounds, but we can accept that differences exist and be a little less quick to judge each other. We can make an effort to listen, or at least accept that we can never really understand someone else's pain. We won't be able to understand, but we can connect with each other and try to at least share the pain.

This question actually came up in my discussion group last week, when we talked about LGBT issues, so I've had some time to formulate an opinion.

I think that lesbians are more socially accepted than gay men, in a general sense (because clearly all of these sweeping remarks vary on a case-by-case basis), because of the differences between how straight boys and straight girls are socialized to behave. From a young age, girls are taught to be tender toward teach other, to share secrets with each other and hug each other. Because of the nurturing nature of the stereotypical female, girls tend to be more caring with each other to begin with. However, guys are socialized to compete with one another--to joke around and make friends, of course, but not to talk about emotions or care about each other. Therefore, I think that seeing two girls holding hands is less of a departure from the norm than seeing two guys being affectionate with one another. We're comfortable seeing women care for one another, so we're not as alarmed by the idea of two women caring for each other as more than friends. We're used to that idea--at least, to a degree.

For the same reasons, I also think that people can turn more of a blind eye to lesbianism than homosexuality in males. As Sam said today, if I see two girls holding hands walking down the street, I may give it a second glance, but I may just assume that they're friends. If I see two guys holding hands, I immediately assume that they're a couple. Lesbian women can "fly under the radar," if you will. Again, this argument seems cyclical--are straight men less affectionate with each other because they're less comfortable with it, or because society wouldn't accept them? It's impossible to completely strip this issue down to its barest form because of how our socialization has shaped the way we think, but I think that it's fascinating to consider. Do guys act more "macho" because they feel they're supposed to or because there's something innate within them to make them that way?

I'm not sure that I completely agree with the logic that lesbians are ultimately more accepted than gay men. Is the stereotypically masculine lesbian more accepted by society than the effeminate gay man? I don't think I would make that assertion. In fact, I think that as a society, we're more comfortable seeing effeminate gay men than we are seeing masculine lesbian women (there was a Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, but has there ever been a show featuring a stereotypically masculine lesbian?).

Admittedly, as I write this, I'm having to second guess my thoughts--what about tomboys, for example? Haven't we, as a culture, learned to accept stereotypically masculine women through the prevalence of women in sports, a tradtionally male-dominated field? At the same time, I'm also thinking about an MTV show, A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila, which featured a bisexual woman looking to date both men and women. Most of these women referred to themselves as "lipstick lesbians," who follow the stereotype of a straight female and yet are attracted to women. Would the show have gained the same amount of viewership had Tila Tequila been more masculine in her dress or mannerisms?

Forgive me if my thoughts aren't completely fleshed out, but I think it's a topic worth exploring. I look forward to reading everyone else's thoughts!

I love this story about your dad, intensedebater2. Coming from a family in a similar situation (both my mom & my older brother have started their own businesses, and my dad completely shifted career paths about ten years ago), I can relate to your perspective on the lecture. We're stuck with whatever backgrounds we have (some of which may be significantly less privileged than others), but we have the option to make do with those backgrounds regardless.

While I was listening to today's class, I started wondering if there's any situation in which we are all equal...just to come to the realization that such a situation doesn't exist. Who we are is heavily determined by where we were born--our parents, our geographic location, our physical looks, whatever. There's no situation on earth where we all truly have an equal shot at accomplishing the same thing. We don't even all have the same chances to try the same things. If you want to be a basketball player and you don't have the talent, you won't get to the NBA. If you want to go to an Ivy League school and you don't have the money or the grades, you won't get into Harvard. People are born with differences, plain and simple. An expression I've heard growing up is that the only thing that hits us all is death and taxes--one that's usually intended as a joke, but there's some truth there. People aren't equal in any other circumstance, period.

But rather than seeing that fact as a negative, and labeling it as "inequality," I think we should all take a step back and see the other side of the coin: diversity. We're all born with different strengths, under different circumstances, and have different experiences. It's these differences that create diversity. Some people are born with a natural aptitude for math and science--these people go off to be engineers or doctors or researchers. Other people work well with their hands and go off to become carpenters. Others want to help people and become therapists, high school counselors, start non-profit organizations. It's these differences that shape us and create an ever-changing, dynamic society. Inequalities exist, yes, but it doesn't necessarily have to be such a negative thing. It's our inequalities, our differences, that make us a unique species.

In today's lecture, Sam spoke to the nature of happiness and how it's not necessarily related to the Western perception of "success." I completely agree with these notions...and I take it a step further. Earlier in this comment, I said that we don't have equal opportunities--but I take that idea back. We all have an equal opportunity to be happy. I firmly believe that happiness is something we each define for ourselves, and we each have every capability of finding our own happiness, of finding ways to make our lives livable. Maybe this concept is somewhat idealistic, and maybe it's easy for me to be saying this as I write from a cozy, warm computer lab on Penn State's campus, but I do think it's true. We don't all have the same chances, we don't all come from the same backgrounds, but we can find ways to make our backgrounds work for us.