After listening to today’s lecture, my opinion of illegal immigrants definitely changed for the better. I often like to think that I am not one of those ignorant people that stereotype illegal immigrants as being Mexicans, but unfortunately I am or was. Listening to Sam’s lecture today was definitely an eye opener considering the fact that “technically” everyone in this country except for Native Americans are illegal immigrants to this country. This includes everyone that calls them Americans. It is amazing to think back to the time pilgrims immigrated here and imagine if Native Americans kicked out every white settler. If this would have happened, America would not have existed as it does today. This lecture was especially big for me today because I am an immigrant to this country from India. Although it was not the same for me since I was a “legal” immigrant versus the illegal immigrants who are a hot topic of debate in this country. I moved here when I was 5 years old so I have assimilated pretty well into the modern society of America but it saddens me to see that a lot of the people with the same goals and aspirations I have are being sent back to a country where they have nothing left. I came to this realization after Sam talked about the fact that many people that plan to migrate to America, take loans with their land as a subsidiary meaning that if they do not successful move to the US, they have nothing back home to return to. Although based on my previous comments, it may seem like I have a clear cut opinion on whether or not illegal immigrants should stay or leave, the truth of the matter is that I really don’t. There are good arguments for both sides, but I really appreciated the fact that today’s lecture opened up my mind to a lot more possibilities. When it comes to illegal immigrants, I believe that we should enforce the border to prevent an overpopulation of immigrants in US. Not just an overpopulation of immigrants but to prevent over crowding. But I also believe that we should let the illegal immigrants that are already here stay. Whether or not you like it, illegal immigrants still provide important jobs and services that many of us rely on even to this date. Whether this means the stereotypical “house building” jobs or the specific situation in California that Sam pointed out, we rely on them and without them the American economy would collapse. There is no use in complaining about illegal immigrants taking away our jobs, if they are willing to work for less pay and worse conditions then all the power to them. It comes down to the principle of survival of the fittest.

After going through the lecture, I learned a lot of things I never knew about native Americans. And almost none of those things were positive ones. It is surprising and extremely depressing to know that Native Americans have high rates of domestic violence, sexual assault, death related to alcoholism, unemployment rate, and high school drop out rate. These have ties to almost every single aspect of life, and having high rates of these factors means that Native Americans are “failing” at life and as a society. This also leads into the fact that Native Americans have the one of the highest suicide rates in the country. I also know for a fact that these facts are not just another statistic that should be ignored. About 3 years ago, my friend invited me to go on a mission trip to Native American reservation in the mountains of Arizona. We were there for two weeks, and I could not imagine how people could bear to live there their entire lives. Not only was there very limited resources on the reservation itself but the environment and the people there were very “dead” and depressing. The only joy I found in helping out at the reservation was talking and playing with the little children that were there. Although they are little in terms of age, they have old in terms of their experience. Kids 4 or 5 years have been put through more real life scary scenarios than I have at 18 years old and maybe more than I will ever have to encounter in my life. While we were at the reservation, we stayed at a local elementary school for two weeks and helped out in whatever way we could. Whatever way we could practically meant everything. We went from helping paint people’s houses to taking care of kids in the form of a daycare to even rebuilding damaged stores. The economy and resources there was a shit hole to be straight forward and honest. This is sad because this condition with the reservation is not specific to this Native American tribe but a lot of Native American tribes all over the country. This needs to change considering Native Americans were originally the owners of this land before white settlers came and took it over. Now not only are they kicked off of their own land but they are confined to tiny spaces that are “allotted” to them. This is completely stupid and ridiculous. It is like taking someone’s house and earnings and then giving them second hand furniture and a corner bedroom of their own house in return. It is very unfair and unjust. I have seen the situation with Native Americans first hand, and it is not a good one by any means.

I completely agree with Ernso in that needy children should not be posterboards for charity and health organizations that are trying to raise donations. I have two reasons for this though. First off, when organizations are raising money to save hungry children, they show the most starved and most needy looking children as a form of false advertisement which is what almost all commercials do on TV. There is no need to lie to the people that are donating money, food, and time. In essence the advertisers are advertising a product (the starvation and the poverty of children) to the consumers (people that are donating). This should not be the primary goal of charity and food organizations. The second reason that I disagree with the use of little children in Haiti as advertising techniques is because of with Ernso said. These children and their families have been through a lot with the tradegies they have experienced, and it is not necessary for them to be degraded the way they are on national TV and online all over the world. I feel as though organizations are actually being ironic by going against what they want to do. These charitable organizations are trying to help survivors of tragedies by providing them with gifts of money and food but at the same time they are, in a way, "ashaming" them by making them seem desperate by taking pictures of their tragic situations and using it as advertising techniques. Instead the "advertisers" should just focus on the efforts and money required from reconstruction and ways to help besides just donating a couple of bucks because if people know what is happening with their money, they will be more likely to donate more and spread the word about Haiti. I am speaking of this from a personal experience because I was one of the people who donated a couple of bucks and dusted my hands, thinking that I made an impact on Haitians and felt like a good person. But what I realized is that the few bucks that I donated gave the Haitians temporary relief while at the same time making them more dependent on the few bucks that the did receive. Instead strides should be made on the long term relief relief of Haiti. We discussed different ideas of how to help Haiti's economy, and in the small amount of time we did have, we generated several ideas including ways to improve the tourism and fishing industries. If I had known this before, instead of donating a couple of bucks, I would have donated some other items that would have helped Haitians more than some paper currency. The more that people understand this, the better their contributions will be.

This question is interesting because each person acts differently to a racist situation based on what stage in development they are. I have been involved in countless amounts of racial situations. But my response to them have varied over the years and depending on my relationship to the person. Usually when it comes to racial situations, I try to stay out of them because I am usually not familiar with people in the confrontation. One situation that I have recently been involved in is almost the exact same situation discussed in class. I was in line waiting for wheezy concert tickets, and I say this group of 2-3 black guys cut in line. They clearly knew what they were doing was wrong and were prepared to challenge anyone that said anything to them. Being involved in lots of these situations before, I didn’t call them out because I knew that nothing good could come out of calling them out. If I said something, I would get called a racist, probably have gotten into a fight, and be hated by that group of people. I knew that I was being stupid by not calling them out considering what they did was clearly wrong. But I am glad there were other people there because a lot of other people started calling them out and trying to force them out of line…..and of course the race card was pulled out. It is these sort of things that frustrate me about society. Black people, and other races often argue saying there is still racism in the world but a lot of the time it is their ethnicity that pulls the race card pulling racism back into public view. The only way to stop racism in my point of view is to stop pulling it out in a negative aspect because it can only make things between races worse. Maybe it is just me that feels that way, but I have been this way for a long time. Starting off in elementary school, I went to a predominantly white school, but then I enrolled to a magnet middle school with predominantly black kids. Although I found this adjustment hard at first, I fit into both schools pretty well and never had any problems with racial or ethnic problems. The funny part of this is that even during the time I spent writing this blog, I have experienced cyber racism. I am currently listening to the wiz khalifa song “the race”, and there are people arguing about pulling the race cards and dropping the n bomb. It is funny that even on the internet where people can’t see each other, they are calling each other racial names just based on the way they talk.

As Sam mentioned in class, interracial marriages and interracial children are among the fastest growing populations in the US. This is a remarkable step considering that interracial marriages were once considered taboo and looked heavily down upon. And if you look further back, the only time interracial children were born were if slaves were raped by their masters. To make matters even worse, interracial children are often looked down upon and when asked what race they are, often go with the “worse” of the two races. Now not everyone may not understand what the worse of two races means but take for example a child that has a white mom and a black dad. When asked what race the child is, they often say they are black because they are expected by society to side with the black side of their family because if they don't they get awkward stares and murmurs. These are some of the multiple reasons why interracial marriages rarely existed but it is uplifting to know that they are know one of the fastest growing populations in the United States. Now, being Indian, I have had personal experience with thoughts of interracial marriage. Indians are often expected to go through with arranged marriages set up by their parents as it is considered part of the Indian tradition. And since parents would often arrange the marriages, they would set up their sons or daughters with an Indian counterpart. Every now and then, there would be some people who would rebel and marry to a person of another race but it is very rare. Although, this Indian tradition is more relaxed than it once was, it still plays a major role in why a majority of Indians don't marry interracially. It is very rare that you see an Indian married to a person of another race. Recently since I have been growing older, my parents have often talked to me about marriage and especially about interracial marriage. Because my parents have gone through the traditional indian marriage and have successfully been married a long time, they feel that it would be best if I did they same. And if I didn't want to do that, then at least marry an Indian girl. They reason they feel so strongly about this is because they feel that if I marry interracially that, there would be a lot confusion between traditions and languages. Although, I am not considering marrying an time soon, I am sort of feel a little bit of pressure in choosing in who I marry. One thing that I have made up my mind up about is that I will not be letting my parents choose my wife to be for me. In the end it will come down to who I fall in love with. This is interracial marriage speaking strictly from an Indian prospective.

Before I begin discussing my personal experience with guilt and race, I would first and foremost would like to express my view on race and guilt. Race is something we are born with and have no control over. I, myself, am of Indian descent. Not Native American, but south Asian. To my knowledge, I did not choice to be Indian but rather this is where fate had me placed. Going off of this, we found out what being a certain color means in sociology class. Our skin color does not represent our personality, lifestyle or even our opinions. There is absolutely no correlation to what we see on the outside to what is actually on the inside. The only thing that our skin color actually tells us about is our ancestors and where they lived. For those of us that are darker skinned, it doesn’t mean that you are any less worthy of walking on this earth or more worthy of doing manual labor, it simply means that your ancestors were born in a region of the world that had a lot of sunlight exposure. And because of this, evolution has made your ancestors darker to increase their chances of survival. As Sam said, we should thank our ancestors for adapting so that we can exist today. Now the point of this entire paragraph is not just blabber on but rather prove to everyone that we honestly don’t have control over our skin color or have any reason to be ashamed of our skin color. Now going in the complete direction, I have been ashamed by my skin color several times. But the reason for this is not because of my own personal beliefs but rather because of the big deal society makes out of skin color. When I was little, I knew that I was Indian, but I didn’t know what that meant in society. I didn’t know that I would be classified as smart, nerdy, and generally not athletic. Getting through elementary school was not a big deal with my skin color, but when I entered middle school, I noticed a huge difference with skin color. Although I lived in a predominantly white neighborhood and area, I was sent to a magnet school in a predominantly black district. The first day of sixth grade I didn’t really notice a difference until I saw a group of black kids hanging out and playing basketball. When I went to see if I could join them, they blatantly said that I couldn’t play because I was Indian and that I suck at basketball. This was the first time that race and stereotype was brought into my view. It was also the first time that I had felt guilty of being Indian. Now that I have grown and matured, I don’t feel ashamed and that is how everyone should be. Race is not something to be looked down upon but rather to be looked up to.

With the decline of the earth currently in progress, it is important to consider the human impact on the earth and how we can further control it. Over past 100 years, the earth has been on the decline with more and more resources being used to feed the exponential growth of human kind that is currently under way. With a growing population of 6.7 billion people, it is necessary, now more than ever, that we take a look at what is going wrong and new and innovative ways to clean up the earth and save the natural environment as it is not only our world but the world of several billion more animals. To make matters even worse, at the estimated growth rate, we are estimated to double our population within the next 50 to 100 years. Not add on a few million more people, but literally double the population e have on now. If we thought that conserving resources is a problem now, we will have a rude awakening if we don’t start changing our lifestyles. The best and most important way to conserve resources is to just stop having kids. I know this may seem like a joke considering that is what teenagers and a lot of people try to avoid in America. This, however, is not the same mentality that people around the world have, especially people in third world developing countries. In some countries it is considered as a status of wealth to have more kids to show that you can raise and afford to take care of a huge family. In other cases, big families arise just from lack of planning and knowledge. Believe it or not many people in developing countries around the world do not know of contraceptives. It may be hard to imagine, but it is true. The best way to combat resources is to spread the word on contraceptives and educate people on family planning and parenthood. The other plan to minimize child birth would be to adopt a similar approach to the one adopted by China. In China, each family is only allowed to have one kid because of the communist government that is in place there. Obviously not all countries run understand the same type of government so the same control cannot be exercised. This plan has been very effective in controlling the population of China and although China is still leading the world in population, it is scheduled to be taken over by India. Since we cannot force people to stop having children, it is important to prepare uneducated people with knowledge about contraception so that they can make decisions based off of knowledge. My guess is that once educated, people will have a different view on big families and change. This will, in the long term, help prevent the world from being depleted of all its natural resources.

The US is a melting pot and meeting point of several different cultures from all around the world. With that being said, there are obviously going to be some differences amongst people and different ethnic groups including both physical and metal differences. It is these differences that make us “frightened” of each other and keeps us from mixing with each other as humans. I know this feeling cause I am from a different country and it often takes me a little more time to mix in with people of different cultures. When I first moved in to the country, I was five years old. Back then I didn’t have trouble making friends since I was a kid and as a kid you don’t notice differences as much. I try and think back every now and then to see if I can remember what the kids I played with look like but I just can’t see to remember what these kids looked like. The only thing that I can remember was that I had great times. The best part of this experience was that I couldn’t speak English during this time period but I had no problem making friends and playing games in the classroom. I was enrolled concurrently in an English as a second language class while I was in first grade but I didn’t feel like that was slowing down my social life as a kid. The reason for this is because of the innocence that is associated with children that allows them to over look racism for a short period of time before they get more knowledge and in turn more racism bequeathed upon them. It is our society that changes our opinion and causes us to see the world and different ethnic groups the way they are. Think about it this way: If I were to have grown up in India, the country I would have looked at Americans differently than I do. Over the summer when I went to India, I saw several Americans there and every time I talked to my Indian friends about them, they had told me about their opinions regarding Americans. They assumed that all Americans were well off and were living a great life back in the states. This however is not true at all. Not all Americans are as well off as some commercials make it out to be in outer countries. The reason why they think like this is because of the way they see America from India. In India, all the commercials representing America seem to be uplifting and showing Americans as rich. And to back up this claim, the few Americans who do come there spend money easily in India as the currency exchange is much better from dollars to rupees. Basically the entire point of this example is to show that society shapes our opinions and views of other people.

America, often considered the greatest country in the world, has been the epitome of success in the eyes of other countries. And why not? America has an unparalleled melting pot of culture, gorgeous girls, and most importantly a great system in which even the poorest of the poorest are helped. When a person goes broke in America, there are several different programs to help that person get back on his/her feet. From welfare programs to food stamps to soup kitchens, there are plenty of options and places to go for homeless people. This is not the same with other places. When I say this, I am not immediately pointing a finger to Africa, the generic stereotype of a poverty stricken continent, but rather pointing the world at large. Africa has been through its fair share of rough times with the presence of many diseases and lack of natural resources, but they are not the only ones. India is also up there with the one of the highest poverty rates in the world, but what is surprising about the word poverty is that its definition does not remain consistent from country to country. Poverty, according to Merriam Webster, is the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions. Many people don’t think of this definition when they think of poverty because they think that it just means poor but it doesn’t. Poverty is simply what is considered as having an unusual or unacceptable amount of money compared to social standards. Once again social standards. This means that poverty in America is much different than poverty in a developing country. While being in poverty may mean making less than 5,000 dollars a year in America, poverty in India or Africa might be considered as barely surviving. America is a great country in that it is a land of opportunity. However, this does not always mean that there is opportunity for good. All I said is that America is a country of opportunity, this can mean an opportunity to do good or opportunity to turn bad. Speaking strictly about the living conditions, I can say that America by far dominates with all the different programs they have for the needy and the impoverished. In fact, we have one great example of these programs is happening right now in Happy Valley, Thon! Thon is one of the many programs that raises a lot of money for people with cancer. With programs like these, America has provided one of the best living conditions in the world where as many countries are still struggling with starvation and drought. The living conditions in America are definitely different and better than the living conditions of the majority of the world.

When I originally looked up at the data for Native Americans, I was confused and somewhat in disagreement. Native Americans are often characterized as living in poverty and being badly educated and not going to college. But the real question is: is it there fault or has determinism led to them being trapped in an endless cycle of poverty and misfortunate? My initial instinct and knowledge of native americans led to me denying the fact that free will led to the situations and circumstances that the native americans are facing today. But after having a discussion with my friend, I started to think otherwise. My friend argued that although native americans are living under terrible circumstances, they still have the ability to make good decisions and other such opportunities to get out of their depressing situation and make a good life for themselves. When I inquired about what opportunities he was talking about, he referred to affirmative action and other such laws that allow native americans to get some benefits as far as education and money related issues go. Don’t get me wrong, native americans have been through a lot as far as getting their land taken away as well as being killed and slaughtered mercilessly and now they are confined and are only given a little bit of space and which they may live. This is not by any means fair, and that is where determinism comes into play. Not a lot of native americans are born into riches, in fact they are often born into a low class family and sometimes even into poverty as the graph we saw in class showed us. This is the straight from the book definition of determinism. They have no say in where they want to be born, or what family they want to be born into, or even the skin color they come to earth with. But that is the same way for all of us. Half our lives, in my opinion, is already given to us and is predetermined for us. It is the what we do with the other half of our lives that is important. This other half of our life consists of all the judgments we make from birth to death. Life is not always fair but that should not stop you from living it to the fullest and doing the best you can even if it is not what is considered the best in the eyes of other people. There have been several successful native americans in history and some of them also came from dire situations and bad lifestyles as well. You don’t have to take my word for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Native_Ameri... . What this all boils down to is the fact that although Native Americans have been oppressed from their full potential with all the obstacles they have gone through, they should not only be given sympathy. People are not defined by what they are born as but rather what they do and that is an important life lesson to take away.