This has been one of the most thought-provoking classes I have taken here at Penn State. I now see a lot of things in society that I never paid much attention to. I took this class just because I heard it was easy and a good class to take. I did not know what I was getting into. This class really opened my eyes into the racial world. I never really thought too much about race and inequality. I mean I knew it was happening but never really took the time to understand why or to what extent inequality exists in this world. I loved being able to skype someone from a different country and be able to talk to them about how their culture is different from ours and how it is the same. Sam had so many good points in all of his lectures. All the statistics he showed on the board were crazy. My favorite lecture though was when he brought in his wife and talked about sex. He proved to me how sex in society is mainly about the man and often forgets about the woman. Having his wife there really helped because they could work so well together and we got opinions from both a man and a woman. All the statistics that they show are so good. Sam really knows how to bring up a subject and make us think. There was never a boring class and this was the only class that I actually wanted to go to. The way he challenges all of the classes beliefs and makes them feel a little uncomfortable is how he really makes the class learn. I think about race a lot more now and notice things that before this class I didn’t at all. I also notice things between sexes too because of the “needy penis” lecture. There is such an unbalance between male and female. Males are heavily focused on compared to females especially in sex. The way woman dress compared to men proves this. I know I wouldn’t want to be walking around in heels just because it makes my butt look good. I never knew that was why women wear heels until I took this class. I see a lot more ways women want to impress men now in society that I never saw before. I never stopped to ask why a girl is wearing that because it can’t possibly be comfortable. This class really just woke me up a lot of the world around me. It showed me a lot of differences and inequalities that I never noticed before. I am really glad that I took this class and definitely think that it should be required by all students to graduate.

The “Needy Penis” lecture was definitely shocking to me. I have never thought about the fact that sex is only for the man in today’s society. But everything they were saying was correct about society. Like the fact that sex is over when the man orgasms was obvious but I never knew the facts behind it. When they showed the statics of how many women orgasm during sex I was shocked. I always thought that sex was supposed to be for both parties not just the male. So that whole lecture was really mind blowing. When Sam got into how women dress for men and not for themselves, it all made sense. Who wants to wear heels? And who wants to wear a small dress that barely gets past your butt in twenty degree weather? Walking around downtown on a weekend night you see all these girls trying to keep their dresses down while at the same time stumbling with their five inch heels. And then you think that the only reason they are doing it is for the guys. I knew all this already but never thought about how much women do to please men. I am so much more aware of this patriarchal society now. When I watch a commercial for even women’s lotion the girl has long legs and smooth skin and is very attractive and even this commercial could be considered for men because the girl wants to buy the lotion to look good for a man. I feel bad for the women who do not orgasm during sex. I know if that was me I would be really angry afterwards. The fact that a man has sex and only cares about himself disgusts me. How can you not want to please the female too? I wouldn’t get satisfaction knowing that I was the only one that reached orgasm during sex or even oral sex. I think that most of the reason why women report not reaching orgasm is because of porn. Most people learn what they think women like during sex from porn because no one teaches it. So in porn they depict a strong man that goes very hard in bed and the viewer thinks that the faster and harder they go, the more women will enjoy it. There is no foreplay at all because men are aroused so quickly unlike women. But porn is not meant to educate. It is meant to entertain men so the way it is made is for the man not the woman. Once again, after that lecture I thought about how this class should be required because it teaches so many important facts about the world that most people don’t realize.

I thought that the lecture on the classes was very interesting and I wonder if the same stages apply for white people because it seemed like that lecture was only for minorities. I can assume that it would be very similar. I do think that some of the classes are better than others. I did not ever really think about how someone moves from stage to stage like the guy explained. Being in stage one in my mind is definitely the least helpful to be in. This world would be a much better place if race became not so much of an issue. As I understand it, stage one occurs when someone blocks off other races so they don’t have to deal with people that are different than them. That sounds like ignorance to me. Clearly if everyone was like this the world would be just a bunch of isolated people of the same race that never communicated with anyone else. How can you better the world when everyone will not work together? In stage two it sounds like there was some attempt to understand the world around you which is a step better in my mind than stage 1. Then I cannot tell whether stage three is getting better or worse than stage two. It is a good thing that you have pride in your race. It can be bad though if you act out on your pride and intend to hurt others that are not like you. Some radicals in stage three will do this which makes it worse than stage 2 in my mind. But there are not many people that are radical like that which is why I cannot decide if stage three is better or worse. Stage four is definitely better than stage three. In stage four it seemed as though race began to not be a factor at all in someone’s life. That is when real progress can be made at the race table. If more people could strive to be in stage four then a lot of this violence that happens could be eliminated. I think that stage four is probably the best stage a person could be in. If I remember right stage four is where you can see race but it doesn’t affect your thoughts or judgments of a person. This is good because you can notice that they are different and wonder about their culture and norms and socialize about it. This will create relationships with people are different than you. I did not completely understand stage five. It said that it was a complete spiritual transformation. I couldn’t relate to this at all because I have not met anyone that truly does not notice race.

As a Christian I was aware of all these sins presented in class. I also know that every sin is the same. This means that one sin is not greater than another sin. You either sin or you do not sin and I believe everyone on this planet has sinned at one point. The point is that we are forgiven if we can own up to those sins and admit them. If someone presented me with a huge meal of course I will accept it. If a girl asks me if she looked good in a certain outfit I am not just going to say no if that’s how I feel because that would be considered rude. In class people laughed when Sam presented many of the other sins such as premarital sex and drinking. Of course people are going to laugh when he asked if we have done these things because they think that it is the thing to do because we are in college. It is promoted in this college society. So when Sam asked who has had sex, almost the whole class raised their hands giggling. And Sam presented many of these sins in a humorous way so that it did not look like we were all just terrible people. As soon as homosexuality came up no one would laugh because it is not acceptable in today’s society. Homosexuality is just starting to become acceptable in today’s society. In the generation before us people laughed and made fun. That’s not to say that that doesn’t happen anymore but it’s getting better. Sam showed some statistics about how we are becoming more and more accepting even in the last ten years. I personally did not laugh because I believe that it is not a choice to be gay. I think many other people in class believe the same and that is why they did not laugh. Sam talked about studies done that show that twins are usually both gay and other biological stats showing that it indeed is not a choice. If it was then how could so many gay people not come out. If it was a choice they would be proud to say it. One person in class talked about he prayed to God that he could like girls. So I don’t even get how people can say that the only reason someone is gay is because they chose to be. People know that they sin and many are accepted by society so it is just whatever to them. Our culture is moving towards homosexuality being that way. It is not there yet though and that could be a big reason why no one laughed at that sin.

Even though one would think the stereotype that Asians are smart is supposed to be good, it comes with some negatives. People for this stereotype think that, just because of the way someone looks can determine if they are smart or not. For instance, if you have high hopes for how well you do in school just because of your race, it creates a lot of pressure on you. People will expect you to do well and even if you do just average in school or on tests, people will think of you as a dumb Asian. All this added pressure can increase stress for them. Another negative thing that could come from this presumed positive stereotype is that people will get jealous of them. Many people act on their jealousy and this can affect Asians in a negative way. As was stated in class, Asians are the people that are most bullied. Other students in class could get jealous of someone in their class doing better on tests than they are. They will turn this into a positive for themselves by making fun of the kid that does the best. They might say things such as he tries to hard or nerd. Many people from places such as China and Japan have stressed the importance of academics in their lives. When they come over to America and work harder than many Americans here, many times they will work harder. This results in better tests scores on many occasions which causes all this bullying. In the workplace some people also could be jealous of an Asian coworker because of the stereotype. This could create isolation between Asians and the jealous others. It could also produce anger in the jealous people because maybe they think that the Asian will get a promotion instead of them. This jealousy and anger can sometimes isolate Asians too. Walking around Penn State you see a lot of different races. That doesnt mean that we are very diverse though. As I walk through campus I see Asians hanging out with Asians, white people hanging out with white people, black people hanging out with black people etc. This isolation causes many people to not be as cultured as they could be. College is a place to meet new people and gives someone a great chance to meet people that are different than him or her. I see many people that dont want to take the risk of meeting someone that is very different than them. This can have a negative impact on Asians because many of them are immigrants that are still getting used to American culture and many times I have seen them only hanging out with other Asians.

The class on latent prejudice was very interesting to me. I knew that it existed but some of the statistics that Sam showed us were shocking. I think this is the case because if we don’t realize that we are being prejudice then we won’t realize the implications of it until statistics like those are thrown in our faces. One question I still have about this is the following. Should we feel guilty for this latent prejudice if there could be some things that we can do to change this but we also don’t even realize the prejudice? Now I’ll get to the implications of this latent prejudice. It definitely has a huge factor in who gets what job. If an employer has not been exposed to different cultures then he or she will probably only hire people that are most like him or her. This is because I believe that people have this fear of the unknown. If they look at let’s say a black man and haven’t been around black people in their past, then they will have a sort of uneasy feeling that will most likely cause the black man to lose the job to someone more like the employer. This is another reason that white people will stay on top as far as money goes. Other races will try to climb that ladder like was stated in class but because of this latent prejudice it will be near impossible. This also has social implications. As I walk through campus I notice that Penn State is a very diverse campus but not really. I see black people hanging out with black people, Asians hanging out with other Asians, and white people hanging out with white people. I would consider this even latent prejudice. This campus is not very diverse at all because of this. The statistics about jail time was stunning to me. The fact that a judge in our judicial system will sentence someone to more time just because they are a different race is disgusting. A white person gets off the hook because the judge can relate to them and thinks that they “just messed up once”. When we were talking about adopting or using someone’s sperm that was not the same race as you was another very interesting topic. When he, asked the question “are you prejudice?” I answered yes. How could you not? I think people in the class that answered no are just trying to look good because everyone has latent prejudice embedded in them. I really liked how he brought a couple people down who said they were not prejudice and asked them questions. I took away from that they yes they were prejudice and Sam just exposed it after he was done.

I was not surprised at all by the reactions of the people in this video. First of all the setting took place in a predominantly white park. People in general favor people that are similar to them. So when something looks out of place they react and this was shown as a black man and a white man were each shown trying to steal a bike. Another thing I have noticed in society is that people generally don’t like to step in on issues. They would rather just pretend that they didn’t see it and turn a shoulder. This is shown a lot when the white male tries to steal the bike. Some people would stop and ask if the bike was his. When he said it wasn’t most people just shrugged it off and kept walking. They did not want to get involved. This is greatly present in today’s society. I think that the reason for these turned shoulders is the fact that our society is so fast paced these days. We don’t have the time to stop and talk like we used to. Even the people at the park, which should have been a place to relax, don’t have time to stop and confront the man or call the police. The main reason for stopping and confronting the black man is what we talked about in class. Everyone has this instilled little bit of prejudgment in what they see. People make a lot of assumptions based on the color of someone’s skin. Its natural because the first thing you notice about a person is the color of their skin unless you are blind. Everyone does it. The assumption made when the people saw a black man dressed the way he was is that he was up to no good. The fact that he was fiddling with the bike got people to believe right away that he was stealing it. They overcame that part of them that wanted to turn a shoulder on the incident solely because he was black. When the blonde girl tried to steal the bike, I was not at all surprised by what happened. Of course, men came up and tried to talk to her and some even tried to help her steal the bike. They hoped that maybe they could get something from her out of it. Even if it was just a thank you, men like to flirt with hot women. This is why women get a lot of special treatment in life. They get free drinks at bars and even here on campus they get into parties for free while men might have to pay. That’s just the way society is and I don’t see a change in it any time soon.

First of all, I was really impressed and completely agreed with the way Sam talked about free will vs. determinism. When he asked us which one has a bigger impact I couldn’t answer because I knew that they impacted a situation the exact same amount. So coming to Penn State was both caused by free will and determinism. I’ll start off with the determinism reasons. I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia where there were more white people than any other race. Both my parents were doing decently so I lived in a nice neighborhood. I went to a very good public school that offered a very good education before going to college. So I had background that was out of my control before I was even ready to start applying to schools. My parents had even put expectations on me to go to college which resulted in my own expectations that I would go to college without any question. I can honestly say that if my parents weren’t there to push me a lot during school that I might not even be going to college. If my living conditions were different I probably wouldn’t be going to college. Even the fact that both of my parents went to college had a factor in me attending Penn State. The fact that Penn State was in the state I lived also had played a factor into the reason why I ended up going here.
Free will takes a key role in anyone’s college career. In the end, once you get all those acceptance letters, it is your choice on where you want to go to school. You will choose the best for you. This could be because it is close to home and you can’t stay away from your family for too long or maybe it just has the major that you really want. Penn State was close enough to home but far enough to be away from home. This university is one of the top universities for engineering which is what I would like to earn a degree in. The school spirit here was another reason I chose this school. The fact that it was a big campus with a lot of things to do also attracted me (not to mention the crazy culture surrounding Penn State). I could’ve easily chosen another school. I had the resources to go to a lot of different universities. I could’ve also decided to join the military or get a job right out of high school knowing that my parents might not have been fully satisfied with that. I could’ve decided that I didn’t want to live like my parents with a lot of material things and maybe moved away and did something completely different. In the end, what was my choice and what was not my choice both factored into me coming to this university.

As far as the numbers go, I was not surprised at all. If I had to arrange each race by household income, it would have been very similar. As I listened to some of the classmates try to explain the reason why it was the way it was, I was actually surprised at their lack of answers. When I see the numbers I think that the only way to describe the reason behind it is to look at each individual race. Native Americans are easily at the bottom because of what white people did to them. As Europeans moved to the America’s they fought these natives. The natives did not have superior technology and as a result could not stand up to these tyrants. So they were pushed to these reservations where little money is available. Then the next lowest was black people. Most black people in the U.S. today trace their ancestry back to the slave trade. How can you have money if you are a slave? They have constantly been trying to climb the ladder, but like we said in class it’s almost impossible. Next is Hispanics. These people have not been in this country for very long and most came as immigrants. Knowing that a lot of the Hispanic countries do not have a lot of money, you can see that they are already at a disadvantage. Many came here looking for a better life and to support their families, but to make a lot of money here, you usually need a college education. Since they came with little to no money, there was no way they could afford college so they took the best job they could. One big step above them is Asians. In order to move halfway across the world, you need to have money. Also, many already attended college back in their native countries and then moved here. They had a huge advantage over any other immigrant because they could afford to move that far and they already had a good education to back them. That will lead to good jobs and money here in America. At the top of the ladder are white people. White people have dominated America (pushing the natives off their land and the slave trade). So clearly they would be on top because they have been since they came here hundreds of years ago. The reason why they can stay at the top was talked about in class. People want to protect what they have. They are going to choose their friends over people that are different than them. So once they are at the top, white people are going to do anything they can to stay there. This makes it almost impossible for other races to catch up, therefore creating those numbers we saw in class.

The quote heard in class today really struck me. When it was first presented as the spiritual advisor to the President of Iran saying it, I felt overwhelmingly alarmed. For someone of such power to openly threaten innocent people with weapons of mass destruction gave me chills. I had always known other countries had the power and resources to do this, but hearing it spoken by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made it way too real. Alarm turned to shock when I found out an American said it. I was in complete dismay when I heard it had come from Franklin Graham, a spiritual advisor. I have many problems with this statement. First, as a spiritual advisor of the President you are representing this country. Not only did he disgrace himself in saying such a heinous statement, but he also gave people of other countries yet another reason to hate Americans. It was absolutely reckless to say, and he is very lucky there were no fatal repercussions. The more I reread the quote, the more afraid I became. Atomic warfare is a very real possibility. The United States is not the only country with access to such weapons. That ignorant statement alone could have been taken as a serious threat and brought danger to the citizens here. Secondly, I was also afraid because of the thought of people like Franklin Graham working for the President. People of that hateful nature should not be in a position of power. Ever. History backs that up with dictators such as Hitler or Mussolini. It makes me sick to my stomach knowing that elitist intolerant people have the potential to hold such power. Finally, the thing that hit me hardest about this was that Franklin Graham was a SPIRITUAL ADVISOR. George W. Bush was raised in the Episcopal Church and later converted to Methodism. This makes him a Christian, so I’m taking the liberty of assuming that Franklin Graham is a Christian too. The statement heard in class today makes Christians everywhere look awful. I hope people realize that Graham is an elitist and intolerant person; this does not define what REAL Christians are. I am also going to take the liberty to also assume Franklin Graham must have been well versed in the Bible since he was a spiritual advisor. In Matthew 5:44 it says “But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”. This is the extreme opposite of what was said. The Bible calls for us to be loving and accepting of everyone. It specifically says to love and pray for your ENEMIES and PERSECUTORS. This makes me conclude that Franklin Graham was not only an awful human being, but he is also the biggest hypocrite and liar. I researched to see if he was fired from the spiritual advisor position; it doesn’t look like he was. This makes me sick to my stomach because it gives others the impression this view is ok. Something for Franklin Graham to think about:

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” – Romans 1:18