Since I was 13, I was fluent in two languages. My first language is Portuguese (Brazilian), while my second is English, which I became fluent in when I moved to England. Since then, I have been studying in English, but at the same time, speaking Portuguese at home-- at least up until I moved to the US and out of my parents’ house. I feel like it is kin. of a shame that I don’t get to practice speaking anything other than English nearly enough while living in the US. In addition to these two languages, I also speak Spanish, which was spoken in my household by my grandmother, who lived with us for about 5 years, so even though I don’t speak fluently, I actually have a very good awareness of what is being said. After moving to England, my family decided to move to China where I studied at an American international school and took a few Mandarin Chinese classes.
I have experienced “Spanglish” from my grandmother whenever we moved to England and she attempted to speak the language. However, I have also seen many other languages being mixed: “Portunhol” a mix of Portuguese and Spanish, which my grandmother ended up speaking after living in Brazil for over 30 years, “Chinglish” which was spoken by some of the Taiwanese kids at my high school. These two are only examples of the many languages that eventually get blended with others. Switzerland is a great example of languages being blended because of their astounding four national languages: German, French, Italian, and Romansh. These languages are widely spoken at least in some areas of the country; because of that, language barriers are created wherever one language ends and the other starts, making people learn each other’s languages to be able to relate to each other (which holds true in a lot of countries in today’s world). This almost always causes people to mix languages in some sense. So yes, this is definitely not exclusive to the US and Mexico. It is only much more televised and therefore more noticeable.
I am a third generation Spanish immigrant into Brazil, and as I read the BBC article that talked about the skill level of immigrants in each of the languages they speak and it seems to hold true in my family, since my grandparents (first generation) spoke Portuguese at least with a Spanish accent, if not actually mixing it with Spanish, then my father (second generation) actually speaks both Portuguese and Spanish fluently (as well as fluent English, with a slight and almost inevitable Brazilian accent). Looking at my life in this way, it almost seems like I had no choice other than learning and accepting at least the three languages that are spoken by my parents. Speaking multiple languages is great to be able to relate to different people, and having lived in four distinct places in the world and visited a few others, I feel as though I have a pretty good picture of the world as a whole, with all of its cultures, languages, religions, philosophies, and ideologies that supposedly makes us different.

I am not completely sure about what stage I am in at this point in my life. I do know, that I have experienced long periods of time where I felt similar to what stage three and four were described to be by Sam Richards and by the guest speaker who was in the first SOC 119 session. I also know that I don't feel like that anymore which leads me to believe I am at least on stage five. However, I can't really figure out if I am on stage five or on stage six.
I was born in Brazil, to a Spanish father, but people in Brazil don't exactly discriminate between races as much. I am not saying that there is no racism in Brazil; there is extreme(unspoken) racism against black people. They live in different places in the city for the most part, and have much less opportunities to get good jobs. Because of this unspoken racism, it can be very hard for some Brazilian people to develop their racial awareness, because all people of white, or light skin color in Brazil are considered to be white for the most part. So even though my grandfather's (being unsure whether my grandmother who was from Peru had a Spanish heritage) entire heritage was from Spain and my mother's from Italy and maybe some Spanish(the uncertainty causes me to have doubt) , we were all considered to be white-- or just the same as everybody else- this isn't talked about nearly enough. Moreover, when I left Brazil and lived among white people in England was when I started thinking about race much more, mostly because of their prejudice. I identified myself as Hispanic for a long time, but I have never been completely sure whether a significant part of my heritage was actually from Spain or if it was only my grandfather's family that lived there. In any case, I feel as though I can’t figure out exactly where my ancestors were from just by asking my family because of the complexity of sociological factors that are involved.
Having lived in a few distinct parts of the world and having thought so much about race and cultures I feel pretty comfortable talking about race and I notice that there are many people all over the world that are in very low stages of racial awareness. I don’t know where I would be in the racial identity spectrum if I hadn’t left Brazil, but I know I wouldn’t have focused on it quite as early in my life as I did. I feel as though my family is around the same place I am, being that we’ve been around the world together, but honestly, now that I think about it, I can’t be sure how aware of their racial identity they are.

The modern world is entirely used to being male centered. Men are often believed to be better by many people of both sexes. The reason for this is the power distribution between men and women, the way we look and tend to act towards each other and dynamics between the sexes. In any sense, this distribution of power can lean towards either side, meaning that even though men have been taken to be "superior" and/ or more powerful for thousands of years, this could potentially be the other way around just as easily as it happened the way it has. However, these are the two extremities of the spectrum, therefore the better way to go about it would be to bring this distribution of power to the middle, where it would produce a much more fair society where people are truly equal, not a place where people only talk about being equal without truly believing it as a collective unit.
The extreme growth in competition, coupled with the fact that a lot of people (even women) think that men are better, or that at least it is more advantageous to be a man as compared to being a woman in terms of being successful or even just having an edge on top of others in terms of social interactions, turns out to have deep consequences on the women of today’s world. The fact that it seems like an advantage to be a man makes it much more likely that women will be more inclined to more like men. This is also true because of the way humans tend to copy each other in a sort of “herd mentality” that usually leads us to imitate or do things that are similar to that which the people we admire do. Since men look like they have more power, it is only natural that women will tend to act more like men as time goes on and as they realize that if they do things in the same way men do, they might be more successful in specific things that they encounter in their day to day lives.
In addition to these things, there is one more way to explain why women (particularly, and almost exclusively in the united states) in today’s world are increasingly leaning towards more of male way of acting. This is because families in the US want to make sure that their children succeed by encouraging and empowering them in the same way for both sexes (this, in a way, is due to the strength of the concept of human equality). This leads to American women being more assertive and powerful individuals who can be just as good as men at what they do.

Even though the US contributes to a large part of foreign aid in the world, there are quite a few other very active countries that take part in this (mostly European countries). For this reason, I feel that Americans should realize that they are not the only ones helping and furthermore realize that a lot more can be done.
Finally, today’s situation in Africa and the growing concern around the world makes it so African tribes and populations or different areas throughout the continent can receive goods and food from other countries. However, this leads to hinder the African people by damaging their ability, or will of being self sufficient and creating innovation.
(part 2)

After hearing what Sam Richards said about foreign aid, especially from the US, in addition to the lecture about Haiti with the guest lecturer (whose name I did not catch), I became quite interested in foreign aid, how it really works, and reasons why people chose to do it. This helped me realize that a lot of aid can be largely ineffective in terms of lifting the country up from its current state.
Having to do this current Haiti project, we really get some perspective on what type of aid people generally fail to provide to other countries. This includes things that are can help their economy and actually contribute to improve their overall situation. Things like building factories or helping farmers are the things that can actually help people raise out of their situation and poverty by providing jobs and self-sufficiency. This is the only way to actually help people in their situation.
Another, possibly unrelated, trend that came to my attention was the way that the US offers foreign aid to other countries; they manufacture whatever goods that are to be sent to specific developing countries in times of crisis inside the US. While this may help populations in extreme poverty, it may or may not be an act of true charity, because it stimulates the US economy instead of the developing country at hand, which benefits the US as well. What should be happening instead is an aid that actually helps build the infrastructure needed for factories that can generate jobs and revenue to stimulate the country’s economy and therefore actually helping the country itself in the long term. Which can really make a difference in people’s lives and the situation that they are in, instead of just giving them something for their short-term benefit.
(part 1)

It makes sense that a standardized test such as the SAT would show a trend between how rich a kid's family is to how well they do in it. The reason for this, is because the high school kids that are in families that are richer can afford to go to better schools, where they may get a better overall education, but even more importantly, for a test with material as easy as that of what is in the SAT (for kids that are planning on going to college, which is the very reason the test is taken in the first place), they have more access to classes focused on the SAT or tutors that can serve enough help to boost someone’s score by at least 100 points, sometimes much more than that. However, this is not the best way to measure how intelligent a person is, or even just their computational skills, the SAT can only be a good measurement for how well a student can perform on a test or an exam.
I agree with the fact that families with more money have more opportunities or can create better opportunities for their children to succeed in today's society, and how different races or ethnicities in themselves can serve the same purpose in different ways. Both of these things are constantly affecting everybody in the world who is in society in any manner. But this does not make a person of more wealth or a person of lighter skin more intelligent than another person may be. The things, events and places that a certain person is exposed to, is able to process in their minds, and thinks introspectively about it are what makes a person grow an intellect that may be superior to the one of another. Genes may also be able to transfer a way of thinking or any other way of approaching things that may assist in building onto a person’s intelligence through their life, but in the end, it is only up to the person at hand.
Regarding trends between different races; that one(race) might have a better average total score than another may lead people to believe that one ethnic group might be more intelligent than another, which can in turn lead to the spreading of stereotypes about each race. Though it may appear this way, the only cause for these trends appears to be related to how wealthy a certain person's family may or may not be. Stereotypes, therefore, can only sometimes be true: these being facts that some people may hold to be true deep inside their consciousness.

Brazil seems to have a type of “unspoken apartheid” which deeply divides the population and makes it for a sort of barrier in which black people miss out on all of the opportunities that should be available to everybody. When it comes to gender issues, I am aware we haven’t reached the topic yet, but since the President of Brazil is now a woman, and women all over the world have been fighting for their rights for decades now. I am interested in comparing and contrasting the “type of racism” of different countries and the effect they can have on the people as well as comparing gender issues.
END

That would be easy to conclude from simply comparing facts between the two countries and seeing all the similarities and differences that it has. On the other hand, racism doesn’t have to be directly shown or spoken about; most racism in the world today takes place in a much more subtle manner. People today don’t talk as racists or show it in an obvious manner, but definitely act it, be it in a conscious or unconscious way. Furthermore, Brazil displays a type of racial barrier even today. This racial barrier does take place in the United States as well, but here it seems like people of different ethnic backgrounds might live in different neighborhoods or things like that, but it seems like there is a lot more opportunity for people in minority groups here than in a country like Brazil.

We have been talked about history a lot in the introduction to this class, and we focus a lot of the US for obvious reasons. However, I would like to know more about gender and ethnic relations in South America. As Sam mentioned, most of the slaves brought from Africa to the Americas were taken to South and Central America. If Brazil "adopted" the one drop rule that exists in the US, over fifty percent of the population would be of African race or descent. Moreover, Brazil never had a civil war aimed at abolishing slavery; it was the work of Princess Isabel, who helped ease the transition into a society without slavery. There were people who wanted slavery to stay (mostly for self-interest), however, the people of Brazil did not split into two clear sides and fight one of its bloodiest wars. Instead, it seems, people actually realized how incredibly inhumane it was to put people (of any color) into the conditions that Africans were put into when taken from Africa to the Americas. I would like to know more about how the racism in the US can differ from that of the one that takes place in Brazil. Are American people more racist?

It is common knowledge that the USA invests, by far, the most money into their army than any other country in the world, and therefore, it has the most influential military in the world. All this power comes with a price, like the responsibility to help weaker ally countries in times of hardship or even to invade other countries that "seem" to need external help. Or are those just excuses made in order to put a military base in other countries that can benefit the US by trading or for buying resources.
It seems that for as long as the US has had a strong army, they've also had if not the most, a very high amount of resources offered to its people. Moreover, to ensure that its people had these resources, the US has “had” to go into war and has invaded different countries (like Iraq for example), which they struck upon with war and are still in their land and buying oil from them.
It isn’t fair that the country with the biggest army gets to have an unnecessary amount of resources, only because that means that other countries will be denied the access to these goods because of the US. This would not be a problem if the biggest consumer wasn’t the biggest waster as well but unfortunately, those come together, at least in this case. The amount of food and water alone that is wasted by the US could feed many other people. If you stop and think about how many other resources they overuse that could be going towards people that may actually need it, that number rises even higher.

Moreover, the billions of dollars that the US spends on things like having useless bases in other countries, only ferociously adds to the amount of money that is being wasted by the US and just used to leverage, and to establish that they are the country in power (even though their debt is up to the trillions). Because of such an influential army, the US may never have to pay their debt, which has already seemed like an impossible payback for a while now, because of such leverages that allows them to still buy resources and ask other countries for favors.