I feel like the majority of people who are biracial seem to associate themselves with their minority group. The reason I think this is because there is much more parental pressure on children to learn customs that they feel they wouldn't learn in the USA, which are all the non-white customs. Therefore in the home, children might get more emphasis on non-white culture if they are biracial. This is because I often see children who are from biracial or just non-white households, with parents who are new immigrants, to seem to feel a lot of cultural pressure from their parents. I think Sam said it in class a while back, the farther the family line stays in the US, the more people grow accustomed to the culture. There's an excellent story about this in Penn Statements (for those who still have it from English) from the viewpoint of an Indian child. She always felt left out because she brought "weird" food to school, mostly Indian foods. A lot of children don't see culture as much of a big deal, they think making friends and fitting in is. Parents just want their children to grow up as they do, with all of their customs, values, and morals. I think that this phenomena would also occur in multiracial couples, assuming one is white. There would probably be more emphasis on the non-white culture, because the child is going to grow up in white culture, learning it in school and from their friends. Because of this emphasis, I think that a biracial child is more likely to associate with non-white culture.

In general, I think that people of color would choose whoever is best for the job. In today's day and age, I think that white people are on the whole, more educated because on average, white people make more money. This means that white people on average get a better education, which makes them more qualified for higher positions. In positions where both candidates are equally qualified and one of those candidates is white, and the other colored, I think colored people will more equally pick between white and colored people than white. I think that the main reason that colored people would pick more evenly is because they are able to connect with both races. Since colored people live in a white-dominated society, they know the norms between white people. Also since they live in colored society, they have the ability to connect with colored people in a way I don't think white people do, in general. This is especially true between groups of white people, as Sam pointed out in the activity he showed us in class. That is why I think colored people are more likely to pick evenly between colored and white people, as opposed to white people, which may have trouble connecting with colored people, especially in group situations.

I think that its more a problem of society not being completely accepting of homosexual unions that raises the problem of homosexual couples adopting children. Since some people don't accept homosexuals, they criticize them, and I think that this will trickle down to the children. Since children don't only understand the things that their parents teach them, there are going to be a lot of terrible comments made towards the children of the homosexual couples. I don't think that the children of the homosexual couples would inherently be confused, since the parents could do a good job of explaining the situation, but a lot of people just aren't tolerant towards gay people, and therefore the other children in school react to that and it puts the child in a defensive position. Teasing on the playground can have a bad psychological effect on the children. I think that children of homosexual couples will have a lot less lasting effects emotionally if their parents aren't married than a child of two heterosexual parents who aren't married.
The reason that I think this is because, as Sam said, homosexuals can't have "accidental" children. Heterosexual couples who have children then don't get married tend to have emotional/psychological effects because they feel almost unwanted. This would seem to be avoided with homosexual children because they know that they are wanted, and their family environment should be more nuturing. So I don't really see this being a problem unless the parents act differently knowing that they can't get married. In summation, I don't think that homosexuals not being able to get married effecting their children unless they let it affect themselves.

I think the conversation about race issues inevitably end up being black versus white because they fought back the most recently. I'm actually surprised most of the time that it isn' about whites against native Americans, but I guess that must be mostly because so few of them actually remain, and society does such a good job at either having them completely removed from society and put on reservations, or forcing them to assimilate into society, because native Americans look more like white people than black people do. Whenever you think of black struggles for freedom, you have this iconic picture of great leaders such as Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X. Who do the native Americans have within the last 50 years, Alexie Sherman, and he definitely isn't a household name. And who do other races, like Latinos or Asians have, no great civil rights leaders come to mind. I mean we put tons of Japanese and other Eastern Asians who we thought were Japanese into internment camps during World War 2, and that never gets brought up. I feel that its less the fact that white people enslaved blacks, over the fact that blacks fought the hardest, and were most publicized to earn their freedom. It doesn't mean that the things whites used to do towards blacks are any worse than things whites used to do towards other groups.
Also maybe it has something to do with the sudden rise in black power in America. I mean whoever is in power pretty much writes history as they see fit, and with an increase in blacks in prominent positions in the United States. This means that its something we have to deal with, while we can keep those who aren't in power silenced. It isn't as though other non-white races have as much freedom and as many rights as blacks do, its just that blacks were mainly the ones fighting for those rights. Since they are so large in number and have much more power than other races, they have the ability to pave the way, because they understand the injustice that happened. It isn't that they were the first to be persecuted by whites, or even had it the worst among whites, not that its really a contest. Its just that since now there are more blacks than there are other races, they have to be the leaders in how these things get dealt with. With numbers comes power, and black people certainly have numbers on almost every other non-white race here in America. So the main reason I think that it always ends up being white vs black is because blacks had to lead the charge to the top of the mountain, because they had the most players on the non-white team.

I can't imagine that the French government doing this. I can't imagine that people wouldn't consider this a discriminate act towards a group of people who have done no harm. I don't think that this is in anyway compatible with the French system of ideals, its just a article of clothing. The fact that it may be a symbol to another culture should be irrelevant to whether or not they should be allowed to wear them. It doesn't really mean everything to the majority of the people in France. I could maybe see if this was a known symbol of hate in french society, something harmful to a group of people, but its most certainly not. It's just that people in Europe seem to be more open about their discriminatory behavior, from my experience. It's not that people in America don't think to themselves why don't they dress more like us, its just that Americans have more of a personal censor on what they say. In Europe, people aren't as judgemental towards discriminatory remarks that others say, so they just have no reason to censor their behavior. If people in the U.S. said the same things, there would be a huge social uproar, and a media circus. People in the U.S. probably reacted harsher to these comments than the French did. I'm not saying that I agree that burqas should be banned, I just think that in France, people aren't as uptight about saying these things as Americans.

i like cereal

I think that one of the major blame factors in Limbaugh's and Robertson's “radical” ideas, and outrageous statements is the fact so many people feel the need to say how stupid they are. In order to have more people listen to your shows, you need to create buzz, and this is exactly what they are doing. A lot of people follow their shows just to say, “Oh wow, what is he, retarded?!” and it brings their viewing up. Then they get paid more money to say more outrageous statements, its never ending. Its statements like these that give them free publicity, and even though its negative publicity I don't think they particularly care, so long as they are getting paid. I do not think that very many, or anyone, for that matter, actually agree with the statements that they said. But the fact that people will watch TV. shows such as the 700 club, just to yell at their TV screens says a lot about how far programming has come. If people just turned the channel off if they didn't agree with what someone said, it would decrease the number of viewers of these shows significantly, and, best case scenario, they would get pulled off the air. I know that these people have their die hard supporters, but I just can't bring myself to believe that there are enough people who agree with Robertson to actually give him his own television show
Furthermore I think it's wrong for people like Olbermann and Stewart to even think about responding to Robertson. After I went on youtube for the clip, I couldn't believe that 370,000 people had actually watched it. That means that 370,000 people actually went in search of this video, how do you think that TV stations are going to see him, as a huge attraction. They don't care if you post negative comments about what he says, its just that you stay long enough to watch the show. They don't care if its negative publicity, as long as they can sell the commercial slots for more money, they will let these psychos say whatever they want. I think the best thing we can do here is to just ignore these imbeciles and give our time to more important things, like actually figuring out ways to help out the people in Haiti. We just don't really have the time or energy to waste on people who aren't willing to help, we just have to ignore them, and eventually they will fade into the shadows.