There is a very inherent parallel between the white standard and the male standard because both of them are what dominate the conventional thinking in society. Both are also the two standards that are overall peddled by the media; whether it is in television, print media, film or social media on the internet. I believe that the reason that this exists is because both white people and males are looked upon as a dominant force on the global scale, or at least, a majority in the richest and most powerful nations on Earth, and thus dictate the way that most things that involve them are portrayed. White males, on the whole in North America and Europe, dominate the media, and their needs are thus, placed in more emphasis and are considered more important than others needs.

In most movies, it’s the man who determines when sex begins, when a climax happens and when sex ends, and we then become used to that idea and as men, we start to believe that we’re in control of the whole situation and we pretty much dictate everything. Likewise, in most movies and media, white men and white women are the most sought after in all relationship, dating and sex situations. When you look at all sex comedies that Hollywood releases, white women are always the center of attention from pretty much a guy of any race. This then translates into the real world where white women believe that they have control of most guys in a party or dating situation and dominate over women of other races. This also, as seen in the video in class, creates a very disturbing situation when children and teens are impressionable to this and think of dolls and figures that have darker skin are ‘dirty’ and the ones with white skin are much more clean and better looking. When I watched the video, I became even more troubled because I started to become self-aware of my own choices when being attracted to girls and what type of girls I usually date or hook up with. I’m Indian, but I’ve only ever dated white girls so far in my life and I thought a lot about it after the lecture as to why I choose to date white girls, or at parties why I choose to approach white girls over a girl of any other race and I think that movies have definitely played a factor and have subliminally marketed it to me that white girls are just more desirable and it was something that really troubled me for a while.

These standards, which are set through a white/male-dominated media, are very influential in society and can make people think a certain way when they are in a particular situation that deals with sexuality or attraction.

I tend to agree that education reform is something that can be a domino effect in leading to better situations in many other areas. America’s education system is heavily flawed, especially in pre-collegiate level education where a lot of children don’t get the proper attention to succeed and really learn anything valuable that they’re going to need or want to use in real life. Most of the educational goals of any public or private school nowadays is only to get majority, if not all of their students past those pesky ‘standardized tests’… why? Because then the funding and donations will keep on coming. For this reason, kids are being taught exams and how to answer already regulated and formulated questions just to ‘get passed them’ rather than learn about skills and knowledge that will lead them to think critically, do problem solving, innovate and create new ideas for the society that they will be living in.

Of course, with more critical knowledge, students who are active in policy making will learn how to deal with economic and social problems in America through ideas of empathy, logic and subjectivity rather than a religious, racial or cultural bias that will blind and paralyze their ability to gain a world view on important subjects. Even students in business and engineering, sciences, arts and other fields will also be able to shape their fields in dealing with issues which effect all Americans. Students who go in business can think critically to decide if it’s moral for them to hire illegal immigrants just because they cost less, and if it is ok to hire them because business employers have an obligation to keep the economy stable and up and they can only do that with cheap labor that will amount to maximized profits. Such decisions need to be made and can only be logically made with critical thinking.

With more critical knowledge, students can help work to solve the immigration issue, or poverty issues or issues of social injustice and government corruption because they will have a much more broad understanding of how American system works and how policies can be changed and how people’s minds can be influenced through unique ideas and critical thinking. Immigration is an idea that people love to talk about but don’t really know about, and it’s important to first teach kids in school all the different facets of the issue and how it effects our economy and social situations in both positive and negative ways. It’s most important to tell both sides of the story, because the school systems are very notorious for being very liberal and unwelcome to conservative ideas. Both sides should be taught and the students themselves should be able to decide which side they think is most beneficial for their country.

I think that art, especially film is the most powerful tool to send messages about something that you really care about. Film is extremely versatile and comprises of not only visual and audial representation, but it can also comprise of a deeper symbolic representation of the topic you want to get across. This past class we talked about the disenfranchisement of Native Americans in America and how they were subject to the longest lasting genocide in human history. I think that documenting strive in Native reservations and getting a deeper look at not only the culture, but also the personal thoughts and ideas of the natives would be a great way to show Americans the history as well as the unjust politics that went on to keep Natives down so low in American society.

Through such a filmmaking and documentarian endeavor, I think that the most important thing would be not to preach about the strife and the disenfranchisement of the peoples myself, but to let them have center stage and a loud voice to express their own feelings towards politicians and the American tax-paying citizens. Too many times, when we are talked to about Native Americans or about the guilt that we should feel in regards to their opression, it is a filmmaker, activist, historian or some college professor who does all of the talking and the preaching. Never do we actually get to hear the words right out of the mouths or the ideas right out of the heads of Native Americans. I think, from hearing memebers of the Cherokee tribe, or the Sioux or the Hopi or Navajo, peopl will feel more compelled to act on the opression and to fix the problem. We need to realize that these people are Americans first and foremost, many of them even more American than we are because their ancestors were here before any of ours. It is important for them to speak and then for us to have a conversation directly with them, cutting out the middle-man lobbyist who feels compelled to tell their story on their behalf.

Film would be the perfect way to represent them because through imagery, we can not only hear their words and their thoughts, but we can see directly the strife that they experience every day. Through imagery in film, audiences may also be compelled to visit and see first-hand in person what the reservations and like and to talk directly to the Natives and learn about their history and the oppression the government has thrown upon them for so many years. This way, both sides will be able to empathize with each other and will create effective dialogue to push the conversation as well as action forward.

DISCLAIMER* This post is for the video on the front section of all the videos which deals with how affirmative action in high-maintainance jobs can affect the quality of care and production that the job demands (it is a 31 sec long video and the question is asked by a dark haired girl with glasses). The link associated with that video is misdirected and leads to a video about ‘nepotism’ for some odd reason. I can’t find the posting section for the original video, so I just posted it here. I suggest the people in charge of this website get this problem fixed because it’s confusing as hell and kind of irritating too.

Yes, I think that the idea of affirmative action enters a very grey area once we start talking about jobs which require a lot of expertise and a lot of formal education and practice. When speaking about jobs such as being a secretary or a desk recipient or some other low maintainance job, affirmative action then doesn’t really come into a discussion because to either take a stance against it, the only argument would be the one of experitise and ‘experience’ and for a low maintainance job, such a discussion doesn’t ever come to a diffinitive stance.

However, when talking about a job such as a surgeon or a dentist or managing director of a firm, or an accountant, these jobs require the individual to be the most experienced and practiced of the group because these jobs are predicated on the individual making the best decisions and managing other people’s livelihoods. In the case of a surgeon, it would be another person’s life, in the case of a dentist a person’s teet, a managing director needs to make executive decisions on behalf of all of the people who work for his company, and an accountant needs to give the best advice for his clients financial stability and future. If the person who works in these jobs is employed through affirmative action when they really aren’t qualified for the position, then not only is it dangerous for the practice of company, but it is also dangerous for the people who are going to be depending on this person to be in charge of a certain part of their life, or their entire life (in the case of a surgeon).

The argument to support affirmative action in these cases is very hard to justify because the jobs are purely reliant on the expertise of an individual and his ability to make decisions and take care of other people in the field, all of which usually comes from a certain education that the person may have gotten. I think it would be an outrage for most people if they learned that the person who is going to be in charge of a certain aspect of their livelihood was chosen simply because of an exterior factor rather than a factor of experience and knowledge.

For a much more low key job however, I think the idea of affirmative action may be justified because low key jobs are usually given to people who are less educated and maybe didn’t get a bachelor’s degree. Though, in the case of a job like a surgeon, the color of ones skin, or the class that the person may be from, or their gender should not make a difference as long as they are the most qualified individual for the opportunity.

I do think America should continue giving aid to Haiti and to other countries which need it. I understand the plight and the situation amongst farmers whereby they get negative effects of cheap American rice being given to Haiti while the farmers who grow their rice don’t get any money for it because they lose customers and nobody wants their rice, however, the aid that Americans give in rice is doing more good right now for a majority of that nation than the rice grown there. When I say that, I don’t mean that the rice grown in Haiti is not valuable, I mean that it is not produced at a fast enough rate and is not directly accessible as much as American rice is. The rice that is grown in Haiti could be better utilized for bartering within that nation. The farmers could eat their own rice and barter some of it off to others for benefits. Meanwhile the Americans can keep giving aid to other parts of country which need it. This can continue until the country is able to be at least partially self-sustaining. By cutting off aid completely to the nation, they will most likely die off because the infrastructure is barely capable of supporting 10 people let alone a nation of over a million. There is not avid transportation system, there is no advanced farming system, there is no food distribution system or government infrastructure to make sure everything from cultivation to sales runs smoothly. The nation is pretty much in shambles and in order for it to even begin to pick itself up by its feet, it will need a helping hand.

American aid, I believe is something that can be extremely beneficial in this situation, where a country is totally desolate and doesn’t even know where to begin to recover. However, many of the aid services that America gives are to countries with dictatorships (note North Korea and Somalia) where the food and supplies that get there never actually reach the people because the government and militia take controll of it. The reason the militia is involved in those countries in the first place is because nations like America ignored them for so long that the citizens had no choice but to turn to a ruthless opressive force which would at least provide the citizens with sustainance enough to live. The lack of any support lead to anarchy and eventually a ruling dictatorship in those countries. In Haiti, if the U.S. stops giving aid, a similar situation could rise because the nation will be so desolate and ignored that it would look to anybody for help and that somebody will be a power-hungry type. This same pattern repeats in country after country, so to let it happen in Haiti would be a neglectful embarassment on our part.

I don’t think there is any stigma towards the idea of reincarnation because it is something that is never really brought up in conversation. It is a concept that most Christians, Muslims and Jews don’t really every think about as a plausibility and since these three religions are dominant in American society, they dictate where the conversation about religion ends up. In India and many parts of Far East Asia Hinduism and Buddhism are the dominant religions and thus, reincarnation is a major facet of not only religious beliefs, but is considered an integral part of their way of life. The main point is that because of the ignorance on the subject in most western nations, there cannot be a stigma at all because people don’t have the facts or the knowledge enough to even form a proper opinion on reincarnation.

I’m Hindu, so reincarnation is definitely something that I think about quite a lot, but the major misconception about my religion that most people have is that reincarnation is the be all and end all of doctrines that is followed. In truth however, Hindus don’t believe in a steadfast system of how one dies or where one goes after the fact. It’s all based on personal judgement or personal desire that dictates your fate after death. If you want to be reincarnated, you will be, but if you don’t want to, then you won’t. I think that it’s really something to discuss because much like other religions, Hinduism and Buddhism both live based on sets of principles which preach well being and respect towards others to gain a sort of redemption later on.

After having read about the discussions of reincarnation and learned people’s thoughts about it somebody would be in better judgement about what they think about it. However, there can’t be a stigma is the information is incorrect or if the information itself is not there. Either way, if there is such a stigma its not really justified because no one really knows what happens in the long run after your death. Sam presented in class a particular scientific study of what occurred through observation in the short time after brain functionality was stopped, but I guess when people call the afterlife an ‘eternity’, then a few hours after death isn’t really enough to make a finite conclusion. So, that being the case, one cannot really hold a stigma or any negative feeling towards another’s belief of what happens after death because that is an inconclusive topic to begin with. Whatever you may believe may be the truth and you will only know once you have actually died and witnessed it for yourself.

So in conclusion, I can say that the idea of there being a stigma against reincarnation is rather preposterous from a standpoint of there being a lack of knowledge about the religions who believe in reincarnation and the lack of knowledge about what happens after death.

The video about young people in Iran and all of their nightly activities was enticing on film, but I feel that the intricacies of Iranian life were not really represented in the video or in the discussion of the subject afterwards. The reason I feel this way is because the video was a very two dimensional representation of Iranian nightlife where all of the people were very wealthy, and enjoying their parties in exclusive clubs and bars with what one could only imagine are industry royalty or business billionaires. The normal, everyday people of Iran need to have a voice and exposure to give the full picture of what middle-class Iranians go through in their country. If the video were to show a group of average Iranian kids maybe going to see a movie or going to a mall to shop, that would be a much more revealing truth to the Iranian nightlife and life of average citizens in the nation.

A second big point to bring up is the fact that none of political, social or religious restrictions were represented in the video at all. How much alcohol are they allowed to drink during a night out? Are the women allowed to go out on their own or do they need to be accompanied by a man? What does the pricing and age limit concern? What kind of clothes are they allowed to wear in the clubs or in restaurants when they go out? These questions are very important to answer because they are key in getting into the intracacies of what the rules and regulations of a real ‘night out’ in Iran really entails.

After the video was shown, Sam asked the class in they were now willing to visit Iran having watched that Iranian night life it like. Sam, hypocritically I felt, was using the same type of selective attention that the media uses to make Americans think that the majority of Iranians are America-hating, religious zealots. He basically made us feel more comfortable with the illusion of images that make it seem that ‘average’ Iranians were just like college students when they go out without taking into consderation that there may be many ‘invisible’ forces that are restricting their freedoms much more than our freedoms are restricted here.

In a way thought, this lends to the idea that maybe the only way for us to really get a true sense of the what average Iranians go through and how their lives are impacted by all of the forces that we don’t get to see simply through the media or the video that Sam played. In this way, it would be enticing for many people to visit Iran if only for the reason that the truth, real truth can be revealed to us.

I felt the comments of the girl from Iran came across the wrong way, at least for me, only because I felt she had so much in her mind that she couldn’t come up with a single fully cohesive thought to say out loud. I can get the gist of what she wanted to say, but again, she sounded nervous, she was sighing a lot, and none of her sentences worked together to come to any real point. I think this was a case of nerves getting the best of her, and when she finally stood up and realized how many people were actually in the room, staring directly at her, probably already making judgemental thoughts in their head, all of the things she had organized in her mind suddenly jumbled themselves up. I personally had a very inquisitive expression on my face as she was talking because I honestly couldn’t follow what track she was going on. She started off with “I’m from Iran, probably the most hated country in the world”, which I gave a “it’s funny because it’s true” sort of smirk. But then, I was completely lost as to what point she was trying to make. She made a couple important conversation starters though, including mentioning why leaders felt it necessary to sit and have a gentleman’s conversation with leaders like Amadinjead or the Ayatollah Khomeini, when the problem in hatred and misunderstanding really lies in the generalization of what the Iranian PEOPLE are really all about. It’s a rather dubious call to suggest that all Iranian’s are America-hating religious zealots and to think that because the Ayatollah has such a large grasp on the political and social workings of the world’s only Theorcacy that the people of that nation are automatically the same. The way to disspell this ridiculous assumption that many Americans have of Iranians is to reveal what the people of the nation are all about. To show that a country’s citizens cannot be defined by its leaders. In fact I believe that the hatred that some Americans (and I say SOME again, not to create a generalization) have towards Iran plays perfectly into the hands of Ahamadinejad and the Ayatollah because then it gives them a reason to hate the west and preach that hatred back. It’s a vicious cycle because these assumptions feed each other until they both explode, and that explosion is usually war.
I can’t say for sure whether the young woman who spoke really felt like she was hated by people in U.S. or whether she was just speaking on beheft of the Iranians in her home country, but I felt that if she had the chance to write down her thoughts in a complete manner and then read it to the class, it would give a much better and clearer picture of the idea she was trying to get across, and I feel that would do more justice to the topic than anything else.

I think that people can get away with offense to others if they believe that it is being done in anonymity or secrecy. There is a sense of ‘protection’ we feel when we are making jokes about other races and none of the members of those races are around. There is a rather amusing, but also very troubling phenomenon when people make jokes about black people or people of another race, that they slyly look around to make sure nobody of that race is in earshot.
When the girls of Chi Omega made that theme party and created those signs and said what they said about Mexicans, I believe that they did it under the protection they felt in their party. Surely, there must not have been any Mexican men or women at the party and for that reason, the offense wouldn’t have been felt at all. If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around to see it, does it make a sound? Same goes for this phenomenon of ‘protection’ that people feel using offensive slurs and jokes. If no Mexicans were around to hear the rude words, they couldn’t have possibly been affected or hurt by them.
The danger in this type of environment however, comes in the fact that when you know you are protected to say these offensive things of another race, then you feel protected to amplify it to a degree that may be considered ‘crossing the line’. Of course comedians and other comic artists in movies and music use stereotypical jokes and such as a part of their routine, but they know when it has become a little too offensive and they have taken it too far. Seth McFarlane, the creator of Family Guy has a huge audience of all races, and makes many tongue in cheek jokes on his show, but he never goes so far as to create an outrage amongst a certain group. This is because he has to keep his writers in check because of the openness of their material and the broad audience that listens to it. If a guy is in his basement with his friends and making such jokes, he won’t feel the need to tone it down because their’s nobody around that he can offend. For this reason, that invisible ‘line’ of appropriate racial joke-making is officially erased through the ‘protection’ of the discrete location and practically no audience.
This idea is extremely troubling because it basically goes to prove that pretty much, anybody can get away with offensive language, gestures and jokes amongst people as long as the targets are not present. As an Indian, I did feel a bit hurt when Joel Stein, writer for Time Magazine, referred to Indians as ‘dot patchers’ and complained about their growing population in central New Jersey. Of course, if he has never specifically written his thoughts in a publication, I would have never been offended by them and I would never have a problem with Joel Stein. This made me even more troubled because I started to think the Stein personally didn’t like Indian people, and essentially, he could be making offensive jokes and speeches about them to his friends and none of ‘us’ would know about it, and that’s a rather scary thought indeed.