South Park is can be really controversial. Almost every episode Cartman is always ripping jokes against Kyle, who happens to be a Jew. Other episodes its Cartman trying to exterminate the Jews. I wouldn't say that it is all of South Park's Characters or there general themes in the episodes, I would say it really has to do everything with Cartman. South Park probably is one of the top things in the media today that ill inform the uneducated. Someone that grows up in a dominate white society, with little education and background on the different ethnicity, might go out there and repeat some of these jokes to their friends at school, and then the friends start to think it is funny. It starts a whole cycle and when these kids come across one of the people from a different ethnicity , they still think the joke is going to be funny and the other person of different ethnicity will laugh along with him. TO resolve this problem I do not think it relies on the school to better educate them I think it mainly involves the parents to teach them the right thing. Kids grow up believing in what ever it is that their parents believe in and if their parents are going to hate or discriminate against others then their kids will soon follow. Some other parents may not hate others, but if they do not teach their kids about other ethnicity and their history, then these kids will really never understand. The other thing I wanted to talk about is that South Park is not the only one out there that is making this situation worse, the other thing that I believe that is not helping it is comedy. When stand-up comedians go up to the stage and talk jokes about other ethnicity and theirs. Someone my age or older with little education might think it is ok to start saying those jokes, and the people of different ethnicity will not be so upset about it. In the end I do not think this situation is going to be so simple to solve, it is going to probably take many years and many nations to be involved in this and White people are going to have to start playing a bigger role. On a thought of my own that may or may not help it. I believe that the main reason why all these racial slurs started is because someone is different and someone is going to put them down because they are different then they are. Maybe one of two things should happen either we say from now on that all racial words now are no longer racial no more, or we start enforcing strict rules on people using these racial slurs. Right now we seem to be in the middle right now between those two things and it is not working at all so we have to try something different.

This is of great surprise to me. This really goes to show, what Sam was talking about the other day in class, how Christians in America and Muslim-Arabs in Iraq really do not know one another. Each side only saw the negative side of the other. That each side did not really understand the other one because all they have heard were things that were bad. They have actually never talked to anyone on the other side, and all they can do is make radical decisions about the other person. The same thing applies here all we think is that everyone in prison is a lost hope, and that they have no good emotions inside of them. The story that this inmate told was truly amazing. It goes to show that you really need to meet and truly understand someone before you start to make opinions about them. People only make these irrational decisions about inmates because all they know is that they are in there for murder, and the violent things they see on TV of what some inmates do to others. Some prisons might be really violent, but that doesn't mean that you can apply this to all prisons across the United States. Although I can understand that this would happen, because after so many years in the same bunk and same place, you come accustomed to it. Someone that has to spend the rest of their life in jail is going to come to sense with himself. I would like to ask the inmate if you would see this from a relatively new person, that has not spent much time in jail. Although, don't be fooled by this self realization, this person still belongs in jail for what he did. Someones father or mother is dead and you cant bring him back now. It is hard to come to self realization after you only make one mistake in your life that land you in jail for the rest of your life.

Thursdays lecture was an eye opener. I did agree with the concept that neither side truly knows everyone on the otherside. The Americans without any knowledge hates any muslim/arab because of Osama Bin Laden saying, "Death to all Americans." On the other hand it is only seen by the untrained eye. Muslim/arab can easily hate America by listening to fellow government officials talk about how they are only there for oil and otherones saying that we need to contain them by any means neccassary. When I was asked to put myself in their shoes, I can see where most of them are coming from when they say I hate America. The main factor of why one middle class culture will hate another one is mainly because of what one stupid government official said. I never knew this fact but Sam said that our government said that we can kill 28 civilians for every one bady guy. That makes no sense at all, and people wonder why they hate us, if you put a statment like that out there against any country, they are going to hate you. The other thing that I did not really think about to much is the fact that Muslims and Christians are trying to do the same thing, convert everyone to their religion. I thought that was pretty disturbing when I saw U.S. soldiers over there in Churchs converting muslims into christians. The government said we were going over there to make it a democratic state, but that never happened, and the next thing was that we want the oil, now we have troops converting muslims into christians. The main reason for that is because the Muslim family is probably scared out of their mind that at any second they might die. It was always said if you cant beat them join them and in my mind it seems the middle class muslims are doing exactly that. if we put all of this aside for now, of why one side could hate another, one side at war with another side. When two sides are at war with each other the majority of one side is going to hate the majority of the other side. The other thing that really bothered me is that there has always been a lot of tension around the subject of Muhammod. One of our government officials goes on national TV and says, "Our GOD is better then your GOD." First of all what is he trying to do, is he trying to set a fire undernieth the muslim extremists so they do something more radical next time. You got to be kidding me the words that come out of our governments mouth, it seems like they never think about what could happen.

Videogames over the past decade have caused a lot of controversey. When you look at this game "Chain Trap", a lot of people in the United States will definitley speak their mind. If you want to know how a game like this could be produced, it is quite easy. Japan is a leading country in producing videogames. Another thing is that the businesses in Japan have a different work society too. When you get a job in Japan you dedicate your life to it and when your boss takes you out to the bars or strip clubs you are kind of obligated to go. To go off of this, it is of no surprise to me that this game would be produced because they know it would sell. Another reason that a lot of people wont know is that Japan was one country that helped finance the prostitution trade. Business men from Japan would go on trips to Taiwan and go to these Brothels to have sex with young women. Since they do this by groups and not just one man, I can only believe that these men and their younger siblings might have the same mentality. This could be a major factor in why this game has the potenial of selling so many copies. I am not trying to say that this game has the right of being in the market because it doesnt. This game did get recalled and the company did take the game off the shelves because they were recieving why to many complaints. This is not the only game out there that should be recieving all the attention though. If people are going to go after this game because of the raping of women, then why are people not going after the most prolific game that is one of the top sellers in the videogame market,Grand Theft Auto. I know that Grand Theft Auto probably recieved their share of complaints, but why has it not been taken off the shelf yet like Chain Trap from Japan. In grand Theft Auto you can have sex with prostitutes anyone you like especially cops. All of these things are right up there with raping women. I onlu played Grand Theft Auto for one day and got sick of it becuase I did not understand the point of it. There are a lot of violent video games out there in todays marketm but these games do not make people violent people. I have read studies on this before and the kids that are violent have either a psychological disorder or had a bad youth growing up. It was hard to relate violent videogames to the actions of the youth. Altough something like this Chain Trap game being sold to a 14 or 15 year old that might not know any better may think that there are no pentalties for this.

This is a really interesting question. When talking about race issues and problems, Asians have always been in the back of my mind. I think this is partially due to the white guilt that I have. Most of the white guilt has to due with Blacks and Native Americans. I have not been educated on Asain history, the only thing that I know that was a terriable mistake of the bombing of Hiroshima. The other thing I know is the concentration camp that America held during world war 2 for Japenese people. Both of these incedents were terriable decisions. I cannot trult call how many times I was taught about slavery compated to these two things, but for some reason the slavery of black people stuck in my head more. I can only assume that is because slavery lasted many years compared the bombing of Hiroshima and the internment camps of Japenese people. Throughout my school history I have met and became friends with Asian decent. Most of them have a really calm attitude in general. This goes to the fact that maybe why there is not so much talk about Asians in a race relations class is because there is not as much conflict between Blacks and whites. I do not see the same conflict between Asains and White people. I am sure there are a decent amount of racial discrimination against Asians as there are against Blacks, Latinos, and Mexicans. This also brings something else to my mind, kind of unrelated. Today in class Sam had African-Americans raise their hands and had other dark-skinned people raise their hands that had a different desent. It was kind of surprising that there was just as many if not more dark-skinned people as there was African-Americans. This goes to say that I guess we need to be more politcally corrent because calling a Malesian an African-American might really upset him and the end result might be you getting called a racist. Going back to the question though, if you call a Chinese person a Japenese, most of the time from my experience they really do not get upset. This is my opinioin, but I think that for the most part dark-skin people get upset easier than Asains if you call them of the wrong desent. I am not saying one should act like the other, I am just trying to show that this is another reason why there is probably why there is not much talk about Asains because there is no major conflict behind it. In my opinion we should just get rid of all this Asain, Black, Mexican terms and just start using guys and girls. I mean in the end there are only two types of people men and women. So when the next time you have to talk about someone just use the term girl or guy.

This is one of the biggest problems that sits in the way of solving racial issues. I see this story from both ways. First of all from the side of white people that do not feel guilty. I can understand why they say that, why should they feel guilty for something that they did not do personally but one of their ancestors. Going off of this, is that if white guilt should exist in every white person, they everyone should feel guilty of what their ancestors did. I know that slavery was really screwed up and can not believe that people do such a thing, but yet again people kill other people too, and that might as well be the same thing. So the reason why everyone should feel guilty is that besides slavery, there are plenty of other screwed up things that yours or mine ancestors did. On the other hand people that do feel guilty, are not wrong what so ever. If you compare slavery to the columbine shooting, the parents probably feel just as guilty as white people. Even though it was out of their hands as individuals they still felt guilty, like they were the ones that caused it. I can probably say for sure that the main reason for the separation or unconformable between whites and blacks is manly because of slavery. Yet again there are white people out there that hate people just because they are different and not from where they are. Which does not make any sense in the first place because those people of hate are not even from here. The thing that kind of bothers me is that all we talk about is the situation, and no solution. I know we have so many problems over here with racial discrimination, but there is still a bigger problem. There is still SLAVERY everywhere in the world including the United States. I just do not understand why that the only stories of discrimination in the news is between people of different elasticities. I realize there is a huge dilemma between black people and cops, with profiling and just thinking that they are doing something wrong. We probably pass more laws against that type of thing then creating programs to help get rid of slavery. I am not sure about this, but I am not trying to say that racial profiling is ok, I just think that the effort we put into that sure be just the same for slavery. Not only do we have to get these laws passed we have to enforce them and not just say we will and do nothing about it. I am sure there are plenty of cases of a white cop discriminating against a black, but nothing came of it. The thing that is funny is that I never saw any such thing in the newspaper or my local news living in the suburbs outside of philly. I am sure that there are plenty of times where that happens. White people need to start enforcing and carrying out what they are saying. Saying is only half the battle.

Reading through this post I agree with some things and disagree with other things. Yes, it might be true, theme parties are done by the majority of white kids. I do not blieve that they are the only ones out there throwing theme parties, I am sure that a couple of people from each ethnicity threw their own share of theme parties. In eay5019 first paragraph he talks about how Holidays like, Christmas, Thanksgiving, or Easter day parties, which are all themes, do not make fun of their meaning. Christmas does not make fun Santa Claus, and Thanksgiving does not make fun of the Pilgrams, and Easter does not make fun of Jesus. Those statements are very true, but they certainly cannot be related to theme parties. Yes they aer having fun and enjoying themselves at these parties, but they believe in these theme parties 100%. If you look at most of the college kids throwing theme parties whether the host of the party be black, white, hispanic, latino, or asain. All of these college kids throw these parties strictly just for fun. I know for a fact that none of these kids would believe in what their doing. It is going to be that since they do not believe in what they are doing and they are just doing it for fun, is definetly in a way racist. When you have white college kids dressing up trying to be gangsters, just on one night once a month, they might not see it but they are definelty making fun of gangstas wereing their pants below there waste and the way they talk. This group of people is just not black people either is can be hispanics or latinos from L.A. So while most of the theme parties are held by white people, I do not think it is just being racist to one type of group it is applying to that cultural. Their is a difference here though, there are white people out there who dress up beign a gansta everyday, that is because they believe in it, not because it is funny. So when you you dress up just to be funny you are apllying that you are making fun of the cultural that is gangster. To clearify what I am tyring to say is that, taking the term racist in the simpliest way, to make fun of someone that is differnet then you whether it be skin color or just a clutural thing. To make fun of someone because their different in my mind is what these theme parties are doing. For many of years I used to thing that black people would always try to make something racist, and I guess that is due to because white people were not tyring to be racist in what they were saying. Today I see that I was just being ignorant, just because I was not tyring to be racists does not excuse the fact that I might of actuall made a racists comment.

This is a really good question. I really do believe that we as a nation need to, take steps, in making kids more aware of the diverse cultrul. Growing up in Middle school and Elementary school, I realized that people around me were different. Some of these people were my friends, and knowing that they were from a different ethnicity, I never brought up the question, of where they were from. Some were along the line, we need to give the kids a good understanding, of what it means to be from different backrounds. Along with teaching them of the different ethnic groups, we also need to start this process at a relitevly young age maybe not three or four, but probably somewhere around third and fourth grade. I think teaching kids any younger than third grade, would not have any effect, and would not grasp the concept as well as a third or forth grader would. One reason why we should start at a young age, is because the sooner and better they understand, the less awkward it is going to be starting a conversation with them. I noticed throughout Middle school, that people clung to others that had the same characteristics as them. All the African-Americans, Asians, whites, and Latin Americans all divided up into their groups. Although this was just the majority, their would be different friend groups of all sorts of ethnicitys. For the major part of it though, someones best friend was the one that resembled them. Another reason why we should start at a young age is because racial comments might be made, but the third or forth grader did not know what he did wrong. Throughout school some people would always be picked on and it just wasnt the Blacks and Latinos it was everyone. I could defintely see a forth grader, making fun of an Asian and their eyes, and the forth grader has no idea what he really meant. He might as well of said the F-Bomb, in the middle of the school. To avoid such conflicts, they need to know that people are different, and the reasons why. Blacks needed dark skin to adapt to the hot sun and the Asains needed to adapt the the constant wind blowing sand all over the place. The only thing that would be how far to you go into the topic. For a forth grader some things are a little to much, for them to understand the bigger picture. The minimum information they should know, are people come from different backrounds for different purposes and that you should not make fun of them for being different. My question would have to be would this be suffectient or should they know more?

Growing up in the United States, I am still deeply confused on what America stands for? This whole gay marriage concept dwells upon, what I am about to talk about. From my understanding, The United States of America, when it was first becoming inhabited, took the stance, that it would be free to any religion or practice. Another way to put it is that people would go to America to achieve the American dream, practice or achieve what ever they wanted to do without being punished for their actions. This is my opinion, but it seems, The United States started to concentrate on one religion. Why does the National Anthem of the United States incorporate the word God. It seems now they have gone from accepting anything to only putting one religion into the National Anthem. Gays or lesbians have been discriminated, for who knows how long. I believe one of the reasons for this is, in almost every religion or practice, they disregard anyone being gay. It is for this, that it is such a controversial subject, of why they can not be married. The religions that do practice marriage, say its sacred and it can only be between a women and a man. This whole ordeal goes to show, of how much of an influence the Church is on the government. As long as I know the government has been creating laws in the favor of the majority. Forty years ago the drinking used to be 18, and today the drinking age was raised to 21. I know for a fact if it wasn't for MADD, Mothers against Drunk Driving, I believe that the drinking age would still be 18. This is another reason why I think that gay marriage is looked down upon, is because so many people devoted themselves to their religions that they believe what they learn and do not accept what anyone else says. Since there are so many religions out their that discriminate against gay marriage, it has been a big a problem for the government to pass a law to accept gay marriage. There is only two states in The United States that have laws accepting gay marriage, the rest had these same laws, but stripped them away. I am not perfect, but the government needs to find a better medium. What i mean by this is that, for every law they create people are going to like it and people are going to hate it. I think they need a better criteria standard for passing laws. If you look at other countries around the world, there are very view laws and their common sense, things like I shall not steal nor shall I murder anyone. In the United States, there are so many laws out there maybe in the thousands that I never knew. How does the government expect us to follow the laws, when we ourselves do not know. To make a conclusion, The United States needs to go back to its roots, when they accepted anyone or anything. Gay marriage should be allowed in the United States, who does it hurt, who is it really stealing from? The government and religion need to stop being selfish and need to keep to themselves. Religions also need to stop trying to make everyone like them.

I can only agree with Mr. Brooks when it comes to the white man's burden. After seeing the movie Avatar twice now, it really raises the questions; why is the hero almost always white? and, why does it seem that the people in need are helpless without out his expertise? Another example of the white man's burden, might be the new movie Cop Out. I have not seen this movie, but however in the previews, it portrays Bruce Willis as the lead role, only by a little bit, and it portrays Tracy Morgan, Bruce Willis's partner as the funny aspect and not as the tough cop. There are plenty of other movies with the white man's burden, saving the world. I think one of the main reasons of why this has grew upon or generation is because the top revenue movies usually use white people as the lead role characters taking on the world by themselves. A good example of two movies one with a black lead role character and one with a white lead role character, is that of Bad Boys and Lethal Weapon. The original Bad Boys came out in 1995 and made 141 millions dollars gross. Lethal weapon 2 and 3 came out right around that time to and both of those movies made almost 100 million more. Is it really what everyone wants to see or is it just the white community dominating the movie trade. Both of these movies were following the same concept a cop trying to catch the bad guys. Another thing I found while looking up the box office revenues between the two movies was that 55% of the revenue for bad boys came from foreign countries. While 65% of the revenues from Lethal weapon 2 was from within the country. After point this out it seems that the movie businesses have decided to rely on this white man's burden concept because that is what is getting them money. A movie to watch this summer and see how much it makes to Avatar is the Book of Eli with Denzel Washington. That movie focuses on the concept that the future of the world lies in Denzel's hand. It has the same concept as those movies with Will Smith and him trying to save the world. From all my friends even those of dark skin said that those were horrible movies. I am quite interested to see how the Book of Eli turns out because it looks like an incredible movie. I have no idea how long this white man's burden thing is going to last, probably after everyone gets fed up with seeing the same type of movie one after another, but as long as the movie industry keeps seeing mass amounts of revenue from these white man's burden movies. It does not seem likely that it will com to an end anytime soon.