gdp's Comments

World In Conversation : Would you respond similarly to Basum when learning about the ratio, why or why not?- 119 Blog

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 02:07:47 +0000

I would be horrified. If I was in Basum's position and had just learned that the invading army had said that there was an acceptable ratio for killing civilians to killing just one bad guy I would be very angry and very scared. Angry that someone can justify killing so many of my people and scared because I know that if I spoke up against the invading army that I would be one of those in the ratio. We are all human, we share the same DNA (except for the .01% that makes up our physical appearance), if the war was occurring in the US, and this ratio was acceptable for the invading army, EVERYONE would be up in arms and fighting back against the injustice that was being being committed against us. We would be living in fear and jumping at every sound, scared. The US has the largest Defense budget than any other country on Earth. Our spending is over fifty percent of all the world's spending on defense. We pride ourselves in being the best of the best: the most accurate, the most able, the most powerful. Yet, somehow, we can justify to killing twenty nine civilians to 1 just 1 bad guy. We claim that our country is founded on principles that all men are created equal and have the unalienable rights to life (which we say count for nothing if we can kill 1 target), liberty (which are denied because they are in a war zone and have limited access to their own country and cities), and the pursuit of happiness (which is lacking because they are at war and everyone is affected by it). I can understand why the US government has justified this, but I think it dehumanizes the population. I support the military and the troops, but this isn't how to go about winning a war. How can we say that we are helping a country when we are destroying the populace 29:1 at a time?

World In Conversation : What are your thoughts on everything we saw and heard in lecture about Native Americans?- 119 Blog

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 02:08:49 +0000

Before the lecture, I knew that the Native Americans were impoverished and had problems, but I never knew that they were so bad. Delaware is very small and does not have a Native American population that I have ever seen, so prior to this class, all I knew were the stereotypes and the very few historical facts I had picked up in various classes. Now I know people that the statistics talk about. In school we were taught the sugar coated ‘pilgrims and Native Americans were friends and had food and games, then they all disappeared…. Ok now we’re talking about the 1920’s…’ They gloss over how the Native Americans were thrown off their lands, cheated, hunted, killed, brutalized and made to look inhuman in the eyes of the conquerors, aka us. We do not even have the courtesy to teach our children the truth about the Native Americans and about why soon, they will no longer exist. We are still slowly killing them off. The native people to the land that so many of us love are still dying and have become lost to us. We are so caught up in our world that we can’t even look at those that came before us. They say we have to look at the past so we don’t repeat it, but we don’t even do that. Native Americans have the highest suicide rate among their teenagers: their children are dying and we are still not taking action. In what world is it ok for children to die while people look the other way and don’t do anything to help? How is it right that they have the highest poverty and unemployment rates and there aren’t politicians in the reservations talking to them trying to help like they do in other communities where the same situation is presented? I guess my question is, why aren’t we doing anything? Why aren’t we helping them? Why are our backs still turned even after all this time? My guess would be that a few factors play a role. America is one of the few countries that places more emphasis on its future than its past. We are consumed with preparing for the future, every speech given by the gov’t is all about the future and how America is leading it, blah, blah, blah. I also think we are still ashamed of our actions even a hundred plus years later. We don’t want to admit that we did something so heinous and so cruel to the native people of this land. We call ourselves Americans, but we are interlopers in the Native Americans’ land. Where we live now belongs to someone else, it is blood land.

World In Conversation : After this class, how do you think about terrorism?- 119 Blog

Fri, 8 Apr 2011 21:00:21 +0000

This class has solidified my thoughts about terrorism: it’s only a few radicals. I have never been one to blame an entire populace for the acts of a few, if I did, then I would have to blame all Americans for the few Americans that bombed buildings or gunned down other Americans. This class helped me really feel what it would be like to have a war going on in my country. People who live in terrorist countries are just like us, because they are us; we have American terrorists in our country so we fall under this category. We have hopes, dreams, aspirations, fears, worries, and we are human beings. We are the same as those that live in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries; their terrorist groups are just more publicized here in the USA. Who knows, other there, they may have videos of our radical groups like the Fundamentalists in the West and they would be thinking about how crazy Americans are. I hate to blame the media, but they do have a role in how we think about terrorism. Media companies are just that, a business that’s job is to make money. In the news negative things sell, like terrorism and videos of little children with AK-47s and Assault Rifles. They show the negative side of Afghanistan and the Middle East, and to be honest, about all the countries we have had issues with. Most people don’t look past the surface of what the media presents. If they did, they would find a group of people struggling to make it day to day while their country is blown up around them. I am sure that if you look at their media, you will find bad images of the United States and our radicals. The people who populate the media are the .5% of any population. So why do they define us? I wish that we lived in a world where everybody had a class like this to open their eyes to see how we are brain washed into thinking what others want us to think so we support them. Think for yourself and you will see that people around the world are just like you and me. The class on Tuesday made many realize that no matter where you are born, what skin color you are, or what god you follow, we are human. 99.99% of our genetic code is the exact same person to person, the .01% is just the gene that turns your eyes blue and your hair green. I know that strife is a constant in our lives and it will probably always be (as sad as that is), but I would like for us to leave the noncombatants out of it. They are normal people, and their soldiers are just like ours, fighting for their country.

World In Conversation : How have you acted when involved in racist or discriminating events?- 119 Blog

Sat, 26 Mar 2011 01:39:20 +0000

My response in the face of racist comments either directed at myself or others has changed as I have grown up. As every situation calls for a different action/reaction, growing up my response changed from passive to a more verbal response. I was very shy when I was young, shy to the point where I made my parents order my meals when we went to restaurants, and hiding behind my parents or a book was the greatest defense of all. It wasn’t until I went to Warner Elementary, that I encountered racism in its simplest form. Warner was a mostly black school with a few Hispanic kids, and even fewer white ones. I can remember being on the bus and having spit balls thrown at me because I was the ‘white girl’ and I was ‘different’ from the others. At that age, all I did was ignore what they were doing as they did it and buried myself in my books that I always kept around. It eventually stopped near the end of my fifth grade year because either they got bored by my lack of reaction, or who knows why. Middle School was another learning curve: instead of dealing with mostly black children, there was a greater mix now, probably a sixty-thirty five-five ratio of students. Now I was seeing racism against other students (I was too quiet for anyone to notice, thank goodness!), at this I was silent, once again to scared and shy to really say anything. When I was in eighth grade, I started to change… I grew bolder, not as likely to hide in books and now, not as afraid to say something. I started small, commenting to friends when another said something rude or mean about someone. In High School, once more the dynamic changed. I noticed more and more the derogatory comments made by my peers. We had gang wars for the first two years I was in school (and no, I’m not joking) so the insults and racial slurs were flying fast and thick, multiple fights a day sparked by comment from one gang member to another, sheer mayhem with one word. After the two years of this, I was (and am) sick and fed up with people putting others down just because of skin color or the language they speak. So I spoke up. I would call out people who made comments and if it was one of the kids I was mentoring or one of my friends, you better believe I told them off. Now, another new environment, and a new set of rules: always speak up, always listen, and treat everyone equally.

World In Conversation : What do you think of the diversity at Penn State?- 119 Blog

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 20:59:43 +0000

Penn State is not diverse. According to the statistics that Sam showed us, Penn State is 80% white. My high school was more diverse than Penn State is. Though it depends on your definition of diversity: is Penn State considered diverse because people from all the different countries in the world? If that’s what you believe, than yes, Penn State is diverse by your definition. By my definition of diversity, Penn State is not diverse. To be diverse we would need the percentage of white students to be somewhere around 50 to 55% so that it was almost a one to one ratio. But, diversity can also mean different socio-economic backgrounds too. Most of the people I have met and talked to seem to mostly fall into the middle class section of America (though that may be because they are the people that have the same ideas and beliefs of me, but who knows). Just think of the poll Sam had us do in class about our incomes; most people fell in the middle to upper middle class area. Diversity at Penn State could stand to be augmented with more people from all walks of life not just those of us in the mid to upper range. Diversity in a college is very important. College is when a person is shoved into a new world and teaches themselves how to stand in it. That new world should be nothing like the one they originally lived in, a radical new place to shake their thoughts and force them to think outside their limited box. Penn State does well in the shoving part, but not the new thinking part. If there was a little more diversity here, I would be forced to consider a person in a new light every time I left my room. Old stereotypes would be destroyed and new insights made. Penn State needs to evolve to be a more diverse school so that when we, the students of Penn State, enter the world, we are not shocked or ridiculed by our lack of knowledge of how different yet similar the world is from us.

World In Conversation : Do people feel guilt about their current positions when knowing about the disadvantages of the freed

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 02:34:13 +0000

The simple answer to this question is yes. When I see these videos of slaves surviving in conditions that I know I could not survive and come out as sane as they did, I feel guilty. Even driving places and seeing those in need gives me guilt. When I was probably around 12 years old, I went to New York City. That was my first time seeing homeless people in that number. I remember walking by them with my mom holding my hand and staring at these poor broken men. Two in particular stand out in my memory. They were on the same street about forty feet apart, both had signs asking for food and they had little Styrofoam cups that some people had dropped their lose change in. One looked ok, a little scruffy and dirty but otherwise ok, his sign asked for work as well. The other was hunched over with a disfigured face, his sign read that he had AIDS and all he wanted was a meal. His cup was half as full as the other man’s. For weeks after seeing them I had dreams about them and I felt so guilty for not doing anything when I saw them, especially the AIDS positive man. I feel guilty whenever I think about those less fortunate than me. I try and appease this guilt by going on trips where I rebuild their houses and try to improve their lives, even if only for that week. But I can’t save everyone, no matter how hard I try or how much I want to. It hurts to see slaves in deplorable conditions and know I can’t just hop on a plane and vanquish their oppressor and give them a new shiny life. I guess you could say I’m idealistic person; I would have to agree with you. I am always hoping that the better side of man will prevail though I know it will never happen. Guilt is an unpleasant emotion that many people push to the side as often as possible so they can continue with their perfect happy lives filled with trivial problems compared to the suffering of those still in slavery across the sea or right next door. Whenever I have a problem or am having a rough day, I realize that my worst day is possibly the best day that the faceless slave across the sea has, and that hurts, and makes me feel guilty. I try not to, but I do. What keeps me moving forward and not dwelling is the knowledge that by getting my degree I could help these people, and that makes each day worth it.

World In Conversation : How do you feel about the poor white society and who are you more likely to help? - 119 Blog

Sat, 26 Feb 2011 02:16:29 +0000

Since the summer before ninth grade, I have been going to something called Group Work Camps of America every summer for a week with my youth group at my church. We live in a poor community for a week and are assigned to a Crew that you work with all week. Our job? To fix their homes, whether they were crumbling single story houses with dirt floors, trailers that survived floods, a row home in downtown Redding, or trailer perched on the side of a mountain. During those four years, I saw poverty in all shapes and forms, and surprisingly to some, not all of our families were black, in fact out of the four years, only two of the five families we helped were (last year we finished our task early and were sent to another site to continue working). The rest were poor white families, and by poor I mean as poor as you can imagine with crumbling trailers and houses, without a stable job or on welfare; many were on disability as well and were unable to work even if they wanted to. The first home I ever worked on was in a very small town, almost impossible to find on a map, called Montgomery, West Virginia. It used to be a bustling coal mining town high in the mountains of West Virginia, railroads winding through the town carrying the fruits of the town labor. Almost everyone worked in the mine or doing something that was related to it, whether that meant driving a truck full of coal to the refining plant in the center of town next to the river, or working at the smaller refineries in the mountain tops where the coal was blasted out of. About fifteen years ago, the coal started drying up. Every year less and less was found, and all of the companies moved out of Montgomery except for one which is still blasting the remaining coal out of the mountain. The people of Montgomery relied on the coal for a job, and with it leaving; many of the more prosperous people, the ones who could afford to follow the companies to the next coal site, left. The one who are left behind can’t afford even the most basic necessities, like food. In fact all the stores left Montgomery except a gas station, a CVS, a few mom and pop restaurants, and an auto repair shop. The people I saw here were very proud people who rarely asked for help and all of them lived in either trailers, or houses that should have been torn down due to health reasons. They were what people would consider ‘white trash’ that lived in trailers surrounded by junk and trash. Being able to live their lives for a one week a year has changed my perspective entirely. Before sharing lunch with Star Lovejoy (yes that is her real name) and helping to fix their trailer that was resting literally on the side of a mountain, I would have looked down upon these people and I would have asked myself ‘why didn’t they just go get help? Or finish school? Or just go get a job!’, now I know better. They feel as though the world has abandoned them, and we have. They search for help and find disdain, so they stop looking. They are told by people in pretty suits that they should be dumb because of where they are from and because their parents didn’t even go to middle school. They are told that they should be delinquents and commit petty crimes, some of which are committed for the basic need of food. So these very proud people turn away from mainstream America and try to fade into the background where people won’t turn their noses up at them. Don’t be mistaken, I do not pity them, I just try and understand what they go through, and I try to let them know that are some of who still care about them and their pain and struggles they go through to just try and live. Every day I am reminded at how lucky I am, and how much I have and take for granted; walking to class today I was so happy to have a winter jacket, and I know that little Star Lovejoy who lives in the mountain tops of West Virginia probably doesn’t have one and that her family hasn’t seen new clothing for any of them in a very long time. I wish that more people could have seen what I did for those four years so that they too could truly understand what they go through just to survive.

World In Conversation : How do you feel about the way people live in America compared to other places around the world?- 119

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 01:17:26 +0000

In America, the poorest citizens live better than most of the world’s population, and yet people in America are obsessed with material possessions. Not that owning a house and car or clothing is a bad thing, but when Americans take materialism to the extremes, when a person has to own helicopter or even a the newest brand of jeans just because they don’t have it, materialism goes too far. I won’t lie, I have and am living a very comfortable life, but I try and only by what I need, but as most Americans, I fail miserably most the time. I just wish that when I, or others are trying to decide between the red shirt or the purple skirt, we ask ourselves of we need it. People around the world need help in a dire way: no homes, no jobs, no clean water, and no food, nothing compared to what we have. Even our homeless can get more to eat than some people do in a month in third world countries. We see the images of the hungry and homeless in other countries in ads and in documentaries with British accents, seemingly unreal because they are behind LED screens and not really in our room. We can pretend that the commercial is just a commercial, advertising a product and thus not even registering on our thoughts. We sit comfortably in our living rooms and don’t want to be troubled be the images of suffering while we are so comfortable. Being uncomfortable causes us to feel guilt, which many don’t want to feel because, it’s not fun to be uncomfortable and feel bad for someone while you sit happily upon your couch. We are pretty lucky here in America, we have everything we need and help is a phone call away. We have few worries and those we do have usually end after April 15th or after the rent is due. We face struggle, but it is nowhere on the level of that of the majority of those on earth. We don’t face a day to day struggle of finding food and clean water; we don’t struggle to find a safe place to sleep at night away from dangerous people and animals. In the US of A, there are soup kitchens and shelters where people can take refuge in when needed, they don’t have to sleep in refugee camps where there’s only food for half the people and other half have to venture into dangerous war zones to search for more food to feed the family. We are so lucky living in America, but no one seems to realize it. We have everything and all we want is more. Seeing past our own day to day ‘struggles’ is almost impossible for most of us; we cannot even see the hungry child in our classrooms let alone across the world.

World In Conversation : Do we have a responsibility to fix inequality?- 119 Blog

Sat, 12 Feb 2011 03:29:08 +0000

I believe that it is every generation’s responsibility to fix the inequalities of their time. In our time, a time where everyone is preaching about the freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do whatever the hell we want, not everyone is getting the memo. For some, the freedom to be who they are is held above their heads tauntingly out of reach by those who tell them it’s because of who they are or where they’re from that they are not allowed to be free. Freedom, a word many take for granted, but because of inequalities in today’s world, many cannot even begin to grasp it. I’m not just talking about physical freedom either; I’m talking about freedom from worry or a burden that’s too heavy for someone to bear by themselves. Let’s look at the public school system: right now kids are in schools that are funded by the property and state and local taxes of the area, kids go to the school that they live by. For those who can’t afford a private school, they have one choice for school, no matter good or bad the school is. The inequalities of the school in the rich suburb compared to the school in middle of the city are astronomical, believe me, I’ve seen both first hand. My first elementary school was in the burbs and had new playground equipment, colorful class rooms, crayons then any kid knew what to do with, and special days where kids picked by their teacher for being a good student would get special prizes and get to sit at a lunch table with the other Eagle of the Week winners. My second elementary school was in the city, we suburban kids were sent there so we could experience a new way of life. Warner was a an old building, and it should with crumbling front steps (that gave you nasty cuts if you tripped on them), classrooms that were blistering hot in the spring and early fall, boxes of crayons that were old and broken, and bathrooms that could definitely be updated. Such inequalities should not exist. In a perfect world, wealth would be distributed between schools and all would be equal for the children, in a perfect world. How can we do anything to even begin fixing this? We have to begin with awareness, if people don’t know about the problem then can’t start thinking and talking about it. Word of mouth travels faster than a public service announcement ever did. Awareness in schools in my district was brushed under the carpet until we got a new superintendent who publicized the disparities which forced the notice on the schools and now the community is starting to rally to try and fix it. Awareness is the first step, after that I can’t tell you what to do, we only have to wait and see what the people in general are willing to do to confront the inequalities of the world around them.

World In Conversation : Why Do We Associate With People of The Same Race and Ethnicity as Ourselves?- 119 Blog

Sat, 29 Jan 2011 02:37:33 +0000

Why do we associate with people of the same race and ethnicity as ourselves? One word: comfort. No one likes to be uncomfortable in social situations and facing a group of people who look nothing like you or act like you’re use to sends our uncomfortable meter sky high. When I was in elementary school, we went to Heritage Elementary for kindergarten to second grade; Heritage was a suburban school and mainly all white. For third to fifth grade we were sent to a school in the city called Warner Elementary, the idea was to expose us to different walks of life and show us what the city was like. This was called a feeder pattern. At the end of third grade, the board of education for my school district got rid of feeder patterns and allowed parents to ‘choice’ their students into schools they wanted. As a result, parents pulled their children out of Warner Elementary (a supposedly lower class school) and into suburban schools such as North Star and Brandywine Springs which were predominantly white and higher income. My parents decided that I would continue my last two years at Warner, one of the few white kids left in a school made up of mostly black and Hispanic lower income students. In fifth grade, I was one of two, that’s right one of TWO white children in my entire fifth grade, and what do you know, my best friend was the other white girl. It’s not that I didn’t have friends with the other students; it was that Courtney was from the suburbs, we sat together on the mostly empty bus for forty-five minutes every day to get to school. Why did I pick Courtney out from everyone else in the school? I was comfortable with her; she and I shared confusion over double-dutch, and talked about soccer as the rest of the kids talked about basketball. It’s hard to break out from the familiar, what we grew up with and have gotten used to, like an all-white family and all-white schools for some. That makes them uncomfortable when the person in a situation where they are completely out of their element and that makes some people feel threatened, so they retreat into themselves and won’t open to experience anything new. For me, while I do have an all-white family, from elementary school onward, my schools were very diverse compared to the predominantly white schools in my district. The experience that I gained from Warner Elementary to Stanton Middle to Thomas McKean High School is invaluable, I learned how to be comfortable in all social situations with people from all walks of life: one of my very best friends who I consider to be my little brother is in fact black. I wish more people had the upbringing I did so that they could see that under the skin, we are all human.

World In Conversation : Body Image Issues- 119 Blog

Sat, 22 Jan 2011 04:24:25 +0000

Body issues affect everyone, and I mean EVERYONE; from the supermodel stalking down the runway to the professional football player everyone adores, body issues are the little voice in the back of your head making you loathe parts of your body. In class we discussed how if people knew that the reason their body developed a certain way than that would eliminate body image problems. I believe that our society, and many societies around the world are too shallow, too obsessed with body image and finding the ‘perfect body’ that they could not comprehend that maybe, they were born to look that way. Growing up, I was preoccupied with trying to fit in and have the super skinny body with the perfect cup size and manicured nails. What I didn’t realize that my body was perfect for what I did: horseback ride. I was shorter than most girls, had hard muscles, and nails that usually were crusted with barn grime. I was a beautiful athletic girl, and all I could see was imperfection. I realize now, hindsight being what it is, that my body was perfect, unique, singular. No one would ever have a body like mine, so it was perfect. Unfortunately, I do not think that society (both America’s and the rest of the worlds) are ready to see themselves as I do. If they did, then anyone could be a model and there wouldn’t be a need for skin tanners or whiteners. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and society’s eye is quite narrow indeed. In the old days, and I’m talking hundreds of thousands of years ago, being overweight was a sign of prosperity and of wealth. The rich were often overweight because they had the means to over indulge in food and a laidback lifestyle. Now our rich are skinny to the extreme in the woman’s case and muscular in the man’s case. Though, in some countries, such as Mauritania, a custom of leblouh is practiced; leblouh is the ritual where young girls are force fed food, sometimes up to 16,000 calories a day, and beaten when they refuse to eat. In the eyes of their society, overweight girls signal that they are ready to be married (the country practices child marriage) and that their husband is wealthy enough to over feed their wife. Extreme skinniness in one culture, obesity in another, how can the societies reconcile with their bodies when such extremes exist? Knowing that we look the way we do because of genetics is not going to stop the ‘fat farms’ in Mauritania or women and men from lining up to the plastic surgeons in the US. If you want to learn more about the ritual of leblouh in Mauritania, read this article, it’s very interesting and informative. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/01/mauri...

World In Conversation : Last Name “F” – Intense Debate

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 18:26:40 +0000

SOC 199