en-us https://www.intensedebate.com/users/2399052 Comments by tko5020 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/19/how-has-your-opinion-changed-on-illegal-immigration-119-blog/#IDComment145243717 This class presented a startlingly different perspective on illegal immigration than I had ever seen before. It’s not like I only watch FOX news channel for information and have taken their view on immigration which we could all expect to be skewed. But none of the other news organizations or politicians seem to be reporting things like this when it comes to debates or reports on illegal immigration. It seems like the argument has always been the conservatives claiming that illegal immigrants are immoral drains on society who don’t pay taxes but still take from the benefits pool of those who do. While the liberals always seem to stick to the side of the issue that we have a moral obligation not to remove people who are simply attempting to give themselves a chance at a happier life. What Sam showed us today was a more human perspective. These people really are trying to help their families most of the time and sometimes they really are just trying to better their own lives. I believe that it is true that people should have the opportunity to make a better life for themselves in America because it is the ideal the country was founded on. But they should not be able to live in the country without paying into the social programs that everybody else contributes to and that almost everybody in the population benefits from. But as Sam pointed out in class today most of the people who come into the country illegally and find work don’t end up paying themselves but their employers will end up paying into the system for them. Therefore the traditional conservative argument that people who immigrate to this country illegally are drains on our society is invalid. Anybody who immigrates to this country and does find work will end up returning a portion of their earnings to the system anyway. Although I believe illegal immigration is illegal and should be stopped I also believe that we should not make stopping illegal immigration more important than giving people the opportunity to live the American dream. That being the ability to make yourself successful through hard work. Therefore I think that instead of changing our policy on illegal immigration I think we need to focus on our immigration policy. By making it less complicated for people to immigrate to the country legally we would have a higher average education rate and more families coming together. Since many immigrants who come to this country do it to make money to send back to families. If the families were to come together then more money would stay in the country and boost our economy instead of leaving the country and boosting their economies. Fri, 22 Apr 2011 23:36:15 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/19/how-has-your-opinion-changed-on-illegal-immigration-119-blog/#IDComment145243717 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/12/is-nepotism-a-good-or-bad-thing-in-the-long-run-119-blog/#IDComment143222448 It is extremely difficult to define nepotism as a positive or negative thing. This is mostly because it is entirely subjective. Those who benefit from nepotism are obviously going to make a case for the positive effects and those who have negatives experience with situations involving nepotism will obviously have a negative opinion of it. However I believe that nepotism is in the end a negative thing. Although there are occasions where the people who benefit from nepotism are deserving of the position or benefit they receive I believe that more often than not nepotism results in under qualified and undeserving people receiving things that rightfully should have gone to another less connected candidate. In an ideal world people would be judged entirely on their merits, however it can be difficult to quantify the value of certain merits. Is a 4.0 grade point average worth more than a prestigious internship? Are exceptional grades worth more than social skills? In some jobs the ability to interact and persuade people can be equally as important as a person’s intelligence. Although it would be simple if we were able to quantify every variable that made a person well qualified for a job or internship or whatever it might be, that simply is not realistic. The intangible parts of a person are often what determines what sort of worker they will turn out to be. Because of this nepotism can occasionally be a good thing, if a person receives a letter of recommendation from a professor who knows them well and honestly believes in what they are writing about the recipient then nepotism can be a good thing. In this case it would end up with the most qualified person receiving the job they deserve. Although it it is hard to believe that that is what happens in the majority of occasions. It seems like everybody can name a story of losing something that they deserved simply because somebody else benefitted from nepotism in one way or another. Personally I can name an instance from my life when I was younger. I had been playing on a travel soccer team from a year and the next year at tryouts we got a new coach. Despite the fact that we had returned every player from last year the coach allowed a full tryout. In the end only one new person was added to the roster, the coached son, who was without a doubt not good enough to play on the team. Unfortunately adding the coaches son meant that there was one less spot on the roster, and one of our more talented players from the previous year was cut simply because the coach picked his son. I feel like most people could name a story like this and would struggle to come up with a story of somebody truly deserving benefitting from nepotism. Fri, 15 Apr 2011 21:22:49 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/12/is-nepotism-a-good-or-bad-thing-in-the-long-run-119-blog/#IDComment143222448 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/07/we-need-help-with-the-logo-119-blog/#IDComment141112738 The country of Haiti is certainly in need of help, and could absolutely use a large amount of monetary aid. With one billion dollars their country could rebuild a much more significant portion of the infrastructure than America would be able to, although that is simply due to the lower cost of living in their country as opposed to ours. Although I make no declaration about whether the people of Haiti deserve to receive aid from the rest of the developed nations of the world after the hardships they have been forced to endure at the hands of mother nature, that does not make it America’s responsibility to fund the rebuilding of their country. People who make donations to a group like the Red Cross to fund relief efforts after natural disasters often do it out of a sense of obligation that has been put on people of more developed nations to help the less fortunate. Although this is a noble pursuit and one I whole heartedly support I think people do it for the wrong reasons more often than not. President Obama’s statement that he would like to raise one billion dollars to fun his reelection campaign is completely ridiculous, that is a ludicrous figure that I doubt he will ever obtain, nor should he obtain it. Though to say he is trying to raise a billion dollars in order to get a four hundred thousand dollar per year job is not necessarily accurate. Obviously nobody is donating money to his campaign just to get him a high paying job, he is a raising a billion dollars in order to maintain his position as the most powerful man in the world. But if after four years it takes a billion dollars in campaign funds to try to convince people you would make a decent president then there is obviously something wrong. Indeed, if it comes to the point of Obama actually receiving as much as a billion dollars in campaign funds then it is more of a shame to the people who donated such large sums of money to somebody who obviously doesn’t need it. It is the responsibility of the donors to decide where they put their money, and although I can easily name ten charities that I consider to be more worthwhile and deserving of my patronage than president Obamas campaign fund, there will obviously be others who disagree with me and those will be the people who give their money to the president to support his attempts to get reelected. The fault does not lie with Obama, who doesn’t have full discretion over the way his funds are spent, because of the fact that they are donated for a specific purpose. But rather the fault lies with the people who give him the money to use in his campaign instead of finding another way to spend their money. Fri, 8 Apr 2011 23:15:34 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/04/07/we-need-help-with-the-logo-119-blog/#IDComment141112738 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/29/what-reasons-make-multiculturalism-positive-for-the-us-119-blog/#IDComment139212337 My blog post will be in response to the question of why multiculturalism is beneficial to the society of the United States. I have come to the conclusion that there are countless reasons that multiculturalism is beneficial to the United States. Having the influences of many cultures can form an amalgamation of cultural pieces that are beneficial to the nation as a whole. One of my personal favorite parts of multiculturalism in the United States is food. So many people from so many different cultures have immigrated to the United States of America and each of them brought their own unique take on food with them. Some of my favorite styles of food are Thai, Latin American dishes, and more so than all the rest: Italian. Chicken parmesean is perhaps the greatest meal God has ever invented and without the influence of Italian food, most likely through Immigrants coming through Ellis Island in New York. Without that I would be my favorite meal, and the only one I am capable of cooking well on my own. In addition, anybody who is going into business these days knows how important the foreign markets are to investments and importing or exporting goods. Without a strong multicultural exposure from a young age, as unfortunately only some American children are exposed to, they are much less likely to be able to effectively deal with people of other cultures. It is important for children to get outside the bubble of people who are extremely similar to them if they are to have a chance of being able to function effectively in a society. If a person if only comfortable around somebody of their own race there is essentially nowhere in this country that they can lead a very successful life, a few small pockets excluded. I know it sounds cliché but it is true that everybody in this country is the descendent of an immigrant in one way or another. Therefore this nation was built on combining the cultures of different immigrants into one effective system of living. The writers of the constitution made sure to include pieces that ensured that different cultures and races and religions always have a fair chance to thrive in this country. Also, the results were probably skewed because of the fact that it was a survey of a class on race relations. Obviously people who take this class are going to be more open to the idea that multiculturalism is bad. We are all people who are open to multicultural ideals, rather than a different class where perhaps less people would be open minded about the idea of multiculturalism. However I believe that without the contributions of many separate cultures this country would not be nearly as successful as is today. Fri, 1 Apr 2011 22:32:01 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/29/what-reasons-make-multiculturalism-positive-for-the-us-119-blog/#IDComment139212337 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/18/where-do-the-messages-come-from-119-blog/#IDComment135958885 I think there has to be a multitude of sources teaching these children that being dark is bad and light is good. I was shocked by the video of the children who identified the darker skinned doll as the bad doll and the white skinned doll as the good person. I honestly don’t believe that people can blame the media for this situation because all the major networks have intentionally injected diversity into their shows in order to teach kids that there is nothing wrong with having a different skin color. There were a plethora of different races in shows like Barney and Sesame Street, as well as shows on cable networks like Little Bill, Dora the Explora, or Zoom. All of these shows show people of different colors in a positive light. In more mature shows like 24 there are white skinned villains equally as often as the villains are any people of color. It is possible that if a child watched the news in an area with a disproportionate rate of crime between light and dark skinned people that they could have absorbed a belief and conditioned themselves to think it applies to all people. This is referred to as generalizing, when people project the thoughts generated by only a few individuals onto the entire population. But the children in the video choosing between the dolls certainly seem too young to be watching the news regularly. Though blaming the media is often the most popular excuse for a situation like this they cannot be held at fault this time. I think most likely it has to come from inside the household, and then mainly from the parents, because I believe they are the only people in a child of that age’s life that have a degree of influence high enough to mold the child’s belief. I do think it would be interesting to see the experiment with the dolls repeated with a group of white children as the test subjects to see if they too picked the white doll as good and the dark skinned doll as bad. If so then that just creates a cycle of sorts where the white children will treat the dark skinned children as less valuable individuals which could cause the oppressed children to end up feeling and acting that way. I believe it falls to the parents to teach children not to be discouraged by their individuality in appearance. One of the girls in the video talked about how her aunt was giving her cousins skin bleaching cream as young as age 7 or 8. That teaches the kids that the way they are isn’t good enough because they have darker skin. The adults in that situation need to take responsibility for teaching their children not to be discouraged by their skin color. Sat, 19 Mar 2011 02:12:57 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/03/18/where-do-the-messages-come-from-119-blog/#IDComment135958885 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/24/how-do-you-feel-about-the-poor-white-society-and-who-are-you-more-likely-to-help-119-blog/#IDComment130736965 During a Habitat for Humanity trip I met a family somewhat similar to Tammy, only in the fact that they were white and destitute. In their mannerisms they could not have been more different. The two women living in the house that we spent a week repairing were both drawing welfare money, neither had a job, and there were having their house improved for free by a volunteer group. Tammy, on the other hand, worked hard and did not want to draw from welfare for money. She walked hours to work every day at a job where she makes about as much money as she could draw from welfare. Because of her desire to support her family on her own and not draw money from the government to help pay for thing I feel that she is very deserving of help. I feel less of a responsibility to help people like the sisters I met on my trip to North Carolina because of the fact that they seem to want the world to cater to them without their having to do any actual work. Therefore I believe that my willingness to give people in a situation where they are poor or homeless would be based more on their level of effort to bring themselves out of their situation. Regardless of race I think hard work should be respected so if there were somebody who was trying and putting in effort every day, like Tammy, to better the lives of themselves and their family I would be willing to help them. Going back to something we discussed in class a few weeks ago, I believe that if you work hard enough anybody in American can improve their station in life. I do concede that some people have merely had circumstances conspire against them or have run into a streak of back luck; and again I think that regardless of race people like this deserve help, at least a chance to get back on their feet. All anybody can ask for is the opportunity to provide a better life for themselves. But the key part of that phrase is for themselves. The government should be help enough to give these people the opportunity to provide for themselves and advance their own station in life. Not to provide for them or to move them forward, but simply to give them access to the necessary means to do it on their own. Somebody in Tammy’s situation who works that hard to provide for herself and her kids certainly deserves help, and it is a shame that it is these people who often do not accept the help, particularly in Tammy’s case when it could help her son pursue school options. Sat, 26 Feb 2011 01:16:40 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/24/how-do-you-feel-about-the-poor-white-society-and-who-are-you-more-likely-to-help-119-blog/#IDComment130736965 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/17/how-much-can-a-person-use-the-ignorance-card-119-blog/#IDComment128986245 In my personal opinion I don’t think that the ignorance card is ever a valid excuse for something like using a racial slur or being unaware of a global problem such as slavery, which as Sam mentioned in one of his previous lectures, is more prevalent today than at any other point in history. Fortunately, or depending on how you choose to look at it, unfortunately, the issue of the global slave trade does not directly affect enough of the people with the power to make a change and help fix the issue to actually do anything about it. Currently the most prominent slave trade with any direct effect on the United States comes out of China, where people are packed into container ship crated for the long journey across the ocean only to be told when they get to America that their freedom will require more money and when these poor people are unable to pay the crime syndicates shipping them over here sell them off into slavery or prostitution to make a profit off of their suffering. Atrocities such as these occur every day in America but they go overlooked because the victims of these crimes don’t have the means or the will power to speak up about it. Know that when I say they lack will power I do not mean that they are weak, but the penalties imposed by the criminal syndicates can be enough to stop anybody from attempting to better their situation. With our access to global news networks and breaking news stories on the internet there is no reason for anybody with access to a television, newspaper, or the internet to keep up enough with current events not to have to claim the defense of ignorance when they make a mistake. It is an unfortunate fact that only a rare few people in this world truly pay attention to issues that do not have a direct effect on their lives. I heard it put best by a radio personality one time who said about voting in elections that it is a sad truth that most people vote by their wallet. If in the past four years the economy has been good and people have been able to avoid true financial trouble then they are significantly more likely to elect a candidate again even if they do not agree with all of the candidate’s party views. There should be more available classes for college, high school, and perhaps even middle school students whose sole purpose is to inform kids of current events going on in the world. Most kid by choice do not watch or read the news with so many other entertainment options, but if part of their school day was devoted to teaching them what is going on in the world than we could significantly reduce the use of the ignorance card. Sat, 19 Feb 2011 01:46:21 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/17/how-much-can-a-person-use-the-ignorance-card-119-blog/#IDComment128986245 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/08/why-do-you-think-racism-continues-to-be-a-problem-throughout-the-world-119-blog/#IDComment127258353 I believe that racism will always have a presence in our society, as unfortunate as that may be. In my opinion the impetus behind the mindset of racism is ignorance. In order to believe that one race is somehow superior another just because of skin color clearly has no understanding of genetics or the human body. It is not possible to be a better person than somebody else simply because you have a different skin color, however in our society today you wouldn’t know that was the case based on the observable history of our society and government. Another unfortunate side effect of our societal viewpoint on racism is that it creates a self-sustaining cycle. Some of our government programs that are meant to counteract the things that we have done wrong in the past as a nation are creating as many issues as they are solving. Many people refer to this as reverse racism, but technically there is no such thing as reverse racism. Programs like affirmative action are at their roots racist programs. People can spend all day debating whether or not affirmative action is a necessary program or if its fair or right. But one thing that cannot be debated is that it is a racist idea, giving one group of people an advantage over another just because of their skin color. Giving somebody an advantage based on skin color is no different than taking away an advantage from somebody based on skin color. Personally, I used to believe that it was an unfair program and that it should have been removed. But after listening to Sam’s lecture today he actually swayed my viewpoint on the situation. My family immigrated from Ireland long after slavery had been outlawed in America, and as far back as I can trace my family tree there has never been a slave owner in the family, so I used to think that it was unfair for people to have advantages over me because skin color. But after Sam’s lecture today I realized that regardless of the fact that my family may not have directly impacted the life of the descendents of slaves today, I may still have advantages that I didn’t even consider that helped me along in life due to the fact that my family is white and have been fortunate enough to be financially stable. Coming upon this realization I discovered that I was being racist about this subject because of my ignorance. Until Sam brought it up today I didn’t realize the advantages that I have enjoyed throughout my life that others may not have. Something as simple as failing to think critically about a situation can breed the ignorance about the subject that leads to racism and for that reason I think racism can never truly be abolished. Fri, 11 Feb 2011 04:18:07 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/08/why-do-you-think-racism-continues-to-be-a-problem-throughout-the-world-119-blog/#IDComment127258353 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/01/do-you-describe-yourself-differently-in-other-countries/#IDComment126074406 This blog post happens to be the exact same thing that my discussion group was talking about last semester when we had to participate in the world in conversation project for my freshman seminar class. I come from completely Irish heritage on both sides of my family, and so whenever somebody asks me what I am I say that I’m Irish. But when somebody brought it up I realized that I only described myself as Irish while I was inside the United States. I have taken trips to Ireland and Mexico and on both of those trips whenever anybody asked me where I was from or, as Sam said in lecture, the most condescending question ever: “what are you” I would say American. I think that the reason for this discrepancy is that we only want to identify ourselves by what makes us different. When I was in Mexico and Ireland being an American made me different than any of the local people I was talking to. But when I am at home in America obviously everybody else around me is American as well so I use my Irish heritage as a distinguishing factor to identify myself by. I think many people would find this to be the case as they travel outside the country. Whenever somebody asks you about your heritage nobody is inclined to say American, even if their parents were the very first immigrants to America they would still describe their heritage as English. I do not think that there is anything particularly wrong with this in this instance, but in general this tendency to focus on the factors that make us different have very negative consequences as far as racial insensitivity goes. In this case we only separate ourselves in that manner as a means of identification, in order to describe people physically we have resorted to describing people’s heritage and letting people infer from that. But by looking constantly at the things that make us different people start to attribute differences like those to the negative traits demonstrated by only necessarily a few people with that particular trait. A stereotype can develop as simply as that and then perpetuate itself into a widely believed misconception that it completely unfair to the people that are being stereotyped. If people were to focus on the things that made them similar rather than looking solely at the things that make us different then people might be overcome the ignorance that begets racial insensitivity. Racisms persists when people blame another group for their problems even when the two have no correlation whatsoever, but if they were to realize how many things they might have in common with the person they were discriminating against then they might be more likely to accept the idea of equality. Sat, 5 Feb 2011 04:34:51 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/01/do-you-describe-yourself-differently-in-other-countries/#IDComment126074406 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/27/what-does-the-confederate-flag-mean-to-you-119-blog/#IDComment124442559 To me the Confederate Flag is simply a symbol of the south and it is not necessarily something that should immediately be associated by slavery or racism. There is much more to the secession of the Confederacy than slavery, such as state’s rights, expansion into Cuba, and free speech. However it is hard to deny that the defining difference that sparked the idea of secession as a necessity in the south was the issue of slavery. Alexander Stevens, the vice president of the Confederacy was quoted as saying: “the cornerstone of the new government rested upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.” It is therefore quite understandable that many people have trouble separating a strong Confederate symbol like the flag from the defining ideal of the Confederacy which displayed a racist ideal as one of its core beliefs. I do not think it is fair to say that the Confederate flag is infallibly tied to “redneck” culture; however there is no question that it is inseparable from the south. The problem with that is that the south ends up getting the stereotype of being full of people who are either racist or rednecks simply because they want to pay homage to other aspects of their ancestors by honoring the Confederate flag. People find it impossible to separate the flag from it’s symbolic support of slavery because of the prominence both of those things played to the Confederate party. It is unfortunate because many of the people who pay homage to the Confederacy through its flag are branded as racists when they really choose to focus on other proud aspects of Confederate traditions like religion and farming. Some people may even only use the flag to show pride in southern culture because the two have become so closely intertwined in the years since it was ever used as an official symbol. Personally the first thing I think of when I see the Confederate flag is the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazard TV series. This could simply be because I have more of an interest in cars than anybody else, but I have simply ended up conditioning myself to think of the General Lee when I see the confederate flag rather than what most people see as a stereotypical “redneck” with no teeth and suspenders. The flag is simply a symbol, it is only powerful based on the images you decide to associate it with, and any most controversy regarding the flag is simply the difference in opinion over what the flag itself stands for. Sat, 29 Jan 2011 00:42:32 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/27/what-does-the-confederate-flag-mean-to-you-119-blog/#IDComment124442559 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/21/body-image-issues-119-blog/#IDComment122869067 I believe that knowing your body was entirely controlled by genetics would not alleviate the issues of body image that unfortunately plague our society so much in this day and age. Regardless of what causes your body to look a certain way societies will still value one look higher than the rest, setting a standard that very few are able to achieve. The cause of negative body image in so many people today is that society has conditioned people to think that tall and thin is the only right way to look and that anything less than that isn’t good enough. In fact I think it might actually be worse if body image was entirely controlled by genetic inheritance because if people knew that they had an undesirable body type then they would probably feel extremely hopeless because they had no way of changing their body type at all. It might be difficult for people now and they might feel that it is hopeless just because it is very difficult for them to change their body. But at least it is possible to do so. If it were entirely controlled by genetic inheritance then you would have to find a way to accept the body type you have for the rest of your life because you have no power to change it. More often than not it is people who have what most would consider to be a perfectly acceptable body style who have some of the most serious issues with body image. Eating disorders like anorexia nervosa and bulimia are more common today than they ever have been in the past because the standards that society has set for people, more often females, in today’s world is unrealistic. An inability to achieve what is an unrealistic and extremely difficult style of body causes people to have issues with insecurity about their body even though they should be completely comfortable the way that they were. It is a shame to think that so much angst could be avoided in so many people if they would simply focus on accepting happiness with the body they do have rather than trying to push themselves to achieve an unreasonable and sometimes impossible to attain goal. The reason issue with body image run rampant in society today so much more than in any other time is because of the portrayal in the media. Never before have people had so much access to seeing the “golden standard” of human body styles in magazines and on television, which unfortunately constantly reminds people who have sensitivity issues about their own body of their own shortcomings. That would still be present in a world where body style was controlled entirely by genetic inheritance and it would constantly remind people who are dissatisfied with their bodies that they can never change. Fri, 21 Jan 2011 23:22:39 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/21/body-image-issues-119-blog/#IDComment122869067 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/10/last-name-%e2%80%9co%e2%80%9d-%e2%80%93-intense-debate/#IDComment120837449 SOC 119 Wed, 12 Jan 2011 06:49:28 +0000 http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/01/10/last-name-%e2%80%9co%e2%80%9d-%e2%80%93-intense-debate/#IDComment120837449