I think immigration has always and will continue to always be a difficult issue to deal with. In my opinion, like Sam, I don’t see there being any type of easy answer to the situation. How my opinion has changed though is quite immense. I used to define myself as a Republican before I really understood what all of the political jargon entailed. I grew up in a family of conservative leaning adults so I basically just followed their ideology and mentality until college. When I got to school, the first time I could really decide for myself what I believed and how I interpreted problems, a lot of what I thought wound up changing. I no longer consider myself a conservative or Republican. I do not prescribe to any political label, seeing as if you do, it only begs for arguments these days.
I used to believe that immigration, specifically illegal immigration, was absolutely wrong no matter what the circumstances were for the person. I thought we should do whatever it took no matter the cost to keep these “illegal aliens” out of our country. All of this was again following what the adults around me were saying, or what I thought they were saying. I used the vocab they used, not realizing how offensive some of it may have been. I realize now that none of what I said made much sense, seeing as I was only playing a game of telephone.
I see now, having dealt with people from all kinds of different backgrounds that I will never know everybody’s story. And just because people have a different story than I do, does not make them any less of a person than me. I know that I have committed illegal acts, and I don’t consider myself to be a bad person. If anything, I have learned to respect these people in a way that I doubt any other person will ever amount. Sam was really able to make me realize that the people who do come to the United States (and other countries) illegally are not people who are lazy. The people who leave everything behind are people wanting to make a better life for themselves and their family. They are hardworking, determined individuals who are willing to give up their entire livelihood, often left to living on the streets and going hungry simply to make a few dollars a day to send back home. While I do believe that immigration needs to be watched carefully and somehow controlled, I do not, nor will I ever, have the correct solution. Simply keeping in mind that I would not be here today if it weren’t for people being willing to give up everything they have to start anew, keeps me grounded and simply unable to say any type of immigration solution.

I think it was really important for us to begin shedding light on the issues of Native Americans and their struggles. Having Native American blood in my family, which unless the photos my grandmother has aren’t real, then it has been proven that I do have Native American blood, it really does have somewhat of an effect on me. Not so much that I live on a reservation and now have to deal with that, but knowing what my distant relatives went through is incredibly disheartening.
I listen to Dave Matthews frequently enough so I knew the song before hearing it in class, but having the pictures alongside I think made a huge impact. By not being able to hide from the evidence and proof that something serious is happening to these people, I think more people are likely to remember.
There are so many serious issues that these people have been dealing with for many years and the fact that many Americans either don’t want to deal with them or don’t even know that they exist is a problem. The fact that the largest genocide has happened within our own borders and isn’t taught in school should make people upset. How can we have an accurate representation of our own history if textbooks are leaving out such an integral part?
The fact that so many women are victims of sexual assault would be unacceptable if it were happening anywhere else outside of reservations. Just last weekend, people were incredibly upset with the stranger sexual assault, not wanting to talk about it in class or between friends. It seemed like people didn’t want to talk about it because if they did then that would be admitting that it really did happen and that it is very possible, making us vulnerable.
Alcoholism and suicide are also huge aspects and unfortunate problems of Native American lifestyle. Again, I think if it were happening anywhere else or to another group of people the focus of American people would be much more intense on helping out and attempting to solve these issues. However, I think another important factor would be actually including the situation within our educational system, but again if we were to really tell children that these atrocious acts were done upon our own people, we would be admitting that we are wrong and the way in which our leaders handled the situation was unacceptable.

I do think that this has been the best lecture. At least this far. We still have a few more weeks, but I think the Christian Invaders lecture was much more “life changing” (for lack of a better word). While some people disagree, I think the point that Sam was trying to get across of being able to put yourself in Iraqis’ or Afghanistan’s shoes can be applied to everything. If somebody has different political ideologies or if someone isn’t as good as you are in math or writing, simply being able to understand where somebody is coming from does amazing things for relationships.
I saw the YouTube video of Christian Invaders last semester and knew I needed to take the class so I’ve been waiting for this particular lecture all semester. From seeing the video I knew what the point of the lecture was, but I was curious how Sam was going to be able to accomplish it. I was fascinated how, despite thinking to myself the first few minutes “How are you going to make me drop all of my intuition and past experiences and make me feel the way Middle Easterners might feel?” I was a little reluctant at first, my stubborn unconscious wanting to prove that it wouldn’t work on me, but after he started rolling the videos out left and right, I couldn’t help but let go of my predispositions and go with what Sam was doing.
The lecture in itself though was just different from every other class I’ve sat through. I don’t know if it’s because of the usefulness or the widespread use that this idea can do. The other classes, while they have been providing us with provocative information and have been eye opening, they have, in retrospect, been mainly about race. Yes you could apply this to gender and age too. But I think the idea for the majority of the class has been the same. So I think Christian Invaders just gave us something different to think about. Rather than just focusing on race, even though obviously race plays a huge role in it (discriminating against somebody that is from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc.). Also, I think our generation, being so open to differences amongst ourselves (more so than say our grandparents), race is not as big of an issue as it once was. In other words, we don’t discriminate simply because of race, we discriminate because somebody isn’t as good as we are in one aspect or because they happen to like the same gender. I think our generation is so busy worrying about how they can be better (because that’s what has been engrained in us for so many years) that we no longer want to take the time to see both sides to the story. But for us, this war has been our lives since we were very young. And I think it being such a huge factor in our lives resonates more so than may race. And by no means am I saying that racism is extinct or doesn’t exist, or even that racism doesn’t exist in the Christian Invaders lecture, because it’s very clear it does. I just think the idea of putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes is so vague that you can really use this for anything you may ever come up against in life. Where as the intense and eye opening information we have been getting is making us aware of what does and is happening.

When I first started school here this was an issue I had never had to deal with before. In high school my friends and I drank and went “out,” but all that meant was going to somebody’s house or going camping for the weekend. Which then made dressing up pretty pointless. The most I ever did was minimal makeup since I generally don’t wear any during the week. I never wore heels, never wore dresses or skirts unless I was wearing it that day. My appearance wasn’t that important in high school. But then I went to college.
The first weekend I was here, I remember the three girls that I was going out with asked what I was wearing. I told them I had no idea but probably just jeans and a v-neck shirt (something I would wear most days to class.) They told me that wouldn’t work, that we’d never get allowed in if I was wearing jeans. I, being the inexperienced college partier that I was headed their advice. They picked out an outfit for me, consisting of my one and only short skirt and a spaghetti strap shirt. I was pretty uncomfortable the entire time but I “didn’t know any better” so I went with it. I did this for two more weekends without really knowing what I was doing. Until the same group of girls and I went to one party where everything just seemed to click. I decided not to drink as we were getting up early for Paternoville the next morning and didn’t want to be hungover. I sat in a chair just watching the interactions unfold all night and the party scene finally made sense. I had known that most people drink to get drunk and meet somebody that they’d go home with for the night. But I hadn’t really realized the other layers. How guys could wear anything they wanted but girls were forced to wearing what guys wanted them to wear. And that was just one thing.
My mom came up for my birthday a week later and wanted to take me shopping. We went to a multitude of stores and she finally asked if I had “going out clothes.” I said I had just been wearing whatever I had thrown together last minute, but that I didn’t have dresses or clothes that most girls would consider appropriate going out clothes. She said I should get some stuff that I could wear out and that’s when I got really upset about the entire situation. I felt like my own mother was telling me that I had to look a certain way and show off certain parts of my body to be accepted or to find a guy who would be interested in me. I found this all so ludicrous, it made me hate partying. But that didn’t stop me from partying. I just stopped accepting the rules guys, consciously or subconsciously, decided as the way I should be dressing.
I simply wore whatever I wore to class that day. I wasn’t there to find somebody to hookup with and never speak to again. I was there to have a good time with the friends I was there with. Fortunately this all happened very quickly for me, realizing that I was doing these things I wasn’t comfortable with just because male standards said that’s what I should be doing. But I know I struggled with the idea of why I was really doing this all in the first place. And there are certain days where when I get dressed in the morning or when I’m going out to a party now I have to question why I’m doing what I’m doing. Is it for myself because I have simply chosen this? Or is it because I have this idea of what I want and to get what I want I have to do what somebody else wants of me? And that decision is never easy to deal with.

It’s hard to say whether I would or not. Being taught all my life that I am to respect authority and anybody who has some sort of higher ranking than myself, to say that I would be able to call out anybody of my own race would be rather difficult.

For instance, last night my stepfather, younger brother, and myself were out eating at a Chinese restaurant and two Spanish speaking gentlemen walked in. They sat right behind us and immediately started complaining about why they couldn’t get a certain item but not as many as on the menu. Then shortly after the dispute with the waitress, one of the men received a phone call. I hadn’t really noticed that he had been speaking in Spanish for quite awhile until my stepfather randomly shouted out an obscenity. I looked up from my meal and he simply chuckled. I got somewhat uncomfortable seeing as I hadn’t even noticed what had been going on. I considered questioning what had made him think his actions were excusable but sheepishly went back to eating instead. As I sat finishing my food I had to wonder why I couldn’t manage to say something to my stepfather. Then, out of nowhere, he says something again. I feel so embarrassed at this point that I don’t even look up and he just quietly apologizes. I finished eating, however at that point all I wanted to do was get up and leave and go home. Again I wondered why I couldn’t and didn’t say something. Unfortunately I couldn’t come up with much of an explanation and that only made me feel worse about the situation.

On the drive home I couldn’t help but question what had happened. I couldn’t fully understand since I hadn’t asked my stepfather what he was thinking. All I could think about was the UCLA video we watched last week and how I reacted to that when I first saw it. However, my stepfather is nowhere near the girl’s level in racial acknowledgement. He is highly educated, having graduated from Penn State himself and being world traveled. He is also a self-proclaimed liberal, which really made the situation not make sense in my mind.

Again, I don’t know if it was simply that the guy had been on the phone for so long or if it was because he had been speaking Spanish or if it was just his volume, which had been quite loud. There are so many things that could have been part of my stepfather’s explanation that there’s no way to truly understand what had made his behaviour excusable. Which is part of the reason why I don’t know if I could always tell somebody of my own race that their actions are inexcusable or racist or prejudice. This is just another way that race is so complex that it cannot be simplified into one explanation.

I actually saw this video my first semester at Penn State in my women’s studies class, so unfortunately it wasn’t as hard hitting for me as it might have been for other’s (at this point in my life). However I remember when I first saw the video, being so young and truly unaware of a lot of things going on at a much deeper level than what’s on the surface, it was very unsettling, but I wasn’t shocked. I have for a long time been aware that there is a large disconnect between how kids should feel and how they actually do. Which is a large part of the video. We’re all told how to think and how things should be, especially when dealing with racial issues. But I think we are all very aware that nothing seems to be as easy or as pleasing as we once thought.
That being said, the video was still very powerful and clearly, based on other peoples’ responses, very moving. I’m sure had I not seen it before and been in this class I would have had a different reaction. Being 17 and seeing it, again I was uncomfortable but not shocked. It makes me want to take a much more active role in the media, as that is definitely a factor in why kids and adults feel this way. However I think it’s very important for people to understand that media simply cannot be the sole reason behind this response.
Like Sam responded to the girl about being told you’re beautiful, how many people, focusing on girls, are told they’re beautiful every day by their parents or friends or significant others? Most of us are, but it still does not change our own personal psychology into allowing us to agree and see what others do. Race is so complex; it cannot be solved in just one aspect. I think to really solve this issue to where this video would become obsolete our entire society would need to be restructured and reorganized. And then, most of the older generations cannot be involved in reestablishment. Too much of the racism can be traced to their generations, since that is what and how they grew up, they very much agree with racist thought and ideology. If we want to move past that, we cannot have any part in our society. While that may seem radical, I don’t foresee us being able to get rid of such an unfortunate feeling towards black and white (whether it be dolls or humans).

The r-word has been in my life for a very long time. I had been speaking to my mother about one of my teachers that I wasn’t getting along with. Something about homework, or a test, or a grade. While I was explaining it to my mother I used the r-word to describe the teacher or situation. She was at work when I was going over the story and one of her coworkers had overheard. She took me aside and explained to me the hurtfulness and extremeness of using the word incorrectly. She had somebody in her family who was living with Down’s syndrome and wanted me to understand how intense the r-word can be.
Ever since then, I haven’t said the r-word. I was young when my mother’s coworker set me aside, probably in seventh or eighth grade. It also came in handy in that one of my close friends in high school had a sister with Down’s syndrome. Being around her family was, at times, very intense when we not only had to alter the way we acted around them, but we had to alter our speech. For me, not saying the r-word wasn’t difficult since I had been in practice with it. For others though, it still continues to be difficult, or pointless.
For me, the decision of not saying the r-word isn’t so much about political correctness. It is more about the compassion it takes in knowing why not saying words such as these. It is extremely similar to saying “that’s so gay.”
People have said that if a person curses or uses explicit language, they are simply uneducated or do not know how to express themselves in another way. While I don’t fully agree with that, the whole educated part, it does seem to be largely truthful.
Ever since one of my very close guy friends came out as being gay, I have tried to get my mom to stop calling things gay or saying “that’s so gay.” Sometimes she rolls her eyes, sometimes she asks why I care so much. I try explaining to her that I see it as being a part of themselves that they identify with. Most people include their sexuality when asked to jot down a few things that describe who they are. There’s the commercial out dealing with saying “that’s so gay.” That replaces gay with two girls’ names. And it helps put the idea in their minds about how “that’s so gay” comes across to those who are effected by it. While “gay” and “retard” are not quite the same, their stigmatization is very similar. Calling something retarded is like saying something that is out of your control, or part of how you identify, is a bad or unacceptable thing. People say that mentally handicapped people are accepted in every day life just as another person is, but that simply is not true. Yes, there are things in place that help them attempt to be seen as equal, but when it comes down to it, it’s just like race. White males have the upper hand over them. And I think we should do whatever we can to help them feel as if the world isn’t against them.

There’s a lot that goes into having discriminations. It’s not just as easy as being able to say yes I have discriminations and these are all of the reasons why I have those discriminations. For the most part, we as a society, may not even realize we have such ideas in our heads. So being able to admit to having them may not be possible unless you realize you have these discriminations and then act upon them to change. I do not think it’s so much as why white people cannot or will not admit to having discriminations. I think it’s more of why won’t anybody admit to it? Part of it, like I said, is they may not even know they have these thoughts. So say a person knows they have these discriminations, and either acts upon them or does not. Because it’s not necessarily acting upon them. So, say this person knows. All of our lives we have all been taught that it is against everything we have worked for to feel this way. So nobody wants to admit to feeling something that we have all been taught is so wrong. And again, we have all been taught that being wrong is rarely a good thing. So nobody wants to be wrong. And then, how would people react if somebody were to openly admit to having discriminations towards one, or more, group of people? Think about how you discuss racism and (any form of) discrimination amongst your friends, family and school. It’s not generally something that comes with good connotation or good feelings. We all know there’s no logical basis behind (most) racism and discrimination. When we speak about it, it’s mostly to say how it’s bad and how it needs to be ridden of. So how would you feel admitting to anybody you are close with and openly telling somebody that you feel uncomfortable around John, simply because he’s Asian American, or African American or just simple looks different than you? Nobody would want to do that. People, as a generalization, care too much about their relationships with other people and how people view them as a person. In part, it’s due to the fact that most discriminations have no logical basis. So most of the time, even if somebody was comfortable enough to admit that they have these feelings, they probably don’t and won’t have anything to really back it up with. And most people aren’t comfortable with admitting when they don’t know something. Instead, we make false assumptions or just guess. Admitting to discrimination is too complicated for most people to see the benefits of.

This was the main topic of discussion in my discussion group this week. We all talked about where we came from and how these two concepts got us to where we are now. For me, I agree with Sam. I lean towards free-will, but it is pretty clear that both determinism and free-will are prevalent in everybody’s life.

Determinism has affected that I was born in Colorado into a military family who moved every three years. Or that I was born into a white family. Or that my mom decided to leave Colorado and move to Maryland during the middle of my sixth grade year. It has affected me in that my biological parents are no longer together and that my mom has remarried. Determinism has affected that my stepfather was currently attending Penn State when they met. Or that I lived in Maryland when I applied to colleges. Or that I went to one of the “middle of the road” schools in the county.

However, free-will has come into play as well. I chose to do well in school, while I could have slacked off due to my parent’s financial situation. I knew early on that nobody was going to make me do anything; that it would all be up to me to make it happen. I took part in extra-curricular activities all through high school to make my application stand out from the others. Free-will allowed me to choose where I applied to college, that I applied to eight different places. It gave me the power to choose where I ended up going. No matter whether determinism played a role in allowing me to be accepted. Despite my mom telling me I needed to consider the scholarships I was given by other institutions and that I would be paying out of state to go to Penn State. Free-will gave me the choice to get involved on campus and find people that I have many similarities with. It also gave me the opportunity to find people that I would rather not associate my time with. It has allowed me to choose to live on campus my sophomore year, while determinism decided that I would be living in supplemental in North. Free-will gives me the choice in which music I listen to, what books I read, and what clothes I wear simply because I was born and raised (determinism) as a Christian and my faith does not determine what my personal choices should consist of.

Determinism and free-will are somewhat simple concepts, but the complexity of how they tie together makes them difficult to decipher. Something as simple as my choice of clothing seems like it would fall under free-will, but in reality it is in part to determinism. I think we, as a society, need to understand that you really should take a hard look and see that each ideology plays a role in a lot of aspects of our lives. It’s not just black and white, it’s shades of gray.

After reading through these jokes, I have to say, I found none of them even slightly laugh worthy. They just seem scoffable more than anything else. Making jokes like these are part of the problem with discrimination in this country, and any other for that matter. I wonder if people listening to these laughed because they thought it was funny, laughed at Jeff Foxworthy’s ignorance or laughed because they didn’t know better.

Also, some of these comments aren’t even relating to being a Muslim. I think people often forget that Muslim is a type of religion, not a group of people, it’s not an ethnicity or race. Which in the long run only makes them look even more ridiculous for generalizing and being wrong with what their claims are. For example, “Your cousin is president of the United States. You may be a Muslim.” This is clearly targeting President Barack Obama and the claims that were created during his candidacy. Many people thinking he was not born in the United States or that he is of Muslim faith. Which even if he was, separation of church and state, right? Anyway, having your cousin be related to anybody has nothing to do with being Muslim. It’s simply a bigoted and loaded thing to say to express your support for a claim that has long been disproved.

Another one is this, “You think vests come in two styles: bullet-proof and suicide. You may be a Muslim.” This has nothing to do with Muslim religion. All it is feeding off of is the generalization that all Arabs and Middle Eastern people are Muslim. And also that all Arabs and Middle Easterners are dangerous people. Neither of which are true, and that is the only thing that has been proven.

Again I don’t find myself laughing, chuckling, or even slightly cracking a smile for any of these. To me, in order for jokes to be funny, they need to be clever. And these aren’t clever at all. All it is, is expressing uneducated and faulty logic. I have done my best to always remember to treat people how I would like to be treated. And to never speak about something I don’t personally have experience with or have spent time educating myself about. I try to give everybody the most equal disposition I can. And I have always said nobody is better than anybody else, maybe better at one thing, but somebody is better than you at something else, so in the end we’re all equal. But the more I write and think about these jokes the more disgusted I have become. I just feel so unfortunate that there are people that have to lead this type of lifestyle of hatred and ignorance. That they themselves don’t understand or maybe chose not to understand that every person is beautiful and can contribute something to the world.