To start, I am operating under the assumption that this question regards a hypothetical government run insurance program since, if they have the money, there is certainly some insurance company that would offer coverage. That being said, my instinctual reaction to the question of whether illegal immigrants should have public health care is to say absolutely not. Public programs are privileges of the citizens. Illegal immigrants are not eligible for public programs since they do not pay taxes. This would not even be a matter for debate if we were discussing the very-in-the-red social security system, but people tend to get soft when discussing health care. I understand the desire for a better life and the desire for upward mobility that immigrants crave but the fact remains that if they do not pay taxes they are simply a drain on the government, whose role it is to act on behalf of its citizenry. However, there is another issue to account for. Part of the reason the government is mandating health care is that it becomes more of a burden on tax payers to cover the costs of treatments for those who cannot afford coverage. Since hospitals are required to treat the seriously ill regardless of ability to pay, the bill is often pushed upon those who have a means of payment. Imagine an illegal immigrant enters an emergency room having a heart attack. Since he/she will not be turned away he/she will receive treatment that may include open heart surgery, days of recovery, not to mention the time of many doctors. The cost for such a treatment could run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, money that will be paid by tax payers in order to keep the hospitals solvent. It seems, then, that we are footing the bill for immigrants whether we like it or not, so why not provide some sort of insurance to mitigate the liability?

To those people the term negro does not have the same negative connotation that it does for those of us born since about 1965. “Negro” conjures up ugly memories in the minds of younger generations; it reminds us of segregated schools and life before the civil rights movement (I am personally reminded of pictures of segregated lunch counters, for whatever reason). To not include negro is to risk the underreporting of the black population; this should be the concern of black people, not whether they agree with a particular term used on the form. Who are we to tell an older generation what is appropriate for them to call themselves?

Aside from the inclusion of negro with black and African-American, I was also intrigued by the other racial categories. After “White,” “Black,” and “American Indian,” are boxes for assorted Asian and Pacific Island nations. I am curious why certain Asian nations were selected as opposed to others (there is a box for you to write in your own race so I suppose that any race could be entered).

Racial categories are not something census makers take lightly; it is not as if the census makers included negro as some sort of racist barb at black people. As Sam wrote in the entry I am responding to, negro is included in the census because that it was certain people identify with.

While nothing could seem less controversial than answering a set of the exact same questions that will be asked of everyone in the United States, the census stirs some real controversy. It seems that most of the controversy is centered around the government’s use of the word “negro” in reference to what today we would commonly call “black” or “African-American”. While some of the people in the video seemed to get the idea, others had trouble grasping the fact that some people identify as themselves as “negro” rather than any of the more modern, more politically correct terms.

I had always considered self-esteem issues more of a problem with females than with males but this video made me reconsider that notion. While the number of males tested in the video was fewer than the number of females, I got the impression that the statistics reflected both males and females.

I can’t understand a self-image so deeply ingrained that you would be willing to insult your own race to uphold certain stereotypes. I had expected to see that children today would have been less committed to the stereotypes propagated today. It is difficult for me to frame racial issues in terms that I can understand since white males are about the least discriminated against demographic as there is. However, when I try to think about what type of doll/toy I would call good or bad I think that at least as a youngster I would have called the doll with white skin good and the dark skin bad (for instance, anytime I thought of a hero I thought of a white male saving a woman from a burning building). This sort of reaction is not so alarming as a white person but when you see black children have the same reaction a problem presents itself. Probably the single most disturbing part of the video was when even after saying that the black doll was the bad one the young girl was willing to admit that she looked like that doll; it made me respect how deep the problems are rooted in this society.

Even though I had heard the results of the “Doll Experiment” long before, something about it being repeated in present day made it hit home a little more. As a white male it is hard for me to connect with the thought process of a young black girl, especially since my parents never confronted me with a black action figure (I probably would have thrown a fit if they had put a black batman in front of me).

The NPR report that Sam posted got me thinking about what the woman mentioned would actually be like if she had been born into a more developed country. The simple answer is to say that someone who clearly possesses such drive in the face of such adversity would be wildly successful in a developed country. Certainly we wouldn’t expect for her to be an abject failure in the US, for instance, but perhaps she would not be as successful as some would think.
The advantages of being born into money are many. The ability to pay for private schooling and hand down connections to your children cannot be overstated. I wonder, however, if being born into wealth takes people of the same ilk as Yvrose Jean Baptiste and makes them complacent. In other words, if you never had to work to achieve success, if you never had to struggle to make something of yourself, why would you? The children of the wealthy (or even the “well off”) aren’t permitted to fail; each time failure seems a real possibility they will be propped up by their parents. If those parents wanted to do their children a favor they would allow them to fail, see how it feels and use it as a lesson. I always consider the example of one of my classmates in high school who showed less and less initiative as the years went on. Born into a wealthy family, she was expected to attend college but could not navigate her way through community college. Sure enough, facing the possibility of failure, her father provided her with the money to open up her own coffee shop which he essentially ran while her name was on the papers. In this situation, the girl had nothing to fear, failure was not an option. For Yvrose Jean Baptiste failure was a very real option which is precisely why I think she was is so motivated.
Sometimes it takes the brink of failure to create the hunger for achievement. If Yvrose Jean Baptiste was able to preserve the same spirit that made her an entrepreneur in Haiti in the US then we would assuredly find her in the upper echelon of our society. But if being ushered through adulthood created in her, as it does in many people, an attitude of complacence then she would probably find herself in the same place that many other Americans find themselves. This hypothetical situation aside, it is very sad to think that a woman who is giving all that she has to make something of herself faces the prospect of failure based entirely on circumstances outside of her control. It is enough to make you wish that we could send some of those Americans who will succeed based on their parents status down to Haiti to get a taste of how cruel fate can be.

I think the fact that lesbians are more readily accepted than gay men speaks to the expectations in this country that every man be the man’s man, that he is able to fix cars, throw a punch, and never cry. As a boy I feel comfortable saying that boys, regardless of demeanor, are all raised with the expectation of toughness. Consider that, of all youth sports, football (the most violent of sports) is the only one without a female counterpart. It is a sport reserved for men, perhaps because it requires the toughness we believe men should encompass. This is all well and good but, why can’t someone be tough and gay?

Part and parcel with the no-cry, no-emotion mentality forced upon boys at a young age is an expectation that you like women. We are expected to think unilaterally from birth and to desire and lust after women. The toughness taught to young boys extends beyond emotions and into a way of thinking. The way women are objectified on TV and in magazines makes it so that young boys are force fed from an early age that they should like women and that anything subversive is wrong (remember the outrage when the teletubby told young viewers everywhere that it was “ok to be gay? This shook the very foundation of early conditioning of boys to like girls). I remember hearing stories from my parents that, long before I would have any sexual feelings, I’d gawk at Victoria’s Secret catalogs; how is it that a 5 year old boy could already have chosen a sexual preference? For some reason to be gay and tough are to be mutually exclusive. To be gay is seen as the opposite of what it is to be a man. While I’m not gay, I think that for anyone to come out to their father would have to be the most traumatizing experiences of one’s life.

The stigma attached to male homosexuality aside, I believe there is generally more acceptance of lesbians. While we, as a society, certainly prefer our women to be feminine, there is also a degree of respect that a manlier woman has that a feminine man does not (even using the terms “manlier” and “feminine” implies that those words actually stand for an attitude or pattern of behavior). Furthermore, to be lesbian and be girly is not necessarily seen as a contradiction the way we generally se being manly and being gay. People would be far more accepting of a lesbian supermodel than a gay boxer. Perhaps the whole issue comes down to the fact that men fear difference more than women; they see gay men as a challenge to their own sexuality.

I took Sam’s Soc 001 class when I was a sophomore and I’m not sure I completely understood the interplay of freedom and determinism before his lecture on Tuesday.
I have always had a tough time deciding whether, using the example from class, the person with a gun to his/her head is truly free. Certainly they can always choose death over the demands of their captors, but what choice is that really? While the ‘gun to my head’ scenario seems quite unlikely, I believe it can be applied to much more relevant scenarios.
The role of free will as it contrasts with determinism is to, no matter what the situation, provide a choice. While it may seem that some choices are made for us, this is an illusion. Certainly some paths may be more determined than others but no choice is ever 100% determined. Some choices seem determined for us because we all tend to follow the path of least resistance, giving us the appearance of determinism. I think this is generally how people prefer to see the world, like they had no choice but to make the decisions they did. One group that I figured would be most likely to see their choices in this light is black males. I was surprised to find out that the vast majority of black males said they were most responsible for their current status in society (according to a stat Sam showed us earlier this year). Allow me to elaborate on my last statement. Young, inner-city black males have free will just like the rest of us. However, the current social system sets only certain expectations of these individuals, not allowing them to rise too far out of the situation they are mired in. What choice are these young men faced with and what forces are at work pushing them towards one path or another?
When people find there to be some sort of racial predisposition to crime because such a relatively large portion of the black population is in some stage of corrections, they miss the point. Many poor, young black people (especially males) are faced with the prospect of the easy, fast money that crime can provide. Do they have another choice? Certainly. But if you grew up in poverty and someone offered you a substantial sum of money to sell a drug that people were going obtain anyway, has the young man not been goaded towards a certain life choice based simply upon the poverty he was born into? Furthermore, the mechanism to escape the cycle of poverty, education, is not seen as a cool thing to immerse oneself in. So while we may like to say that everyone has the choice to surmount the obstacles and make themselves better, the truth is that few of us have the resolve to beat some of the worst circumstances.