I guess the main way I have started to think differently since being in Sam’s lectures for the last fifteen weeks is just that I just really need to think about things more deeply instead of just taking information at face value because it is easier or is what is thought of as being the norm. It seems like a lot of people like to just accept certain thoughts about things and people, and believe in stereotypes; and I would like to believe that I was not really too bad at this sort of thing (buying into different believes and being pretty single minded), but I would say that this class has taught me to be more conscientious of my actions and mindset when I am doing or saying things that are socially dangerous, or believing in dangerous stereotypes. Not only did I kind of have to reevaluate my on positions on certain issues, and decide if I was really on the right side of the issue, or had merely taken the easy way out by blindly following what the majority of people thought; I also learned that by staying silent and just letting other people promote ways of thinking that are potentially wrong I could still be contributing just as much to the promotion of these possibly dangerous beliefs. That being said, I do not necessarily mean that I came to the conclusion that I would stand up vigorously against the ways certain people think in every occasion, but rather try to be as unthreatening as possible and tell people who are making or believing in certain stereotypes that they may have a skewed perception of the issue (because when it comes down to it, there are certain peoples’ minds that you just are not going to be able to change no matter what you tell them or how hard you try, and could potentially just make them really angry).
Other things I kind of already had an idea about, but the lectures just kind of reinforced what I had already learned with Sam supplementing the idea with data and numbers; Things like the discrimination towards African Americans, and Latinos in the justice system with their increased likely hood to be arrested and incarcerated for the exact same crimes as a white individual, and how a lot of people in America blindly think of the people from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran (pretty much all middle eastern countries) are evil, when in reality the civilians from those countries are not much different than us at all. All in all this class was a good way to open my mind to new ideas and concepts, and I think from now on I won’t be as quick to accept things at face value, and try to notice injustices so as not to promote them unknowingly.

The “What would you do” video with the man in the Texas bakery that refused to serve the Muslim woman solely based on her race and religion seemed to make a majority of the class pretty uncomfortable just watching (and rightfully so because the treatment the actress in the scene was getting was just plain horrible.) And while there were the handful of people that stood up for the Muslim woman getting the racist treatment, the scenes of the people that stood up for the bakery worker saying that his treatment was just and fair was pretty sickening, the fact that normal people could see this kind of racism going on right in front of them and agree with is makes you kind of step back and think again about the kind of people that might be walking around in society.
But the real question here is on the mindsets of the majority of the witnesses who saw this woman getting unjustly treated and stood by and did nothing; they just kind of sat back and let the situation play out. And I feel like this is just kind of because of a second nature kind of thing, whether it’s just and American thing to do or whether it is just turning into inherent human nature I can’t really say because I haven’t had any experiences outside the country. It seems like a lot of people nowadays just really want to avoid any sort of confrontation, so they adopt a mindset of “it doesn’t involve me/it’s not my problem, so I should just not get involved”. And this kind of mentality is pretty sad because helping out your fellow man (or in this case woman) should just come as second nature, but everyone is too busy watching out for their own backs that they become kind of self-centered.
But at the same time I feel like it is really easy for me to sit in the classroom watching the video and say I would definitely have stood up for the woman, but you really do not know exactly what you would do in the situation until you are faced with the decision of what to do in real life. I feel like if I was in that exact situation there would be a lot of things going through my mind before just jumping into the confrontation; I would want to kind of have an idea of what to say, decide whether or not to call the cops, see how big the guy is (because I wouldn’t want to start yelling at a guy for being racist if he was twice my size), etc. In a perfect world no one would need to worry about how to go about these difficult situations because people wouldn’t be so dumb and racist, but until that day we need to starting sticking up for one another when faced with injustices.

When it comes to the whole “wearing saggy pants” fashion statement I would definitely have to put myself on the side of the argument against people wearing saggy pants, but I would not go as far as to say they needed to pass legislation to put a ban on people wearing saggy pants all together. The only reason I am personally against it is because I think it looks dumb to have the top of your pants down below your ass so that everyone can see your underwear. But putting a ban on it all together would not have affected individuals like myself all that much though (that is if the law had been passed in Pennsylvania rather than Alabama) because it is not going to change the way I have to dress myself in the morning, and see other people wearing saggy pants really does not affect my life much at all either. I really do not see what kind of harm people wearing their pants in this fashion does to society as a whole, and the fact that the bill passed in the house with a unanimous 59 -0 vote kind of surprised me to see how passionately these legislators hated saggy pants.
The one thing I don’t really understand about this bill is what they really plan to change in society with it. It really does not seems like they are going to be accomplishing anything of value with this bill, and it kind of seems like a waste of time for state representatives to be worrying about this kind of stuff rather than more pressing issues. It is not like this bill is going to lower unemployment, or crime rates, or taxes or anything like that; it’s just going to mean you’re going to see a couple of less pairs of boxer shorts per day.
It is interesting to think about how this situation might have been different had the writer and proposer of the bill been white instead of an African American. The fact that a black man wrote the bill is probably the only way this bill got into the system in the first place because I think had a white man wrote the bill there would have been a big outcry of how racist the bill was because a white man would be calling out primarily black youth/young adults because they are pretty much the originators of this style of dress. Regardless of the race of the individual who wrote the bill it’s still pretty ludicrous for someone to come out and tell them that they aren’t allowed to dress the way they want to, it’s not like they were hurting anyone; at the very most they were just making themselves look kind of silly.

I have only ever heard a couple times about schools that had these kinds of security precautions, and I think the only person I have ever met that went to one of these types of school was just like a month ago. I have gone to three different high schools of pretty different areas (a fairly mediocre high school in New Jersey, a pretty big high school in Omaha, Nebraska, and a really big high school in Cumberland County, PA), and the most extensive security out of any of them was the fact that there was a single security guard/ police officer that had a pistol, but when I talked to him the one day he said he has never had to ever even unholster it. And as far as drugs went, my school in Pennsylvania brought drug dogs in every once in a while, and had random drug tests; but the random drug tests really didn’t seem that random as it seemed to single out either star students that they knew would be able to pass, or kids that were blatant drug users and dealers (one might assume they did this to save money because all those random drug tests couldn’t have been cheap).
It just seems really unfair that they have such a difference between how many security measures are administered in more urban area or predominantly attended by minority students schools compared to schools in suburban or more predominantly white communities. Like I said earlier, I have never attended a school in a community / school system that took such extensive precautions, but I can say that I do not think the schools I went to that were much more lax in comparison were nowhere near perfect. I could have pointed out lots of students from any one of the schools I went to that did or sold drugs, I even knew a kid that forgot to put his shotgun back in his gun safe at his house on day so it was just lying in his truck all day and nothing was ever done about any of these things (with the exception of the “random” drug tests). It just seems very biased that put such harsh security measures on students just because of the area they live in. I think that I would personally be very upset if I was just a normal student who wasn’t dealing drugs or doing anything questionable (which I’m sure a lot of students who go to those schools are) and had to go through those pretty racially based securities. If schools want to have metal detectors and police escorts then I think all schools should have to do the same, it is just wrong to basically tell these young students that they are inherently more dangerous just because of the school they go too.

I actually had not really heard about the story of the young black man who was wrongfully followed, chased down, and shot to death by the corrupt officer until Chenjerai told the class about it. The story is such a sad one, but what is sadder to think about is that this is not the first time this sort of thing has happen in our country (or the world for that matter). And the story seems like it has a lot of media coverage right now too; for example I had just read an article online about Obama making public statements about the situation saying it was a “tragedy” and that “if [he] had a son, he would look like Trayvon”, and closed with the statement that “they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves and we are going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened”.
But the question that still remains in the open is the one Chenjerai presented to the class after talking about Trayvon’s story, that question was whether or not the situation would have unfolded differently if it were a black cop shooting a white man instead of the white cop shooting the black man? I personally think that there is no doubt that this would be a much different story had the races of the respective individuals been flipped. It’s terrible that the white cop from the shooting has yet to be arrested and still walks free as if he was never in the wrong; because I am sure that this would not be that if a black cop had wrongfully chased and shot down a white guy, and would no doubt have been arrested by now. But I think the kicker to this story is that I really don’t that that scenario would ever happen; I don’t want to sit here and say that the police are corrupt because there are definitely a lot of police officers who put their lives on the line and do the job the way it’s supposed to be done, but it’s obvious that some cops operate on the assumption that young black men are all criminals and thus seem to act on a “guilty until proven innocent” mind frame, rather than the constitutional “innocent until proven guilty”.
Hopefully this cop faces the consequences he deserves for his actions, but in today’s society people seem to get away with doing heinous things far more often now (like that Casey Anthony case). I’m not sure when (if ever) this kind of crime can be finally done away with , but I think if the cop who did the shooting faces the penalties he deserves it would be a huge step in the right direction. And if this is the case it would still be terribly sad that the life of Trayvon had to be sacrificed for this movement to begin, but it would be even worse if his murderer got away with it scot-free.

It is kind of hard to pick sides when viewing the videos Sam showed us in class. I mean when you view the videos from the perspective Sam wanted us to (that being from the perspective of the Iraqi civilians, and to try and empathize with and understand their situation) it really makes the particular soldiers from the videos seem really evil, and what they are doing seems so unethical. But after hearing what one of the Iraq veterans from class had to say it also makes you looking at the soldiers as just normal people following orders.
The first video this kind of applied to was the video of the soldiers who caught a handful of Iraqi civilians stealing wood and as a consequence the soldiers shot up his car with their pistols and then proceeded to run over the car with their tank (it is later said that the owner of the car was a taxi driver, and his livelihood depended on that vehicle.) And while I think it is important to look at from the perspective of the soldier (as relayed by the veteran) that they are just following orders, and that is what you need to do in the army or else you face consequences yourself; it seems so inhumane to penalize someone for doing everything they can just to survive and keep their family fed. I wonder if the group of soldiers who completely destroyed that Iraqi man’s car would have still gone to such extreme measures (and then sounded so proud of it afterwards) if they were more informed of the situation of the people they were affecting.
The second video of the American soldiers in the Hummer that sent an Iraqi citizen careening off the road (and possibly into an electrical pole head on) by side swiping him off of the highway is much more of a stretch to see both sides of the situation. I can’t really see how anyone would be able to side with the American soldiers in this case because I don’t think anyone would argue that they had no right to endanger that person’s life for no apparent reason, it was a pretty disgusting thing to do. Granted, maybe there was some reason for the soldiers for doing this, but I’m not going to give them the benefit of the doubt in this situation because I can’t think of any good reason for anyone to do this to an innocent person.
As far as the last part of the question goes, I’m not sure there is really too much we can do to help with any of this. Being that we are so far away from the action it’s kind of hard to have an impact on what’s going on; I think the least we can do would be to keep an eye out for people who are blindly prejudiced against the Iraqi people, and who think they are all terrorists and try to get them to look at situation from the perspective of the Iraqis for a second, to hopefully get more people to truly understand what is really happening/has happened.

I thought this topic was kind of interesting right off the bat because there are so many random and ridiculous stereotypes about almost every minority group and white people seemingly go around obliviously thinking that they are not the victims of such thoughts. As a white male I can honestly say that I had never heard the stereotype that Sam mentioned in the blog post video about “many minority groups thinking that white people smell like wet dog when they get wet” (and that the smell is actually very potent). While at one time it is kind of eye opening to find out about this kind of thought process that people of other racial groups have of white people, I found it kind of odd that they manage to keep it so well hidden from the people they think these things about. I feel like when stereotypes are formed based on a minority group it becomes mainstream very quickly, and the people who they are talking about know about it. I wonder if this is not the case with the “white people smell like wet dog” idea because the minority groups who formed it do want the white people to “ruin the joke” (as they undoubtedly do from time to time. I am not sure for what other reasons this stereotype could be unknown to white people for so long; maybe talking about how other races smell right to their face is just too confrontational for people, I can say I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone tell someone of a race that was not their own how they smell differently.
I personally have never run into this stereotype before, but I think if someone of a different race came up to me and told me “white people smell like wet dogs when they are wet” I would not take offense to it, it would actually just sound sort of silly. I would think that white people would have discovered that we smelled like wet dog by now, and if in fact we do it hasn’t really affected us as a group all that much (if at all).
If anything, after finding out about this apparently very well guarded stereotype, now I am just kind of interested in finding out what other similar thoughts exist from the mindset of people of minority groups about white people. This being said, I am not saying I think that the people who hold these thoughts need to come out and tell the world, they have every right to think what they want to think and tell who they want to tell (because white people probably have similar stereotypes about different groups that these groups don’t know about).

The common modern stereotype of all Asian people being intelligent (falling along side the concept of the model minority), may not at first seem too terribly problematic, a lot of people may just look at this stereotype as not being a bad thing because even if it’s not entirely true it still makes the racial group to whom this concept in directed towards look better as a whole. And for the Asian and Asian-American individuals in the country that are very smart and face this stereotype, they might just be able to overlook this “positive” discrimination (because smart people most likely enjoy having their intellect noticed and rewarded). But what happens with the Asian people who do not fit this stereotype? And there are definitely people of Asian descent that don’t necessarily have the mental ability that is seemingly required of their race by people who blindly follow this stereotype. I personally know more than a few people of Asian descent that do not meet the requirement this stereotype asks of them.
This stereotype is kind of unfairly asking the Asian people of average intelligence to live up to something that they just aren’t. It is more or less setting up a specific mold that any Asian individual is forced to live up to, almost prohibiting any Asian person from trying to do something outside of being an intellectual, and that is kind of unfair to everyone from that racial group; to set out a framework for what a person should try to attain solely based on their race is definitely a problem as it is kind of works out to be a form of racism that discriminates Asians from even looking to get into career fields that don’t require a high level of intelligence.
And taking a deeper look at the people who do fit this stereotype one can kind of see that there are some negative effects there too. For an Asian individual who has worked and studied hard all their life to get where they have gotten, and has reached their level of intellect and success as a result of this hard work it would be kind of disheartening to have someone look at your success and attribute it mainly to the fact that you are Asian and neglect the fact that you had to really try your hardest and put a lot of effort into your journey.
This is not the only stereotype that works in these ways, besides the “smart Asian” stereotype there are also the “athletic African American”, or “Italians being good cooks” (and I’m sure there’s still more out there). I think people need to realize that all stereotypes are harmful, and not just the negative stereotypes, but after stereotypes are around in society for so long they get increasingly harder to combat.

When Sam asked the question of why some racial groups seem to dominate the pool of athletes in certain sports I sort of got to thinking about how this trend has seemingly become just an accepted fact, and people don’t seem to question or care about this reality. As big a part that sports play in America (and for the rest of the world for that matter), one would think that more would be done in the study of this phenomenon. There definitely seems to be a certain path that athletes seem to follow depending on their race; white men (primarily Canadian and Eastern European) make up almost the entire National Hockey League (with only 26 active black players, and 7 Asian players in the entire league), the National Basketball Association is primarily made up of black players with a handful of white and Asian players, Baseball is a little more even but still has more white and Hispanic players than anything else, and the National Football League is starting to become more predominantly filled with black athletes.
I feel like it would be ludicrous to come out and say that people of specific racial backgrounds are inherently better at specific sports. It just doesn’t make much sense to me personally to say that African American athletes are genetically built to be able to jump higher, or that white athletes are just straight up better at skating and handling a hockey stick. I think it more or less just comes down to the popularity of sports to different races, because if you grow up really liking a sport and paying a lot of attention to it you will probably be more inclined to play that sport over any others. Take the sport of hockey for example, the sport is dominated by Canadians, and this is more than likely due to the fact that hockey is their national past-time and thus everyone loves it up there. Being that Canada has a lot of white citizens it would only make sense for the sport to be dominated by white athletes. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that only white people are good at the sport, Wayne Simmonds is one of the top scorers on his team, and Jarome Iginla is one of the top scorers in the history of the sport and they are both black hockey players.
There seems to be this sort of discrimination at a deeper level too. Take football for example, why is it that the quarterback and Offensive Lineman position seem to be predominantly white, while the running back position is almost exclusively black? And I’m not exactly sure how to go about answering that particular question. Maybe white athletes just grow up dreaming of being a quarterback and black athletes doing the same for the running back position; or maybe it’s some inherent racism in the system that makes white athletes want to be the leader on the field and have the most important position.

I think Sam’s stories about shamans and even his story about his experience in dealing with one personally was the part of the last lecture that most caught my attention. In modern times it would be so easy to just take a story like the ones about the shamans going into a trance and speaking to the plants and nature, and write it off as pure craziness; people convince themselves too easily into believing that only logical things have any merit in the school like science and medicine. The way I look at it is “if it works, why argue with it”; while going along the more scientific or medical route to solving these sorts of problems have studies and tests to back up what they are doing, I would argue that the success these shamans have with their own personal methods gives a certain amount of credibility to these approaches.
Looking at Sam’s story as a sort of case study one can analyze this further. Having a high ankle sprain is a pretty painful injury to have to endure, and the shaman he went to was able to help Sam relieve the pain this ankle injury was causing using some random lotion he concocted (using a recipe he procured in a trance like state), along with some twisting and massaging of the afflicted ankle. Upon hearing this story the one thing I started wondering was whether or not Sam’s belief in what the shaman was doing as a credible procedure had anything to do with the success of the process. If someone who thought the shaman was a lunatic went to try and get some aid from the shaman as a last resort, would they have had the same experience?
I am not trying to say that I believe the ways in which these shamans find how to heal (and in turn heal) their patients is a better alternative than the studied and proven methods that modern day doctors use, but at the same time I also don’t want to write off what the shamans do as ridiculous.
I think the coolest part of the whole shaman discussion was when Sam talked about how when researchers talked to a bunch of different shamans who practiced this form of medicine and asked them to describe the thing that was guiding them through what they needed to do while they were entranced they all came back with the same response: a double helix figure. I’m not sure how exactly to interpret that, but it is definitely an interesting concept to look at. I don’t even want to venture any guesses as to what it could mean because it’s just so mysterious. As far as the shaman way of medicine goes, I guess it’s easy to be a little skeptical/wary of such unorthodox (unorthodox by today’s standards at least) medical techniques, but from what I’ve heard about the subject it doesn’t sound too sketchy to believe.