Watching the videos of the United States soldiers was incredibly eye opening for me, similar to some of the other nuances brought up in class. I think watching the videos that Sam played certainly gave me an added value of empathy towards the whole situation over seas. I can honestly say I have as close to a feeling of how they feel, without actually knowing how they feel, as a person who lives where the war is being held.
Empathy is probably the most critical thing I have obtained from this lecture. When people in America think of Muslims, most people jump to the conclusion or image of terrorists. This is almost natural for people in America, because that is the interaction we have had with Islam. In recitation class, we were asked what we thought of when we heard the world Muslim. Words like Islam, Koran, Osama Bin Laden, Allah, Terrorist, and on and on, were thrown out there. The problem is, this is what we all know, instead of knowing other important things. Family, Culture, things that we appreciate here in America are of value to Muslims as well. The problem is that we do not see this side of their life, similar to the way they do not see that part of ours.
After the videos, I realized that the regular Muslim guy is just like the regular American guy. We aren’t educated enough in the fact that we are almost exactly the same, barring a few religious and cultural differences. When a Muslim guy thinks of American people, he would think of Christian Invaders, which is almost our form of a terrorist. I hate that this is the way it is. We think of Muslims who we interact with –sort of- so we think of Muslims blowing things up. Muslims thinks of Americans they interact with, and they think of United States Soldiers holding weapons and taking the oil that is already theirs. With a little bit of empathy, it is easy to see that our two civilizations are not much different concerning this issue. The pictures of the two families, the cities, and everything showed almost complete parallelism between our two cultures, of course the difference greatly being religion.
So yes, the videos in class were hard for me to watch. This is because I know the hatred that I once, and many others still have, of Muslims for the sole fact that they caused a lot of turmoil for our country. Watching the videos showed me they feel the same way, due to actions from some of our soldiers. I am not jumping to any extremes, but merely saying I believe an average American Guy, and an average Muslim Guy, likely have the same twisted views of each other.

I am driving in the car this morning with my father, and he basically posed this exact question. What if Sandusky had sexual relations with girls on campus? What if these girls weren’t minors? There are so many things that would have been “better” than what he did. The sad part is that we cannot change what he did.
If Sandusky would have been raping little girls, I still think it would have been just as wrong as if he did what he had done now. Little girls have no way of protecting themselves, just like the little boys. The fact that he met these little boys through the football camps is one thing, but he had the opportunity to potentially meet people of the opposite sex through his foundation. He chose that he liked boys which is disgusting, as would have been little girls.
What if it were student girls? I think the things would have changed, especially if these girls were over 21. He would still look like a disgusting creep, but at lease it was legal. The only thing in question would be this guy’s tastes and judgments.
What if the person who found out about this was a girl? I think this changes the scenario so much. If it were never McQueery, but rather a girl, the cops would have been called right away, and to an endless pursuit. I am not knocking what he did, but I think that girls are more passionate about the victims in this situation than the men are. I think most male students are concerned with Joe Paterno, but also with the victims, where as the girls are totally focused on the victims.
What if Sandusky were a girl taking advantage of little boys? Of course, the scenarios would be changed a lot, but still I think the reaction would be remotely similar. The fact that Sandusky raped people who were minors and not able to defend themselves is terrible.
This issue has been beaten to death, and it is very hard to talk about it. After thanksgiving dinner with the family, I have heard way to much about this issue that it makes me sick. I am not saying that I am embarrassed by my school, because I will forever be proud of Penn State, but it is rare that someone will have the same opinion as you when there are so many conflicting issues and circumstances. We can talk about the “what if Sandusky was this” or “what is a girl found this” all we want, but we wont accomplish anything, because what happened, unfortunately happened. It is sad, but we can hope that Penn State will come through with pride and integrity and put this behind us.

Today and yesterday have been a gloomy day in the happiest of valleys. It is hard to live here without hearing of any parts of the travesty we are encountering. In an email to an old teacher that I sent last night, I can accurately explain how I am feeling, and how this occurrence has affected me. “I know it's late right now but I figured you might be up watching ESPN or every other news channel out there. It has been probably the saddest day in State College, ever. Wanted to hear your take on all this, and how you felt about the riot tonight. I will say that I attended, but left as soon as it went past a "peaceful gathering". Of course I am saddened by the fact that our beloved coach is fired on this note after all he has done for this university, but I am embarrassed as well by the actions of my fellow students tonight. Joe Pa will be missed, but was firing him in this way fair or right? Weird day in the valley today...”
This negativity has affected me a lot. As a person who thinks that Joe Paterno should not have been fired, seeing everyone else’s reactions either fuel the fire or aid me in knowing people agree with me. Not only does this negativity of the situation affect me, but the entire out come affects me in my life.
I would like to become a teacher one day, and on top of that and until then, I work at an over night camp. If I were, as a camp counselor, to come across a boy getting inappropriately touched, I would go to the camp owner right away. Does this put me at fault for not calling the police? I don’t think it is mine, or Joe Pa’s, job to get the person fired or arrested, but the person with more power, like Curley or my camp owner. Curley was involved with campus police, this should have been taken care of. Back to the point, this affects me because there is really no correct thing to do upon walking into this type of issue. As a teacher, do I go to the principle or someone higher up in the district, or do I go right to the police as one of the many teachers, without even investigating it? There is really no right answer.
It was a tough day today in the valley, and I hope that the negativity can turn itself around. Hopefully we have a strong turnout to the football game, as well as the candlelight ceremony on Friday night. Together as the student body, we will be able to get back to the University that Joe Paterno created for us.

If I were a store owner, a land owner, or any single position that would require to me to hire people to work for me, I really don’t know what I would do for hiring illegal immigrants. I know that these blogs usually want a specific answer, but this is not something that is really on my radar at the moment. I hope to one day have it on my radar as a potential store owner or company owner, and at that point I will decide what I will do. For now, though, I will list my decision making factors for what I would potentially do.
To follow will be the factors that would drive me to hire an illegal immigrant. It would make me money. By hiring an illegal immigrant, I would be able to pay them below minimum wage to do work that could literally be anything. I could tell them to do anything and everything and they would do it. I guess this is the same thing that any worker could potentially do, but the fact of the matter is I could save money or pay for me workers. Unfortunately, while writing this I have answered my own question.
Hiring an illegal immigrant is probably really stupid. Yes, you can get cheap labor at whatever cost you want, as well as with whatever hours you want. This might be one of the only benefits, but the risks definitely don’t out weigh the gains. This might just be my opinion. Think about it; hiring an illegal immigrant puts the owner at risk for getting caught with an illegal worker. This is something I would not want to have to worry about every day at work. This could risk the company, or put myself as the boss in a lot of trouble. On top of this huge risk, I do not know how I would feel about paying someone below minimum to do hard work. I used to work for a catering company and doing any type of laborious work is really hard. I would be upset if I wasn’t making minimum wage. With that, if I was not getting paid well enough for the work I was doing (I was),I would just quit because I have the luxury to do that. Illegal immigrants need these jobs so they can pay for their lifestyle. I do not discriminate against illegal immigrants, but another huge point in my mind kind of deals with the fact that I don’t know anything about the people trying to work in my company. Wouldn’t I rather disperse my money to people who I actually know? Just a thought. I’m sure one day, this may be a tough issue for people I work with and I.

Giving land to indigenous people is a tricky subject. The survey questions we did in class were pretty difficult. If I am a house owner and an indigenous person nocks on my door and says this was my land give it back to me, I really don’t know what I would do in that situation. If I had to take a stab at it, I would probably be hesitant to give anything back, especially since I would have paid for my land. It is not like I personally stole the land from this person. It would be a long line of events that lead to this situation. For this, I basically believe that we should not be giving land back to indigenous people, but rather help them to build up land for themselves. It is a tricky situations, obviously, but there is really no way in telling what the correct answer might be. Simply based off of the fact that I personally did not steal these peoples land, I do not think that I should be giving anything back to anyone. If I stole some persons watch (which I would never do), and they confronted me and said to give the watch back, I would give it back. This is because I would have stolen the watch on my own. If my great grandfather stole some guys watch and then his great grandson comes to me and says give me back the watch, I would probably tell him no. I know that this might be mean, but I was given the watch. It can kind of go the same way when it comes to dealing with peoples land. If my great grandfather kicked your great grandfather out of land, it is not exactly my fault. What am I to do in that situation? Do I just tell this guy, “here, take my house and my yard”? Wouldn’t it be better to tell this man “I know that is a possibility, but I am not giving up my land. Let me help you get set up in another place.” This definitely seems like a simpler and easier way to figure out this tough situation. I do not really know where we can send all of these people, which is another interesting portion of the topic. I do not think it is right to send them all to one place together, because is that not like a segregation type of thing? I think these people, if the situation were to arise, should be placed intermittently throughout townships. Maybe we could provide them with enough money to get their feet wet, we being the United States Government. It is tricky though, which I think is my big point that I am making. There is likely not a correct answer.

When people hang out with a group of people whose race is primarily not their own, I do not think it means that they are a poser. There are a few examples as to why this could be seen in such ways. If a solitary white guy hangs out with a group of black guys, people would think he might want to be black or think he is black. This is not true in many senses. He might just feel more comfortable with this group, or he could be a good friend with some of them. Just because he is hanging out with them doesn’t mean he is posing to be them. In any scenario of races, sexualities, genders, whatever, a minority is not really a poser. A poser is someone who dresses like someone else and acts like them, takes their beliefs, just because they want to be like them when they really are not. This can be seen, of course, in a group of people with one solitary person who isn’t of the same race as them, but it doesn’t limit the word poser to these scenarios.
The word “wigger” was prominent in high school. These were white kids who acted black. Its obviously very inappropriate. People were obsessed with this, for some it was a compliment and for some it was an insult. Kids would dress like they usually would not and this lead to the derivative of the word. Baggy pants down below the kids ass, all white shoes, on and on. This was posing, especially because there was only one black kid in my school. I don’t really get what these people were trying to prove or who they were trying to pose or really impress, but they kind of just looked stupid.
With this example, we can also relate back to just the shear idea of a white guy hanging out with a group of black guys. If he dresses like them, it might be because he is a poser, but it could also be because that’s how he was brought up. There are always extenuating circumstances in scenarios like this. I don’t really think there are many extenuating circumstances that hold enough significance in the “wigger” scenario.
When one girl hangs out with a group of guys, does it mean she wants to be a guy, or is posing as a guy. No! This is the same as a race scenario. Just because one person of color hangs out with a group of white people or a white guy hangs with a group of black people doesn’t mean they are posers. They could be friends, have grown up together, or a million other things, but they aren’t always posers.

After the class that dealt with the racial identity stages, I have come to believe that America is stuck in stage two; meaning millions of people just like that dude in the weird hat. When put in awkward confrontations dealing race, they don’t know what to do or what to say. Exactly like what happened in class where Sam asked the kid to describe the girl he picked out. “The black girl with the thing on her head” is obviously not the right answer but because this kid, similar to many other Americans, was put on the spot, he buckles and blurted out the wrong thing.
America is stuck on stage two, 100%. We see this kind of thing on the news, in newspapers, and on the street. Nobody who is white really knows what black people want to be called because everyone is different, so people jump to generalizations ranging from black, African American, negro, whatever the case may be. But still, Americans act awkward in these situations. We see it everyday when people are trying to tell a story that involves someone who wasn’t like them. The “person from Mexico” or “the Spanish guy” or “the Hispanic man” are all jumbled up in someone’s head and it is awkward until he blurts one out.
How does America get past this? Sam told us plain and simple. Jump in. If we engage or try and find out what certain people want to be called we wont have this issue. We all felt extremely awkward for this kid in the weird hat during class because every time Sam put him on the spot he would go “well I don’t want to offend anyone but…”. Regardless of what you may say, there is a chance someone will get offended either way. If you act like your nervous about what you may say, there is an even bigger chance you will offend someone, so you might as well do yourself a favor and act as if everything is normal, because by making it awkward, you actually just make it awkward. Just like how Sam acted normal helping his friend go to the bathroom, we should act normal when discussing race.
If you haven’t caught my drift yet, America is clearly stuck in phase two. I have no idea what phase I am, but it is obvious to me that when I observe every day life outside my personal bubble, I see many people who try to be politically correct and this makes them unsure of what comes next. If we can all just jump in, then there wont be any more room for political correctness because all this thinking about what to say only hints at the idea of possibly being racist, when you could rather not give yourself that option at all.

My parents always ask me this question. Why do the girls run around your frat house wearing nothing, but its cool for you to wear jeans and a t-shirt? Sorry mom, and sorry to the two girls who raised this question, but the answer is obvious. I’m going to continue to wear jeans and a solid t-shirt every single night that I go out at Penn State because that is what dudes wear. Girls have their own dress code, and although it may seem so, this is not because of any man-centered universe.
Let me paint a little picture for you. There are forty guys my age who live in my house, and from Thursday to Saturday, we have girls come over at night, just like the rest of the Penn State world. All of us wear essentially the same thing: jeans and a t-shirt or button down. Girls come over, and they too wear essentially the same thing: tight dresses or short skirt things (I’m a guy, I don’t know what girl clothes are actually called). But why do the guys get to wear comfortable clothes that keep them warm and the girls don’t? If I had a dollar for every time my mom asked me this. The reason girls wear that is because it makes them look good! Girls love to look good, so it makes perfect sense that they wear these clothes. Guys, on the other hand, wear what makes us look best, which is jeans and some sort of shirt. If I wore a tight pair of pants that barely covered my ass, I’d look like an idiot. Girls look good when they show off some skin, and guys simply don’t. You don’t want to see my legs walking around all night, but to the 30 girls who come over, all of us DO want to see your legs walking around all night.
On this note, guys never said or set this dress code. I think it was set more by the girls. Girls could easily come over wearing jeans and a shirt, but they choose not to. I strongly believe this is because girls know they look good in their tight outfits, and they want to look good when they come out. Who doesn’t? I wouldn’t wear a shirt that made me look bad. Who would?
To come to a general consensus, girls and guys wear different things out when they go out at night. Some may say girls sacrifice their comfort, but if I wanted to be comfortable I would be wearing sweat pants. Just saying. To the girls who feel they sacrifice their comfort so they can wear short skirts and high heels, I will speak on behalf of the men at Penn State. Thank you.

When asked ‘Does race affect my view of criminals?’ I didn’t really understand the question. After much further thought, I realized that this question is blatantly a stereotypical type of thing. This question is basically asking me, what do I think when I see a black person getting arrested, or, what do I think about when I hear a white guy just got out of jail? To keep it simple, I will stick to talking about whites and blacks just for comparisons sake. I, personally, do not think that race defines anything about criminals, but stereotypes certainly shape peoples views of why people of certain race are criminals.
When your walking out of a supermarket, or a shopping center, mall, whatever, and you see a black man getting arrested, cuffs and all, you are led to believe one thing. This is stereotypical of the black race, and of course, its not always true. The assumption would be to say that this man was caught stealing. When your walking your dog down the street and you see cops coming outside of a big house with a white guy in handcuffs, his kids standing at the front door, what are you to assume? Guessing would likely lend him to something like identity theft, or some other elaborate crime involving drugs or numbers or something. In my personal experiences with a black friend, and a white father I know, these crimes line up. By buddy Tim James, a black friend I played soccer with, got arrested for stealing something from a local store. A father in my neighborhood was arrested for illegally proscribing drugs because he is a pharmacist. Another father in my town was arrested for selling oxy cotton, and another for identity theft.
Race does not affect my view of criminals, but I can certainly see why it would or could. Black people are stereotyped into people who steal stuff, but I know a ton of kids who are white who steal shit. I don’t think it is fair to let race affect your view of criminals, because if I were to walk into a jail and see two guys sitting there, regardless of there race, I still don’t know what they did to get into jail. Some people can assume, of course, but I don’t like to do that because it only leads to bad thoughts, ones that are racist and stereotypical.
This is a very good question to ask because I am really confident that other people feel the same way as me, and that there are other people who would see a black guy in jail and say ‘oh that guy probably stole something’. All people get convicted of crimes if they perform them, regardless of their race. You cant know what happened unless you actually know.

When reading about the Haiti project that Sam had started, I was very intrigued at first. This feeling first came to a feeling of disapproval. I read the information and watched a few of the videos, and thought it was weird that the efforts weren’t going to schoolings or for more important things in the civilization than clothing makers and bag makers. I understand the motive behind it now, but at first I just never thought it was a good idea. Why would putting the hard efforts into random entrepreneurs do anything remotely good for the civilization? I now realize that it certainly would.
In my eyes, at least the eyes that original read the world in conversation site, putting an effort towards schooling and building up the poor areas of town would have been a better idea. This way, the Haitian people could come up in a less impoverished area with a better idea of what it takes to be successful. I then realized, this would only work in a more American area. In Haiti, this will not work. The people who are going to make it are those who are entrepreneurs. The Haiti project is not your regular project but rather one that funds those who aren’t exactly the ones you would think, and that is a pretty cool and different project if you ask me.
I watched the video or Clorene Blaise, a Haitian clothing manufacturer. This lady would buy used jeans and turn them into cool little bags with little designs on them. She is doing okay, but would be better off, of course, if she had a good income of goods or a place to work that would be more efficient. I at first thought that funding Clorene would be a stupid idea because her little business will have no benefits to anyone but herself. This is wrong, obviously. After learning in class about the rice scenario, I learned that by funding local entrepreneurs the Haitian economy could prosper. Before the USA fled Haiti with rice, most people were able to afford it because it was made on Haitian soil. Now, we send rice and a good amount of people cannot afford it, and all this does is increase poverty and starve more people. If the USA stayed out, they might have had a better economy, and cheap enough rice to feed more people than it currently does. By fueling Clorene’s little bag business, she might be able to benefit the economy by getting money circulated and also by producing a material that people will want to buy or even need for every day life. The Haitian project is not your normal relief thing, but it is definitely going to help.