I was definitely not surprised to see that businesses are the ones that shape our immigration policies. If you really think about it, it makes the most sense. It’s just like the chocolate slavery. We still buy and sell diamonds that are from Sierra Leone, if it can keep their business up and running and they can make a profit out of someone else’s labor why not? I’m not going to say that it’s just the people that run businesses that do this, every one of us has a little bit of that guilt regardless of if it’s a level one or a level ten. Don’t believe me? How many of us have taken a class only because one of our friends took it first and probably still has the notes or even exams from that class. They did all the work, and now you have all the answers. Yes it’s less drastic but if you take the extremity out of it, it is the same situation; you are benefitting from someone else’s labor.

So am I surprised? No. Do I think I would do the same if I was in that position? No, but that’s because I am too humane (hence why I am a human development and family studies major and not in business). I believe that one would really have to corrupt enough to know that they could have someone working in their backyard or their kitchen and know that they are barely making enough to buy a slice of bread. Although I’m not illegal, and I never met any illegals until I came to Penn State, but after realizing everything they have to go through just to be a citizen, I would stay illegal my damn self. I used to think, “Well just take the test and become a citizen, it’s not that hard”, but then I did some research and the information they ask of these people are stuff that American’s don’t even know. Why would I care who made the first American flag? To be a better American? But most American’s can’t even answer these questions. Sad part is when people think illegal immigrant they always think Mexicans, but just recently I met a guy that is an immigrant from Jamaica, and he shared his story with me. He’s been in America for eight years not and he’s still not considered a citizen. For a country that was established on immigrants who are we to stop other people from coming in. If an American wants to move to Europe or something like that it would not be as difficult as it would be for a Cambodian, Mexican, or Haitian to come to America if it’s for keeps.

I say that to say this. These people have no other choice but to stay undocumented and get work any which way they can. It’s not fair, but they are determined to achieve the American dream (whatever that maybe), and at the end of the day they will always have more heart and courage than any AMERICAN I know.

I definitely noticed that the story got messed up as a new person told the story but I do not think I noticed the difference in the racial differences in the story until I heard this question. Now looking back on the activity I think I know where the foundation of the whole issue started. It seems as though the black or mixed girl that first listened to the story first started the sugar coating, it was minor but it began with the first reiteration of the story. When she started to tell the story to Bill (oh the irony), she neglected to tell him about the part where the white kids in the story called the Bill from the story a “nigger”. I feel as though that’s where the mix up started because when telling a story people often forget about the minor details of the story and remember the big impact. Example: no one seemed to have forgotten the part where everything ended in a “scuffle”, but no one could get the part where they got into the building together. One kid even forgot to mention it all together and threw that scene in at the end but couldn’t even remember where in the story it belonged. If she would have stated that the N bomb was thrown in the equation, chances are the story would have still gotten messed up because that just how whisper down the lane is; the purpose is to show how rumors are always a misconstrued story of the original (kind of like the bible).

Now I think I know why she neglected to leave out the N word in the first place. I believe that if a black or Spanish kid would have come out of the room first then she would have included the fact that someone said “nigger”, in the story. The N word is more acceptable for people of the black/Hispanic community to say than for anyone else, due to the similarities in their upbringing. Majority of black and Spanish people have grown up in the impoverished neighborhoods therefore they have more in common than most of ethnicities. Now when she seen the white kid come out of the room, she knew that if she told him the story, that there could have been a possibility that he would either have avoided the word, or because they had to say the story the best way they could to the next person as the person before them had said it, he could have said the word himself. And in a class like Soc 119, full of minorities, that could have been a big problem.

All in all, the point definitely was apparent. The story is going to change as every person says it and as the ethnicities differ. Not to say “it’s a black thing, you wouldn’t understand”, but we have different backgrounds, different stories, and different viewpoints.

The video about how Jihad is taking over the world video was definitely had the biggest impact on me. I say that because it scared the Hell out of me. I never thought of Arabs or Muslim people to be evil, or to try and take over the world or anything of that nature, but when I saw that video, not that I looked at them in a whole different light but the thought process that went into that video is what scared me. The fact that someone so extreme would take the time out of their day to make a nine minute long video, is beyond me. I also think that if Sam would not have shown that video, the rest of the class would not have went as smoothly as it did.

There was no way that Sam could have convinced me to see my life as a Arabic woman if he never had shown that video. If he would have shown the extreme Christian Crusaders video without the Jihad video everyone would have thought that Sam had officially lost his mind and not have paid him any mind. This video set the foundation for the entire lecture and Sam had me wrapped around his finger the entire time. I was appalled at the fact that this is the picture that we display of these people, while we carry around “Support Our Troops” ribbons on our car and become over the top patriotic. Where the way they see us is the same as we see them. I already have conspiracy theories based on what the United States has done, thanks to the Zeitgeist the movie, where it takes apart Christianity as a religion and the events on September 11th. With what I had already seen in Zeitgeist and then this lecture I was convinced that things that are going on in this country are completely out of hand and thanks to the media using all the resources they have to pick and choose what they want to show our society is what’s brainwashing this country. Because they knew if they told us the story in its entirety, would we still be supporting our troops?

Another thought I had was we are so quick to say that there is a separation between church and state but the United States is 83% Christian, and the fact that we have bibles printed with army fatigue or the army logo on them is ridiculous. The fact that we are so quick to go over there for oil and turned it into a religious conversion therapy session to make them more civil but making them believe in Christianity? How do we even know that Christianity is the correct religion? Every religion says that they are the right one; they have the right God and no one else. But what if the day we realize that we should have believed in Buddha? Or Hinduism? Or Islam… What if there is no such thing as a God? Between money and religion, are the root of all the problems we have.

The irony of this question is hilarious to me right now because directly after class I went to the mall and bought me a pair of heels and as I stood at the cash register I chuckled to myself as my thought brought me back to class and how I know when I put these shoes on a half hour into them being on my feet, I would hate myself. When I left the store, shoes in hand, and as I walked through the remainder of the mall, I caught myself constantly looking at shoes. Granted they hurt but I love them.

You see, growing up I was a tomboy and when I got to high school I grew out of it. I started wear tighter clothing, started buying more heels and things of that nature. I liked it, and I never questioned my like for it until this very class. Personally I believe the way women dress is a little bit of both what society places on us to believe what we should look like on a Friday night as well as what we know we should feel like. If I do not feel comfortable/attractive in what I’m wearing, chances are I might not even bother leaving my room that night. Now if I wanted to go to a party in a t-shirt, jeans and sneakers and I felt comfortable and attractive enough to go to a party dressed like that, well that’s exactly the way I’ll be going. I simply feel as though society tells us how to dress if we want to get dressed up but that varies in between every woman you ask. Personally I cannot walk out my house naked. What I mean when I say that is I cannot have a lot of skin exposed at the top and a lot of skin exposed of the bottom. If I’m exposing a lot of skin on top I will cover up my legs and vice versa, I do not want men to mistake me as a video girl, who they believe they can degrade and take advantage of, I’ll pass.

My point being that regardless of what you have on, you as a person have to feel comfortable within your own skin. I know many guys that will not leave their place for the night if their shirts aren’t ironed or if they do not have a haircut because that is what society has in place for men. For example, Lil’ Wayne walks around in tight jeans, that before was a feminine thing to do, but now he does it and it’s acceptable for all men to wear tight jeans. Yet we all know that men should not wear tight jeans simply because their testis should not be that confined in the first place. Granted, women go through more pain and more uncomfortable situations but it’s up for you to define if you’re doing it for yourself or because your environment told u to do so. As for me, I do it for myself and no one else.

This question spoke to my heart… what do I think of interracial relationships? I love them! I think they are the most beautiful thing ever. I may be biased only because I love Black men of all shades from caramel to liquorish. But I’m a strong supporter of them. A majority of my past relationships have been with Black men, not saying I will not date anyone else of any other race, but I’m from Philly and a majority of people from Philly are either Black or Hispanic.

With such a love for the Black man you would assume that my parents were accepting of it, but on the contrary, my mother was very open minded and did not care who I dated as long as I was happy. My father on the other hand, was extremely racist, he told me if I ever brought a Black boy home he would kill him and that I had to marry a Puerto Rican man or he would disown me as his daughter. Of course I did not listen because all my friends were Black and a relationship with a Hispanic man let alone a Puerto Rican man never worked out. All of my most serious, long lasting relationships were with a Black man or Jamaican or something of that decent, and luckily for me, I do not speak to my father anymore and haven’t for years, and I continue to date who I want, for whatever race and for whatever background.

When it comes to matters of the heart, I doubt that you can tell yourself to stop loving someone because they are not the same race as you, you could be missing out on your soul mate (if that’s what you believe in) that way. I believe it would be hard for certain people to date outside of their race if they had extremely different backgrounds. For example, it would be hard for me to date a preppy white boy that has never struggled or worked for anything in his life because I've been through Hell and back, but at the same time I could not date a Black guy like that either because it’s not about their race but because we are from different worlds and the chances of it working out would be hard because you would not understand where I’ve been and what I’ve come from.

At the end of the day, I believe that your incompatibility with a person is what should determine if you should date them or not; not their race. People worry too much what their parents would think, what their friends would say, what the neighbors will whisper but at the end of the day if you love the person (or even if they have the potential to make you fall in love with them) then the words people speak are irrelevant.

Although I am far from the darkest girl ever, I really do feel compelled to respond to this question. I've experienced from the outside looking in the battle between light skinned/dark skinned women. Growing up, I always felt like I was not a Latina because in order to be “recognized” as a “real” Puerto Rican, you had to speak Spanish and be dark (because all the people from the island, supposedly), so because I’m very light and do not speak Spanish I was not Rican. As I got older I started to hang with more and more African American people and always found myself surrounded by that community as well as their culture.

I remember the first time I was told about the light vs. dark debate. I had a friend who was dark and in the summer became even darker and her sister was light skinned, and they used to always argue and fight, and although they always had that sisterly love, that did not stop them from throwing derogatory slurs at one another. Things such as, “light bright”, “tar baby”, were some names that they would call each other. When I asked my friend why did this constantly happen she told me that it happens all the time with not only her sister but with all light skinned girls. She said they kind of put their noses up in the air as if they are superior. Then I asked my male black friends who they preferred more, light skinned girls or dark skinned girls? And most of them would prefer the light girl, saying they are more beautiful, more sexy, more exotic, etc., but I have witnessed beautiful women of all shades and I personally find the most beautiful women be the darkest ones, with skin so rich.

Personally, I feel as though most women who experience this do not even know why it has originated, but if they knew that the foundation of their hate comes from the slave woman who was raped by the white owner and with that produced a lighter child. With more and more years of this happening the production of lighter babies were the “privileged” ones, the house slaves, while the dark slaves are stuck out in the field. And although it seems as though that has no prevalence today, it is more influential than we think. This has been passed on to our children and we haven’t intentionally passed that on, hence why these children in the experiment would choose to say the white doll is the nicer/better doll but they identify with the dark doll; the bad doll. We need to shatter this thought of lighter is righter because all it is doing is tearing apart the black community instead of bringing it together and building it to be stronger. If they are tearing each other apart it only makes it okay for the “white man” to do it.

I’m not one hundred percent sure selfish would be the term I would use, I think that it’s not very logical though. People who are poorer tend to have more children and as I watched the video I couldn’t help but wonder why that is, and as I heard that Tammy’s father was dirt poor and she had 21 brother’s and sister’s pissed me off. Why would continue to have kids, whose ass you will have to wipe, when you can’t even afford to wipe your own. I presented this question to my friend in class while the video was still on and she looked at me and said, “I don’t know, maybe she couldn’t afford condoms or an abortion”, but my belief is, if you couldn’t afford condoms how do you expect to care for a child?

According to Dictionary.com, selfish is defined as, “Devoted to caring for oneself; concerned primarily with one’s own interests, benefits, welfare, etc., regardless of others”, and I would believe that if you relate that to those who have many children, they would be considered selfish. But would it still be considered such if they actually did their best to take care of said children? For example, they did not really say if Tammy refused to continue to receive food stamps or if she was discontinued for receiving service. She must have done something right as a mother to have her oldest son to want to aspire to do more with his life, although everything in life would say that he’s wasting his time, and maybe he even knows that he is wasting his time but refuses to give up on his dream. The fact that Tammy got mad when her son tries to be a part of the social class that he’s not in, now that I see to be selfish, instead of understanding where her son is coming from she wants him to acknowledge that he is poor and that he’s not better then everyone? How could he forget? When every time he turns around he’s reminded of the life that he has been placed in because his mother new she was poor but wanted to have kids anyways. He understands that in this society you cannot be lazy and “bummy” and expect to get anywhere, if you ask me, I respect his work ethic.

I guess what I’m trying to say is I do not thing that it is selfish but I do think that it is inconsiderate. She (or any poor person with a lot of kids), clearly did not think everything through enough. Its common sense that when you have sex you carry the risk of getting pregnant and if you have sex without a condom you raise even more of a risk. If you made a mistake of having one child (although no child is a mistake), people do not learn from their experiences. Having more and more kids is defiantly not the solution.

Now anyone who knows me, know that I am far from the average, I love V-day, kind of girl. I honestly hate the day, and refuse to celebrate it. Unlike what many believe, I never had a bad time celebrating it, I've only done so once and it went very well, it just not for me personally. As I read the articles on why Muslims do not celebrate it, I can’t fully agree with their whole ideology (that and I do not know much about the religion itself). What I can say though is I commend them for refusing to contribute to the holiday, it has nice sentiment attached to it but at the end of the day it is pointless to have one designated to day to celebrate love. One should not be instructed when to give love and when to show that you love someone.

As far as their fear for young ones to partake in premarital sex on February 14th, I think that is kind of ridiculous. If young people want to have sex before marriage or not, they are going to do so, religion plays a factor but in this day and day sex has become such a taboo topic, that the more you say how horrible it is to do so, the spark of curiosity only gets increased. Also, if you do not want young people to have sex before marriage and are checking hotel logs, why on Earth are unmarried people even allowed to rent hotel rooms in the first place? All in all, Valentine’s Day does not equal sex, the hormones within teens going through puberty and unable to handle their urges is what makes them have sex.

Now if you believe that it crosses over with Christianity, and conflicts with your beliefs as a Muslim then I would assume that to be acceptable. Because I have been conditioned to look at society having law and religion separate (even though in all actuality all of our laws correspond with Christianity), it is hard for me to understand why it would be against the law for people to celebrate the holiday all together. I’m not advocating for the holiday, but not only lovers or married couples celebrate this “holiday”, but friends use it as a way to show their love and affection between one another, or siblings and parents take it as day to spend special time with their loved ones… Yes, the holiday focuses on primarily couples, but Hallmark was smart in making cards for everyone from anyone. So why should everyone who likes the day because it celebrates love, be punished for wanting to “promote” love?

In the end, I do not think that it violates any Muslim rules, even though I am not that knowledgeable on the religion itself, I think it should be up to the people to decide whether or not it should be banned.

“I think all the violence is worse than all the violence”, is probably one of the realest lines I've ever heard in a song. If you listen to Lupe Fiasco’s Words I've Never Said, in its entirety, you would be speechless (I know I was). I think this line in particular though is saying so much with only eleven words, in the rest of that verse he states how fear is such a weak emotion, and people are simply prisoners in their own head because they are too afraid to say the words they never said.

You see, people are so afraid of what everyone else has to think about them that they never speak. People witness racism on a daily basis but never say anything. People listen to derogatory terms related to homosexuals or women and we laugh it off because they are the “weaker” ones, why would we defend something beneath you? You wouldn’t because if you did, you would be ripped apart by those who think that things like racism, sexism, homophobia, and so many other forms of discrimination are acceptable. So you stay silent, you suffer in silence and you allow your mind to conform around these things that you know are wrong but decide to believe is right.

Now the violence that shows courage; it’s hard to understand because growing up the average household was told that fighting is bad, be the bigger person. But what if the bigger person holding all the smaller people down, holding you down? Then there would be a problem. See the people that choose violence are the ones that go against what is socially acceptable to fight for something they believed in. they are the Malcolm X’s of our time, they are the ones that refuse to sit back and accept the standards that society have in place for us. They are the ones that will tell a little lie and risk being put in jail just so their child can go to a better school.

But think about the people that say nothing, stand for nothing, fight for nothing; well there are the ones that are worse than the violence. At lease the violence had a purpose; at least the violence had the balls to stand up for what they believed in. You know what they say, if you don’t stand for anything you will fall for everything.

Personally, I don’t discriminate again any comedian, I’m a huge comedy fan so if you are funny, you’re funny. The art of comedy, though, is the fact that, one, they are supposed to speak of things that everyone in the audience can relate to. Secondly, if there is a large amount of one group, race, or ethnicity that they relate to they are going to use that to their advantage by talking about their own life stories and making playing off race. For example, Kevin Hart and Katt Williams are very famous black comedians who are known for telling stories about fatherhood and the hood. They do poke fun at other races, for example, Katt Williams is known for directing a portion of his show to the white people in the audience member to get themselves some black friends and pokes fun at the way certain white people act, but he does this playing off not only the stereotypes of white people but the perceptions that black people have about white people. All in all it is simply poking fun, nothing too offensive.

As far as white comedians are concerned, I’ve never had a problem with them, and normally find them just as funny as any black or Spanish comedian, such as Dane Cook, love him! Yet last semester, I attended the Phi Beta Sigma annual comedy show and the very first comedian was white, and within the first few seconds of him being on stage practically everyone in the audience felt uncomfortable. You see, Phi Beta Sigma is a historically black national fraternity; therefore, a very large portion of the audience was minorities. So when you have a white guy performing in a room full of chocolate and tan faces, opening up with racially discriminating and sexually demeaning jokes such as, if you date a Puerto Rican, be prepared to deal with her child wanting you to be that child’s father because their actual father ran off. Or, if you date a black woman, be prepared to deal with her loose vagina (and that is put very nicely compared to the things he actually said). He crossed the line, therefore making him look more racist than funny.

Overall, it isn’t a matter of minorities are allowed to say what they want about who they want and it is acceptable for them and not white comedians, it is more of a matter of knowing your place and saying what is acceptable and appropriate for your audience. If a black or Puerto Rican comedian would have said the things that the comedian at the comedy show would have said, the reaction would have been the same because you stepped out of being funny and went straight to being disrespectful. It goes back to what my mother always said to me growing up as a child, it is not what you say, but how you say it.