7/7/10
Lesson 14 blog response

Before this lesson I thought I knew most if not all of what there is to know about affirmative action in America today. But once again, Sam has a habit of lifting the cover and exposing the real impact of affirmative action on everyone today. I am honestly amazed that only ten percent of people getting jobs, scholarships, admissions, is due to affirmative action. I just thought it was so much more due to my experiences with applying to schools and scholarships myself. I researched so many scholarships through several sights where a vast majority were for x type of minority. But in the grand scheme of things, ten percent makes sense when every job, scholarship, or admission is looked at.
When discussing nepotism and affirmative action, I thought of how sad that exactly zero of 828,000 high school seniors said that they are below average when it came to get along with others. There are definitely some people who fight with everyone in every large group of students in any grade or class. But no one is willing to admit that. Also the survey about how one family conserves water compared to their neighbors amazes me as well. 87% to 97% said that their neighbors could do better to conserve more water. The ego’s of everyone is just absolutely astounding. Then the whole tidbit about how an individual follows the Ten Commandments better than everyone else finished it off. How can people be so self centered? Didn’t all of the Disney movies that we watched as a kid drill the idea that no one is perfect, ever? And that everyone will make mistakes in life. I thought everyone learned that as a kid. I guess it all wears off when we are in high school. This is absolutely mind-boggling. It really shows how we as a society focus on the individual first before everything else. Maybe that’s why when anyone does an act of kindness, it’s so applauded that someone put someone else ahead of himself or herself.
I was also surprised to find out that the main goal of affirmative action was to combat indirect institutional discrimination. I thought it was to give minorities an equal hand when it came to jobs or college admissions. I didn’t really think of the institutional discrimination that often happens without white people even knowing it. In that sense, affirmative action has done a decent job at that.
I was also thankful for Obama’s stance on affirmative action. Obama made a compromise of both sides of affirmative action. Stating that affirmative action should be used within social and economic classes just makes more sense. It makes the main goal easier when it comes to deciding who should get what on whatever criteria.

Definitely, No question about it. Inequalities are apart of out life no matter what. I got my summer job because my brother put in a word for me to the boss. I now work exactly the amount of hours that I want to and make a good wage all because my brother called our boss one day. If it were not for him, I would be working another bad job making a dollar less and working half as much as I wanted to. It really is about who you know. There is an article in the shadowboxing with race book about how most people on the Forbes list admit that they in fact are completely lucky about their fortune, most being of who they knew to get to where they are now. No one will be willing to give up an offer to be apart of a fortune 500 company, there will be no one who will say, well I don't deserve this, I need to find a job where I work harder. It doesn't make sense unless the person is a Buddhist who gives up all pleasures who denies the job offer.

7/4/10
Lesson 13 blog

I feel now we are in the part of class where we really look at the issues of race and ethnicity in the sense of the problems that we face as a nation today. Illegal immigration is probably the biggest issue in America that is touchy because of the race issues that are associated with illegal immigration. Sadly, most people automatically assume that illegal immigrants are only associated with Mexicans and other countries south of the border. It makes sense due to the fact that most people who are entering the country are from south of the border. But when discussing illegal immigration within the united states, we need to be open to the entire issue facing America, this also includes the other illegal immigrants who enter in from the north of the border and on either side of the coast. We do see the immigrants mainly from the south, so naturally we attack the biggest source. But we need to also address the other areas that are apart of illegal immigration to the United States.
I really liked the main point about how Sam addressed the business side of illegal immigration. Bringing together the American value of capitalism into explaining our current illegal immigration reform is perfect for shutting up at least some of the politicians out there who are trying to completely “shut off the facet” of illegal immigration. The truth is that we need them in order to complete the jobs and run the economy that need to be done. We could top immigration completely and hire American citizens who demand higher wages, therefore making the cost of fruit and landscaping and all the other jobs that illegal immigrants tend to take go up. It will be another pear increase of 40 cents per pound. But some politicians believe that getting rid of all the immigrants is the best thing for this nation, even if it will cost millions of dollars to afford to get rid of all the immigrants. Maybe the reason for why president Clinton built a 40-mile long fence was to allow the immigrants to get into the United States but seem like he was preventing the immigration. Much like the war in the Middle East is about “fighting terrorism” rather than acquiring the oil. The government chooses the pros and cons of stopping or not stopping illegal immigration. They pretend to stop it by building a fence and telling the public of all the reform that is happening, when really the border is only covered by a little fence that a lot of people can just walk around if they have the necessary food and water to make it into California or Arizona.

That guy who posted his rampage and the quotes that have followed just go to show the steps that we still need to take to subdue racism in America. He is obviously uneducated about the whole term of illegal immigrants. The comments are also an example of what I think is one of the most obvious forms of racism that anyone can show. And of course the guy doing the video has to be white which shows everyone that all white people are racists. Obviously a lot of us (including American citizens of color) are upset with the illegal immigration issue today. But video posts like this have absolutely no place in the race talks to solving the problem today.

6/30/10 reply

About the LGBT community, the fact that god plays a huge role in deciding if LGBT people are allowed to live their lifestyle annoys me. I feel that the LGBT community will take twice as long if not longer than people of color to reach some form of equality, only because of the religion card that the majority of people play who are against the LGBT community. The bible says that marriage should be between a man and a woman, and people who don't agree with that are going to hell. The idea of going to hell is supposed to scare everyone straight. I think we have moved forward as a world into manipulation people with fear into living their lives. Religion works by scaring people from committing murder, and sadly it does the same for being gay or lesbian. If only we could re-write the bible to be more human rights friendly.

6/30/10
Lesson 12 blog response
Sam’s lectures about multiculturalism and the melting pot/ salad bowl were impressive in the sense that the US is so more different from other countries in the world. Everyone in the US was considered immigrants at one point or another in time in the history of the United States. I’m pretty sure that the United States is the most diverse country in the nation due to the opportunities that the US has today. The US is the cool kid in class that everyone else wants to be apart of. So people of other origins come to the US to be the best in the world. And it makes sense; a lot of immigrants come to the US for a better chance of living the life from the American dream. The only people who are truly non-immigrants are the Native Americans that were here first. And even then we are not sure where they come from. So in the beginning of America there were white colonist from Europe that made the US into what it is today roughly 500 years ago right? So with the advancement of technology and transportation, immigration and growth has exponentially increased in the US. So it will not take 500 years, but rather 50 years for immigrants in the rest of the world to migrate and be larger in numbers than the white people who took have been the majority in the US for so long. I think this is the reason for the feeling that white people get when they see that they will almost be minorities to people of color in the US. It just moves so much faster and we are not used to it. It makes us feel uncomfortable about being knocked off the biggest group list. That is the American way sometimes. The bigger the better, like the natural selection theory by Darwin. So I wished Sam did a better job at explaining why white people might have that feeling. That is the best that I can come up with according to my experiences and thoughts.
Also, I think most people are confused by the whole idea of a salad bowl and a melting pot. I generally hear the media state that the US is a big melting pot with all sorts of cultures interacting. This is true, but I think most people should think of a salad bowl of uneven proportions. As of now the white people are the lettuce, and the different minority groups are the add-ins, like walnuts, chicken, tomatoes, dressing. This way se can see how white people compare to the rest of the people of color either with respect to one group of color people or as all of people of color by not seeing the lettuce.

Lesson 10 reply

I think the main reason to why people of color go through the first stage so fast is because they can see the difference from the way of life that is shaped for the white race. An extreme example I think is the civil rights movement. Like the colored people had to go to the back of the bus or they had to use a different drinking fountain, different schools and so on. They realize that they are being treated differently than their white citizens because of their skin color. Which I guess leads them to realize that, "hey I'm black/brown/yellow". I think people of color realize they are colored faster is because of the world that the white majority set up for everyone.

6/23/10 Lesson 10
It is amazing to me to compare how white people realize their stance in society is so different than that of color people. I really like the analogy of the fish and the two-legged amphibians to describe how white people and color people interact in their worlds. The white people are always involved with the their upper hand world while having no experience of living in a white world as a minority. The people of color have to adjust their lives to fit in the white stream America while also accomplishing the task of living in their own world of their own race and it’s entails. Each minority group has to deal with making sacrifices to live in main stream white America to get a chance to strive in. They have to juggle dealing with both societies, which can be stressful. The video Sam showed us of the black girls who talk about how they or their families adjust to fit in the white society really connects with this fish and frog analogy. The main point after seeing this clip was, who is the group that is forcing the black people to try and be whiter to fit in? Or are all white people sub consciously forcing white people to be like them.
Another thing I thought interesting was when on the racial identity steps, when white people and color people split their ways on their respective paths for racial identity. The immersion for color people is obviously very different than the revisioning stage of white people. It is safe to say that this split is caused by the fact that white people are in control of everything that the people of color encounter. While most people of color realize that there is now a difference between them and the white people, I found it interesting that a particular group of color will become uninterested in a group of another group of color. I think if we want peace between whites and colors, we need to take that extra step and understand other people of color asap. It might come in a later stage, but I think we as a society will be on a faster track if we all took the time to realize the other “thems” in this situation.
The last thing that I found very interesting in this class is how our white run society has sub consciously made black people the bad group. I am of course referring to the white and black doll experiment performed on a group of black six and seven year olds. This is very shocking to see that in the pre-awakening stage of racial identity, the white mainstream has already manipulated a lot of the black population that they are the bad kind. This is most likely on if the big sources for hatred of color people, when they finally come out of the first stages of racial identity, they see how the white population as slowly continued to take over.

I took Sam's soc 001 class last spring and we actually watched a documentary about the twins and their band Prussian blue. It was interesting to see how the freedom of speech in the United States gives the parents the opportunity to raise their kids however they feel necessary. In the rest of the documentary, the audience later finds out that the mother of the girls "the father is not in the picture" was sexually assaulted by a black man when she was a girl. The mothers personal experience is probably the driving force to her promoting the white race as much as possible and using her daughters to do so. The girls actually confess that they don't want to sing about their mothers harsh views anymore and eventually push her out of making the decisions for the girls lives. As for the commercial, I think it was meant to show the audience that the audience will always point out the difference between white and black no matter if it is on the street or in a furniture commercial.

06/18/10
As lesson nine continued with explaining how white people live in this racially stressed, I have begun to see how I am involved with more than one stage (of the four we have discussed) at a time. Sam has shown how complex every different racial situation we encounter is. It is nearly impossible to tell what level someone may be in at any given time. It is nowhere near being black and white. I think taking this first step to understand that every person can be any different stage in racial awakening is vital to improving the race relations in the US now.
The one thing that I thought was interesting was when Sam discussed how white people are taught to be colorblind to improve race relations between every race. I was under the impression that this was a fantastic idea. If we truly threw race out the door entirely, it would be easier to treat everyone with equality. But the matter of the fact is that race is apart of everyone and ignoring that just prolongs the healing of racial relations until later. We take this class so we can embrace race and then go forth and attempt to heal what is wrong about race relations today. If everyone tries to be color blind in society. We are really being like the white people who don’t try to say anything that might offend someone. It’s all about prolonging the discussions that we need to have.
After hearing about the fist four stages that a white person may be in, I can say that I have been at least one point in time in any one of them. There were different experiences in life that led me to feel one of the four stages that Sam has discussed thus far. There are sometimes where I just don’t know what to say about meeting someone of a new race that I have never encountered but was curious to know. There are also times where I just get fed up with people of race who constantly blame any white person for their struggles in America. I just wish everyone were more educated about how to confront the racial issues that we face today. People are often too quick to make judgments about race and keep them there until they have an experience that they take amongst themselves that will change their first initial judgment.
The last thing that I have about this lecture is about white guilt. Because of our American values that tell us the power of guilt, white people feel guilty about being the better race when they consider them selves not racist in the first place. I agree with Sam on this point. We are forced into feeling guilty for something most of the white people didn’t cause. It’s just a natural feeling that occurs due to the way that we were raised as Americans; it’s just another issue that we need to discuss.