I think part of what is happening about how people tend not to follow the commandments sometimes is because of how strict and controlling they might be for a person who is being born with an instinct and a nature for longing to be free. For example the issues of using God’s name in vain, and the other about how people are making the love and respect for God is second to their respect for some other issue or thing that is happening in their lives. As you mentioned: relationship, something they really admire, etc. And sometimes I find myself guilty of believing the person who is more serious about God, are more trustworthy.

Affirmative action had always been something that I admired about America, and I believed it was something that helped maintain the rights of the people in America.
My position regarding affirmative action and whether it should exist in a system or not is based on whether it helps to maintain the maximum attainable fairness or not. Affirmative action should stay since it maintains the right for the people who are most likely to not to get the job or the seat at the college they are applying to, either because of their color and their employer’s racism, or because of other things such as: nepotism, where people may earn a seat at a college or earn a job because of parental interference. This will benefit the non white people because most of the jobs that are in control of other jobs are not occupied by non white people, so it is predictable that white people can have access to jobs and other things such as university seats more than people of other colors.
One other thing I would like to talk about is how nepotism is explained in the Shadowboxing with race. I believe that the issue of nepotism is one of the things that can be cancerous to the dreams of people, especially when I come from a country where not only nepotism exist, but it also extends to who are your cousins, your uncles, your friends, and your last name. As if the people in my country tried to pick anything that can be the criteria of how they can distinguish between people at work, except hard work. This not only happens at work, if you go to a governmental office trying to finish your papers let us say regarding the national ID card, or driver’s license. So long as you know the right people through your father, mother, cousin, nephew, friend, friend of a friend, or share the same last name, you can consider yourself a lucky person who will find getting what he or she wants from the government, in this case it is the driver’s license or the national ID, much easier than the rest, and even if the others see this, there is nothing they can do about it at all. I have seen many severe cases where nepotism have helped people who have barely worked their way to school to earn the best scholarships and land the best jobs and get the best exemptions from the government. I think this can be a negative effect of nepotism, but the cases provided in the book are cases where nepotism played a minor role. Yes I can agree that the money was not 100% earned by them, but what could they do, the factors that helped them were not under their control.

Well there had been many attempts to make English the official language of the United States, but the issue I believe you should consider is that the United States, unlike other countries, is a country of immigrants. People immigrated to this area, and English was brought to this land like Spanish, German, Hebrew and many other languages. And I don’t believe the first generation immigrants who came years before we were born were perfectly fluent in English. They spoke English with heavy accents that were influenced by their native tongues, so I think it must take time for these new people to get used to the language, and instead of criticizing why they do not sound American by their accent, I believe it is better to give them a chance to integrate and feel that the American people are welcoming them, which may ease this transition from their former culture and language to this new one.

All my life, I have never fell for these extreme movements against the media and that we never get to know the truth. I never believed that we are always getting the truth 100% of the time, but I believed that those movements were a little more enthusiastic about it than they should be. That they usually distort and magnify the issue of our misinformation, and I have been gradually starting to question myself and see if I was wrong about what I think about this whole issue. I believe I was wrong, and that I am so extremely misinformed that I may need to spend a lifetime to replace the potentially wrong information with the right ones. I believe what we know about many disciplines and studies are following the agenda of the authors who did not take in consideration how bad it is to serve one’s own interest instead of preserving the truth. So President Andrew Jackson did all these savage crimes, and thought it was the right thing. I thought barbaric crimes were exclusively for Muslims throughout history. I no longer know whom to trust. From one side, I get to hear that the Westerners have committed violent crimes that nobody could ever approve of to access to the resources and land that they are on right now, and the other side tells me my people have always preferred violence and oppression as a way to expand their state. I have been switching teams for a while, condemning each party at a certain time of my life. But now, I do not really know what to think about the whole issue since I really do not know what is true and what is not.
Another point that I found interesting was that when Professor Richards said that businesses control the American policies regarding immigration and who gets in and who does not. I think that businesses not only control the immigration policies, but nearly control all the policies and laws in the United States. What about universal healthcare and how insurance companies made the Republican party a “subsidiary of the insurance industry” as Congressman Anthony Weiner said about them. He also said that he cannot think of a single Republican who is not bought by corporations. I am not trying to dump on Republicans, and I am 100% sure that there are many politicians of other parties who are influenced by corporations, but what I am concerned about is how long will it take until the United States takes control of itself and diminish the power and influence of corporations on the government and the people. Why couldn’t the United States be like Canada or other countries where corporations are not as powerful as they are in the US.

I also think the same thing about how college students want to live in more diverse places than other people like high school graduates. My college experience, so far, allowed me to interact with people of other cultures, religions, and colors, from whom I have learned many things about how simple were the stereotypes we are spoon fed by the media. I also experienced living with people from other nationalities whom I know, if I did not go to college, there was no way I was going to meet someone from their area on the map. College has been a point of transformation for me.

I could not agree more with Professor Richards and his points about how some are asking too much of immigrants when they want them to leave all their culture and all that they used to believe as their values, and adopt the American substitutes, but when they do, those immigrants find a group of people who do not like them. Now, the immigrant, will find himself in limbo, he is speaking a new language, adopting new values, eat and wear differently, and change his entire life, some even change their names, so that they can fit in the new environment they are in, only to find a person who is not going to accept them no matter what because of color, accent, or other reasons.

I do not think that the American values and the beliefs and views that a person must believe in as part of being an American are things that are commonly rejected. I mean who does not want to live in a place where they will be free, where nobody is above the law, and a limited government that is not up in everything the person does. I believe many would dream about living in such place, and that is why it is universal, wherever I have travelled, they would say: “I dream about living in the US or Canada.” For the reasons I have mentioned, and as you discuss their dreams and what they think will happen when they go there, nobody ever mentioned living in the Indian, Nepalese, or Tunisian communities. Nearly everybody I have met who said he is interested in immigrating wanted to integrate and become just like the people who came before him, but the shock and the way they were treated by some people who were there before them made them reconsider. I heard many things like: “Nobody like your own people.” I do not blame them at all, to be honest. I mean do you expect me to completely transform in months to become a person who talks, walks, eats just like you, and while I am still in the process of doing so and as I am trying hard to replace whatever feelings I had for my country and switch my allegiance, as well as force myself to speak the language just like the locals, do things the locals do, even try to become interested in sports the locals are interested in, and while I am still in the process of doing so, I start seeing many people who do not want me, and will alienate me and call me immigrant or other names. They may feel uncomfortable around me and think I am not trustworthy, if this happens, I think it depends on how much the person loves the country he is in now, and how much he loved his dream.

I feel like I can understand what you were saying about not needing to find a group where you belong. Prior to coming to the US, being brown was not really something that I have ever thought about, it is just the color of almost everybody in my home country, so I have not worried about whether I am going to be accepted by other people of other colors like they accept people of their color, or that whether I should worry about finding a group of people of my own color whom I know they would at least accept me for my color, but now as I came to the US, I feel things have changed.

The part where Professor Richards talked about how isolation can lead to a mental illness was the most interesting to me. That is because I have seen several cases of mental illness that I believe happened because of the racial isolation, and how the media and society is structured to glorify one race while dump on the others.
The first case, which was the most interesting, was the case of one of the people I knew back when I was in high school in my original country. That guy was even darker than me, and I know that my color is somewhere between black and white, but it is a little bit lighter than that person’s color, and I do not count myself white because I know that I am not, but that person is not seeing he is not white. He hates black people, he had ignorant stereotypes about people with skin tones darker than his, and these stereotypes get more negative and negative as the person gets darker. He classifies his himself as white because some who try to classify people by “race” for things like the census count Middle Easterners with Caucasians. Well, I know this does not make sense at all, and how come that person believes that he is white, but what makes sense to me is the relation between his hatred towards people who are not white, and his pathetic attempt at trying to be white. I believe that the reason behind both behaviors is insecurity. He is insecure and extremely uncomfortable with his color, while seeing the thing that he wanted but he will never be, and that it being white. This issue had driven the guy so crazy that he once told me he agrees with the Ku Klux Klan. Yes, a dark brown guy saying he thinks what the Ku Klux Klan believe in is right, an organization that believes that his race is lower than the white race, and he still believes they are right. I believe this was because he was blinded by his thoughts that he is white, that he really started living the dream, while forgetting that in real life, he is a brown person. I found his thoughts sick, and I have tried arguing with that person for countless times about his fantasies and his serious hatred, and the hope is lost.
The other thing that is interesting about this isolation is that I noticed, almost every non-American society that I have visited, as I observed the people more and more, I noticed that almost in every society, there are people who are called white, regardless of their color. It is just their skin tone, and those people in many cases are viewed as beautiful, and they are more likely to have more money than others.

Well, first of all I am not white, and I completely agree with you on what you said about the “white guilt.” It is not your fault that some whites back then had slaves, and you were born into a white family, nor it is the black person’s fault that s/he was born to a black family. So this is why I think it is essential that blacks and whites should start from that point, and understand that if everyone will try to settle something that their ancestors did, like the two men who beat a 16-year old boy in Seattle, it will be impossible to move on, and blacks and whites will maintain the status quo, or maybe go back a little, instead of progressing

I am not the type of person who would really care about other people’s thoughts. I think indifference is good sometimes, especially when somebody is expressing their thoughts, and these thoughts are not matching mine. I abhor all kinds of censorship and denying people their freedoms for any excuse whatever it is, but this issue of race supremacy is starting to tick me off. My issue is not with whites only. I do not know much about many cultures, but I believe in almost every culture, there are teachings given to the kids early that tell them that they are born special; hat they are better than some other group, or even worse, they are the best group. Now as I said earlier, I oppose all kinds of censorship and opinion control, but the nonsense of the universal argument that the race of somebody is better than the other is really annoying. I fail to understand what some people see in the color of their eyes. So the album was called: “Prussian Blue.” My question is, what is the big deal? Does this prove they are immune to cancer, or that they can see at night? No, and what is driving me crazy is that other cultures would have a similar attitude towards another unique physical feature, and the same people go to rallies that supports their agenda. I really fail to find excuses for the two girls for not realizing that what they are doing is ignorant. Or why would they claim they are superior over mere physical characteristics that are continuing to get worse and worse in shape as long as you age. What is the difference between a Latino or an Asian and a blond guy? I fail to find any difference other than that the obvious looks that can almost prove they are not white. I cannot understand what makes dividing the people, making enemies, and causing threats to you and others, worth it as long as you “preserve your race.”

I find it funny that I talked solely about the anger I felt when I saw that clip, because I stopped the lecture after the clip was over and wrote about what made me angry, and then as I continued watching the lecture, Professor Richards talks about how anger can be caused by increasing awareness about racism. I have had long, heated discussions with many people: family members, friends, and strangers about the issue of racism. I found myself defending white people on one day, and black people on the other, and on another day I was defending Asians. It is really frustrating when you see that racism not only common in all groups of people, but that it is embedded in the brains of people, and it will be passed on to their successors.