I to was awakened to my own bias in the world of affirmative action. I just always assumed rather than took the time to become educated on the subject. White women being the number one beneficiaries of affirmative action would never have been my guess. As most people I am sure who know little on the subject would have guess people of another race, but as the white man always does, we protect our interests. Even when people believe there is no beneficial way white people are benefiting from affirmative action we raise the curtains and show you other wise.

Lecture 14 July 9, 2010

Before the beginning of this class I would probably have been on the other side of affirmative action than I am now. I considered affirmative action to be an outdated practice that started to lost its effectiveness and merely now was placing unqualified people in jobs based on race or sex. This is to fault of my own and to millions upon millions of people in this country. We are all so quick to decide where we stand on issues with little knowledge in the subject. Without the data and Dr. Richards insight to current problems we still face with discrimination I am sure my opinion would have remained the same. It is impossible to argue with the facts that were presented in class to come to the conclusion that discrimination is not a big problem in the workforce anymore. It, in my opinion, is morally unjust for me to have such a substantial advantage over an individual based on the color of my skin or my sex. However, this is the world we live in, constantly surrounded by injustice. Also, as many others I am sure, believed affirmative action came with quotas and through this class I learned that this is not only not true but also illegal. I believe the ability for humans to come to conclusions so quickly on a subject without doing proper research and “wrestling of the mind” is a major problem we all should concern ourselves with. We see it everyday and is only becoming more outlandish as we see our media and others associated becoming more biased and taking words out of context or blatantly lying to form their objective. For example, the death panel issue brought to the table over healthcare. Millions of people were concerned over this issue believing this meant euthanasia. How misguided could one be? How do they believe something like this would be possible in America. People generally do not want to hear the truth, they want to hear the “truth” that already supports what they believe. This also goes into the completely biased patriot of this country. How many times do you hear when you question or condemn the actions of the United States you are greeted with the response, “ if you don’t like this country you can get out.” People are quick to come to anger over this subject by why? To believe the United States is this nurturing, always does what’s right body is a misguided ideal at best. The United States is responsible for a lot of suffering in this world, this does not mean that we also don’t do good for people but to believe we don’t create a lot of sadness is completely biased. And to question this and condemn it is not wrong, in my opinion it is far from that. It is the morally and ethical thing to do because we can not throw a blind eye to the destruction we bring to this world.

That was a great example of the word escape goat. Americans constantly want to find an easy solution to their problem and who better to blame it on than illegal immigrants. When is anything really this simple especially when dealing with such complexities as the American economy. Dr. Richards said it perfectly of why there is being nothing done is because business does not want it to happen. People will have different opinions on this whether it is a good thing or bad thing but it is our free market system. People need to stop focusing on lower levels of the totem pole when they have problems and go to the source at the top, because if we know anything in America we know the top control the bottom.

Lesson 13 July 4

In my opinion this is one of the major aspects that people over look that pertains to everything in politics. Everybody wants to separate themselves into this group or that group showing why they are different or “better“ than the other people who believe differently than them. As we do in so much in our society today and through history. Racism comes from this mind set, pointing out reasons why they are less. Hitler took this ideology to heart and so many before and after did as well. But our major problem we face today is not democratic ideals or republican ideals it is the power of the corporation, money is power. Current issue of this is how people can not understand why little has been done with banking regulations to take away the possibility of another banking meltdown. It is the same reason as Dr. Richards says with immigration. The powers that be and the free market do not want this to happen. Putting this limitations on what they can and can not do will hinder their ability to make money. Now this is not the same as immigration because as was said in the lecture we do need illegal immigration if we chose to continue with the same way our lives operate. To keep prices low, like Wal-mart, practices like these must take place. However, I think most of us can be in agreement that bank regulations today do drastically need changed. Immigration tends to benefit everybody, but our current banking laws seem to benefit the wealthy and cause the middle class to become further extinct. All that needs to be looked upon is the continuous gap between average American wage and the wage of the wealthy. I laugh every time I see someone on a talk show stating that them possessing all this wealth does not make other people poorer. How could it not? There is only a set amount of monetary value out their for everyone and you possessing an astronomical amount causes me to have less. Now I am not saying they need to give up their wealth, and I am not spread the wealth around and make everyone even. All I am saying is some power needs to come back to the middle class, and the money needs to spread out a little bit. Regulations need to be included to not allow such free will to find every way around any limitation. At the end of the day in my opinion politicians are generally not the voice of the people anymore, they are the voice of the corporations. They allow just enough limitations and other things to keep us from uprising, but in the end they possess the money so they possess the power. The main reason is the cost of running for politics. Millions of dollars are spent on campaigns and that type of money can but a lot of corruption.

Yes, we as Americans need to come to terms with the fact that we will no longer be the dominant super power of the world. As Dr. Richards said who cares, how will it really effect our lives. Do we receive a trophy every year for being number one or something? Our lives will still be our lives and we still will have to do what is necessary to improve them. We should be more focused on how to make the entire world a better place than countries competing to be on top of the mountain. The world is not the same it used to be since the development of such sophisticated weaponry. Large highly militarized nations know the checks and balances of what would be the consequences of starting a WW3.

LECTURE 12 JUNE 29, 2010

A classic thing that is always said is people are homophobic because they are scared of possibly being gay and the one statistic of homophobes becoming aroused 80% of the time was hilarious. I have always had trouble understanding why people find such a problem with gay relationships. It’s the constant question I ask them why do you care, how is this affecting your life. As Dr. Richards said most of the scrutiny comes from religious reasons but that still does not explain it for me. Cause as everybody knows very few people have ever followed the ten commandments but somehow they are saving people from hell when it comes to gay marriage or gay relationships. Even if by doing this they will be condemned to hell, why is it religious peoples responsibility to take up the duty of making of assuring their spot in heaven. In my own personal opinion I think the religious reason is a nice cover but I believe it comes from the same area as racism. People dislike and fear what is different from them. I mean you see it in other areas were religious people intervene and try to change your mind on what the bible says you are doing wrong but it is not seen anywhere else like in the gay community. Coming to terms with being gay must be a tremendous and emotional ordeal to go through. An individuals safety, family, friends, job, etc., can all be at risk with this simple realization that you happen to be attracted to the same sex. And being gay is not a choice, as Dr. Richards said who would openly want be exposed to the danger and scrutiny of being homosexual. Homosexuals are just trying to be happy, no different than any heterosexual person. We are all searching for the extra special thing in this life to give it meaning and purpose, but there are to many people in this world that have a problem with that if you do not go about it the way in which they feel you should be going about it. For such a multicultural nation there is still much hate and ignorance towards other beliefs and mainly other peoples choices of what makes them truly happy. With being exposed to different types of people and beliefs that very few countries can offer one would think we would be much more diverse but in actuality we still have a considerable amount of gain to me made in this area. Also, I don’t understand the philosophy of allowing gay people to have a union but not to be able to call it marriage. Marriage has lost it’s sacred value. As a lot of things western culture came in and took the sacred out of it. People should get married if they want to, no matter what sex, just don’t use the sacred part as your reason.

Lesson 10 June 22, 2010

I also found the video of the black girls playing with the white dolls disturbing and finding the own doll that resembled them as, “the bad doll”. This just shows how big of an issue race is. At such an early age these little black girls are seeing their skin color as the bad skin color. How does this happen at such an early age? This no doubt also helps to create extremist as we saw in the video. People will be angry at white people for feeling ashamed of their appearance or culture and once they hit the awakening stage possibly could choose extremism.

Lesson 10 June 23, 2010

The data that keeps be represented to establish backing to Dr. Richards arguments continue to blow my mind. Who would have ever thought something as popularity is something people of different minorities have to face on a complex basis. It is kind of like an individual has to decide whether he would like to be popular or lack in the social department but do much better in academia. Popularity or academics would be a very tough decision considering the age that generally this decision would have to be made on. At that age who really does not want to be popular? Also, at this age the big picture is rarely in any adolescents mind. When your 12 or a little older or younger how can someone be expected to make such a large decision when it’s virtually unimaginable to place yourself at say 35 years old. In this stage of someone’s life reality isn’t actuality, you are still experiencing a childhood. I don’t really know what to do about this but I think most people can agree something needs done with the mindset of minority youth. Somewhere along the line a campaign needs to be made to start expressing on an aggressive basis how important an education is to your future. As Dr. Richards said I am sure some young minorities look at it as conforming to a white man’s world but it should not be looked in that way. It is basically conforming to humanity. How do we keep advancing humanity is by continuous education and research. Life is not set up in a way that somebody can do whatever they want. Tough decisions are always going to happen and I believe that taking the route of securing a better future is worth somebody being ignorant and saying you are conforming to white society.

The videos of the little girls was also a pretty big shocker. This shows how our culture continuers to influence people. One would think the black girls would chose the black dolls but that is not the case. Somewhere along the line they must have started to believe, even if subconsciously, that the white doll is better than the black doll. I don’t understand how this happens. This is one of the main reasons why I believe black people move through the first few stages rapidly. Generally, they are exposed to it more often and it a bigger influence in their lives, in my opinion. White people mostly are not the ones being discriminated so there are things that we just do not notice and think about much. But as growing up a minority something as simple as the difficulty to wave down a taxi could be relevant at an early age.

That video was complete insanity. They look like the Americana of what a little sweet white girls should look like. Then they show up with the Hitler smiley faces. I don’t understand why a parent would want to brainwash their children into such a jagged path. I guess though if you are a white supremacist their may not be a lot of understanding and different approaches to things in life. As you said they started to go away from their mothers beliefs, I hope so. And hope they keep making progression to the point were they can completely see all the wrongs it what their mother believes.

Lecture 9 June 20

As we learn more about race we become more open and knowledgeable about different people but our progress is slowed because of political correctness and assumptions. People assume since we don’t regularly partake in racial discussions with different race groups that we must hold some racial issue towards them. But in many cases this is not true. It has become increasingly hard not only of white people but also people of different color to openly express their thoughts and views on races making it increasingly hard to go beyond your own current level of understanding. This hinders one’s ability in the reasoning of people not listening to other people’s points of view who may have a first hand experience. It is very hard to have an equal perspective compared to someone who may be black and has lived the experiences and statistics that are being discussed first hand. We see it in politics all the time. Politicians are so politically correct because they don’t want to offend anyone and possible lose votes. Maybe back in the early twentieth century when the Klan had a great deal of power one could elected to office on the basis of being prejudice but our nation mainly does not operate that way. One would possibly acquire votes with playing some racial issue but in general anymore that will lose many more votes than it could gain. The media loves this stuff anymore. Once a slip up is out there they constantly keep running the video or audio. Constantly keeping this playing and talking about it keeps it an issue. If it ends bad for the person, who may have meant nothing bad of his comment, this scares white people. It illustrates that even who you just misspoke or something was taken the wrong way there could be strict and punishing consequences. I believe people need to be more understanding and open about race related issues. People will misspeak, stuff will be interpreted wrong, this will always be around. We should look at the entire person and possible wait a little to judge until we see the whole body of work. With doing this it constantly allows the division and segregation. You are allowed to say this to this person , but this one I know I can’t. This becomes extremely complex and troubling. The constant struggle between the decision of two different personalities who will have possibly two different interpretations makes an individual uncomfortable and he takes a back seat. White people also have to be not so willing to back away constantly. Ask the questions, gain some knowledge that previously you never had or never really thought of. I believe race relations can be greatly improved if we could be able to reasonably differentiate the people who are actually racist between the people who want to gain a first hand experience perception.