This letter written by a lifer was very moving and shocking to me. I am the kind of person that likes to volunteer, work with kids and give back in any way I can to get a good feeling inside. Also, when I don’t do something as simple as not opening a door for someone, it weighs on my mind for at least the rest of the day and I think, “Why didn’t I do that?” I try and help others because I feel as if it is the right thing to do. This is kind of what the lifer began to explain through the first part of his letter about how an inmate was consoling another inmate who was his enemy because that is just what they do. Of course I am not perfect so I do not help people every chance that I am given. The lifer was explaining that inmates pretty much do help others any chance they can. It was fascinating how he explained the ways that they helped others who had been stricken by devastation and how much these devastating experiences really affected the inmates. It really is shocking how people “on the outside” are so busy with their daily lives, the daily life stressors and trying to do this and that between their jobs and their families that they just simply forget about these devastating disasters. Just like how Americans sort of forgot about the earthquake in Haiti, how 300,000 people died and even the pretty terrible state of the country before the earthquake hit.

This particular quote by the lifer, “[Compassion] is the heart’s recognition of pain in another and the soul’s demand to provide succor,” is very humbling and deserves great reflection. Can you imagine that this man never graduated from high school but has more appreciation for life and other human beings that many of us highly educated peoples could ever wish! He explains compassion as if it is a knee-jerk reaction for him and why would anyone not provide compassion to someone who is in pain. I am not saying that since we are not in jail, we should all go down to Haiti tomorrow and any other country in need to help out. This lifer’s letter has just made me really believe that the first way we can show compassion is just by acknowledging these devastating events and reflecting on what is has done to Haiti, to the Middle East, any other country in such circumstances and how these people are feeling. We can just show sympathy by keeping these people in our thoughts and prayers (if we choose to do so), not taking the resources, wealth and family that we have for granted and just for thinking of these people when we let the little things in life bother us.

This article actually made me feel sick to my stomach. When Sam did the Christian Invaders lecture the other day, it really made me put myself in the shoes of those people in the Middle East. With that being said, it’s disgusting that U.S. soldiers would offer this man money for each family member they had killed. Money obviously doesn’t make anything better and then to go and offer him a goat so that he feels as if he cannot take revenge on the United States. How would these United States soldiers feel if five of their civilian family members were killed by foreign soldiers? I may not agree with this war but I am behind our soldiers no matter what, but they really are going to try and make peace with this man through such ridiculous means!

It really is crazy to see this tremendous devastation occur and most Americans not doing anything to help and even more moving on with their lives as if nothing has happened. Especially when they stated in the video that Sam posted about how these Haitian people will be living in these tent villages for years to come. The reality is that like someone stated in class, only doctors and non-profit organizations were going down these soon after the tragedy occurred. Today, it still is kind of hard to go down there and help out without being involved with an organization and finding a way to really change the terrible economy that Haitian are having to deal with right now. Maybe all most people know to do right now is give any extra money they can to the people of Haiti and encourage those people who can really make a change to down these to do so.

Being a woman is a tough job. With appearance, it’s like a never-ending cycle of judging other women and being compared to other women. Personally, I am a pretty tiny person and people were always saying I was “too skinny” or even “anorexic-looking” but when I gained 10 pound last year after being sick for 3 months, people said I was fat. It was only a 10 pound difference and I went right from too skinny to too fat! I just feel like as a woman, there are so many pressures in the media through almost every magazine having pages upon pages of workout plans and exercises to tone this or slim that. Also, the majority of women in Hollywood are small and if they gain weight such as when Jessica Simpson did, jokes are made about them and everyone wonders what is wrong with the female that is causing her to gain weight. There are those occasional women in Hollywood like Beyonce who have beautiful curves but do you see any stretch marks on her body or any unwanted cellulite? Nope! Then on to larger women like Jennifer Hudson who has just lost her baby weight and is getting so much public attention for losing the weight. Everyone wants to know what women in the spotlight are doing to lose weight and how to keep it off, so these women endorse these “great weight loss diets,” teeth-whitening solutions, hair techniques and countless other products to complete transform who you are and become this Hollywood, plastic woman. It’s not even the sole fact to lose the weight for appearance reasons but for the pressure for women to have strong hearts and avoid getting preventable health problems. This is just yet another reason for women to get and stay fit.

Someone in class was saying that men are so focused on appearance and that is why women have to be concerned with their appearance. Studies have found that this is not true at all and women actually think that men want them to be a lot smaller than they truly do when in fact men want women that are about average-sized. The pressure for women to look the way they do comes from those women closest to them or in close-proximity to them. Women are so judging of other women and I think they pick at every little flaw that another woman has just so she can feel better about herself. This is especially true of those women that you do not like in your life and you would rarely say, “Wow, she really looks great in that.” So we sort of create this problem for ourselves by trying to compare ourselves to other women and not just embracing the beauty that we have. “You don’t love a women because she is beautiful but she is beautiful because you love her.”

I think there is step two that is achieved through not endorsing any of these acts of slavery by not purchasing any of the goods made by slaves but I’m not sure how realistic it is for someone to truly achieve this. From the list that Sam put up that included all of the products that are obtained through slavery, I just feel as if it would be very hard for someone not to use any of these products. Maybe we just have to take baby steps. An example of a baby step would be how Sam only eats fair trade chocolate or one of my friends did not get a big rock for an engagement ring because she does not agree with the child slaves who mine diamonds. By taking these small steps to eliminate using certain products and informing others why you are doing this, it would make a huge difference in the end.

I think a lot of people do misuse to welfare system and are more likely to be on welfare if they are born into the system. Also, you see people with food stamps in the grocery store but somehow they have perfectly manicured nails…funny how that is. The problem is that there are people who are born into poverty and try everything to better their standard of living, but many are addicted to drugs and/or alcohol, unemployed, single-mothers with multiple children. That is why the welfare system has implemented many restrictions in the last 10 or so years such as the recipients have to be looking for a job and cannot get money and aid for more than a set number of years and only one time in their life. At this point, I do not think there is a way to completely eliminate the welfare system but there is a lot that can be done to continue to improve it and limit the amount of money that is going to families and the total amount of money used in the welfare system.

Wow, I am so shocked by this story. I do not agree with the video games that involve killing and get into the hands of kids, but this is very different than that. There are really men out there that think it’s okay to play a game where the object is to rape a woman? It is not even that Japanese men created it because all different kinds of men are able to access it is since the game is uploaded on YouTube or such sites. That’s bullshit to say it is an outlet for people who fantasize about raping women because shooting games are not an outlet for adolescents and neither would these rape games if they got into the hands of adolescents. Rape is not a funny issue. It makes me livid that these games are directed at raping women because there is a much higher rate of women being raped everyday, but would also make me angry if women were playing this game and raping men.

My thinking has absolutely changed due to Sam’s lectures, Lori’s books and the book on slavery that we read. My initial thinking before coming to this class was that I “didn’t see color” because my first crush was Korean, my first best friend was Mexican, my three best guy friends from high school are black, Mexican and Puerto Rican and my best friend in college is from Kazakhstan. Also, I am a Military brat so I have moved around a lot and have never had just all white friends. First of all, through Sam’s classes and the race relations group, I have learned that quite a few people at Penn State are from high schools that were mainly white with the percentage of white people up to almost 98% of the school. I did not realize that people really were not exposed to different races and cultures in high school. The next thing I realized through the stages that white people go through is that I absolutely see color, every day and every time I look at people, even though I have friends of color. Also, I realized where this anger towards white people who act racist comes from. Next, the part where he talked about how our president, congress and senators should be able to tell people “no” to all the demands that they request so that they do not have to tax us so much and that they can not ever satisfy all of these requests anyway. The biggest thing that Sam has done this semester is change my thinking from what I thought that black people have any equal chance to do well in all aspects of life, even if they come from the lower class or families in poverty, because they can get a good education, a good job and then improve their standard of living significantly. What Sam helped me realize is that African Americans do not have an equal chance to get into college, are discriminated against in jobs, are treated very unfairly in the criminal justice system and many just do not have the same opportunities to improve and will not due to where they start, that is likely where they will be as an adult. I really can’t believe that this guy says Sam hasn’t changed any of his opinions. I mean hasn’t he at least changed this guys way of thinking about periods and how it’s not so gross to talk about them after comparing a period to cutting your nails or your hair growing, and saying that you should have enough respect for your mother and/or sister to respect this normal bodily function. Sam has changed many more of my ways of thinking that I can’t even remember at the moment.

I grew up with about half of my friends being white and half being black, Mexican and Puerto Rican. So I was a little behind you and was still in the awakening stage when I got to this class. Then I quickly moved through the Awakening stage and am on into the Revisioning stage. Through Sam’s lectures, I have definitely begun to see the racial inequality that exists in the criminal justice system, the workplace, college admissions, etc. I also see the white privilege that I have experienced in life such as getting every job that I have ever wanted, and getting into the first college of my choice even with a high school GPA of about a 3.7 and average SAT scores. There are a lot of people of color in the United States that I am sure have higher SAT scores and GPAs than I do, and applied to Penn State but did not get in. I know there are other things that I have benefited from by being white that I haven’t even noticed. Maybe even when I only got a traffic violation for not following the traffic signals when I was speeding in a school zone, going 36 when the speed limit was 15 because the school zone signs were flashing after school, I may have experienced white privilege as oppose to someone of color who had gotten a ticket and points on their license for doing the same thing. This leads to white guilt seeing as how I benefit from these things solely because the color of my skin, even though others are much more qualified than I am. Then begins the anger towards white people who take advantage of these things, think that they deserve them just because they are white and show racism towards people of color. It really outrages me, especially when people in this very race class say racist things over the text program that Sam has enabled. Also, as Sam has said that it was just pure luck that white people were born into the family that they were and were born with white skin. Why does this make white people, particularly Americans, think that they are superior to all? I think this has to do with the fact that people are ignorant and don’t care to learn about the marvelous people and places from all over the world.
I think the whole observation about how the first characters from Africa were lions and not people in Disney’s the Lion King is due to the fact that Walt Disney and many of the first writers of the Disney movies were white and in many of the movies where people of color were involved, white people were taking over their land for the most part. It is very sad though but hopeful that there is now a Disney movie with a black princess and hopefully there will be many more to come.

I completely agree with the whole LL Bean catalog nonsense because I know plenty of black people who dress like those people in the catalog were dressing and my friends wear shorts when it’s warm out. They may not be as short as the khaki’s that the one black man was wearing but my friends wear khaki cargo type of shorts all of the time during the summer and many even have kind of a “preppy” kind of dress but do not have that kind of personality, they just like to dress in clothes that fit them and look good. Also, with the whole Jesse Jackson thing, I don’t understand what Sam was saying either. I mean he’s explained before that you’re going to identify with your own group because it’s familiar and comforting but that doesn’t mean that people are not trying to come to a common ground and improve this gap between black and white people.