When Sam said we were going to have an interesting class I was never expecting this. I have also been very patriotic and pro USA and not very middle east. I have always thought of it as a desert that we should stop wasting our time in. Partially because I really just don’t like that hot a climate. But maybe its not that bad. But Sam over and over again in class presents us with these seemingly radically liberal ideals, or atleast that is how we interpret them at first and by the end of class he has really turned our minds around too see what he wants to show us. The man has seen a lot and knows how to manipulate people because of societies pressures. I didn’t realize how much he knew or how little I knew. As we all press against terrorism and insurgency it now seems quiet ironic. Isn’t what they are doing almost exactly the spirit of American pride and the reason we are there in the first place. If Chinese were actually in the United States people would be going crazy killing them. Especially people in the south, I know I would be. Sam has some balls to put himself in that position when everyone is doubting and not understanding in the beginning. I thought he was going to get attacked by some radical people. And I can completely see how other people would think americans are crazy when they see movements like the Klu Klux Klan or Neo Nazis. I never thought that the radicals of islam would be a small population. I don’t know why I guess I was just naïve. Now I understand and would even considereing going over there at somepoint in my life when it is more safe. I don’t even know if I would like to be in the military now when I used to want to be in it. Some of the videos about the soldiers were crazy. But as Sam said they are some of the minority. The tanks were pretty sweet thought. But I really never thought about the whole situation the way it is unitl Sam opened my mind to ethnocentrism. I never thought this way at all, I don’t know if its just me or if its everyone else. Some people seem to get very angry at times. I was wondering if Sam has office hours that you can just walk right into because I would probably think about going to them I think I would find out some interesting thing. I wonder if he has been there and seen it first hand. I also wonder where his information comes from he should probably tell people that because I think some people doubt the credibility.

On eating the second piece of chocolate I wouldn’t worry about people that ate it as much as people that don’t want to take any initiative after hearing this topic and seeing the video. They could be in the same grouping but that is not the point I am trying to make. I didn’t eat the second piece of chocolate only because I don’t like chocolate very much. I don’t think that I should be grouped into those people that would eat the chocolate that this girl is creating because I do want to make a difference about this. I feel the need to get out into the world and away from this bubble that is Penn State. That is what people often say. This Happy Valley bubble. But I think of it more as a United State bubble or a United States and Europel bubble. We have the great opportunity to abroad during our college experience. I think of it as one time where we can actually go experience the world. The world where the poorer population of American’s makes more than the average of another country. And instead of studying abroad in South America or somewhere in Africa a lot of Penn State students study in places like Barcelona or Seville. Places with booming night life. In these place they can stay in there bubble. I have trouble understanding how people can bad their experience abroad on night life. I want to go somewhere that I can see how the rest of the world is. I have trouble understanding how I can be sitting here typing on my thousand dollar computer when there are thousands of families on this earth than cannot afford a meal tonight that costs thirty cents. This is something that we should be concerned about. A lot of people criticize Sam, but I think they misunderstand him. The difference between us and Sam is the basis of human nature in contrast with the brain wash of society. He basically tells us what is human and shows us how society has pulled us away from it. Why are we so worried about how we compare to our neighbor when we could compare ourselves to a slave in Ghana. Living without option paid nothing, forced to work or punished by death. I completely understand what Sam said last class where if we believe in a God that will judge us, he isn’t going to compare us to someone in the same state as us, but more likely anyone on earth. There are so many people out there that need our help. We are fortunate enough to be put in this situation to help them, so why not. What are we waiting for.

In response to the girl that is bleeding. First off I don’t really understand how you think calling menstruation bleeding is disrespectful if you want it to be more open. All of my girlfriends have been completely open about having their period. I agree with her that it should be something that is though of as a beautiful sign of life. It is where every person on earth has come from. I try to think naturally about everything so it has never really bothered me. Most people that are squeamish when the thought of a girl having their period comes up don’t even think about what is actually going on it is just their natural reaction. Sam picked a good example of something that is taboo in the United States. It is all a result of society I think that we should all just understand what is natural and not sorry about the problems placed because of people’s thoughts. We are all affected by it whether we like it or not. Sam is an experienced sociologist and even he needs is time away from other countries when he is in a foreign country. He said how when he is deep in a foreign culture he needs to take a break at times and go to the United States embassy or an American bar. I think this is a good example of the strong pressure our society puts on us. We may not feel home even if we are completely comfortable and understanding of the situation that we are in. But the menstrual cycle may not be just in the United States I am not sure. I know many societal things are different overseas but I can see that women’s periods are not talked about in many places. I feel like I would know if women having their periods was completely open or in serious contrast to how it is in the United States. I just think it is somewhat silly that the girl gets angry about it being called bleeding while a guy is actually supporting you. I feel like you are one of the girls in the crowd complaining about Sam while he is just trying to support you. I think so many people are naïve and stupid in our class. Always complaining and not seeing through to what Sam is actually saying and when he actually admits to having an opinion on something they don’t understand that he is openly saying “I have an opinion on this I understand if you disagree, I am not trying to change your opinion”. People are so quick to jump to the opposition when they should be open and waiting for the message that is trying to be delivered to them. Isn’t that why we are in college we are here to learn and to open our minds to the world that we have to come to yet.

I thought Sam’s class about the menstrual cycle was very interesting. He told us in the beginning of class that he was going to be himself. I did not realize how deep he was going to go. His profession and own thoughts have brought him to a point where he is mentally un-phased by society. It is a way in which I often attempt to think. When I was younger I was curious and slowly put the pieces together in my mind of why different people had different color skin and different features. I was curious about the affects of evolution. Sam showed his experience in sociology when he got the class so fired up over something that he just happened to make up. He really exposed how contained by society that we really are. Was the image he put in everyone’s minds really that hard to handle. I was surprised to see women so outraged when it is something they see on a regular basis. I guess they may have felt what he was saying intruded on them personally because Sam is not a woman. Going into the class I never expected so many people to become so critical of Sam. People really get uncomfortable very easily when we push the envelope on societal restrictions. Once I was talking to a friends, telling her how much I enjoyed my race relations class and how she should take it. I told her that in our discussion groups we just kick around thoughts about race in our lives. She responded by saying “ I told really like talking about race in public…” I responded quickly “That’s the point!” It is so easy for all of us to give into the societal pressure without wonder. I am always thinking about different ways in my life that I can explore out of my restrictions in any aspect. Sam makes it seem that a lot of sociology is just seeing what society adds onto our evolutionary human nature. Menstruating is a natural function, so it should be nothing different than anything else we do. Society has placed its judgment on it. I do not know how much the world would be different if it was a woman’s world. May be not as extreme as Sam says. I still think society would place judgment on a bodily function like menstruating. But I see how Sam is confused with society how they can be so against hearing about the process that allowed everyone to be born. I think as we have gotten older talking about menstruation is not as bad, it is just not talked about. If someone finds out that a girl is on her period they will not make a huge deal about it, but it is just never talked about so they do not find out. That is also different than the images that Sam was creating for everyone. He really knew how to create an uproar I have never seen student leave a class because something the professor was saying.

I may be confused but it seemed in class that this was a nation wide issue. Between the Native Americans and other landowners in the United States. Not Native Americans, white people and black people. I think what this girl meant to say is that she is in a dilemma deciding whether or not to side with Native Americans or white people because she is African American. As we learned in class African American meaning that she can trace her ancestry to slavery. Which would mean her ancestors were brought to the United States of American by force and they would not have lived on Native American land by choice. I think this is an understandable conflict for an African American person to be in, but I also think it may be a more complicated situation than she makes it seem. The people that have moved onto red land are not just white people. Though it is a predominately white population in the United States. Brown people that live in the United States most likely came here by free will, so this is something else that this woman could think about in settling her dilemma. I am not really sure what a good solution would be to settle this problem between Americans and Native Americans. I don’t think that there will ever be a complete solution because this pain runs so deep and the devastation so drastic. But like Sam said in class, the direction that we need to go in is to first recognize the damage that has been done. With Obama as president I feel like he could be the man that finally throws this issue into the spotlight and keep it there. He also has many other things to worry about like the war and the economy. But I think it is huge to take care of these people who we have taken their land from them. As a child I always wanted to learn more about Native Americans and their culture and I still love everything I have learned. It really makes me sad to see the videos that Sam has showed in race relations class. Showing what the United States of America has pushed these impressive people in to. As awful as sports teams named after Native Americans are in mocking their sacred traditions. I think that they are so cool as sports team names there cultures are much more detailed then the secular cultures that we live in today. But back to the woman from class, I think that it is great she is taking initiave to try to solve these problems, as many of us should do. I think I need to get involved especially because of my interest in Native American culture.

In the past I have felt very strongly that gay and lesbian couples should not be able to adopt children. I thought that a child growing up with parents of the same sex would be raised in an environment that would be detrimental to them. I thought that a child would be tormented in school and confused through out his or her time growing. However this may still be true, I have come to the realization that by allowing gay and lesbian couples to adopt we have the ability to gain so much. There are so many children across the world in need of a home. Whether circumstances are difficult in the beginning of an adopted child’s life having a loving home for there entire life is much more important. I personally think that homosexuality is genetic so having gay or lesbian parents would not make a child more like to be homosexual. Growing up with such an open mind about sexual orientation may even make a gay or lesbian child more likely to come out about their sexual orientation. This is something that I would think can be very difficult for a gay or lesbian person to deal with and anything that could lift the pressure would be very beneficial. One could argue that relationships between two men or two women may not be as strong as between a man and a women. Which could be detrimental to the raising of a child but some studies have shown that the difficult obstacles that gay and lesbians relationships have to overcome bring them closer together and creating extremely strong relationships. Especially at a time when the divorce rate is at nearly fifty percent. Situations like this have taught me that I need to initially be more open minded. I am surprised that I didn’t even think to myself, the more homes for the children the better. Also now as gay and lesbian marriage is becoming more acceptable and as time goes on it will be easier and easier for children to grow up with same sex parents. The only thing that may still concern me is these children may not have the proper balance of a father and mother figure role in their lives. May the two people in the relationship try to split up that type of role to help raising, I am not sure. As I am moving towards life in the real world I think that I should look more into how same sex relationships are affecting our culture. I would not like to get into a business situation that could turn out bad for me because I was ignorant to same sex life. As we move toward strong gay rights I am interested to see what will happen with same sex marriage adoption.

This must outrage republicans. A politician could do nothing worse that speak this way about human beings. People like Bauer are those bad people that remind us of the racism that still goes on in this country. The racism that we have been desperately trying to move away from. He is an embarrassment to all Americans. He is an embarrassment to the United States that people like this are in power in the government. He is the type of person that should drop into Sam Richard’s race relations class so that he can be easily enlightened on social issues such as these. It doesn’t seem right that I group of 700 plus students with understand social inequality in the United States better than a South Carolina politician. Bauer apologizes for being out of line and letting his emotions get the best of him, a politician like this should not be able to let his racist feelings take over. Bauer was most likely born into a wealthy family where he has had nothing to worry about but making speeches to sway people into electing him. What does he know about the struggles impoverished people must fight through to survive. He has most likely been handed everything and he is trying to keep medicine from those people that have had to fight for everything they have ever owned. I cannot comprehend how someone so stubborn and bias can make it to power and be preaching to citizens of the United States. You would think that Bauer would be smart enough not to insult so many people when he is soon to be running for another position, which I hope he is not elected to. The man is an embarrassment. It seems that South Carolina cannot catch a break, the Mark Sanford scandal, now the brutal remarks of Andre Bauer. I don’t see how this man could gain respect around other politicians or another human being for that matter. How sad would it be to be a person in the United States receiving welfare and hearing that a leader in your country used a metaphor saying that he would like to cut off your food so that you would die and not reproduce. How could he try to cut off the hope of the people that need it most, to break through the struggle that has been keeping them where they are now. More than anything Andre Bauer’s remarks are un American. He pray he is not re-elected and for that matter anyone that has similar qualities. This type of person is the man that should be struggling to survive, so that he can see the difficulties that one must overcome. He should see that in many circumstances assistance is needed when everything is not handed to you.

I rarely see movies at home or in theatres. I would say I average seeing three movies a year in theatres. I happened to make the trip with my friends to see Avatar in 3d. I personally loved the movie even though the plot was very predictable. But there are lots of other reason that critics can pick on this movie for. I am not a very good person to analyze movies because of the reason that I just told you. I am not so sure that I think the white messiah coming to the rescue in films like Avatar is a bad thing. But David Brooks does put the question in my mind why are there no movies about aliens helping save the planet (that I know of) or a movie where black or brown people save the white people. To tell you the truth I don’t think I would be as interested in a movie with that plot, I’m not so sure why. This probably doesn’t occur because it is always white people exploring into black or brown peoples land and not vise versa. A movie where I actually picked up on the white person being the savior on my own was the movie Mel Gibson’s move Apacalypto. For someone that is not familiar with the movie, there is a terrible drought in the Mayan kingdom that is destroying all the crops. The Mayan kingdom sacrifices people that they capture to sacrifice to the gods to end the drought. The last scene of the movie shows three European ships coming to shore with ministers bearing crosses. I interpreted it as Christianity and Europeans coming to save a savage society. I dislike the white man’s role much more in Apacalypto that in Avatar. Brooks talks a lot about how in the movie the white man is necessary to save the day in Avatar. The main character does lead them into battle, but I think what he adds most to the winning side is giving them information of how to fight them. Such as fighting up in the floating mountains rather than on the ground so that the enemy Radar cannot pick up their movement. One thing that I didn’t understand about the movie was when the main character’s body is relocated from the base camp to somewhere in the woods. When the enemy is looking for them I don’t think it would have been very difficult for them to find his defenseless body with their future technology. Also I thought that they let the main character and the female character have a relationship too easily when they claim to have such a rich Avatar culture and deep rooted traditions. There are definitely places to be critiqued in Avatar but overall I liked the movie.

After reading Sam’s post “The Enlightened “West” Knows Best” I came to see the comparison of women that wear abeyya to the way some women dress in the United States and Europe. I don’t know much about Islamic culture and the scripture of the Kuran but I have always thought a little bit negatively about the way women are treated in the religion. But after reading Sam’s blog I feel ignorant for thinking that way when I don’t know anything about the culture. Sam said that many women are accustomed to veiling of their bodies and think nothing of it. Women dress in revealing clothes and high heels in the culture that I am apart of and I did not even realize that the pressure they may feel to dress this way may be a like the pressure some Muslim women feel to veil themselves. In regard to the video of the two women in France I think that the government has a good idea in wanting to alleviate oppression on women. But to truly know enough about the religion and the culture to decide whether this is something that is created oppression they must dig deep. I think logically it will be hard to come up with a plan to keep these women from covering themselves in public because it may end up hurting more women that it is helping. If these dedicated women that refuse to go out in public uncovered have to confine themselves to their homes it will be very detrimental to their lives. If they decide that they are willing to break the law it would be a costly fine that is not affordable for many people. This is another reason why I think coming up with a plan to solve this predicament would be very difficult. If these women decide that they want to break the law without paying the fines the government would have to put them in jail. If there are a multitude of innocent Islamic women thrown in jail it would not look good for the French government publicly or in the eyes of Islamic nations. As a college student I would consider myself a fairly educated person in the United States and I don’t really find it a very good thing that a fairly educated person in the U.S. is has such lack of understanding of the Islamic religion. It has shown me that I need to look deeper into things so that I can understand them before I judge. It makes me wonder what people from other countries think of the United States culture when they here and see of the way people act and dress. I could see people thinking that men are very oppressive in the society. But I think the women feel the same way as some Islamic women, they don’t feel oppressed at all, and if they did they would change the ways they dress immediately.

The recent death of a friend has brought me to a realization that is in some ways similar to the feeling that Laurie is getting in her blog “Haiti’s Calamity.” Through out my childhood my mother always told me “You attend a funeral for the living.” The saying isn’t meant to apply to every situation but usually when I was wondering whether to go to a funeral of someone’s relative that I had never met. Unfortunately I had attended almost a dozen funerals by the time I graduated high school, many of these funerals were not ones that I would be expected to attend by social norm. I would often ask friends if they were going to funerals of people our age that had passed away and they would respond something along the lines of “Well I didn’t really know them.” I don’t think that my friends did this because they didn’t feel like going out of there way to mourn someone but rather because they were afraid the close friends of the person that passed away would look at their appearance at the funeral as a way of people claiming friendship. Which I feel would be almost never the case. If a family member of mine passed away I would be deeply grateful to anyone that came to pay tribute to my family member and console my family. The death of this friend has opened my eyes to the fact that my or anyone else’s social reputation is so far less important to the good that I can do whether how small it is for someone that is in such great pain. I agree and believe in what Laurie has said, in that it is hard to grasp how one person’s suffering could liberate another. My friend’s death has been able to lift me from my selfish desires to see what good I can be doing for those that need it. I would not call his death sacrifice but I did gain from it. It may not need to be as great as a serious tragedy that can help open our minds and relieve us from the foolish things that we let get in the way of what is important. What is important being peace, happiness and trying to make sure that everyone can achieve them. But especially those of us that are so fortunate that we can let these desires block us, we should be the ones to be thankful and help those that need us. Hopefully the tragedy in Haiti will help open the eyes of many Americans like it has Laurie’s. Anything that we can do would be at little expense to us, and great gain for those in need in Haiti.