This is an issue that has lasted throughout the entire semester with this class. Can someone achieve major success with simply gold old fashioned hard work, or do they need help from their ancestors and a financial ground to stand on. I personally think that it is much easier to gain success when you have a good ancestry who has given your family financial stability. I know there are plenty of cases where people pick themselves up from nothing and become success stories, but the likelihood of that is very low. I know that I would certainly not be anywhere close to the point I am today if it was for my parents and other previous ancestors.

This is a great question. Sam definitely touched on this in the class about Haiti and I think it really hit home for me when he related it to September 11th. When September 11th happened it was devastating for everyone in the country and the entire world paid attention to how we recovered for a very long time. To think that 300,000 people died in Haiti because of a natural disaster is incomprehensible. I cannot imagine if something like that happened to the United States and everyone else around the world pretty much forgot about it after a few weeks. Haiti deserves all the help and attention they can get and I really hope they can somehow pull themselves out of this terrible situation.

South Park is a show that will parody any issue going on in the world no matter how much it might piss people off. They have been doing it since the beginning of the show and they have covered pretty much every base when it comes to offending people. Since the earliest episodes of the show South Park has had a Jesus character in it that they constantly parody and their seems to be no trouble with that. As an avid South Park fan I have seen some of the most offensive things that they have done on the show and the recent Muhammad controversy does not come anywhere close to the offensive nature of so many other jokes on the show. I think it is ridiculous that every other religion in the world shows their profit and allow people to make fun of it and the Muslim faith has this special circumstance where they are immune. Just because the few extremists threaten people with violence does not mean that South Park should not be allowed to show Muhammad. Also South Park did not actually show Muhammad but just what was supposed to be Muhammad in a bear costume. I do not understand why it is such a big deal for a cartoon television show to depict Muhammad in a bear costume. It should be a harmless joke, but instead people have to take it too far and threaten violence for something so trivial. In the same episode they had Buddha snorting cocaine and you do not hear any backlash about that. We live in America where free speech is a cornerstone of our society, so I do not think Matt Stone and Trey Parker should have to back down for anyone over any issue. If the rest of the issues in the world are free game than Muhammad should be free game too. Also I do not even see how the way South Park depicted him was offensive. They had him in a bear costume and he probably said two words. The whole episode was about bringing everyone back in the show that has ever been pissed off at South Park and piss them off again. Tom Cruise threatened to sue them years ago over an episode that they called him gay in. They brought him back in the recent Muhammad and slammed him with gay comments again. I am not comparing Muhammad to Tom cruise, I’m just saying that no matter what people threaten to do to them, Matt Stone and Trey Parker will continue to push the envelope because they believe they should be able to say and do whatever they want on their television show. I hope they don’t let this controversy deter them for bring up other issues in the future.

I definitely feel like everybody including men feel the need to conform to society. Insecurity is something that everyone deals with and seemingly the only way that we have learned to deal with it is to fit in with the crowd. I guess instead of men having to be skinny and have big boobs, were supposed to be macho and have big muscles. Also conformity is definitely seen a lot in the way people dress, and for the most part at places like Penn State men and women tend to dress like each other. Unfortunately this does not seem like a fixable issue and it will probably continue very long time.

I think this class, and race relations in general, is just to get people to realize the major part that race and other sociological issues play in our every day lives so that we can continue our lives knowing this information. If we all expand our minds to the different cultures out there we will no longer be stuck in our current mindset. I know that I rarely ever thought about what it means to be white, and that seems to be because I grew up around a majority of white people my entire life. This class is about ethnocentrism, and realizing that the views that we hold are not the end all be all and that learning about others views and experiences is extremely important.

It is always interesting to look at another person or group through a different point of view, so todays lecture was especially interesting for me. First of all, all of the commenters above me that think Sam said Christian’s are trying to take over the world completely missed the point. I think basically what Sam was trying to say was that everyone sees situations differently, depending on what they are being told or what they are seeing around them and in the media. Before this class I did not really have a good understanding at all of why there is a dislike for America in Iraq and the Muslim community. When I say this I do not mean the extremists, but the Muslim’s that are pretty much just like us. They only know one side of the story. If they are only shown the types of things that Sam showed us in class today I can see why there would be some animosity. Stepping into the Arab Muslim point of view like in class today I can see why they think we are over there to steal their oil and endanger innocent civilians. In the United States we are mostly shown videos of Muslim extremists spouting death to America and setting off car and suicide bombs intended to take out our soldiers. Because of this we obviously have a negative view towards Muslims in general, which is definitely a problem. If Muslim people are only shown the evangelical Christians who speak in tongues and act like crazy people I can see why they think Christians are trying to take over the world. Unfortunately this is what we see, instead of the images of happy Muslim families and bustling communities that very rarely make an appearance over here in the states. Sam changed my mind a lot today because I had never taken a second to think about where the Muslims are coming from. The Chinese coal example was a great way of illustrating that point. If the Chinese came to the United States, stole our coal, and instituted a military occupation in our country I am sure a whole lot of Americans would be pissed off and want to do something about it. Instead we are on the other end and we have been lead to believe that Muslim’s are just crazy people who want to kill us. It seems to me like the fundamentalist Christians are trying to impose their religion on Muslims just as badly and the Muslim extremists want to impose Islam on us. And like Sam said, this is ONLY the Christian extremists, not all Christians. When groups are generalized to be one way people on the other side cannot see the reality of the situation. A large majority of Muslim’s are not bad, just like a large majority of Christians are not bad, just like a large majority of American’s are not bad. A few crazies shouldn’t condemn a whole group of people.

It’s hard to believe these games are actually sold in stores in Japan. Something like this would never be allowed to be sold in the United States. These games are obviously horribly degrading to women and promote nothing but bad values. I personally believe that things in video games do not automatically make kids go out and repeat them, but these games are certainly different. These games could definitely have a direct negative affect on children’s actions. It seems like the Japanese government is going to ignore the situation until someone forces them to deal with it so we will continue to see it on the internet over here for a while.

I think Sam’s method of teaching is very affective and sometimes people choose not to listen because some of his points are hard to accept. Personally I think that to a certain extent Sam has changed my mind about a few things. As many of my other classmates said, Sam told us that he is not trying to change our opinion, but make us think and question the things around us. Most of the time things that Sam says do not totally change my opinion, they just make me think about things that I normally would not consider. A lot of the time I find myself thinking how true a comment of Sam’s is and how surprised I am that I had not realized it before. He causes people to recognize things that they have been blind to because of their social surroundings. Before this class I had never really thought about what it meant to be white. After hearing Sam talk about it I realized all of the perks that come along with being born white in the United States. I reflected about who I am personally and how I would not be anywhere close to where I am now without my ancestors. I guess you could say that I changed my mind about my beliefs on how much I actually deserve all that I have accomplished. Also the widely ignored persecution of the Native Americans really hit home for me. For pretty much my whole life I had neglected to realize the extent to which Native American culture was destroyed by our ancestors. Sam showed me how naive I had been by pointing out the many wrongs that were committed. One of the last points that Sam partially changed my mind about pertained to modern slavery. Sam’s latest lecture, along with Disposable People, had somewhat of an affect on me. I now know much more about modern slavery than I did before and the little things that I can do personally to help. I know that any of the little things I do will not make much of a difference but at least I am now aware of it and I can continue my life helping whenever an opportunity comes along. Having said all of this, these realizations and small changes will probably not affect my life that much at all but at least I am informed now. I think that Sam’s teaching style keeps me interested in what he has to say because he seems passionate and has a lot of experience in the field. Most of my other classes are painful to sit through but Sam has a way of keeping my attention and getting me to care about the issues that he is talking about.

I think this is a great point. Sam always does seem to be talking about the white team and the black and brown team so it must be hard for multi racial students to digest what he is saying. It is interesting to hear it from your prospective. I think it is important to place yourself on both teams because that is who you are. I understand the fact that you lean more towards your hispanic culture. I can’t understand what you have been through, but I think that if i were in your shoes I would feel the same way. I think I would want to more fully embrace my hispanic heritage while still identifying with the white team as well.

I think this is a great point. Sam always does seem to be talking about the white team and the black and brown team so it must be hard for multiracial students to digest what he is saying. It is interesting to hear it from your prospective. I think it is important to place yourself on both teams because that is who you are. I understand the fact that you lean more towards your Hispanic culture. I can’t understand what you have been through, but I think that if i were in your shoes I would feel the same way. I think I would want to more fully embrace my Hispanic heritage while still identifying with the white team as well.