7/7/10 cont...
The Oprah video was one that we had seen before but still was a great way to show the disparities in society. The video made it very evident that the suburban high school was far better off than the inner city school. At the suburban high school there was an Olympic size swimming pool and at the inner city school the pool was not even filled with water. It’s incredible to see the inequality between two schools only an hour away from each other. Clearly, the kids that attend the suburban high school are at a greater advantage and have more opportunities than those students that attend the inner city school. How can we solve this solution inequality? I have no idea but something needs to change. America is supposed to be the land of equal opportunity and clearly that is not happening everywhere.

7/7/10 cont..
I do not think that nepotism will ever be stopped as family and friends are always going to look out for each other. Often we do not stop and think about the people that we step over due to nepotism. This sort of thing happens at universities like Penn State too as they are more inclined to take the son or daughter of alumni over non-alumni. It’s not fair but that’s the way it seems to work. I do not see all of society giving up nepotism so it will remain an aspect of society and it is just something everyone should acknowledge and deal with. As for affirmative action, I think I agree with what President Obama said. It should be based on economic circumstances and social backgrounds. Affirmative action should be equally available to people of every race and ethnicity.

7/7/10
In this week’s lecture Sam took a different perspective when looking at affirmative action. I never thought about affirmative action in comparison to nepotism. They are basically the same thing. The only difference between the two is that nepotism is an accepted part of the way society works and affirmative action is something that spurns heated debate. We have all benefitted at one time or another from nepotism and more often than not we have benefitted numerous times from nepotism. Parents typically want the best for their children and will likely do things in order to give their children the best chance to succeed. They get their kids jobs and internships that they normally would not get but because of a family member they got the job. I got my summer job through my father, a job that I did not even have to interview for. The job was basically handed to me without any work on my hand. I am very grateful for this because I know some of my friends are struggling to find a good job for the summer. I also know that it is unfair that I got this job just because of my father.

7/6/10
Nepotism is everywhere and I think that everyone has benefited at one point or another in their life from nepotism. I know that I have benefited. The internship that I am working at this summer is a direct result of my father working at the company. I never had to go out and look for an internship on my own because I knew my father had a job lined up for me. Networking and using connections is just the way that society works. It is a way to get a leg. Is it always fair? No, but it is something that has become the norm in society and is a reality we all live with and help perpetuate. Nepotism has been going on for centuries, as the kings and wealthy nobles left their kingdoms or estates to their children. From the look of things it does not appear that this system is going to change anytime soon.

7/3/10
After this weeks lecture I am left in the same place as I was before on the immigration issue- confused. I cannot say that I feel strongly one way or the other about the issue. The lecture was very interesting as I have rarely heard immigration discussed as a business issue. It makes sense to me that business regulates the number of immigrants that flow into the country as this is how it’s always been done in this country. When business needs labor they seek cheap foreign labor. Our founding fathers and first Europeans to settle America used indentured servants and slaves on their plantations, we used Chinese labor to build our railroads, the waves of immigrants from Europe at turn of the 19th century did all of the unappealing "dirty work" that no one else wanted to do. All of the waves of immigrants were treated with hostility and were used as scapegoats to whatever problems were going on in the country. This holds true today as waves of Latin American immigrants are entering the United States. I feel as if a blind eye was turned to illegal immigration when business was booming but now that the economy is sagging immigrants are blamed for taking jobs away from other citizens. However, all of the immigrants that were once treated with hostility in the past have now become "accepted" into the country and join in on blaming the newly arrived immigrants. There seems to be a pattern and I wonder how the waves of Latin American immigrants will be viewed 50 years from now. At one point in our country's history storefronts displayed signs that read "Irish need not apply" but now the Irish immigrants are celebrated for their industrious nature and hard work in the face of discrimination. Even people who are not Irish love to take in St. Patrick’s Day in honor of the Irish and love of the drink. One day in the distant future we may be taking in Cinco de Mayo as if it were St. Patrick's Day. Throughout history newly arrived immigrants have been perceived as a threat to society but have helped transform of country into a world leader, known for innovation. We are a country of immigrants and that is what makes America so special. We are a magnet for for hardworking risk takers because of our free market system. While I believe that immigration is the backbone of this country I still have some mixed feelings about illegal immigration. I have no solutions to offer but we have to regulate it in some way. We need to know who is in our country as criminals are able to enter just as easily as people who are looking fro a better life. Illegal immigration is allowing the Mexican drug cartels to flourish and creates a threat to security especially in border towns. We need to protect our country but cannot build walls around it to keep everyone out. I am not sure what our current immigration policy is like or what it takes to come here legally. That may be part of the problem and something that we can improve to curb illegal immigration. The Glenn Beck video was an interesting look at our immigration efforts (or lack thereof) and I hope that we actually do something this time around and not wait another six years.

7/2/10
I can relate to what you said about immigration as my father came to the United States in the 1950's from Italy. My grandparents dreamed of a better life here and they worked very hard for many years in order to provide a better life for thier family. However, this experience has made me more tolerant of illegal immigration. I do not support illegal immigration but I do understand that the majority of the people crossing the border are trying to create a better life for themselves and their family just the same as my grandfather. I think that all immigrants that come here are trying to take advantage of the oppurtunities that this country offers.

6/30/10
The lecture on multiculturalism was very cool and full of interesting information. The surveys in the beginning of the class were an interesting way to look at how people feel about multiculturalism. The only problem with them is that people can interpret more diverse in a lot of different ways. I think that the democratic numbers were affected by political correctness and were not 100% genuine. It was also interesting to me to see that much larger percentages of hispanics and whites would prefer to live in a community made up of people of their same ancestry. I am white and I live in a largely predominant area and neighborhood however there are a few immigrant families (all from the middle east) on my street. I personally like to have more diversity in my neighborhood because things get too boring otherwise. It's interesting to talk to my Iranian neighbor because he comes from such a different culture and its cool to see how he feels about certain issues pertaining to this country. I have learned some new things from him as well as he was the first person to explain the difference between Arabs and Persian. A student during the lecture mentioned something about the cheese steak place in Philadelphia that put a sign up about customers having to speak English. The place was Genos and i remember reading about the sign in newspapers a couple of years ago. It's pretty blatant discrimination against immigrants and those of different national origin in my mind. The sign is not that much different than ones you would see during the late 19th century that read "Irish need not apply". I think that it is a good example of how the people with power demand assimilation of the minority groups. Instead of isolating non-english speaking people, Genos could make a little effort to meet these people halfway. I mean they are only trying to order a cheese steak, it's not like you have to try to explain quantum physics. A lot of people seem to be hung up on the issue of speaking english in this country. While we have no official language I do believe that we are an english speaking country. However, schools in this country, at least to my experience, do not place nearly as much emphasis on learning other languages as other countries. My high school requirements for foreign language was not nearly enough to become any where near to fluent in another language. I did not even start foreign language classes until I was in seventh grade and those classes were only two to three times a week. Whenever i meet someone from another country they are almost always bilingual, and many times know more than two languages. I feel like we are doing ourselves a great disservice by not learning other languages and assuming that everyone should know how to speak english.

6/29/10
I also thought the idea of the chinese flag as really interesting especially because I happened to partake in the good herb shortly before watching the lecture. To me, the flag does not really mean anything as I see it as only a piece of cloth and I do not put any symbolic meaning on it. The constitution is what represents the set of ideals and values of my country. I think the flag is just an easy rallying point for many people to get behind. If you were born in China you would hold a very different set of ideals and see the chinese flag as representative of your culture. Flags are just an easy way to seperate between countries which is useful if you are at sea or in a conflict zone. I do think that the American flag looks cool but why do all flags have to rectangular. Countries should try some different shapes to make theirs really unique. Just throwing an idea out there.

6/23
This weeks lecture was had me wading in some unfamiliar waters. I am a white person so I never had an early realization of the color of my skin. Black or brown people are forced to deal with this at an early age. I can only imagine that it is confusing to see whiteness all around you and being told that light skin is beautiful. The story Sam told about his friends little girl who came home from pre-school crying because here friend told her she was dirty was a good example of this. I do not think that the girl’s friend meant it a racist remark but simply did not know better. However, it is still a hurtful thing to say and a harsh way for that little girl to come to terms with her race. The video “A Girl like Me” was really pretty disturbing to see time after time the kid pick the light skinned doll over the dark skinned doll when asked which on is good. It was also shocking to see the black girl pick the light skinned doll as the one that was most like her. It seems like the little girl does not see herself as being black because she associates that color with being bad. It’s sad that she sees the world that way but she must have learned it somewhere. Most likely she learned it from the media, television and movies. There was a similar experiment done on CNN a couple of weeks ago except the kids had to choose between a series of pictures of progressing darker skinned children. The kids in the study were of all different races and yet they all picked the picture of the light skinned children to be good and the dark skinned to be bad. I think it shows that parents need to talk to their kids about race because it is a very confusing issue especially for a little kid. A black or brown child growing up in a world where you believe dark skin is bad is pretty fucked up in my opinion. The study that shows how grades affect popularity is really interesting. As black or brown people get better grades they become less popular and the opposite is true of white students. I am not sure I really understand this concept, why getting better grades makes you less popular. I suppose some people in the black community would feel that doing well in school is representative of someone trying to act white. It does not really make any sense to me and seems counterproductive. Doing well is school is a way to get ahead in life and can open up more doors of opportunity. It is a silly way to try to separate yourself from another race.

6/21
I also have a different perspective about the Native American guilt. The guilt about the plight of Native Americans is something that should be shared with all Americans. I am not saying that the genocide of Native Americans is the fault of black people and I am not going to put the blame all on the shoulders of one ancestry group. However, as Americans we are all living on "red land", their soil before we ( white, black, brown, whatever) came here. Long ago this was foreign land and we made it our own ay the expense of the indigenous people and now we thrive here. Stopping to think about how we live our lives on Native American soil certainly makes me feel something. I think we can all work to get over the past transgressions of our ancestors as those actions are not our personally responsibility but I think it is more important to focus on our lives instead of the past. This is especially true as Native Americans suffer from some of the worst socioeconomic conditions in this country. I think it is something that we can all relate to.