When Sam first talked about how he went and visited lifers in prison with his wife I thought, “Who cares?” These people had done something so bad that society has decided they are useless and not worth humanities efforts to try and make them a better person. I was strongly in favor of the death penalty and I am stunned to see that what I thought was wrong. When people think about lifers they think about someone who is not that educated and more of a rough-edged violent person than someone who seems peaceful and smart and seems like they know and understand everything that is going on around them and are at peace with it.
Thinking about lifers now, it makes me wonder what they do when they are in their cells. They have probably like twenty hours a day to sit in their cells and just think about things. The things they think about have to be mind-blowing when you are sitting in your cell for twenty hours a day for seven days a week for probably thirty years or more, depending on when you got sent to jail. These people know that they are never going to get out of jail and yet they seem to gain a sense of calm or closure from knowing that they won’t be leaving jail anymore. I wonder if it is easier for these guys to relax and settle down when they realize they don’t have to conform to societies pressures anymore and they can be with people who are closer to their own mindset.
When I looked at and read this letter, I was amazed by how educated it sounded. For a man who never even graduated high school to write something like this is very impressive. When I think about people in prison I think that they are more illiterate than that they can write like this, so I am quite impressed. The other thing that amazed me about this letter was how compassionate this lifer and other people in prison are. In the real world I see plenty of people who are not compassionate at all and yet these people who aren’t trying to impress anyone or to conform to any public pressure are showing compassion for this man who had his son die in a car crash. Furthermore this lifer said that he saw a guy who hated this man letting him cry on his shoulder because he can’t get in touch with anyone else on his phone. Reading this letter makes me wonder if perhaps there isn’t something we can all learn about from these lifers and if I have been mistaken in my belief that these lifers are not important enough for society to care about them anymore.

I believe that health care should be an equal right to everyone. What gives people in the U.S. the right to decide that some group of individuals doesn’t deserve the right of health care? We could be sentencing some of these immigrants to death if they can’t afford health care on their own and we don’t offer it to them. I know that it would create a bigger burden on hospitals and the government if they have to support illegal immigrants but if they tried hard enough I’m sure illegal immigrants would find a way around the system anyway so we might as well just give everyone health care from the beginning.

I for one favor hard work over just having money but in this country I’m not sure if just working hard is enough. You see these immigrants all working hard and trying to give themselves a better life but they end up living in these crappy houses and barely being able to support their family. Then you look at the other side of things and you see all these rich people who are lazy and only rich because of their family. You see them and you wonder why can’t they be the ones who have to struggle, because they don’t deserve to have the money, they just won the genetic lottery while the immigrants didn’t.

When I first saw this video, I was completely shocked. For someone to care so much about something that they will kill themselves for it is a level of dedication that is incredible. This lady cared so much about her beliefs that she sacrificed her own life for it. Even though she believed in something that is terrible and is terrorism, she still believed so much in it that she would sacrifice herself. That takes a lot of commitment and I’m slightly impressed by that. However, while watching this video I felt a mixture of being disgusted and being impressed by her commitment.
Even though I was impressed with the woman’s commitment and her sacrifice, it doesn’t mean that I believe in terrorism or that what she was doing was the right thing. I believe that there are better things she can be doing to show that she doesn’t like the government or whatever. In the United States, when someone doesn’t agree with something they peacefully protest it; they don’t strap bombs to their bodies and blow themselves up. I don’t understand why other countries, mostly in the Middle East, have resorted to violence and terrorism instead of peace protests when they find something that they don’t like.
In regards to the article, I have never thought about terrorism from the other side. I don’t believe in terrorism but I can’t say that the things they do are necessarily evil. They are just trying to protect themselves and their country much as we are. The only difference is that they are harming innocent lives and killing themselves in the process of protecting their country. While they are justifying themselves by saying we are the attackers and terrorists and they are the defenders and innocents I don’t necessarily believe that. How can they say they are not terrorists when they are killing innocent civilians and themselves in the process?
Even though we are paying 2,000 dollars for the loss of every family member I don’t believe that it is enough. 2,000 dollars isn’t even close to being enough to cover the loss of a family member. I know that the United States doesn’t have to give any money technically but if we are going to give anything we should give enough to make it worth it so that the surviving family members don’t become terrorists themselves and kill innocent people for no reason. Take for example, Haji Sharabuddin, the 80 year old person who lost two sons, two daughters, and a granddaughter in the attacks. He then said that he would destroy everything and launch his own suicide attack on the United States. This is probably the worst thing that could have happened. For this person to result to thinking about killing himself and many innocent people because he is angry is terrible.

Yes I do believe that guys have to conform to society to the degree that woman do. While most people look at woman and just assume they are conforming because they are trying to act like the woman in magazines and television men have the same problem. Men try just as hard as woman to fit in. They try and wear the same clothes as the people they see on television and they go to the gym and try to get the same body and shape as the people that are in magazines. So while many people don’t seem to believe that guys conform to society as much as woman, I believe that they do.

When I first signed up for this class, I just saw a class that got pretty good reviews on ratemyprofessor.com and was a gen ed that I needed to graduate. On the first day I went into class and listened to the things Sam said and I thought to myself that this guy was crazy and I should drop this class or I was probably going to fail it. I was talking later with my friends and we decided that we weren’t going to drop it because we thought that some of the things he said could be useful and there wasn’t a better class for us to pick up instead.
It is now almost the end of the year and I can honestly say that this class hasn’t really done all that much for me. While all of my friends seem to find more and more insight out of Sam and this class I find myself struggling to pay attention and comprehend what he is saying, especially as the weather is getting better and better. All of my friends walk out of the class talking about the things he said and how it makes them feel and how it has changed their lives and I just don’t seem to be affected by it like they are.
I just believe that most of the things Sam has said seem to be common sense or things that I don’t really seem interested in. When that happens I find myself zoning out and missing the rest of the lecture, which might include stuff that isn’t common sense I just can’t seem to pay attention enough to see what is and isn’t common sense. It’s not that I think Sam is a boring guy it’s just that he gets off subject really easily and starts to ramble and he goes completely off subject a lot and that makes it hard for me to pay attention to him.
It’s not that I believe that the stuff we discuss in this class isn’t important it’s just that I feel like it’s things we should already have thought about and already reached an opinion on before entering class. Like when he talked about slavery and eating the chocolate, I already knew that slavery was involved in many things, not necessarily just making chocolate. Even though I saw the video and thought it was slightly disturbing I still ate the second piece, while most of my friends looked at me like I was crazy for eating the second piece. So this class is teaching me some things, but it didn’t change my opinion and I will still eat chocolate and buy things from Wal-Mart, even though I now know that they are made by slaves.

When I first read this article, I was thinking about many things. First, would the non-Hispanic Caucasians still consider themselves to be the majority even though they will no longer be in the majority? When this officially happens there is a chance that it could be really bad for the people in the majority now because the people who will soon be in the majority could try and force their way into the majority and power through violence or other means that could result in violence. Than I thought that this was all common sense, because it was obvious that eventually the whites would no longer be in the majority.
I than wondered whether the White would still be in the majority just because of how everything is viewed. Even though on paper it may say that there are fewer whites than everybody else I don’t believe that we will notice a change at all. The people in control would still be white and the people getting screwed out of everything would still be the minorities. I can’t think of a way for this to change, even if the white people are no longer in the majority, because it is too deeply rooted inside of everybody that the white people have the power right now. Maybe in a couple of generations when the white people haven’t been in the majority for years you may start to see a change in who holds the power reins and who has all the control but I can’t see it happening in any of our lifetime’s or even happening in our kid’s lifetimes.
Another thing I thought about was that even though the white people would be in the minorities it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be the majority in terms of race groups. White people tend to categorize every racial group that isn’t white into the minority group. Just because white people do that doesn’t mean every group does that so the African American racial group may still see themselves as being in the minority cause there would still be less African Americans in the United States than White people and the same thing with Mexican Americans. Just because as a whole, the minority group of people will soon be bigger than all the white people in the United States doesn’t mean the minority groups themselves think of it that way, since they all see themselves as being completely different from each other.
While reading this article I was thinking about many things but I feel like this article is just simply going to disappear and not really be acknowledged by anybody after this because the white people in power are going to try and pretend that they are still in the majority group so they can stay in power as long as possible.

I believe that the welfare idea in itself is a good concept but that our government has not put it into effect in a good way. The government has made the welfare system too good for the people who need it so that they aren’t motivated or interested in getting off of the program and getting set up on their own two feet again, which is what it is supposed to be intended for. Since all these people have been losing their jobs and going on welfare, they have noticed all the benefits they get from going on welfare and they are choosing to just not look for a job and just continue to rely on the government money that keeps coming in.

Just because you are using affirmative action doesn’t necessarily mean you are lowering the quality of the individuals. If you are hiring in the medical field, just because you hire a minority doesn’t mean that the minority is worse at being a doctor than a white male. Affirmative action doesn’t mean that you are hiring somebody just because they are a minority; they also have to meet the qualifications of the job. I feel like that is one of the biggest misconceptions that everybody has about affirmative action and it makes people hate the idea of affirmative action because they believe that they are losing out of jobs to people who are less qualified.

When I watched this video, I was almost stunned. I knew that Sam talked about how disturbing this video was going to be and how it was going to be one of the disturbing videos in the whole class but I could not believe what happened if I wasn’t watching it with my own eyes. When I saw that African American kids were saying that the white doll was the one they would rather have and then saying that the white doll was the nice one and the black doll being the bad looking one I couldn’t believe what they were saying. Did the children know that they were black or did they think they were white? I can’t see the children picking the black doll as being the bad looking one if they had known that they were indeed black like the dolls. These kids were so young I am wondering how they became convinced that the black doll was the bad one and the white doll was the good one. I would figure that their parents would try and make them feel like they are the nice type and not the bad looking type but yet the kids still say it. That was probably what shocked me the most about this video. These African American kids said that the white doll was nice and the black doll was the bad looking one. I am thinking about it again now and I still can’t believe that they said that. I’m still just so shocked that they say that. The white people are so much in the majority that they are able to get young African American children to believe that being white is better than being black at that young age. I wonder what would happen if they did this experiment in a different place where being white is not in the majority, such as Africa or China. Would the African American kids still pick the white doll as being the nice one and the black doll as the bad looking one or would they choose the black one as the nice one because the majority is African American and they don’t have the same bias as in America. I also wonder whether Asian people in China would pick a black or white doll, or just say that they like them both the same, since neither the African American nor a white group is in the majority. The one thing that confused me about this video was that the people who were interviewed were mostly African American girls but they had a few African American boys too. I know that when I was that age I didn’t like playing with dolls like that and I’m wondering if maybe the African American boys felt the same way I did and the researchers could have used something else like G.I. Joe’s or something.