I think its more about your position on the inheritance of your parents and so on and so fourth that allowed you your position to visit these countries and establish that you could do more for these people. But then it becomes a problem if doing more for them would actually help them, like getting businesses started, etc. like a government and civil projects. It seems that you can't really draw a line except for the extreme that you can judge yourself worth more as a person,as each person does something in that society to affect another. Best bet would be to say your worth just as much as this person so the opportunity is equal among both of you but some factors you can just never get rid of until times change and places develop.

Well about the whole immigration and the problems it brings die to the large interests groups who sway the policy due to the number of workers needed for around the time the work becomes the busiest, I think it should be more relax in general where illegal immigration is still tight. I think illegal immigration does cause problems over America's infrastructure when it demolishes thousands of dollars here and there to help those without any kind of Medical care or social security. They do harm to the system when some need to repetitively abuse it because of their circumstances. The best thing I can hope for out of illegal immigration would be to document those workers as illegal so when in a problematic situation i can be known where they come from and at least some money goes back into the draining funds or the currency deficit they create. It might not be a lot but even a 5 out of 100 is better than a 0. The next problem would be to adjust work visas for those that they are able to come over and work in the states for FAIR wages, also negotiating with the "fair trade" organization to make sure that these people do not only work for their money but receive compensation for their hard work. Costs may go up but so would satisfaction and quality of goods if now people compete for their wages like some do across businesses.
On the working topic of these immigrant I do feel that sometimes when doing certain hard jobs that they try to improve their status in life. As each bit of money counts in a poor family they don't waste much and try to conserve as much as possible. When you think about families giving up education to make money to support their elderly or sick or just to keep food on the table, its hard to see the justice when they work tirelessly for 12-14 hour days on average for a small pay while many people today think the worth and laborious efforts to do these things would be worth much more. I think its a harsh reality and some people do remain poor but some manage to become lucky and break the mold where they are able to get better jobs and support their families with enough income to live happy life. I have some friends who work tirelessly here in college working 40 hours a week and a physically demanding job and trying to keep up enough time for grades and studyign to keep their life ahead of them looking better as they pay off some of their debts in college before they even graduate. For the immigrant workers, they work just as hard if not harder than my friend where work consumes the vast majority of the time,leaving little for the life they want to have like some business execs in a fortune 500 company where they talk about ideas and see what works and doesn't instead of actually going out and putting the work in. The legal works do help this country strive for better policies for all of us, as well as point out the flaws of our society making sure things are fair which is not all the time. Hopefully something will be done and will be done soon to help out everybody's situation whether illegal or legal.

I have seen the 200th episode of South Park where they start to make fun of Mohammad. Its kind of funny how they say that he is immune to being made fun of and is face is never shown on the TV. But its also interesting how every other religion can be made fun of freely on that show except Muslims known for their terrorist activities due to the few extremist organizations that cause problems and destruction for everyone else. I think that because we live in today's society that when one thing become taboo, someone must speak up about it and expose it or else it will remain taboo and the fact that you can never show his face might start to die down. It reminds me about when Sam talked about taboo and "bleeding" for women, it just takes one person to start knocking down walls and the rest will follow.

There a ton of difference of what each culture (and I do mean EACH culture) of the standard of beauty is. Some tribes in Africa send their women away to get fat or large because their standard of beauty much like that of the 1900's was that fat or large women are considered wealthy and suitable. Currently in America we all know what the standards are for both men and women, and for each they have to conform to some type of stereotypical person in which it forces people to act like somebody different. IF you honestly believe that everyone is beautiful then I know you are lying because there is probably some people you would never associate with because you think they are not in some way beautiful enough to even talk to.

Some Muslim is extremists but some are normal people the problem with the extremists is that they go too far on mass murder sprees or suicidal bombing locations which is true for any religion. Catholic religion has known to have some extremists who have done a lot of damage to other people, killing many. The best way for Muslim to resolve some of their issue would be to fix their Qur’an so that if a person does not want to convert to Muslim that they don't have to be killed. But the difference between our culture and theirs is the rights of each of the people here are different than there. Here we have women's rights; there women's rights are very limited. There are faults for every religion but the best way to deal with them is to find a peaceful resolution both sides can agree to.

I thought this lecture was really interesting to the point on how we are the invading force in the Middle East and how people respond to us as extremist on both sides of the war. I think that it has become a blown out of proportion war on both ends where those that are in the Middle East watching the videos about Christian extremists and those watch the Muslim extremists in Afghanistan. Each side watches how crazy each other is and those people that are civilians on the sidelines have to watch the massacre posted on the media, how the media shows only the bad parts of war such as Muslim extremists with weaponry and the US troops taking down most threats. But the problem consists with each side not watching the other on the ways to resolve the issues like the one soldier giving the children candy or a Muslim who has helped out some US troops. Instead what goes on the air on television is a tank patrol finding looters in their own country who have no food or heat that have a need to loot in order to stay alive from the destruction around them and the car that they used was crushed by the tank patrol. The only problem with that like Sam said each of the countries see the worst in the other so what must be done in order to stop the problem with the war getting out of hand is too find a way for the US to find a peaceful resolution in which those people that attack are troops are dealt with but that none of the civilians get hurt while retaliating. The best way for the troops to stand out as good people is to protect the Muslim civilians from their own extremists, because that is the only way that the war will stop with those people pissed that the US is there for oil instead of there to actually help with specific matters. We hide behind taking down figureheads who are problematic to our cause like Sadam H. and say we liberated their people from that of tyranny. But the problem is that each religion is by their own at faults, each of which try to spread their message to people of another and try to convert them to the preaching religion. Christians try to get Muslims are they are down on their luck from after the bombing and Muslims if unable to convert you have the religious right to kill the people converting to Christianity. But the problem with that is Christians should not kill at all, which makes them unable to defend their religion in the same manner, but only the catholic figureheads such as the Pope and Bishops do they make a unified decision to start a Holy War. Killing should be unforgiving in any religion but since we still fight each other based on the premise of skin color, attributes or anything else we can see our differences as there will always be fighting until there is a unified set of ideals or a standard of processes that everyone is able to follow. The fighting itself will never stop within my lifetime I'm sure of that.

You only get thrown into the re-visioning stage if you allow yourself to be, or you can just be conscious that some people have a different culture. Just because you grew up around black people doesn't mean you went straight to the re-visioning stage. Its basically necessary for each person to go through each stage even if not immediately but it does take some time to progress through each. The young have a easier time adjusting but some people who say 'yea I'm comfortable around black people, i grew up around tons when i was young' do not always remain that way. There becomes a psychological switch that makes some people start to conform to the norm whatever it may be. But if she's here at Penn State chances are she has not remained true to the fact that she was thrown into the re-visioning stage otherwise when hanging around people you see that she still hangs around people of the same culture or ethnicity as those she was friends with back home. Most likely she has conformed to people a group of white people that she hangs out with most of the time. Everyone is different.

I think it is kind of funny that everyone is confused about where they are on the census. I think its everything including easy but that it could have been easier but the fact is when you start getting too specific on a group of people that it gets harder and harder to differentiate races by the government, such a Hispanic person that identifies themselves as Hispanic but is from Mexico than a Hispanic that comes from Spain. The ethnicity is where they identify where they come from, but their race is dependent upon their culture that they experience. They could have set up the census that it asks what you identify as and has each as a choice "white/negro/African-American/Hispanic/Latino(a) etc."and have a sheet where they fill in what country that they identify their heritage from but the second list would be around over 100 choices depending on what country each person is from and if its not on it would seem racist because it was left out. I think that everyone takes things way too far to where they need to think about what they should answer for a simple question. Everyone knows what they should put down, if they identify with that group. Because people get wrapped up in the race issue that everything needs to be politically correct that it become excessive. Even research need to group people together but they have to identify closer to a general topic instead of Latino, Hispanic differences which are cultural. And each of these groups need 5000 at the minimum participants for the research to become even generally accurate that it has the same effect on each group. (If you don't understand this please look up the drug BiDil and do a little research about one of the first drugs to come out that works greater for the African American population) And getting a few 30000 volunteers or paid test subjects is expensive as well as time extensive and not to mention it needs to be ethical. Returning to the census topic, it would be for the best that people expand some knowledge that other people identify as different things and people are not always trying to be offensive. It becomes a filling idea of problems that people become racists if they include something that seems racists, in which they don't want to be deemed so. Its a "damned if you do damned if you don't" sort of logic. If people want to play the race card against the census, they can but they are getting over excited about something different, if change is wrong I can just point back to slavery and say 'well the change was for the better wasn't it'. Laugh at the stupid but pity the confused.

I knew this was coming eventually, because if you thing about being white as a 'pure' kind of thing, which requires both parents to be white it is pretty much inevitable that because of the multiple cultures mixing and interracial marriages and children that everything that is not white moves whites to be put as a minority. The one thing that kind of bothers me is that what will history be like if changed and forced under review to include different details, how will textbooks change. If you think about every minority writing in their part of history in a textbook, will the history of what happened really change or will it be more on the focus of what happened to the minority and will we lose sight of the bigger picture. The white team is getting smaller year by year but the real question is what happens when it becomes a minority how really will race relation issues change.

Well I think that women make a big thing about and it becomes a taboo to talk about a natural body function because of today's society and the right to privacy. But the thing that makes it sensitive is it is a sexual/reproductive function. And we today live in not a sexually open society where people are still judged by their decisions as they are straight, gay, lesbian, bi, trans, pans, whatever. There is a point where women keep it a secret as to not gross out other people by bodily functions but i really think the subject is only as touchy as some of us make it out to be. I know some girls talk about cramps and it doesn't tick for some people unless they say "its that time of the month" or "my period" but I'm not offended in anyway its just sometimes a reminder because its been so long since i've heard someone talk about it that i got shocked. I think something will change it the more its talked about.