When it comes to immigrants in the U.S., I am one of the people who don’t throw up my arms right away and show anger that they are in our country. For many people, immigrants, especially illegal immigrants, push a certain button of theirs and sets them off onto a rant about how they all need to be sent back to where they came from. Personally, I acknowledge that it is illegal for people to hop the border and live in the U.S. without proper documentation. However, I believe that the positives that arise out of them living here outweigh the negatives. Many immigrants come here to work. They come for a chance to make the life they’ve always dreamed of and can’t successfully obtain in their old homeland. That’s a complement for our country. People flock here because we’re free and we hold our destiny in our hands. No one tells us what to do, we choose the lives we want and work with what we have and what we are able to accrue. So the people coming here aren’t just trying to freeload off of us citizens. They stimulate our economy by doing the jobs that no one else feels like doing. They work in manual labor which a lot of Americans are shying away from these days because our society is becoming lazier and lazier due to the advancement of technology. So to answer the question of whether or not I’d take in immigrants, I’d have to say yes. And of course this is hypothetical because I obviously couldn’t while I was in college now. But the idea is something I’d go for. Helping out a fellow human being who shares a goal of making a good life for themselves is something I couldn’t turn my back to. They aren’t harming anyone and they obviously value our country over every other country in the world so we must be doing something right since everyone wants to be a part of it. Also, from the standpoint of learning about other cultures, I’d have to say that it would be an opportunity that was impossible to pass up. Living with a foreigner and learning about their culture and why they left their homeland to come to mine would be fascinating. To compare our lives and lifestyles would be fun as well. And lastly, being the person who acted as a springboard for someone who had nothing to be able to become successful in our great country, it would feel awesome. I was always taught to share, and for me, living in America is a blessing so being selfish is not an option. I would love to help someone else out and share the American experience.

The first thing that I think of when I listen to talks on Native Americans and the steady genocide of their kind throughout all of U.S. history is “how far does the responsibility reach?” Of course, the initial settlers are to blame for starting the removal of Native Americans from their own land, but then what? Are we today still responsible since we live on their land? Do we really have a choice whether or not to live here? Does being born into this country alleviate us of all responsibility of something that happened hundreds of years ago? I’m not sure. I often think of black people and wonder whether they aren’t responsible because they were brought over here as slaves and had no choice to live here on other people’s land. That makes sense, but then you can wonder, do black people NOW deserve any blame like whites because they knowingly live on stolen land? I’m not too sure that there is a straight answer to any of those questions. I believe it comes down to peoples specific opinions on the matter. Personally, I think that as long as we are aware of what happened, that’s good enough. There aren’t enough Native Americans left to feel guilty of living on their land because, as our ancestors stole the land, the land wasn’t the current Native American’s, it was their ancestors. So there’s a bit of a gray area as to where the line should be drawn, but again, I believe that as long as the current citizens educate themselves on the land that we live on, that’s acceptable. It’s not like moving away or giving land back will do anything due to the lack of Native Americans alive today on reservations. I mean I’m sure they could build up a culture in a long period of time, but why try to fix something that has been done so long ago? The real question is whether to integrate the Native Americans into our society, if they wanted to be included. But it seems as if they want to be left alone, which is understandable. One quick note about the sports teams named after Native Americans such as the Redskins or Seminoles, I’m not sure whether that’s insulting or not. I kind of lean toward it being insulting, but at the same time I can also see it as a tribute almost. But it’s twisted because why would we tribute something we conquered? It’s just a tricky situation where people like me feel guilt for something I didn’t do, something I had no control over. But that guilty feeling is good, because it means I’m aware of the land I live on and how my people obtained it. Forgetting completely about the Native Americans would be a sad, sad thing.

I’ve always thought about the number of innocent lives that are taken in wars. I realize it’s something that isn’t done on purpose and will always happen in order for countries to meet objectives, but it still is alarming to hear the secrets behind these killings. In class Sam reported to us that for every “bad guy” to be killed by the American troops, 29 innocent civilians can be sacrificed in order to achieve that goal. 29 people, dead. If it were 30, then the US troops would probably not launch the attack. But 29 is ok. I sit here typing and am shaking my head at the thought of human beings, from my country, actually calculating a formula to predict how many innocent lives will be taken before they launch an attack, and then still attack! Just to get to one person. I’m all for taking out terrorist leaders or tyrannical presidents, but can’t it be done without taking lives? Isn’t our intelligence trained enough to single out these people without blowing their surroundings to smithereens? I just don’t understand why it’s ok to kill anyone from a country you’re at war with. It should only be that country’s troops that are acceptable to be killed. I can’t imagine a country such as Italy or Egypt (hypothetically speaking obviously) going to war with us and predicting how many lives are acceptable to take so they could kill Obama or any of his Cabinet members. One of those lives taken could be me! Or my friends, or family or classmates! And we had nothing to do with the war! It just scares me to think that our military, which is the largest and strongest on the planet, can think so lightly of innocent human life and basically let their greed of taking out the big shots take over their humanity in deciding that others can be killed too as long as this big shot dies. I’d love to hear the Secretary of Defense’s explanation for why 29 people are allowed to die as long as we get our target. I really would. Because he’d be bullshitting out of his you-know-what since there is no logical reasoning. In my opinion it’s laziness. Instead of dropping bombs to kill these specific people, why can’t we send special agents in to assassinate the targets? Sure it may take a lot longer and be more dangerous, but since when is it our right to decide who should be put in danger? Especially people from a foreign country? If it were up to me, I’d say ZERO people can die in order for the one target to be killed. If the goal is to kill a specific person, he/she may die and that’s it. No innocent lives.

As I was sitting in class listening to Sam talk about “the male standard”, a lot of different ideas fell into place for me. I learned a few things about my own gender, but I really learned some things about the female gender and why they do the things they do. Hearing these things kind of made it all click in my head which was cool. First, I always wondered why girls dressed in high heels and tight, suffocating dresses. From time to time I’d ask my girlfriend these questions while she got ready for a night out. Her response was always “it pays to be fashionable”. I thought, “fair enough”, and always ended the inquisition there. But after hearing Sam’s take on it, it all made sense. Girls wear uncomfortable clothes and accessories because it’s what guys want. Sure, they say it’s in style, but they never think WHY it’s in style. If guys liked girls in furry sweatpants and strait jackets, girls would wear them! They put themselves through discomfort for approval of the other gender; at least teenage girls through middle-aged women. It all makes sense: we live in a male dominated society and girls feel the need to please the males so they cater to our likings. And it’s crazy because guys could usually care less what they wear out, they just want to be comfortable, and would never sacrifice comfort for the approval of women. Next, the topic of sex was tossed around. It was made aware to me that my thoughts on the topic were correct. Guys need the slightest arousal cues to get in the mood for sex, while girls usually need a lot of time and romance to get in the mood. This may be a reason why girls often use alcohol as a cover up to be able to have sex. Guys can just do it whenever and not be judged, but as soon as a girl acts the same way, they are labeled as a slut/whore, etc. It’s crazy how that works. I guess it’s just the way our global society has evolved throughout the history of time. I don’t see any change in the future, ever, to be honest. It’s almost like girls feed into the notion of the “needy penises” of guys. I could tell a lot of the females in the audience were getting upset and feeling picked on, but the truth is, they were just being called out on facts. It’s just the way our species works nowadays. The male dominated society works on a viscous cycle and will never be reversed in my opinion. Overall, I learned a lot of things about women and men that I will for sure notice from now on, and it’ll be kind of funny because so many people are unaware of the “male standard”.

For me, I was raised to date whoever I wanted. My parents never made a point to tell me that I couldn’t date a certain race or they’d disown me. I’ve been reading about classmates whose parents have said such things and they excuse it by saying “that’s the way they were raised”. Quite frankly, that’s a lame excuse. They’re adults and have been for probably at least 25-30 years. Sure, they could have been raised to not accept interracial relationships but there comes a point where you no longer are brought up by your parents and you mature and think for yourself. I hate when people blame things on how they were raised: you’re conscious enough to realize it was the way you were raised, so be conscious enough to change it.
When I first started liking girls, it was 6th grade. To be honest, the first girl I had a crush on that year was a black girl. She was beautiful and something about her made me feel good (that was my thinking as a 12 year old). So I would always try to hang out with her and even mustered up the courage to ASK someone to ASK her out for me. Looking back on that year, I’m amazed that I saw no color. Especially when it came down to having a crush on a girl, I did not see her as a black girl, I saw her as a girl…who I liked a lot. I credit that color-blindness to everyone and anyone I came into contact with who taught me that color means nothing. If I would have avoided girls because they were black, it would have been “acceptable” at that age because I didn’t know any better, much like some of my classmate’s parents. But that color-blindness has stayed with me through high school and college. I see black girls as I do white girls and the ones that I know are ordinary girls just like everyone else. Granted, I have a girlfriend currently, but hypothetically speaking, if I didn’t, I would see no problem dating a black girl. Or an Asian girl, or a Hispanic girl. I see people for who they are not what they are in terms of skin color. I’m lucky enough to have been like this for a good chunk of my life. I can’t imagine avoiding interracial relationships. I wouldn’t let others pick my girlfriend or spouse for me. It’s not right. I have confidence that the girl I end up with is the right girl for me regardless of how she looks. So, all in all, I’m all for interracial relationships and I think everyone should be as well as long as they are thinking for themselves when making the decision.

In our discussion group today we spent a lot of time talking about whether or not we felt guilt for living on stolen land from the Native Americans or from buying goods produced by slaves. Many great ideas were shared and I am going to write about a few of them. First off, dealing with the situation of the Native Americans, many people said that they shouldn’t feel guilty for something they had nothing to do with. I agree to that to an extent. For some Americans, their families had moved here from Europe or Africa or wherever only a few generations ago, therefore weren’t even present when the first Americans basically stole land from the Native Americans. For that point, I understand how someone can’t imagine feeling guilt for the actions of others. On the other hand, though, I think of it this way: sure, we may have been born into living in American and feel no need for guilty feelings of stealing Native’s land, but, we do have a choice whether or not to live here. I assume that a majority of our country’s citizens know a little bit about the land and who it belonged to before we unjustly kicked the inhabitants out, therefore we are all consciously choosing to continue living on stolen land rather than move to areas that weren’t owned by the Native Americans or even a completely different country. Now I know that’s pretty extreme, but it’s the truth. What we all decided on as a class was that there’s no need to move or anything since we’re at least 500 years removed from the beginnings of the Native American “removal”, but there is a need for us all to be aware of the land we live on. Having awareness is such an important factor in living on this Earth. Understanding our peers, all of our peers, is vital in progressing as a species. The other topic was the question of whether or not we felt guilty for purchasing slave made goods. After realizing that a good number of the items we use or eat during the day are produced by slaves around the world, we are forced to stop and think. Do we really need that item? Is that item available in the fair-trade market? Does it really matter if I buy this even though a slave made it halfway around the world? Well, there are two answers to this. One is, slavery is awful and inhumane and it needs to stop. Buying those products when we can buy other fairly made products should give us a guilty feeling. We have a choice with what we buy and eat. On the other hand (a more realistic answer), sure slavery is bad and we don’t support it, but with today’s society I need these items or I’ll be left behind. It actually is beneficial to slaves if we continue to buy their items because if we refrained, the price of those items would skyrocket, thus causing more people to be enslaved and worse working conditions. It’s all a viscous cycle: the less we buy, the worse it is for the slaves; the more we buy the “better” off the slaves are, but the slaves are still around either way so we basically just in a bad spot in terms of choosing whether to buy slave made products.

Upon hearing this discussion question, a million different ideas and thoughts popped into my head. So I will try and sort them out into some kind of logical order. The natural resources of our world seem endless and plentiful because we are getting by with them in the current times and consequences don’t happen abruptly. But when we take a step back from everything, we notice that we are in fact wrong in our assessment of these resources. There is a limit to them and we will run out some day. Every day that passes, the speed at which we approach this “deadline” increases. Some may say it’s too late to slow down the process of maintaining resources, but I say it’s never too late for anything. The main issue with resource conservation is our ever-growing population. Like the question asker brings up, our worldwide population will double in about 100 years or so. That feeds the struggle to conserve our resources since the more people there are, the more resources we need. Sam said that there are about 3 billion people on earth who don’t get enough food on a daily basis. The question of how to solve that problem was brought up. There are many answers to this widespread problem. Now, I’m not sure if I really feel the way I’m about to talk about, but I’m just going to go with it. The theory of “only the strong survive” can apply to this situation. If we continue to try and find answers which would benefit the poorest of the poor and the hungriest of the hungry, we’re only feeding into the problem. The less hungry people there are, the more people will reproduce, and the more people will live on earth. It’s a viscous cycle. I think that in order for the world to run properly there needs to be poor, hungry people to balance out the rich, gluttonous people. Just like in society where a society just wouldn’t work if everyone was successful. I know, it’s a pretty bad outlook on things, but its reality. Instead of trying to feed all of the hungry, we need to focus on conserving oil or coming up with more “Green” ideas to sustain our future. It’s almost like looking ahead and constructing the future, not looking behind and trying to pull up the past. The world is a fast moving, ever-growing “thing (for lack of a better word), and we can’t slow it down. Our only logical option is to go with it and make adjustments along the way for our future. Trying to pull up “the weak” will only cause overpopulation and overpopulation will ruin our Earth. It’s basically a “take your pick”: either you act on your human nature to help the needy, which will end in our world’s slow death, or you can fight that urge and realize that letting nature take its toll may be harsh, but it’s the best long term plan.

I think it depends on the person’s situation to decipher whether or not it’s selfish of them to have kids when they live in poverty. The first scenario is that the person had kids and then, for whatever reasons, fell into poverty. Now all of the sudden it’s nearly impossible to provide food, clothes and education to 3, 4 or 5 kids. In that case, I believe it is not selfish at all. It’s just unfortunate circumstances most of the time. Now, the other scenario is that the person is already impoverished and they choose to have kids anyway. I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I feel that it’s not smart to bring kids into such a bad situation. It’s not only bad for them but it puts the person in a bigger predicament which doesn’t make sense. It’s hard to tell whether poor people are purposely having kids or just having unprotected sex. Either way, you can’t tell a human they can’t have kids or sex, especially based on their financial situation. It may not be smart to have kids as a poor person, but it’s their choice and if they choose to do so, they must work their way out of the hole which they made deeper for themselves. In that sense, maybe there should be different welfare laws or something which makes it harder for people with 4, 5 or 6 kids to obtain help from the government. To be honest, I’m not sure what the solution for this “problem” is, but it definitely is an issue that somehow needs to be addressed. It’s just tricky because it’s not dealing with anything that is illegal or immoral, just something that requires the people involved to have some common sense. Maybe their mindset is “if I have kids, my kids may have a better shot than me at getting us out of this impoverished life”. Or, who’s to say that the mother wouldn’t love, nurture or care for the kids with everything she had regardless of her income? What it comes down to is other people projecting their beliefs and such onto the impoverished part of our society in terms of what we think they should/shouldn’t do, and it’s not right. We can’t speak for them. All in all, it’s the person’s choice to have kids, so if they’re in poverty, then it’s up to them whether they want procreate and deal with any repercussions. Maybe they’re more human than us for wanting to reproduce and show their offspring love regardless of their class status. Because it sure seems inhumane for us upperclass people to sit back and say we wouldn’t have kids just because we were dirt poor. That’s a bit materialistic and shallow. Raising a kid has little to do with the parent’s monetary status.

I believe that it’s a combination of racism in the criminal justice system and the influx of police officers patrolling in the inner cities. I will discuss the later issue first. It’s statistically proven that inner cities are home to a very high number of minorities. I’m a Crime, Law and Justice Major and the other day we learned about the structure of cities and why they are prone to such high crime rates. Basically, when cities sprout up, there is usually an industrial district somewhere around the center. Outside of this district, there are zones or rings that are home to different groups of people. The first ring is the zone of transition, which is a place that has bars, casinos, strip clubs etc. Then comes the zone of homes for the workers, and the following zone is where the wealthier factory owners live, and then come the suburbs. (This obviously isn’t how it necessarily works today, but the cities are still laid out this way, so it’s still relevant to discuss) The zone with the bars, strip clubs and gambling opportunities is in between the factories where people would work, and those people’s homes. This area, aka the inner city, is where a vast majority of crimes are committed. Drugs, sex, violence, they are all a part of life in this zone. The police forces are aware of this and can key in on this area. Combine that with the fact that this area is home to mainly minorities, and you’ll get the correlation of more minorities being arrested. So, that isn’t racism, that’s just the way inner cities work. The next issue is whether or not police forces/ the justice system are racist. Based on what I just talked about, I cannot conclude that police forces specifically are racist, although some studies have shown that cops are more “likely” to suspect crime when they see suspicious black people in the city as opposed to suspicious whites. What I can comment on, however, is the Justice System as a whole. Down in Georgia there was a case, McCleskey v. Kemp, where a black man was convicted of murdering a white cop. He was sentences to death, which caused a study to be conducted measuring the rates at which blacks were given the death penalty compared to whites. After going over about 2500 cases, the results were surprising, or not surprising, based off of what your view on the justice system is. It was determined, after removing 39 nonracial variables, that defendants charged with killing white victims were 4.3 times more likely to receive the death penalty than defendants charged with killing blacks. The numbers speak for themselves. I know this doesn’t have to do necessarily with arrests, but I feel this is more important because the arrests statistics don’t tell you whether they were charged with anything. This statistic shows the rate at which whites are “protected” and their killers sentenced to death at a much higher rate than black’s killers.

Racism being a problem throughout the world dates back to the earliest days of culture. As soon as people began relating to one another and classifying themselves in specific groups, problems became apparent between these groups. As we learned in class today with the “King of the mountain” example, the white race won that game early on and has never really been dethroned since. Different groups among the white race, i.e. the Germans and White Supremacist groups, have branched out and continued racism and in some cases made it worse. It’s like a trend almost; one group starts it, another continues it, but it never really dies out. It all relates back to who is “above” everyone else in terms of race. There seems to be a need for a dominant, majority group, with many minority groups below. But all that does is create controversy between said groups. As long as one group is in “power” or “on top of the mountain”, all others will be seen as inferior to that group. It’s hard to change. The only way to end racism is to even the playing field and educate everyone so that they value others for their differences, not persecute them. But since that is a tall task to order, we have to start somewhere smaller. In my opinion, that small first step would be to try and get everyone to recognize that there is a problem. Part of the reasons for racism is that people holding racist beliefs don’t necessarily think what they believe is wrong. They usually grow up being fed these beliefs so later in life it’s normal for them to think negatively of other races. They also surround themselves with people of the same mind. With no one telling them they are ignorant or misinformed, the problem grows. Mix in the millions of stereotypes that are constantly being thrown around, and it’s a tough force to stop abruptly. Ending the force that is racism is a project that will take multiple generations to complete. It starts with us in today’s world, continues with our kids and their generation, and then is solidified by their kids and the generations to come. In conclusion, the reason that racism is still a problem today is because it’s not a quick fix. I do believe that it’s slowly fading away, but it will take time. It will also take an initiative by those who want it to disappear so that the process is sped up a bit. With everyone doing their own small part, maybe in 10, 20, or 50 years from now we won’t have to ask the question “Why is racism still a problem?” hopefully it’ll be a thing of the past.