I'm not sure I understand your question in the way it's being phrased. I also don't think we discussed the legal immigration process in class, what people have to go through to get legal status, the money (if any) required, etc. I hear a common theme of people who say "well the legal process is too difficult." I believe that the legal process should be streamlined. However, we can't let just anyone in, however, it should not have to be based on socioeconomic status. There need to be venues for workers to immigrate and be able to work (as a documented worker) to earn legal residency status.

I also believe that part of the fact that workers must be undocumented to be able to work for wages and benefits below the minimum regulations. I am one of those people who believes that the minimum wage laws cause black markets for labor and should be reformed. I know that sounds like a cold statement, but minimum labor prevents some types of labor from being able to be legal, and labor laws like this should be relaxed.

Unfortunately the legal labor pool is not suitable for many unskilled immigration laborers. The government through its regulations and taxes has effectively legislated away many types of low skill, low wage employment from the legal labor pool. There are millions of unemployed Americans who would be happy to take low wage low benefit jobs, including some of the jobs that have been off-shored; especially recently with the recession.

I happen to believe that when the government creates black markets like this, there will be all kinds of unintended consequences. For example, drug prohibition may cause less people to use the drug but drives the market underground, forcing people to take incredible risks in a market that does not abide by the rule of law. Similarly, immigrants are forced to sneak in and risk being deported because low wage jobs such as this are illegal, and face intense, often violent competition for underground low wage jobs.

Immigrants are faced with a conundrum; they need legitimate, legal jobs that they can work in order to gain legal status, but don't have much available to them. Unless the immigrant has a marketable skill that they can enter the United States' higher education system or skilled labor pool, they are pretty much forced to work illegal jobs under constant threat of deportation. The problem is that the low skill legal jobs have effectively been legislated away.

In addition, I believe that the public should become more educated about the legal immigration process, why it is so cumbersome, and how it can be reformed to be more fair and give poor immigrants a chance to move up and succeed; though I suspect that the basic underlying cause is the patchwork of restrictive wage and benefit laws that discourage hiring.

**they only have the most powerful army because we send them money and weapons**

First of all, you have opened up a can of worms with this issue, and many in the class would be offended by what you said. Nevertheless, my opinion on the whole thing is that our country can no longer to afford to geopolitically and economically dominate the world. So much capital has been poured into defense, finance, and other unproductive industries that the rest of the country's economy is crumbling and produces little of value any more. So, my opinion is that if the U.S. is to renounce its global empire, it should start with pulling out of the Middle East. That includes stopping the transfer of weapons and money to Israel. It will require significant belt-tightening on the part of Americans but I for one think that there is a lot of belt-tightening that can be done in America (by the wealthy and politically connected socioeconomic classes that is, not the growing underclass that is increasingly including whites). Our budget would have money for manufacturing, education, healthcare, and infrastructure (i.e. a REAL economy, not a FIRE economy) if our money stops going to the military, the banking system, the mortgage industry, and to foreign governments such as Taiwan and Israel.

How can one not expect this? Our media puts out propaganda about the extremist Muslims, portraying them as if every Muslim is like that, and claiming that the Muslim world has declared war on America and Israel. Only when Sam asked us to envision ourselves in Middle Eastern shoes, the Christian Invaders propaganda seemed much more real. Of course it is still propaganda but the effects are much more real to them and hit home in the way it most definitely doesn't in America. I think the reason for that is...voila...it IS much more real!! Arab extremists have caused, what, 5000 American civilian deaths? Most of whom were in the WTC? Compare that to the US troops in Iraq (the Gulf Wars and the Iraq War) and Afghanistan, and the numbers don't even compare. Our invasion and occupation is on a order of magnitude bigger than any coalition of Arab nations or extremist groups could muster up. When Sam asked in class whether I'd take up arms or support the insurgents, my answer is an emphatic YES. If you are in MY land killing MY people, I WILL shoot back. NO questions asked. Think about it. If America were invaded and occupied by China, I would muster up as much weaponry as me and my friends could find. No joke.

If I went over to the Middle East as a citizen, it would not surprise me in the least bit if I were looked at funny or met with hostility from Arab citizens. We all say this war must end, but how can us ordinary Americans end it if the people at the top in the banking and defense industries benefit from making loans to governments to finance wars, and manufacture weapons for lucrative sums of money?

"Asian" is a HUGE group. Bigger than black people I believe. But yes, the stigma holds true for Asians too. For example, in my fraternity there is one Asian guy and one black guy. If I were to tell someone, "Talk to Josh about that", and they would ask, "Whose Josh", I can see myself saying, "He's the short Asian guy." If you are in the minority people will use that to describe you. I have had the same thing happen to me.

As for the Asian American/Asian difference, it reminds me of the time when Sam said how he and his wife could pick out Americans from a distance just from the way they walked and acted. I usually would like to think that I don't have to hear their accent to know that they are American. When I'm walking around and an Asian guy passes by me I usually tell myself whether I think he is American or if he's an immigrant. I don't really think about it but I subconsciously notice. Usually I am right. I can't really describe it, but I think I can tell before they open their mouth and say something.

Both men and women believe that the bleeding thing is an issue that shouldn't be talked about. I am personally very apprehensive about talking to a girl about her cycle. I would assume that she wouldn't want me to bring it up. But then turn it around. If I were a girl I would be apprehensive about talking about it, because I would think that a guy I'm talking to wouldn't want me to bring it up. It is one of those stigma, like the black and white thing, that runs deep among everyone no matter their gender. And yes, it is very much a man's world. Although there are forces today that seem to indicate that the gender division is shrinking (like for example the unemployment rate for men is higher than the unemployment rate for women), but men still hold the position of power.

I like many others here got teary-eyed when I saw this. It goes to show the notion that runs deep in society; that white people are good, superior, and somehow better than everyone else. When black kids show this so early on, it really means that this notion runs deeply in our society, from the elites all the way down to young minority children. I thought for a second that one of the factors may have been the idea that the color black symbolizes darkness, evil, and ugliness, while the color white symbolizes purity, goodness, beauty. Hell is dark and heaven is bright, the darkness is dangerous and the daytime is safe, etc. Then I thought about it again, and wondered how can symbolism like that be extended to children of such age. And then again, it's not just a black and white thing. It's a white and minority thing; like for example, how some of the posters above explained situations with not wanting to even play with Asian or Hispanic-looking dolls. I would also imagine that most white kids would pick the white doll. You could also say that hey, that's a given, but is it really? I am curious; does this happen in other countries besides the US? Do young children born and raised in China also pick the white doll over the Asian doll? Do young black children born and raised in sub-Saharan Africa also pick the white doll over the black doll? I would hope not, but it also wouldn't surprise me in the least.

Young children pick up on things like this. When everybody plays the race card so much, it must be hard to avoid as a minority child. Being brought up in an environment where black and white people alike play the race card all the time, especially as a minority child, practically guarantees that we will have issues like this. Take the tea party protests in Washington for example. The left points out people at the rallies who make racist signs and yell racial epithets to stigmatize an entire half of the US populace as racist. And the people involved in the Tea Parties on the right blame the idea of infiltrators from the left sneaking in and trying to frame the tea partiers as racist. I don't know what to believe, given the partisan nature of the mainstream media. I suspect that there are both infiltrators AND tea partiers that are truly racist. And I can't help but believe that both sides are using the situation to their advantage and to try to exonerate themselves from being racists, when the truth is, deep down, there is a great deal of hatred among everyone involved. There is as much hate as ever in this country and I don't know whether to blame the people at the top, the people at the bottom, or both. But partisan politics and the mainstream media doesn't help the situation at all, and keep everyone hateful and divided. I can just picture African American parents sitting their children in front of the TV and saying, "See that? Those white people spat on the black man at the rally." At a young age I would imagine that children would think to themselves that maybe the white people are right and maybe the entire black race is bad or inferior.

Parents teach their children at a very young age. And unfortunately this translates into a stubborn belief system later in life that traverses generations upon generations.

The closed environment is the first step for many people who wouldn't dare come out of their shell in real life and consider even facilitated discussion a step forward. Being in the facilitated discussion, there is at least an agreement that the members will try to have an open mind. There is no expectation about that out in the world. The fact is that even if you are comfortable about talking about race, others aren't. Being comfortable about talking means that you are prepared for whatever consequences may come your way should you say such things. And if you are inexperienced or reserved about it, it probably means that you overemphasize that risk to yourself considerably or are unwilling to have to deal with it. If you are capable of talking about these things, some will look at it and think it's racist. I feel like many people are not comfortable with those risks that come along with coming out of their shell.

No, she was asking if it made any "difference". Yes, it does make a difference. No it doesn't make it "better" or "worse" It just has different (but both) implications for race relations. When a black person does it, it is not the historical deep-seated hatred that whites had, it is his newly empowered sense that blacks now have the power and influence and return the fire from past actions and not only that, believe that it is okay. Apparently the racism is coming from all parties, not just blacks, in SoCal. None of it is okay. I am frankly not surprised at the incident though. I disagree with a lot of what the people in the video were saying, by the way, if that isn't already clear. Though I do agree that education is needed (I wasn't aware of all of the issues until this year, and I owe it to PL SC 110 and SOC), if it is a one-sided viewpoint from a majority of ANY race then it will be biased.

Obviously people wouldn't be getting all fired up if there was no issue here. The fact is that there ARE racial issues at that campus. Not sure if I am phrasing all this correctly, forgive me if I'm not making sense. The explanation behind it and the implications it would have...are surely different but the harm is there just the same.

Much of the institutional racism in the past in the South came from individuals in the community and local governments harboring deep-seated oppression and hatred. And until the public perception changed (along with greater communication and transportation that exposed the South to the world during WWII), there was very little that governments at the federal and state level did or could do. The gradual decline in white on black violence was a long process that were caused by an improvement in local race relations. Government throughout that time (Post Reconstruction) was often used (by local forces) as leverage to entrench and solidify segregation, racism, and oppression. National policy did not cause this, it followed it.

Speaking of WWII, much of the civil rights movement stemmed from political embarrassment from the fact that the entire world saw America fighting fascism and oppression overseas with all of the problems within our borders and the atrocities that took place during the Jim Crow era up until the Civil Rights movement.

I think we are making a mistake in yet expanding the unprecedented size and scope of the federal government. Time after time there are allegations of regulatory agencies not doing their job and being ineffective with comparison with informed consumers and businesses. It just doesn't strike me that the Department of Education will carry out their regulatory duty properly. It seems more likely to me that education oversight will look more like the way the SEC and the Federal Reserve regulate banks. Which is very poorly. National mandates involve lots of political power and involves the most powerful unions and corporations into the legislation and often neglects ordinary people. This time around, it would be the largest teachers' unions. Not to mention that there is not a one-size-fits-all strategy for all neighborhoods, their schools, and their racial demographic breakdowns. Change comes from the grassroots and the general attitude of society. If parents and educators are unwilling to participate in their childrens' education process then no progress can be made. All too often schools do get the funding they need; funding is an issue but after all, some of the problems come from unionization issues or misappropriation that involve the city government and local politicians; in addition the local community and parents all too often don't care about going to school and getting an education, or there are family or poverty issues.

It is bad politics to misrepresent one's own constituency, even if it were the right thing to do. This is why you don't have politicians coming out and admitting that there is seriously wrong if the status quo benefits them. Cases in point: Southern congressmen during Slavery representing plantation slave owner jurisdictions, and representatives of highly racist communities, who in both cases will continue the status quo of oppression. It is bad politics to say that many fundamentals of your constituency are based on lies. The only way that the history books will ever become "truthful", and properly represent Native Americans, is if all politicians, local, state, and federal, were to join a "tell the people the truth instead of what they want to hear" campaign. Only then would any legislation that requires the full truth to be told in education be enforced effectively and efficiently. Highly unlikely. If only politics wasn't a game for self interest and lobbyist money and was instead an honest, beneficial service for the common good. Ah, human nature.