As we discussed the stages of white identity development in class on Thursday, I was quite surprised at the steps that a white person goes through in order to become totally comfortable with race issues. Before I had always believed that they had it the easiest among the racial groups because no one really commented on their color or racial identity. The first time I realized that a white person and many others may be confused by racial issues and the proper way to address a person of color was in one of the first Sociology 119 classes where one of the girls in the front, who was white accidentally called the term people of color as colored people. It was then that I realized that people of white descent or at least most of them are really confused as to how to address and confront people of color as in finding a way not to offend them. It is like their looking for the line as to how far you can go in terms before getting too offensive or too oblivious in conversation with colored people. So this then leads to the stages that a white person can go through. I think that the worst stages are stage three and stage four because they focus a white person on the bad things that a person of color does or goes through instead of seeing the people of color as they really are and trying to accept or understand their culture and backgrounds. In stage three, a white person commits themselves to equality. This is all fine and dandy that they see the differences between our races and are trying to fight for the people of color, but the problem or what I see is wrong about this is that they are doing it out of guilt. I would rather someone feel the need to protest because of their own beliefs not because they feel guilty for what their ancestors did to the people of color before causing these lines of separation between us. Stage four is one of the worst stages for a white person too because in this stage, the white person gets tires of the hypocrisy of the people of color. This is bad to me because it seems like they came to the realization that these people who they were just fighting for in the previous stage are scumbags just like the rest of the world who are putting them down. This is wrong because they are again seeing the people of color as a whole, treating them as if one person’s actions reflect the whole groups. One bad thing came from the group which means everyone from that group is bad is not how it should work. In my opinion, the stages I would most want to interact with would be stage one, stage five, or stage six.

I found the subject of our last lecture quite curious and eye opening for a lady such as myself to realize that pleasure in such forms is dominated by the male’s pleasure rather than female. Not only that this aspect is orientated to males but also that we live our ordinary lives in a quote un quote, male dominated world. And this influences us, as females down to the very outfits and ways we dress ourselves. I personally did not think much of how I dressed when I woke up in the morning. It never even crossed my mind that I may, somewhere deep in my sub conscious might be thinking of appropriate outfits regarding those of the opposite sex. The thoughts that usually go through my head when I wake up and stare at my closet to dress up are the questions do I want to look nice and dressy today or be comfortable and look like a bum? Usually I choose the latter and look like a bum, choosing comfort over attraction. If you have seen me in recitation in our private sociology groups you would know this by my sweatpants and t-shirts. In this way, I guess you could also say I am choosing to repel men by wearing outfits that don’t appeal to the “male gaze”. The male gaze is such a strange concept. Earlier in the semester, I was even contemplating it with a male friend who was getting ready for a party. All he had to wear was a t-shirt and jeans with some cologne on and he was ready to go to the party. I said, “Are you serious?! That’s all you guys have to do to get ready?” Girls have to spend hours upon hours getting ready, finding the right dress, putting on makeup and fixing up their hair, while this guy looks like he just came out of class and he’s ready to go. I was like this is so messed up and now I know why; it is because of the male orientated world we live in. In my other sociology class, we were also discussing the way that women are portrayed in our society as just objects for the male’s enjoyment. Especially in advertisements, women come off with less respect than that of an object or possession being that they have no lines or say nothing but stand there and look good in the advertisements. Furthermore, the media also pushes the male orientated world in such that it objectifies the female body as needing change to look good for the current male gaze and not placing any emphasis on the male to change for the female. With the way I dress, I think or at least hope that I attract men who are normal, intelligent guys that would treat most ladies with respect and dignity.

The stages of racial identification are all very different and distinct from each other. I feel that each one has a different obstacle that a person has to pass to get to the next stage of racial identification. For example, one must get past the blurry veil that society puts on us to get past the first stage onto the second, or at least that’s how it seems. I think that in order for the progression to higher stages is to occur, people need to realize and find these obstacles in each stage and overcome them. In my opinion, I think the stage that would be the best to be at as a human being would be either stage four or stage five. At these stages, a person has already come to grips with his or her culture, in such that she or he accepts it as not superior, but equal in important and appreciation of other races and ethnicities. A person in this stage would have passed the imaginary hurdles or the previous stages and realized what is important about their culture and can now express their interests and understanding by applying it to understanding other ethnicities and races also. I think that this is the best way to see the world of race. Not as a separate entity of different races that are fighting for superiority over each other, but as one people who practice the idea of holism between races, that we are all connected in our differences.
On the other hand, if I must pick which stage I think would be the later or worst of the stages of racial identification, I would have to pick between stages one or three. I feel that three would be the most trouble and worrisome of the stages because the people in that group practice a certain type of ethnocentrism, in that they believe that their group is superior to any other and to express this they may turn to drastic methods. This is one of the worst stages, because the individual does not see or even try to understand other people and their races. They shut themselves off from the world and only see what they want to see, which would be in this case the members of their race that see their and sympathize with their ideals. In my opinion, whenever someone binds themselves intentionally to something it is never a good thing. Stage one is also one of the worst stages because the people in it don’t even know that they are in it. For example, I remember when I was in stage one back when I was a child. Being raised in “western” culture as an Asian American, I remember always wishing I could just look like a white girl so I would be “normal”. What makes this stage so bad, is that I didn’t even know why I thought that, all I knew was that something about me was different, which was my race and I didn’t want to be part of it. Of course now, I have moved past that and have come to grips with the racial topic when I was in high school.

The video that we watching during lecture about Jorge was very interesting to watch. My family identifies as a Catholic when it comes to religion so I guess you could say that I am too. I went to a private Catholic school since to began going to school in Pre Kindergarten until I moved to Pennsylvania and went to a public school. I remember going through my school supplies and old papers this summer to clear out and throw out some stuff when I came across my old school work from all the way back in the day when I was in Catholic school. In my old school, religion was a subject. We had to learn everything about the bible and everything else about our religion. I remember I was also in the choir that sang all the hymns during mass. I remember I was shocked by how religious I used to be when I was a child. I found a little turkey hand paper mache cut out that was made for my thanksgiving project and it had written on it the things that I am thankful for. Most of them were the same as what I think now, as in I’m thankful for my family and such, but what I was surprised to see was at the top was that I was thankful for God. It ran through my mind as strange that I would put this at first then I remembered my religion and my background. I feel more detached then my younger self when it comes to these matters of following in Jesus’ footsteps. That is why when it comes to videos like the one shown I think to myself that it is truly amazing what Jorge does for those people every day and how he sticks to his religion, doing it only for the love of his brothers and sisters. I actually do think to myself, would I do this for these people I do not know and probably will never see again? Would I waste my money on them even though they would give me nothing in return? And then I think yes, I would try my best to. I don’t know if everyone in the class thinks the same way that I do, in that I think when I see people who are suffering like this, I think how could I help them? Is there anything I could possibly do to help them improve their condition? I think that in every one of the videos we’ve watched about people who are in bad living conditions and or suffering. I guess you could say I think that because deep down I still have the all morals that my private school taught me.

As a student of Asian descent, I feel that this question is very easy to answer. I am of Filipino descent, therefore Asian although I have lived in the United States all my life. I personally like to be called Filipino instead of Asian when addressed by my friends and colleagues. The reason behind this stems from a long line of I guess you could call insults and stereotypes that were associated with being called Asian. At my high school, I was one of the few people who actually made up the Asian population and quota. Being that as it was, my high school as I’ve said before was made up of mostly black, Hispanic, and white kids. I think that this was a very wide variety of exposure that was brought in to each of our attention and definitely cultured us to respect more racial groups as I have stated before in my previous posts, but what escaped my attention before hand was the lack of Asians in my school and the understanding and respect that should have come to that specific group. Thinking back, when I moved to my new high school and middle school in Pennsylvania, from my old private school in New Jersey, which consisted of mostly Asians, Indians, and white children, I did have a hard time fitting in with such a diverse group of people at my high school. I remember because I was Asian I was made fun of and stereotyped into the typical Asian tactics like always doing well in school, and being the teacher’s pet, and doing everything on time, and being very obedient in doing the right things and school work. I remember despising it so much that my new classmates were stereotyping me into this Asian person instead of seeing me for who I really was that I actually took specific precautions to make sure I did the exact opposite of what a “typical Asian” would do. First of all, it was hard enough trying to fit into a new school after living all your life in your old school and then moving from all your childhood friends, but it was even more to have to try to make new friends with this stereotype over a ten year olds head. So I fought against it. I tried my best to do the opposite of my stereotype. For example, I started to do poorly in class on purpose. My private school was light years ahead of my new school’s system of education, so I was much more advanced when I came in and got all As on everything. I threw that away and started to not hand in assignments and do homework. I started to skip classes and not answer teacher’s questions. I started to despise Asians and being called Asian myself during high school and the stereotypes that came with it. I just wanted everyone to know that everything I do, my good grades, that I’m good at piano, that my talents were not because I’m Asian. It’s because I am good at it, not my race. So I believe the thought that Asians are superior in intelligence can have a negative effect on Asians and I am direct proof of this.

I personally think that I would not be nervous at all to talk to or approach Kay. I come from a place that is very culturally diverse even though it is in Pennsylvania. When people think Pennsylvania they always assume that it is this back water place where only white and Amish people live, well at least that was what I sadly thought when I moved here from New Jersey. My area of Pennsylvania, which is at the far eastern part is actually very culturally diverse. I believe it is due to the fact that half of the kids that go to my high school and middle school moved from New Jersey or New York also. These kids plus the kids that are originally from Pennsylvania, as in born and raised here made up the diversity in my high school. We had a good mix of black, white, and Hispanic. We were only lacking in the Asian aspect, which I came to fill being Filipino and all. What was interesting was that living in our old homes back in new jersey or new York or eastern Pennsylvania, most kids would not talk to each other the way they did at my high school. For example, living in New Jersey, I actually went to a catholic private school where all my classmates were Indian, Asian, or White. I will admit that living there, although I was in the city and exposed to all the different races, I was a bit racist. I never realized it until I moved to Pennsylvania and had class with Hispanics and Black classmates. I was quite nervous around them and I could not put my finger on why until I lived there for about a year. The reason I was so uneasy around them is because of the environment that I used to live in the city. Back at Jersey City, we surely were culturally diverse but the approach that we had to each other did not have the same tone as my high school and middle school did. It is sad to say but the only time I saw black and Hispanic people were in shady situations like in parking lots and on the streets and they always looked dangerous so I came to believe before that they all were dangerous or to avoid them because they look like they were always about to cause trouble. Coming to Pennsylvania gave be more understanding to that aspect. Another example, would be the people who were already living in my current area of pennsylvnia. We have other schools in our district that actually act in a very discrimitory attitude toward our school especially at sporting events because we have all different ethnicities in our players and even though they are in the same school district, they only have players of white ethnicity. So I think that it comes down to the environment you were raised in to see how you would react to a person who has Kay’s appearance. The old me from New Jersey would have been a little scared to, but now that I have adjusted my perception of race through the help of my high school environment, I have no problems talking to and approaching a person of Kay’s appearance. In reality, that was also the case when I first met him to play some video games!

The video that they played in class on Thursday was a pretty interesting one. I personally have watched a lot of episodes from that show, “What would you do?” I think it’s a pretty interesting show because it video tapes the reaction of actual people, not paid actors or actresses in a “reality television show”. This means that the people that they are taping are giving their honest reactions and expressions toward the situation that is being placed before them and that is what I like the most about the show. In the video that Professor Sam played, it entailed a situation where a person was stealing a bicycle and the variable that changed in the situation was that person, who was stealing the bicycle in a local park. As I said before I watch the show “What would you do?” to see the on the camera people’s honest reactions to the situation put before them. There were three different people shown in the video that changed who were a white male, a black male who were around the same age, and a young female. Each of them had a separate time, but had the same tools and equipment to break a chain and steal the bike it was hooked up to. First up was the white male, who barely any grief for trying to steal the bike in broad daylight. A lot of people passed him, but most of them just went on their way and ignored him, even the ones with a family and or companion with them. Next, the black male took his turn at stealing the placed bicycle and the response is completely different. More than double the amount of people that tried to stop the white male scolded and even took action against the black male almost immediately upon seeing him. The reaction that people gave to the white female was even more shocking. People actually tried to offer assistance to the girl trying to steal the bike. I think that these honest reactions can be tied back to our culture. In my other sociology class, we are learning about how culture is foundational and how your culture determines how you think and view the world. I know that usually we like to think of ourselves as individuals and that we can think whatever we want to think, but in reality, I feel that there are these walls or foundation if you will that are set in place for the way that we think and that is determined by our culture. For instance, we as member of the American culture think of certain terms and assume certain things. Like if someone says success, the majority of us think of the terms money, power, etc. Or if someone says that they ate worms or cockroaches for breakfast, we think that’s disgusting, but in other parts of the work people of different cultures like those from Thailand eat insects all the time. Going back to the video, the reason people can say they’re not racist and think discriminatory thoughts is because of our culture. People see a black guy in baggy clothes and think he must be a no good punk. People see a girl and think damsel of distress in our culture. People see a white guy with tools and think he must be well prepared and an ok lad. They think this way because it is what our culture has developed them into thinking subconsciously.

Freewill and determinism are two very conflicting forces that affect our daily lives. Just the thought of freewill being restricted by determinism or vice versa caused quite the uproar in class that one day. We, as people of our society like to think that we are individuals and that we can make our own individual actions and decisions, but determinism tell us that our actions are not completely our own. My other introduction to sociology professor assigned us a reading that had a good example of determinism. It had us picture a person on a motorcycle stopped at a four-way intersection. The question would be which way would the person on the motorcycle go? You could say that you could never guess or predict what the motorcyclist would do because it’s her or his personal opinion so that it would be completely unpredictable. Determinism comes into play when you can limit the choices that the motorcyclist can do by following the normal traffic patterns that were embedded by society. For example, we know that the motorcyclist cannot move backward in the same lane because they would run into the car behind them. We also know that he or she cannot go into the other lane or go into the sidewalk and run into the pedestrians. Therefore, determinism can limit or even direction the motorcyclist into a certain direction. We can think that the motorcyclist is completely free to do whatever she or he wants but in reality, they are restricted by society’s rules in the place of determinism. The same type of concept can be applied to things like the decision as to which college we chose to attend and apply to. There are many different events that affected my decision to actually attend and continue my schooling at Penn State. These include the fact that both my brothers have been accepted into and go to Penn State already, also that I have been going to Penn State open houses and orientations since I started high school as a freshman because my brother was a senior at the same time. I also had heard that Penn State had an excellent employment rate and had a lot of opportunities for research and internships. Another event that did severely affect my decision to come to Penn State happened a long time ago when about nine years ago my family moved to Pennsylvania from New Jersey. If we did not do this, I would not even know about Penn State and all the things they offer. If I really think about it, most of these events were not really of my choosing; I didn’t not have any choice in moving to Pennsylvania, I didn’t have any choice in choosing which school accepted me and which did not, I didn’t get to choose which school open houses I went to and which most frequently. I think the most free will I have actually had in my decision to come to Penn State was that I got to choose which roommate I would have and what I wanted to major in, which is still slightly controlled by determinism over freewill because I am partially going into my major because it is new and in demand.

When we did this game in class, I have to admit I think the most correct I think I could get is about two or three and that is including me. I am not very good at identifying someone’s gender nor do I actually pay enough attention to clarify it in my everyday life. I guess I still follow my own personal notion that you should acknowledge another person’s race or ethnicity, but you should never hold it against them. What I mean by holding it against them is that you should follow stereotypes or any other ethnocentric ideas against them before you get to know them. Applying it to the subject of race, I feel that if I can acknowledge the other participants races, but I do not really need to know them unless they clarify themselves. I was one of the participants in the guessing game. Professor Sam came up to me before class and asked if I would represent my ethnicity, which is Filipino. It was kind of funny when he asked me and my friend, who is also Filipino what we were because I asked him what he thought we were and he thought we were Cambodian. This proves that not even our own Sociology professor can completely tell the difference between each sub group of Asian and it is not his fault. I personally am used to people being confused at my racial background because of my tan and the fact that my “Asian eye” is not as pronounced as the other Asian participants. Usually I am mistaken for being Hawaiian or a mix between Hispanic and Asian parents. In reality, I am almost completely of Filipino descent; both my parents were born and raised in the Philippines and my grand fathers and mothers also grew up there. In reality, I also would not want to be in the guesser’s shoes, because I actually could identify what country half the people on the floor with me were from, especially the young lady standing next to me. The girl standing beside me was the one who revealed she was Saudi American. I had no idea that she was even Asian, because her blonde hair and fair skin threw me off compared to my tan skin and jet black hair next to her. This just shows how different two people, who are covered by the same term, “Asian” can be. Asian can describe so many very different people and to generalize us all into one category seems wrong to me. That is why I like to personally be called Filipino because it is more specific and better represents what I am, but in the same way that the girl, who is Saudi American says she is not bothered by when people call her just “American” I also have learned to not be bothered by when people get my ethnicity wrong.

I am not a man and I cannot really speak for them. I identify with the other gender; I am a female, one that is also repressed into society by this perspective. The unsaid notions that mold us into society’s shape are barely ever pointed to us because they have been programmed into us as being “natural”. The definition of natural is always in a constant flux. What is natural to me can be completely unnatural to the person right beside me. It is all very confusing. To the point, what are the reasons behind the why women have to shave, cut, and clip away at their hair while men get away with at the least a close shave? To seem desirable to men in our modern day society, women must strain themselves and hack at something that is truly just naturally part of their bodies, their hair. In any other form besides the hair on the very top of their heads, hair is not allowed or can be called as harshly as taboo to most men. These men are communicating, maybe unconsciously the acceptable standards as to be beautiful. The problem is that beauty is, not to sound like a broken record, is in the eye of the beholder and quite literally too. Like you know, if you line up two different people and give them pictures of “beautiful” stuff, those two people will most likely pick different pictures when asked to pick the beautiful ones. But the point we usually miss is that we can apply this to our actual lives. In regards to the subject of natural body hair on the female, we can relate this to the beauty is in the eye of the beholder concept. We, as a whole society can represent the one person in the lineup and then we can think of a completely different society and culture as the other person. We may think that this lack of hair makes a woman more desirable or even acceptable in our society, but the other culture could find it more acceptable or even desirable to the men of their society. It is all in perspective. Our perspective is quite narrow minded in my opinion and actually a bit demeaning to the woman who is forced to follow it. Men are putting women down on the basis of something that is so natural to every human being. Not only is it superficial, but it is also illogical if you really think about it because if women have to shave to be acceptable, why do men not have to shave their hair and spruce up also? In my opinion, there seems to be a bit of a double standard in this equation.