I don’t actually think the picture is that offensive, but I understand how some people can think that. The obvious reason for why this picture is offensive is the signs. They make it seem as if all Mexicans smoke weed and mow lawns. They show how insensitive the girls are towards Mexicans, and how little they actually know about Mexican people.
I understand how people can find this party theme offensive, but I think it is absurd that it is getting national coverage. There are so many other party themes out there that would offend just as many people. One that specifically comes to mind is a party I know of that had the theme “pigtails and pedophiles.” This is where the girls dress up as young innocent children, and the guys dress up as creepy pedophile men. To be honest, when I first heard of that theme, I found it to be pretty hilarious. People need to just loosen up and look at the humor in it.
When the Chi Omega news broke, the first think I thought about was how common racist jokes are. Movies, TV shows, and standup comedy are all huge culprits for containing racist humor, and the reason it is this way is because racist jokes are funny, and the same goes for offensive jokes. But it’s all about context. If I was acting in a skit for Saturday Night Live, and I was playing the role of a stereotypical Mexican landscaper, it would be totally okay. But if I was at a party dressed as a stereotypical Mexican, then that’s not okay? And also keep in mind that this party occurred during Halloween weekend. Like, seriously? These girls are getting their balls busted because they were dressed up as someone else during Halloween. That’s the POINT of the holiday! That’s like getting angry at someone for setting off fireworks on the fourth of July.
I’ve also came to the realization that this is being made a big deal because of the nature of signs. People say things much worse than what’s on the signs on a daily basis, but just because these phrases were written on the signs, and being held up, it’s easier to call out these girls. If someone just says something racist, you can’t replay what he or she just said. After the words left his or her mouth, they’re gone. You’re not going to hear them again. But in the case with the signs, every time you look at the picture, you’re going to read those words again. It’s harder for people to forget about that than when they just hear something. Like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

One reason I can think of for why interracial dating is difficult is that some people would be afraid of forgetting their own culture. They would have to adapt their significant other’s culture into their life, and they won’t have time to perform some of their own practices. I can see this with my mom and dad. My dad is half Italian and half Irish, and my mom is full Colombian. She is pretty Americanized for someone that was born in Colombia. She only makes Colombian food occasionally, and she never speaks Spanish to my sister or I. Meanwhile my grandparents, who are both Colombian, make Colombian food every time I visit, and always speak Spanish to my mom.
That’s how my mom lost part of her culture. On the other hand, my dad lost some of his too. When he was a kid he tells me that he went to church every Sunday, and was even an altar boy. My mom didn’t ever go to church. In this case my dad’s culture is what had to give. I rarely go to church because that’s how I was raised as a child.
Another huge reason racial dating is difficult is the fear of being judged. I know for a fact that if I brought home a black girl, my dad would be confused as hell. He probably wouldn’t show it, but he would judge the crap out of me. Probably my mom a little bit too. All my friends would be so shocked, since none of us even really know any black girls. There would be without a doubt a lot of jokes cracked by my friends, and hanging out with them and my hypothetical black girlfriend would definitely have its fair share of awkward moments.
It’s also harder because we simply like to date people that are similar to ourselves. The more different a person is from you, the less likely you are to want to date him or her. Dating a black girl would have a huge learning curve for me, and I’m sure an equally as large learning curve for her. There are just things that we do differently, which makes it a lot harder for us to be able to connect on an intimate level.
I feel like I have to add that this isn’t the case for everyone. It largely depends on how you were raised. Throughout my life I’ve been nearly isolated from black people. My neighborhood had no black people; my elementary, middle and high schools had barely and black kids. I haven’t been exposed to black people at all, so it would be a lot harder for me to date a black girl, than a white guy who’s known black people all his life.

I imagine it would be near impossible to put myself into a Muslim or Arab person’s shoes because our lives are so different. This is the case especially if they do not live in America. I literally have no idea what their life is like because I have never really taken the time to find out. They seem to be a lot more religious than myself, and only that right there would be a huge transition. It would also be nauseating to see my fellow American soldiers fighting against myself.
I would also have a hard time adjusting to how the media portrays me as a ‘bad guy.’ When you hear ‘Muslim’ in a movie, chances are they are talking about a terrorist. As a white male, I have never experienced anything even remotely close to that. Being put in the shoes of someone of color would be terribly hard to adjust to, and probably a lot less enjoyable.
It would be annoying to always be getting special attention at airports and having to deal with bomb/terrorist jokes all the time from my friends. That is, if I have any friends that aren’t of the same ethnicity as me.
The truth is that it is much easier to alienate with Muslims and Arab people than it is to relate to them. It’s much easier to have a scapegoat than no scapegoat.
I would also find it extremely frustrating when I do find some people of my ethnicity are living up to the stereotype that others have assigned us. Like, if I read in the news about a public bomb attack, I would be upset because I would know that that’s only adding to the stereotype and strengthening it.
These are all things that I have no experience with being a white, straight, male. So I think me and other white, straight, males would have the hardest time being put in someone else’s shoes because we know the least about discrimination and stereotypes because we’ve never had to deal with it.
I honestly can’t even imagine what it would be like being Muslim or Arabic. There’s probably so many things that I can’t think of that would pose as a problem for me. I’m glad I’m thinking about it now though because it makes me feel less ignorant. It’s good to be aware of people of different ethnicities and the troubles they have to go through. That’s one of the main points of this class: to raise awareness.
To be honest, I’m very glad I’m not Arabic or Muslim. It looks like a tough life. I feel terrible saying it, but it’s good to be a white male. I’m kind of glad I’ll never actually have to switch our shoes.

In Tuesday’s class we discussed a list of sins that, if committed, the Bible declares that you will be put in Hell for all of eternity. All of the sins were laughed at by the class, except for one: homosexuality. The reason for this is because that is the only one that our society hasn’t completely accepted as “normal” --or at least not yet. Other sins mentioned included, but were not limited to, drinking, sex before marriage, and bribery. These are all widely accepted among a college population. I only know a handful of people that go to this school that don’t drink. I only know a handful of people that are still virgins. And I constantly here people bribing other people to do stuff for them, like laundry, homework, or what have you. These are all things that are extremely commonplace around a college campus.
Homosexuality, though, is not. Two men or women holding hands in public is a rare sighting. It’s for this reason that homosexuality is a harder sin to accept. If drinking was as rare as homosexual acts, then drinking would be viewed the same way. Now obviously homosexuality has come a long way in becoming accepted in society. It’s still not totally there, but it will be. It just hasn’t made the cut yet. That’s why it’s still a hard to talk about topic. It still makes many people uncomfortable, and a lot of people don’t even want to acknowledge it.
The fact that almost every sin besides homosexuality is widely accepted kind of shows that this laundry list of sins shouldn’t really be taken seriously. It seems to me that this list is outdated. Maybe back in the day it was frowned upon to get frisky with your girlfriend, but things have changed. The same should go for homosexuality. People need to get over their phobia, or their uncomfortableness about the topic and just realize that it’s real and there’s nothing wrong with it.
I’ve actually never known a gay person—or at least an openly gay person. All of my family and friends are straight. I’ve never really gotten to know a gay person. Maybe a small talk conversation here or there, but nothing that actually tells me about the person. And yet I still accept homosexuality. Now, I will admit that if I see two girls or guys making out with each other, yes I will do a double take. But after the second glance, I’d just be like “oh right, I’m supposed to be accepting of that, so I will.” I just realized that makes it sound like I’m forcing the acceptance of homosexuality, but I don’t think that’s the case. I don’t have any reason to have a problem with homosexuals.

I’ve learned from this class that coming into contact with people not necessarily similar as you is essential being able to understand and relate to them. Without being exposed to anyone, you will tend to form your own thoughts and ideas about other people, with many of them being wrong, and assuming they’re all true. This is how stereotypes form.
My high school had about two black people in my graduating class. I didn’t know either of them, so virtually I had never had a black friend before. That changed in my freshman year when I got randomly assigned a black roommate. I found myself tip-toeing around any sensitive topics, and many times I found myself uncomfortable because I was not used to the situation. I think he understood this because I told him that I never really knew any black people before. It kind of pains me to say that, actually. I never knew a black person until I was 18 years old. Like, black people make up a HUGE portion of the human population, and I didn’t know any of them. How’s that for unexposed?
And now I can see that after a year of living with a black person, and now having a few black brothers in my fraternity, I’ve become much more comfortable around them.
Now this makes me think about other types of people I’ve been unexposed to. I come from an upper-middle class family, so that by default puts me on top in relation to everybody on Earth. I’ve never been to a third world country. In fact, I’ve never even left America. I really want to, but haven’t had the chance, but that’s a different story. The closest I’ve ever been to coming in contact with someone that lives in poverty is just from walking past homeless people in New York City. The thing is though that I don’t think anything of it. I pass by these people and just think of them as another homeless person. I don’t realize that this individual has an entire history, and a whole set of past experiences, and emotions, and thoughts, and ideas. This is where the lack of exposure becomes evident. People like us need to not only come into contact with people not like us, but we need to actually get to know them. We need to connect with them and get on a level where we can understand where they’re coming from.
More exposure is the key to having a world where there is no stereotypes, or judging, or what have you. Unfortunately, it’s so hard to truly understand everybody’s situation, so you’re always going to find yourself generalizing at least to some degree.

Latent prejudice is one of those things that you know exists, but it’s really hard to actually point out. It’s hard to point out because latent prejudice is basically unconscious/subconscious prejudice.
Unsurprisingly though, Sam had no problem in class revealing how prominent latent prejudice is. I’ve never considered myself overly prejudiced, but when he asked if I would adopt a baby of a different race, there was no way I could honestly answer yes. Obviously I have nothing against babies of other races, but having a baby of a different race would raise so many unnecessary obstacles that could be avoided with having a baby of the same race. Does this make me prejudiced? I’m not sure.
Latent prejudice was also made clear when Sam showed us the study of the employers hiring people with traditional white names, and people with traditional black names. Although the résumés were completely the same, the white people were hired much more frequently.
Is that the employers’ faults though? I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same. Whether it’s a stereotype or not, which I’m pretty sure it’s not, black people are generalized to be more likely to get involved with crime, so therefore you’d be less willing to hire a black person.
Latent prejudice has economic implications too. They’re evident when you look at the financial incomes across races. Earlier in Soc 119 we’ve seen that Asians and Whites are on top, while Hispanics and Blacks are on the bottom. Latent prejudice is to blame. It’s kind of like we’re all equal, but we’re not really all equal—because of racial prejudice.
The trickiest part about latent prejudice is that it’s uncontrollable. You can’t control your subconscious mind. So apparently we’re all at least a little prejudiced, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Because no matter how hard you try to be conscious about it, there’s always going to be extremely subtle things that you don’t pick up on.
It’s pretty crazy how much latent prejudice actually affects the world. For example, if you ask black people why they’re voting for Obama and not Romney, they’ll probably give legitimate reasons along the lines of agreeing with Obama’s policies or whatever. But deep down you know that the fact that Obama is black plays a BIG part in their decision. They wouldn’t say, “I’m not voting Romney because he’s white,” but c’mon let’s be real here. There’s no way the fact that Obama is black isn’t affecting their decision.
And this leads me to believe that latent prejudice is something that may never go away. There will never be a day when everybody views every single other human being as completely equal. It just won’t happen.

At first I thought that free will plays the biggest part in where you end up in life, but after thinking about my own life I’ve come to realize that determinism plays a much bigger part than free will. My opportunity to come to Penn State was pretty much handed to me. I went through elementary school, middle school, and high school, and I was able to come here because of my work throughout those years, so that part is from free will. I chose to work hard enough to get into Penn State, but I had the opportunity to go to those quality grade schools because of my parents. I was born into a family that had enough wealth to be able to put me through a grade school, and pay for my college tuition at Penn State.
A lot of people didn’t have this opportunity. The people here at Penn State who went to crappier grade schools than I are here because they worked harder than I do. I like to think of it like this: there’s a certain threshold of hard work you need to put in to get into a good school, but certain people are born with a handicap than others. I think of it as if it were a sport. Let’s say you get into Penn State if you have 100 ‘points’. But I’m given 40 free points when I’m born, and the poor black kid from Philly starts out with 5 points when he’s born. I have a head start over that black kid just because of the environment I was born. The black kid was still able to get into Penn State, but he had to work to get those extra 35 points that I was given at birth. I hope that makes sense. It made sense in my head.
Now, I didn’t necessarily have to go to college, but like, I kind of did have to. I don’t know anybody that didn’t go to college after graduating high school. So like I kind of had the choice not to, but I pretty much didn’t. This made me realize that my whole life has pretty much been decided for me, or at least on the grand scale. The scariest part is that I have a pretty good idea of how the rest of life is going to be. I’ll graduate in two and half years, get a job somewhere, work my way up for a while, get married, have kids, work until 50s or 60s for retirement, grow old, die. I almost want to go out of my way to avoid that path just to spite the system. This goes to show how much my life has been affected by determinism and not free choice, and how much it will be in the future.

The fact that Whites and Asians are far above Blacks and Hispanics in total income is not surprising to me at all. Whites are obviously going to be ahead because they’ve had all the time in the world to establish themselves. Yes, Native Americans were here before them, but they kind of lost their chances at first place when they got pushed to the side, among other things, by the conquistadors.
Whites came to America, established themselves as the most powerful race, and held everyone else down around them. It sounds terrible to say, but that’s pretty much what it boils down to. I remember in class when Sam was asking everyone what characteristics would give some an advantage of getting to the top of the ‘mountain’, someone in the class yelled out the adjective ‘ruthless.’ That one really stuck with me. It completely agrees with the expression ‘good guys finish last.’ White people are at the top today financially because their ancestors took over America and completely smothered any other race that would try to catch up.
Now for Asians. One dude in class said that part of the reason they were up their with Whites is because they are generally smart. I was thinking the same thing, except I didn’t want to say it because it’s such a stereotype. But then that Asian girl totally strengthened his argument when she said both her parents are engineers.
Another good reason pointed out was because all the rich Asians are the ones that are coming to America. So if they’re rich, that means they’re going to be able to pay for a good education, which then means they’re going to get a hard-to-get job, which will have a higher salary. I can’t say I haven’t noticed this. Even in State College I notice it. Whenever I see a really nice car on campus, it is probably nine times out of ten an Asian kid driving it. All the Asians have the nice cars around here.
Black people today have it the hardest today because they’ve been dealt the worst hand to work with. Some of their great grandparents were enslaved, so they haven’t have had a long line in their family tree of successful people. This puts them at a serious disadvantage today because they didn’t get the head start that White people got.
Hispanics are low on the earnings chart because they lack the education and resources. Mexico doesn’t offer many high-paying jobs, so a lot of poor immigrants come to America, and if you come to America without an education and no money, you’re not going to be able to land a good job. If you come to America with money, you’ll probably keep making money. If you come here without money, you probably will continue not making a lot of money.

The past class we discussed that girl, Balpreet Kaur, who was ridiculed on reddit for her substantial amount of facial hair. Sam asked a couple girls in class if they choose to shave their legs, and they all said yes, but is it really their choice? Do they really have an option. Their options are 1) yes, shave or 2) no, don’t shave and be viewed as ugly and have to deal with people mocking you every day of your life. As a man, I’m okay with admitting that’s kind of our fault. We, as a gender, decided that girls with hair only on the top of their head is much more attractive than having hair in other places. So that’s the image that most women try to achieve.
I don’t know if it’s actually woven into our DNA to find that specific type of look attractive, or if it’s just so deeply engraved in our mind due to society that we have been sort of brainwashed to believe that’s what beauty is. Either way, this is how it is, and if women want to be attractive to most men, that’s what they’re going to have to do.
I don’t think we (men) have the right to tell women how they should look, but we can’t help from finding certain looks more attractive than others. It would be impossible to just find everything attractive. Then nothing would be ugly. Then everything would be the same, and there would be no attractive, and no ugly, just a plain middle. Does that even make sense?
And since it’s impossible for us to not find some people more attractive than others, there will always be a certain basic appearance that will be viewed as more beautiful than others. Imagine we lived in an alternate universe where the most beautiful women had so much body hair that you could braid it. Then this past class we would’ve been talking about a girl that was ridiculed on reddit for having shaven legs and a clean face. As long as there is a certain image that is viewed as beautiful, there will always be people that are far from that image that are ridiculed and viewed as weird. And since there will always be a certain image that the majority of people find attractive, this problem will be impossible to get rid of. There will always be people that are viewed as beautiful, and there will always be people that are viewed as ugly, and plenty in between. It sounds harsh, but it’s the truth. We would have to all look the same to have no extreme ends of the spectrum, and I think we’ve all learned in this class that there are many different types of people in this world.

The pictures we saw in class showed everybody how big the gap is between how much they think they know and how much they actually know. I, as did mostly everyone else, got nearly every question wrong. I could not tell who was what. Part of this is to blame on the fact that there are just so many different types of people. If you try to generalize the types of people in the world it’s inevitable that people are going to be excluded or put in the wrong category.
I’m half Colombian, a quarter Italian, and a quarter Irish. On the little sheets I always mark myself Caucasian. But technically I’m not any more Caucasian than I am Colombian. I just look whiter than I do Colombian. People can never tell I’m Colombian and think I’m lying when I tell them. That is just like the people we saw pictures of in class, like the two boys who weren’t black but were from Haiti.
I almost don’t think there’s even a point in us separating everyone by category. Doesn’t that further alienate each other if we place each other in different groups. If only it were easy to just accept everybody as the same, and we wouldn’t even have to discuss the different categories of people in the world.
The ‘what does Jewish mean?’ question really got me. I’ve always thought about this, but have never cared enough to actually figure it out. It seemed as if everyone had a different idea of what Jewish meant. Technically it is a religion, but when someone is asked “what are you?” they answer with “Jewish.” That’s like if someone asked me “what are you?” and I said “a student.”
I also liked when we were discussing the difference between Hispanic and Latino. I personally don’t mind either because I’m not that invested in my Colombian nationality, but I know some people would mind. Now, when people call me Spanish, I make sure to correct them. Spanish people are from Spain, which is completely different.
It’s definitely harder for me to tell the difference between people of nationalities I’m not familiar with. This is what leads to people generalizing. But there really isn’t any way to prevent it. Maybe at a young age you can have kids be exposed to as many different ethnicities as possible? That’s still really hard. There are just so many different types of people. Maybe try to teach kids not to group other people together? I don’t know if that’s possible either. Maybe it’s something subconscious that’s embedded in every human being’s DNA. I hate to say it, but I find it really hard to imagine a world where a person’s color isn’t something that, even subconsciously, crosses our mind.