After I watched the video, there were several key words emerged on my mind, such as personal temperament, concern of others’ comment, and fear of argument; in my opinion, these would be three factors that “keep us in our own boxes”. I believed that this video could reflect the basic reason or factor that affected the way of thinking and the attitude towards some problems that discussed in class; in other words, I considered that “what kept us in our own boxes” could determine how people thought and analyze the social problems they heard of or encountered; “our boxes” could make us hold different ideas on one issue; “our boxes” might have led to the argument or confliction that belonged to some certain social issues.
Firstly, personal temperament could determine whether a person made himself/herself out of his/her own boxes, when analyzing or encountering some certain problems. For example, some people may do not feel comfortable when trying to meet and know new friends due to their shyness or nervousness. The personal temperament may obstruct some people taking themselves out of the boxes. When considering the question in last week video, which was talking about how people feel or think when they date with other people who are from difference races, I considered that this might also depend on personal temperament. For example, one of my friends knew so many friends who were different from her race, and she could get along with them comfortably and willingly. On the other hand, some people may not feel comfortable when they need to know new people; their personal temperament may obstruct reaching new people.
Secondly, concern of others’ comment may be a more dominant factor that affects people cannot get out of their own “boxes”. This can really make some people be caught in dilemma; for example, one person is asked by his/her friend to decide what to take for lunch, he/she may have to take his/her friend’s personal preference in consideration; if he choose the food which is not suitable to his friend, he may thought selfish by his friend. I have had the similar experience, since some people may not be nice enough, they just pretend to concern about your idea, but they may persuade you following their ideas finally. Choosing what to take for lunch may be a small case in life, but I think it can tell me why people can hardly jump out of their own boxes; some people prefer to compromise with others’ opposite ideas rather than advocate their ideas in their boxes because of the unreasonable and excessive concern about others’ comments.
Thirdly, the fear of argument may also prevent making oneself out of the box. The incentive of maintaining the peace in an organization or a friend circle may make people swallow the words they may want to express. Although the argument may boost the development of the true mind or spirit in an organization, it may cause the confliction among colleagues. Similarly, in a friend circle, if somebody is talking about the star or a problem that I may support, but he/she holds the negative or destructive comment on that, it may be hard for me to break up my own boxes to let him/her understand my opinion.

When I first saw the clicker question that about how possibly one could kill another human being, the first word came in my mind was revenge; I thought that revenge would be a reason to a person to kill another human being, if the person did not try to kill one for property or other purposes.
In my first reaction without any thoughtful analysis, I just thought that I would not kill one human being in my life, since I felt so denying and frightened when the “kill” word shown up; thus, I chose the option that I could not kill another human being. However, I have not realized that ration cannot always be kept in my consideration until I saw the clicker poll result, which told that about fifty percent of students chose that they could kill another human being who has threatened to their relatives, friends or themselves. In some special or contingent situation, people can hardly keep their rational minds, and may take some unreasonable behaviors; for example, if one person encounters an emergency on his/her way to home, he may not kill the person who threatened him or his families, but he can offend to the external dangers at least. People have consciousness to protect their families and themselves when they are threatened by others; in other word, people may take every action they can to prevent their families and friends being attacked by others. Thinking about the Holocaust that talked a few days ago, I believe that if Jewish people had the chance to rescue their relatives or other Jewish people in the camp, they would do everything they can to keep the lives of their relatives definitely; since everyone has the heart of being concerned and mercy regardless of the outside influence, a person with the power of mercy and love cannot keep silence to that ruthless situation. Something that breach people’s sufferance may results in that people take agitated and severe behavior actions.
The description in the video really made me recall my memory of the movie that recently shown---“The Life of Pi”; in the movie, only five lives survived after the huge storm, they stayed on a lifeboat at first, but spotted hyena had eaten zebra and chimpanzee; this really made Pi crazy and angry to the spotted hyena, and Pi had tried to kill that spotted hyena several times, but he could not kill it and felt resent; the tiger, which was referred to the instinct and evil inner side of Pi by author, suddenly came out and killed the hyena. The tiger may reflect the instinct that people may hardly control in their lives, and this also can explain why many people thought they could kill another person for protecting their families or themselves. Hence, I consider that the instinct in human beings may drive people responding immediately towards the dangerous situation they have met; similarly, I think that people may kill a person for the revenge which can push people’s patience and toleration fading away.

The opinion in the video has made me think so many problems and solutions that are related to the problem expressed in the video. I believe that there are some companies that make slaves or sweatshop produce or assembly their products£¬since some newspapers and media have reported that some electronic companies assembly their products through sweatshop; for example, FuShikang, a electronic company in china, mainly be responsible for assembling iPhone products for the Apple company. The company made their employees have to overwork severely because the company has received too much orders to finish in time. Additionally, the company had seldom paid salary to their employees on time, and required their employees working more time than usual without paying any bonus or giving any rewards. These problems have made the employees encounter so much difficulties and pressure than usual, and nearly 20 employees committed suicide in the factory o! f the company last year reported by some websites and newspapers in China. These series of problem have drawn the public attention, however, the employees become more angry about their company's conduct after the company has been exposed by media; they tried to fight with the company administration, but they were controlled by the local police at last. Finally, the government adopt the law force to punish the company, and most of their employees have got compensation. Thus, I consider that if I just stop buying the new phone or electronics personally, it will not stop or change the company who use slaves or sweatshop for production. The idea in the video can convey the positive and moral concern to people, but not all people are concerned to the producing approach the company uses; in other word, one person can hardly advocate all people stop buying the product that produced by slaves or sweatshop, so personal behavior cannot change the market or e! conomic. On the hand, some electronics can help working more efficiently, they should not be blamed or banned. If government can principle the company more seriously in producing and hiring process, the problem of sweatshop or slaves would be solved and avoided. The company may also should let the customers know about their employment conditions, this can improve their impression on customers.

Contact will help me understanding a new group of people or culture because I think that people can hardly get to know about or approach a group without contacting it. Firstly, contacting can help me overcome the barrier to know new people or group. For example, in my freshman year, I have tried to make some new friends in the resident halls that I live in; when I tried to join in a group of people and introduced myself, they seemed really nice to accept me; however, when I got involved in some activities of them, I felt that I cannot get used to that due to the different personal interest or background. After that experience, I felt it was not appropriate enough to know a brand new group of people by just introducing myself directly; moreover, I thought it was hard to find a group or culture that I like or be familiar with just through looking at the external things. Thus, it is still hard to join in or be really get involved in a new ! group, although trying to contact can help me overcome the barrier. Secondly, I consider that contact may actually works to people who have the same interest or stake, it can help these people get together for working or researching and generate understanding. For example, when I took the group project in one class last semester, I worked with other four guys. Although I was the only Asian guy in my group and class, I did not feel hard to join in them, and I also I could feel being involved in the group because we were in the same class for doing well in the project; we have decided and arranged the work to each other at the first meeting; however, I really encountered some problem when researching in my part, and my mind was blocked before the second meeting; i did not realized we would practice the presentation until the second meeting, i felt so embarrassed during the second meeting, all other four guys come up with their idea and comments about the parts the! y did, when turned to me, I had to tried to explain my research content without any sort or summary; I felt more blamed when practicing the presentation, I even lost the words how I could use for explaining or pretending, however, other four guys did not blame me, and they encouraged me still working on it and making some comments to me for change; this really helped me, and I also got a sense of responsibility of doing well in the project which was on the day after our second meeting; finally, I brought the research content and memorized all the words I would use for the presentation, and finished it confidently. Hence, I think people who have the same interest may be easier to know each other; it is difficult to know a group of people or culture that hold different value or faith to you, it is not only because they may work in the opposite direction than you, but also attributed to the connection or understanding between them. In addition, I think people can approach a group who have same mind or hobbies as them regardless of the ! different races. There are many NBA players who from different races work together in the games. In the gym, people also can work out together with different guys. Therefore, different race may be a factor that determine if contact can help understanding a group or culture, but it is not the important one.

When I heard the question about how many people would be curious or ask about his hairstyle, I felt a little confused because I thought it was a personal issue and choice that might not be thought curious. Firstly, I consider that hairstyle depends on personal preference and choice; everyone has the freedom to make up themselves in a certain way rather than others. People may should hold the inclusive attitude and be friendly to accept different kinds of personal style, it does not seem appropriate to ask or feel weird to others’ preferences, such as hairstyles. The student’s hairstyle that shown in the video can be easily found in many other places, for example, some rock stars or actors in the movie might also have kept their hairstyle in that way. Secondly, I did not understand why people would ask about that student’s hairstyle until I noticed that somebody felt a little uncomfortable with that. However, in my opinion, I do not feel uncomfortable or strange to a person who has a different hairstyle from some other people, since people has the different perspective and standard of what is beauty or fashion. Just as the example that letting different girls choose the attractive one of four Asian students, those three girls had the different idea and comment to those four guys; some people may think being skinny is attractive, and others may think being fit is better; thus, I do not think it is hard to find somebody approachable or know one if he/she has a different or shining hairstyle or other styles. Thirdly, with the growing diversity and development of the culture, it is hardly to keep everyone behave or has the style in a similar way; people may also should adapt to understand or be inclusive to the things which are a little different from their established perception; if people can accept the character who got a weird or fashionable hairstyle in the movie, why they would not accept or understand the similar style in reality? Some people may just try to imitate the actor of a movie or make themselves fashionable or being stand out. Additionally, I realized that one more reason why people did not feel approachable to a person with a very different hairstyle after the student in the video told the class a few drunken people had asked about or touched his hairstyle. This made me know that somebody may hold a sensitive or unfamiliar attitude to that student due to the stereotype or the straightforward perception, and he/she may be worried or afraid to ask about that question even if he/she is curious enough, unless somebody who is drunk may ask. Consequently, I do not feel it is not approachable when I see that student’s hairstyle before and after Sam’s idea.

People may hold different attitudes towards the people of different races. When i took the clicker question about who would get higher call back rate of white people with criminal record and black people without criminal rate, I thought that people without criminal record would definitely be preferred than people with criminal record regardless of the race of them. However, when I see the result of that clicker question, I felt very surprised because I thought that it was not reasonable to employ people with criminal record rather than people without criminal record even though some employers might focus on racial problems. I consider that people who prefer white people who have criminal record may have stereotype of black people and white due to historical problem. I think that using stereotype to make decisions is not rational because people are different, not only to their personalities but also to their knowledge. Firstly, people! 9;s attitudes to the problems they met at work may be varied by their personalities; for example, people who are thoughtful and patient enough may can hold positive attitude to solve the problems in work regardless of their races. Secondly, people with the knowledge and ethical standards they have learned in school may be reliable and responsible at work, no matter what races they are; hence, choosing white people with criminal record rather than black people without criminal record would not be thoughtful choice. In addition, people may be deceived or confused by the visual factors; for example, the video about three people in different identities breaking the bike's lock may reflect that; when the white person tried to cut the lock, people did not pay so much attention to him; however, people tried to check if the bike belonged him when a black person cut the lock; it was impressive that people helped the girl who tried to cut the lock. The "purpose" of that! three people was actually trying to "steal" the bike; however, people who witnessed that held different thoughts to them. Thus, I think that people may be influenced by the stereotype; they may not be racist actually, but sometimes people may cannot control the inner self. The different judgement or idea may raise up in their mind unintentionally. Therefore, it is complex to comment if they are racist. The different opinions to that three people may be attributed to stereotype, misconception, and experience with a certain person.People may be distracted by tons of information they receive from media and peer evaluation, for example, I think someone is easy going person at first, but when someone tell me a different opinion I will think about that person twicely, and may change my opinion to him/her.

Everyone has different standard or attitude when he/she makes decision. Some people may make decision based on their own free will; others may be influenced by viewpoint or comment of societies, and cannot make decisions only according to their free will. I considered that determinism may dominates free will, since it was hard for me to make decision without thinking the effect or outcome to others; this might be attributed to the education of family and school, teachers and parents taught me how to exchange the viewpoint of others and myself, in other words, it meant that it was better when making decision after thinking about others’ feeling or comment. However, some people hold different opinions about the relationship; for example, there are many students I used to know in my high school, and they consider little about others, such as their friends; when they were required to clean the classroom according to the sequence of schedule, they skipped the duty of cleaning classroom, and left all work to other team members; this was resulted in making other team members have to do more work. Just as the first clicker poll shown in the class, there were more people thinking free will is more important than determinism than people thinking determinism can affect free will. This may reflect that many people in class thought free will can determine the decision making, and they may decide to do something following their free will. People who make decisions based on their free will may get more sense of self-satisfaction, since they can do the things they want without considering much of others’ comments or feelings. On the other hand, Sam told us free will and determinism are equivalent of importance in one’s decision making before taking the second clicker poll; the example he provided that if someone’s family call him/her go back home for looking after parents during the exam week had changed my mind of the two factors; the person in that situation may has to make decision between going back home or reviewing the exam, and free will may be partially affected by the external factors. This helped me understanding why free will and determinism are same important; people may want to make decision solely thinking about their free will, but it may hardly happen since most people will have to concern about the effect of their decision or behavior to others, and people always need to do the right thing with the common viewpoint of society to get the admission or acceptance of the society. Contrarily, people also will not make decision without keeping their free will but determinism, it is hard to control people make the decision without the acknowledge of their free will. Therefore, most people make decision with respect to both free will and determinism.

I consider that salary is the base of living, and people in different region may need different amount of salary or money to make their living, since the economic trends in different region are not same. I do not feel surprised when Sam told us that the household income of white people ranked in the top, however, it is brand new information to me when Sam pointed out that Asian household in the U.S. ranked in the first position.
At first, I felt it was unreasonable because Asian people were not the majority of the U.S. society, although some people may hold the U.S. citizenship. However, it was gradually clear to me when Sam stated that some Asian people did engineering or other technological work which could make them get the high salary. On the other hand, I have realized that there is an increasing number of Asian students come to the United States, this would definitely boost the demand of Asian food and commodity which could make the Asian stores and Asian manufacturers sell more products to increase their profit. There are many Asian people in California for doing business, such as food manufacturing. The location can make them convenient in exporting and importing products. The income gap between different classes may be caused by many factors, such as the number of population of different races, potential market, and opportunities of work. There are a huge number of Asian people in the world, this may lead to more and more people immigrate to other countries, such as the United States, since the resources and opportunities in their home countries are shrinking. Thus, the high rank of Asian household income may be also attributed to the huge number of Asian people.
In addition, I totally agree with Sam’s statement that even if there are some people whose household income is far behind by Asian and white in the United States, they are much better than many people in the rest of the world. For example, there are many people who only can afford one dollar for their daily foods in my hometown which is in urban area, since other living problems, such as housing and medical, make people have to save money to pay expensive housing rental and medicine; to myself, the expensive housing and medicine have also frightened me; when I came to my hometown this summer, I can afford two dollars on my daily foods, this may seem better than those people who only can afford one dollars, but actually I am still experiencing same as them. Most people in my hometown think that the expensive housing rental and medicine problems are caused by the government and those rich people. As we know, government has access to make crucial decision, and rich people can dominate the economic trend; this would be a key factor of the income gap, and it might be also a factor that why the income gap can be solved hardly that discussed in class. As the “king of the hill” game played in class, people who climb on the top have the incentives to prevent others climbing on it, this would be an illustration of why rich people can dominate the economic trend. Moreover, the stairs example showed in class also can explain the income gap among different races; every race’s household income would increase simultaneously, when one of them steps forward.

The lecture by Dr. Jones on last Tuesday was really interesting; Dr. Jones conveyed his opinions and statement in a humorous and thoughtful way. His statement in the video helped me figure my confusion about rumor out, not only making me know the potential cause of the rumor, but also opening my mind to think about what attitude that I should hold when interpreting others’ rumor or story.
Firstly, I have heard about the opinion or the truth that the words that transformed from one to the other may be different from the original meaning or cause misconception; it may be caused by different personalities or characteristics in people, for example, some people may exaggerate the words that they heard because of their special personalities; when they tell others that words, the meaning of the words may be different from the original.
Secondly, after hearing Dr. Jones’s statement in the video, I realized that some racial characteristics may also affect the process and outcome of passing words to others. As Dr. Jones said in video that many people could respond very limited information when they hear stories, and the stories might have been changed to five or six different outcomes when they got. For instance, the second person of the paraphrasing story game in class lost so much information from the first person, although the first person remembered and paraphrased so much information. During the paraphrase, the second person lost many main details of story and even added a little information that not in story, this might definitely affect the third person’s understanding of the original story. When the third person told the story to the fourth one, the main content of story had been changed a little. The story kept being changed and misunderstood during the later paraphrase. When the story turned to the seventh person, the main content had been omitted and changed totally, and it made the class laugh.
As Dr. Jones said in video that a story turned shorter and shorter when more and more people paraphrased in different ways; the story was about the complex process of an African American student negotiating with his advisor to late add a course which had no available seat, but it was changed to a simple story about the African American student meeting a white student by paraphrasing at last. I consider the second person missed so much information of the story may be caused by her misunderstanding or other racial problems; she might cannot memorize or paraphrase the story in her mind. Some other factors may also affect or obstruct a person understanding or paraphrasing a story, such as being nervous in front of the class and lack of sufficient vocabulary. Therefore, the story that passed through many people may be changed a lot eventually, and the rumor also may not be true according to the paraphrasing game played in class.

One thing that I have seldom thought about is how to differentiate people’s different racial identity through their appearance. I really felt confused when I took the clicker questions about identifying people’s races by photos. I just can differentiate that which continents do people come from through their skin tones. In my opinion, it is hard to recognize specific racial identities of people just by their appearance.
Additionally, people may undergo something embarrassing when they just say hi to people who look likes coming from the same countries as them. For example, once I was on the bus to home, there was a student seating beside me; I just spoke my native language to him for noticing him I would get off, but he confused and asked what I was saying; then I realized that he was not from the same country as me. There are indeed some people looks like some people who are from different races, such as Kazakhstan students who are looks like Asians. Hence, it may seem difficult for me to identify people’s races just through their appearances.
Moreover, some photos showed in class really confused me, for example, when Sam showed us two pictures that one of them was obviously European, and the other was a Russian woman actually. However, I thought that woman was an Asian because she really looked like Asian. I realized that I might not identified correctly people’s races by their appearance after Sam showed the answer of that two pictures to us, the woman in picture was actually belong to Europeans; in other words, she was white people, although it might be hard to identify through her skin tone. To other picture questions I was also uncertain about their racial identities. For instance, when the clicker question about the racial identity of President Obama showed up on screen, I thought the answer would be African American; but the correct answer was the “mix”.
Another group of pictures that were about identifying Latino person also made me uncertain, since I did not have a clear concept about Latino or Hispanic. After Sam’s question and explanation to class, I noticed that Hispanic was an ethnonym that refers to a relationship to Spain or ancient Hispania, and some Hispanic people could be traced their ancestry to Spain, Mexican, Cuban. While, Latino refers to people of Latin America. On the other hand, sometimes people may identify one’s racial identity correctly by some obvious characteristics. When the question about identifying the woman who was not Latino from a group of pictures showed on screen, I answered that correctly due to the obvious facial contour.
Therefore, I consider that people may identify others’ racial identities through their appearance, but the appearance may confuse people. A deeper knowledge or communication from others may help identifying race, such as several clicker questions that Sam asked in class.