So, lately, everyone has been in a frenzy over this Chi-O picture. The picture recently surfaced from this past Halloween, where the girls had a Mexican themed party. They dressed in traditional Mexican ponchos and wore sombreros, some equipped with fake mustaches.
I think it is obvious that the picture has received a lot more attention since Penn State was just on the chopping block for child abuse – now we’re bigots too. I have read comments from a couple stories ran on the subject; some people are outraged, once again, and others are saying calm down, everyone throw’s themed parties, it’s college fun gone bad. Personally, I agree with the latter. Dressing up as a Mexican is no more offensive than dressing up as a nurse, samurai, Native American or Eskimo. They’re all types of people that that individual isn’t, and I think it’s in good humor to dress up like them. It is done all over the country, the world even, but just like with the Sandusky trial, people are choosing to focus on one isolated incident instead of recognizing it is a global “problem.”
I can’t even count the amount of times I’ve seen someone dressed up as a “thug”. Am I offended? No. They look ridiculous anyways, just like a bunch of 18 year old girls in mustaches do.
The picture was offensive because they were showcasing a blatant stereotype. All stereotypes hold some truth, but, today, it’s usually for an outlying group of people. The signs read, “Will mow lawn for weed + beer,” and “I don’t cut grass, I smoke it.” Not only were the girls dressed up as Mexicans, they were essentially calling them grunt-working drunks and stoners.
This question asked us to delve into what offensive means, in relation to the picture. Unfortunately, I find that a little difficult because I truly believe that if Penn State weren’t the associated school, at least 65 percent more people would be on the ‘cut the college kids a break’ side of the comments. Overall, I think it became offensive when the girls openly acknowledged the stereotype with the signs. It goes back to Sam’s whole argument about how people don’t actually like to confront or admit stereotypes, but they still participate in them. I have neighbors and family members asking me and my parents or siblings what’s up with this photo, and I’ve heard every single one of them make a Mexican and/or other stereotyped joke before. I feel offensive admitting this now but my dad stole my makeup and went to a Halloween party as a Mexican just two years ago. When a large group of people bands together, it comes off as an extremist type group, even if that isn’t the intention. People aren’t only offended, some aren’t offended at all, but that extremist-type presence makes them feel fearful and threatened.

In class, Sam asked us how easy it would be for you as an individual to kill someone, and what would it take. I feel like a psychopath now, but I put that I strongly agreed it would be pretty easy. I don’t think killing is hard, people kill things every day. The associations we’ve made with what it means to kill another human being is what makes it hard; it’s the emotional block. As soon as you can put aside the emotion, killing becomes easier. As soon as you do it, I’d imagine it’s like riding a bike.
That also sounds psychotic, but when I think of soldiers having to kill people, they’ve been trained to become emotionally desensitized to it. Sam and the guest speaker, Serge, mentioned that back in WWII people were afraid to shoot each other because they’d only ever practiced on circular targets. Serge listed that the hit rate was 20,000 shots to 1 kill because the soldiers would intentionally shoot just slightly upward and miss. It was at this point that the military began providing human shaped targets, and the hit rate drastically increased.
The next step to this is instilling the emotional associations. Fear has been a main theme in class lately, as well as in my discussion group, and I think it is one of, if not the, main source for an average citizen to decide they must kill someone. If they don’t kill the person they feel threatened by and are fearful of, that person may succeed in doing the act that they fear, and this cannot happen. Kill one easily turns into kill them all; shoot on sight.
(Whenever someone mentions radical or extreme opinions I can’t help thinking of the gym teacher’s lecture on abstinence in the movie Mean Girls. “Don’t have sex. Use a condom. You will get an STD. You will get pregnant and you WILL die! Just don’t have sex!”)
So, the reason why I strongly agreed it would be easy to kill is because I’ve found myself extremely emotionally disturbed before. I’ve had the mindset, extremely angry and/or upset, but not the extra push. I was not fearful or threatened; I had no reason to believe that killing that person would do more good than bad; I could never kill them by my own hand. What I mean is, unless the terror was right in front of me (I or my family/friends were being hurt literally right in front of me) I’d only be able to shoot someone from afar. As Sam described the killings in Africa, I would not be able to bring a machete down and hack someone unless there was a zombie apocalypse.

I really enjoyed Sam’s lecture video. I try to keep an open mind that my perceptions aren’t just my own, and that other people in the world feel a similar sort of way about me. I was wondering if there would ever be a class that asked people to put themselves in the shoes of the Muslims in regards to all this terrorism business, and I’m glad there finally was. I had no difficulties putting myself in their shoes, but the lecture still opened my eyes to some things. America isn’t the type of place right now where insurgencies and bombings openly occur. When they do, the media mocks it out as someone going off the deep end and then that person’s trial becomes a huge entertainment spectacle. Just because we’ve currently moved past moments in our history where large issues required massive social activism, doesn’t mean that the Muslims are wrong. We’ve done it before, and I think I really hoped that other people in the class would see that. Gay rights are probably going to require some giant movement soon, maybe not armed, but still. When Alex asked the class, having seen and heard all the examples, having been talked through the rationale that makes people angry about another population – the same things that we see and do that make us extremely judgmental toward Muslims – who would join the insurgency to protect themselves and their family? Admittedly, I’m pretty sure everyone recognized that the video ended 12minutes early and was on the same page to get out of class… but not even ¼ of the class raised their hands. This is what brought my mind to a struggle. The whole point of the exercise was to put ourselves in their shoes. Are those people saying it’s OK for American men and women to go out and join a type of insurgency, endearingly termed the armed forces, but 500 something people couldn’t step out of their own mindset to understand? I was honestly very disappointed. No one raised their hands to say that they just didn’t want to be involved or die, they just said they wouldn’t. Maybe they just didn’t care to participate.
I think the level of miscommunication between international countries and their news sources is unfortunate. Just about everyone listens to the news; that’s how public opinion is formed. I’m a comm. Major and am forcibly exposed to the arrogance all the time, so I suppose I just have a more irritated view of the situation. I think it would be beneficial to do another chat with someone from the Middle East, and maybe even actually watch the video that the last guy had wanted to show.

I think before I address this question I need to mention the difference I see between sexual and erotic orientation. I didn’t used to think of the two so differently until my BBH class this semester, and we recently began discussing it. I think your sexual orientation isn’t chosen, it’s just what it is – you’re born with it. You can ask someone, when did you know you were gay? And that person could respond, when did you know you weren’t? Most people don’t have a definitive answer and/or will attribute it to their first feelings of attraction. Usually, though, they can say that they knew they were whichever orientation before that incident. This brings up the issue of erotic orientation. I think people can be attracted to each other without wanting to have physical relations with one another. For example, if a 10-year-old girl admitted being attracted to her best friend, her parents would just tell her she’s confused. She may be, it may further develop, or she may already just know she is gay and need to come to terms with it. Likewise, a person who has one encounter with the same or opposite sex of their sexual orientation doesn’t put them in breech of their chosen norm. If a straight man had sex with another man, he has to hide it or he’ll be called gay. If a gay man has sex with a straight woman, it’s looked at as a one time thing and he’s still going to get called gay. No one’s going to sing Hallelujah that he’s cured, and no one’s probably going to tell the straight guy it’s totally normal to do that. I just don’t think these are very healthy rationales.
Influences of society, parents, peers, and education largely determine how someone views homosexuality. With this, I think the notion that being gay is a choice is something developed to make people, who decidedly aren’t gay, feel better about the situation. (They chose that path, so it isn’t my fault that they’re damned or different. The bible says homosexuality is wrong, they knew that, they still chose it so they don’t deserve my rights). From BBH class, studies showed us that people who said homosexuality was wrong or disgusting had absolutely no distinct reason to think so. They’d never had a run-in with a homosexual, never talked to one, never even known one. I think that this is a terribly misinformed way of looking at things.
I am very pleased that states within the recent election have chosen to legalize gay marriage. I am from Maryland and I couldn’t be more proud. I think barring against homosexuality is another example of some wild notion that, once surpassed, people will look back on and think, “What was wrong with them; how could they do that,” in the same ways that the modern world looks back on slavery.

Sam has mentioned this concept before, and I agree that exposure is a very important tool in desensitizing people to differences between groups. Without exposure people have higher tendencies to lean toward irrational extremes in their beliefs about different groups of people. In reality, and as Sam has also mentioned, if you ask those people what they know about that other group that they are fearful or unpleased with, or what their experience was to make them judge them poorly, most people have no personal answer. The experience is not usually theirs, and they’d heard something from someone somewhere else, or the experience happened to a family member possibly a couple generations back, and the perception stuck.
In fall 2011, I took an international communications course and we had to do a world in conversation session. The session I took was something like, “West Meets Middle East”. I remember thinking I didn’t want to do it because, although it may be interesting, I was worried about offending the Middle Eastern participants. I knew very well I had generalized & inaccurate Western opinions – not in all areas – but this international communications class had definitely pointed out some of my ignorance. I felt like they probably expected me to walk in there and naturally be a jackass.
The conversation was very awkward at first (on both ends), and it was interesting to see that the Middle Eastern people were equally worried about offending the Westernized ones; it wasn’t even because they thought we were jackasses (entirely). The conversation was really eye opening in that I learned all these little significant things, such as, it isn’t the American population many Middle Easterners frown upon, but the government. Hearing that I just thought, “wow, that’s a relief & me too!”
The best part of having contact with this group of people was that we talked about this whole 9/11 and terrorism thing. Some shared very touching feelings about what it’s like to know that, when they walk into a Wal-Mart, for example in the boondocks of Pennsylvania, several people are making extremely harsh judgments (not to mention how negative they were right after the event!).
The most intriguing point of all was that I never realized how disconnected most Middle Easterners, so unkindly lumped as Muslims, are from the actual Muslim/al Qaida/extremist groups. I knew most of them weren’t directly connected, but this was the real eye-opener that I’ll never forget: one kid said “it’s not just you…it’s not just Americans that are victims.” He began talking about how schools, power plants, civilian areas, etc. are bombed all the time by these extremist groups and many Middle Easterners are just as terrified, IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY! He’d lost friends and relatives, and had friends who lost family immediate members. I was just very shocked to hear the severity of disconnect and felt like I had everything in common with these boys & girls. That one World In Conversation project completely changed my view of Middle Eastern people, and I’m pleased to say that the lessened judgment, if you will, spilled over into other areas too.

I’ll just dive straight into it! Based on their appearances, the following are my beliefs/perceptions:
Guy 1: Although he has long dreads and is wearing a fitted hat and headphones, I don’t feel the stereotypical “thug” vibe. He looks like a very nice kid who has a preference for that type of style. I believe he is smart and working toward overcoming the stereotypes frequently associated with his image, especially since he is wearing glasses. The headphones make me believe that he’s musically inclined or talented.
Guy 2: This guy definitely gives off that “thug” vibe. His dreads are shaggier, headphones even bigger, and he’s wearing a cock-eyed expression of complete disinterest. The red toothpick hanging out of his mouth puts the icing on the cake. I relate his look to being thuggish because his appearance is similar to the males’ that I was friends with in high school. They were all good guys, but didn’t have as much concern for homework or authority figures. I presume his backpack is more of a fashion statement than for carrying books, and his headphones are big enough to tune out judging onlookers.
Girl 1: She looks like your classic, all-American, always-does-her-homework kind of girl. I’d imagine she’s smart and gets a lot of A’s. (Funny thing is she’s probably pretty wild). Her choice of button down and sweater lead me to believe that she was raised in a proper Caucasian home, pleasant town, and within a nice area. Her smile feels falsely joyous and amused, so I feel like this activity is just a fun little game for her – she knows everyone is going to give the response I just did.
Guy 3: I have construed perceptions of him. He made a blog question about a week ago that seemed like he was trying to come off more deeply perceptive than he actually is. I think he’s probably smart and a nice kid, but in a way that seemingly irritates me after that post. A teacher’s pet, perhaps. The first time I watched this video, I made a mental scoff, “psh..this kid…” (Sorry, kid). I feel bad, but I find it very relevant and interesting how one, 15-second, exposure to someone completely shaped my lasting opinion of them.
Guy 4: He just looks silly to me. What’s up with that hat? You can’t even see out of one eye. This kid seems nice, but doesn’t strike me as very intelligent. An average student doing average things & hanging with a crowd that resembles guy 2’s look or some athletes, but he himself is not so thuggish or athletic. Although having given him a negative first impression, something tells me he is very driven. Oddly, I just noticed that the only two people who seem driven to me are African Americans. I have social constructs shaping me to believe that blacks are naturally slighted and must work harder.
Guy 5: I don’t know what to make of him. The scruffy hair and pulled collar make me think he comes from a poorer background. He looks sad, like he knows that the responses might say that. Not looking at the camera makes me think he is uncomfortable being filmed for scrutinizing. He’s probably a funny guy though.
Girl 2: This is Sam’s wife. She looks pleased to have the camera on her and interested for what the responses might say. I also think she’s smiling because she enjoys being a part of her husband’s crazy class.

The video in class this week was very interesting, but I wasn’t exactly surprised at what I saw. I expected the outcomes that the researchers found (white man not suspicious, woman easily helped, and black man drawing all the angry attention), but that didn’t make it any easier to watch. I really felt for the black experimenter because, although he knew it was an experiment, he was receiving very real, negative, reactions from the people in the park. I thought the white guy looked pretty sketchy as well, but he was having the easiest time blatantly sawing and hammering at the bike chain.
Honestly, I think just about everyone is racist, but they don’t realize or accept it because race is so deeply integrated into our society. Among myself, my friends, and random passersby’s I constantly hear interjections like, “I’m not racist, but…” and I can’t help but think that if we’re not racist, why does it matter to say it that way or at all?
Maybe racist is not the correct word. I suppose I believe that everyone is prejudice, yet in terms of race. People act in certain ways towards each other because of the stereotypes they’ve become accustomed to knowing, and that is a huge (and, unfortunately, widely accepted & unnoticed) form of prejudice, and in extreme cases, racism.
There was a particularly relevant point made in class that everyone just wants to think the best of themselves, even if they’re a ‘terrible person’, and I use that label very loosely.
When Sam presented the clicker question asking the class to agree or disagree with the statement that if you were hiring someone you would choose the candidate based on having the best qualifications or not. Whereas I would have liked to have easily said strongy agree, I said neutral. I am aware that if someone seemed annoying, made me feel uneasy, or if I had an idea that the Spanish guy might be late a lot, etc., I probably wouldn’t hire them even if they had a PhD.
It was also noted in class that black and brown people are as likely to believe the same negative stereotypes about their own races as whites/mass society are. After hearing this and realizing its truth, I felt bad for having been neutral on the hiring clicker question. I think blacks & browns are likely to fall into believing the same negative stereotypes because they had to fall into step with white America to be in the position that they are in, and don’t want the stereotype coming back to haunt them with some “low-life” becoming a real life example.
Lastly, in regards to the video I wanted to repeat a point that I saw another student make in their response: Everyone has high hopes that [they] aren’t racist and that their beliefs are not judgmental. But that just isn’t how it is, everyone’s acts without thinking sometimes. A lot of people act in a way that isn’t how they believe. For whatever reason people are scared to act how they believe because they are afraid they are going to get in trouble or do the wrong thing. If everyone would just stand up for what they believe in and not be scared of saying or doing the wrong thing I think the white boy would have gotten yelled at more during the video. I think people were afraid of what he might say.” – gfeghali6 – I thought this was a really good observation and I fully agree with it.

The biggest personal decision I’ve ever made on my own was to move out of my father’s house. I have lived in the same house for 15 years, since I was six years old. I’m now 21 and have been struggling living with my father and his new wife for the past four years. My parents divorced four years ago when I was 17, and some shady things had gone down that led my father to remarry a short time after. I have a very negative relationship with his wife, and have unfortunately lost most of my relationship with him, to which he has done little to prevent or reconcile.
This past summer, it finally reached a point where I was on my last will of being pushed further and further out, both feeling like a stranger and being told I was increasingly less welcome in my own home. For reference, my father and his wife did not buy a new house together nor redecorate, she just moved into the “dream house” my mother and father had had built for our family. Instead of going “home” on the weekends, for a while now I have just been going to my best friend’s house and not telling anyone that I’d come home. Sometimes my father knows I’m home and I choose not to come by.
I’d tried to move in with my mom a couple times and was always bribed to return for various reasons – if I wanted to keep my dogs, college tuition, etc. – that always were false promises. I suppose I wanted to have more faith and trust in him than he ever displayed.
Then my mom moved an hour away, and I put it out of my mind to move in with her because I didn’t want to sacrifice ties to where I’d grown up, nor have to deal with the drive or general lack of population and entertainment in the area she’d moved to.
So, over this past summer, my father’s wife and I had a very large falling out and I’d chosen to dismiss her from being a necessary person in my life, as she also chose to disown her real daughter for taking my side on the matter. And my father chose to continue his display of spineless efforts throughout the entire week and well after.
This is where I told him and her that I was finished. My mom has already been making accommodations for me to live with her permanently, until I get on my feet after graduation. I haven’t yet told my father that I’m not staying at his house for any of the holidays.
To some extent, this decision was based on my own free will, but having made the attempt to move out and being dragged back, I unfortunately admit that there was a stronger influence from invisible shaping factors. I was reaching my limit no matter what, but it took a lot for me to finally say “this is it,” and make the real change. I love my father, but the factors were not always so invisible and not always presented as testaments to my strength and ability to act for myself. I’ve always had a strong eye for determinism in getting away from that situation, but, in the end, realizing free will is what pushed me over the edge. In this situation, I do not think I could’ve had the courage to act upon my determinism will without operationalizing free will.

Sam has been periodically asking/mentioning this question since day 1 of class. I still haven’t come up with a solid answer. He keeps bringing up this idea of guilt – people feel guilty about relations from the past that they can’t do anything about or guilty about economic statuses they can’t change. If I think way back to middle school when I first learned about economies, one of the main points was that they operated in a circle. People are supposed to give as they take. The more you have or take, the more you should give back. I think this question more so asks people to define their economic morals than give a general response. If people don’t feel responsible then I can’t say that they should be. As Sam described in class, the rich are getting richer and staying on their toes looking for ways to keep their cushy seats locked behind closed doors. That’s the “American way” these days though, even toward other people in our own country. I think each person has to decide to make it their responsibility, not just feel obligated out of guilt or pity.
Personally, in everyday life I feel guilty but not responsible, which is terrible and I think it should be the other way around: responsible not guilty. I can’t help it my ancestors were chosen as slaves and way down the line I ended up being born into better things in America. I can help knowing that I didn’t actually come from here, and to recognize that almost everything I have that isn’t crappy says Made In: somewhere that’s not America. Those people should be paid more attention to, but they’re exploited because they’re a lesser country. I don’t think these countries and their people would be lesser if the rapidly industrialized nations weren’t frequently taking more than giving.
Likewise, there are so many charities and funds for all kinds of things to help “people in need,” but unless you’re on the ground actually helping needy people, the resources are most likely going to the wrong people or being dispersed improperly. Giving back shouldn’t be a charitable gift, it should be something that people want to do, and feel responsible for, all on their own.
For example, take the woman Sam is putting through college. I want to say that’s an amazing thing, but Sam was right to shrug it off. If he were to go around telling people he’s putting a less fortunate Haitian through college he’d get commended for his charities, but it really isn’t that awesome (although, still, it is very kind). The girl is really smart and obviously amazingly resourceful, she just doesn’t have enough resources to get more people to see it and is too preoccupied helping herself and others stay alive. I’m sure she could’ve gotten a scholarship if she had the opportunity to be evaluated for one.

The Guessing Game really put it into perspective how you can’t be sure where people are from, and the generalizations people make are really unfitting. The 4.0 girl didn’t do as well as the first kid, which just proves that overall intelligence gets you nowhere in race relations; you have to take the time to understand racial/cultural variance (no offense to 4.0girl... totally impressed, I suck at SCM). At the same time, I really feel for 4.0girl because she is white (I’m brown) and I agree that white people have gotten the short end of the stick in racial conversation. They more often have to watch what they say and the concept of political correctness from that one reading applies most heavily to white America. The Guessing Game also made me realize that really I’m tired of having to wonder and worry about what people are and where they’re from.
A girl in my discussion group is from a Spanish speaking country, the name is eluding me, and when we asked her how she viewed America in terms of being a world power and the ‘America is the best’ argument, her initial response was, “I don’t understand why you call it America.” The class was perplexed until she explained that, for her, America referred to North America, not the US. It was easy to explain this away: United States of America, America for short.
I brushed off the topic, more interested in what she had to say about the question at hand, but I later realized that her comment wasn’t a misunderstanding at all – it was an extremely accurate observation. When I say I’m American, that’s it, that’s all there is to it, I don’t even stop to think about what that might mean or that I’m brown and my ancestry has no ties to America. When I say I’m American, Canadians and Mexicans don’t count because they’re Canadian and Mexican. After my classmate’s comment it really sunk in that we’re all part of the same continent (i.e. all American) and, as Sam has pointed out, probably aren’t from/solely whatever background most of us think we are. This happens all over the world, not just North America, and within each continent and country there are millions of different backgrounds. I went out last night and met a kid who I assumed was plain old white, and he turned out to be 100% Argentinean.
In combination with watching Nina Jablonski’s talk, the Guessing Game just proved to me how idiotic societies are in deciding to label their people. I think it’s wonderful to be prideful of the country you live in, the language you speak, and your cultural values, but not to neglect the continent or actual background that you come from. Cultural, linguistic and geographical factors are man-made and largely have nothing to do with evolutionary genetic make-up. Neighboring countries spend years in war with each other, and it isn’t even worth it. I would not have done any better than 4.0girl, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyways because people, myself included, spend more time labeling than learning that we’re all probably related and look the way we do for reasons having nothing to do with color coding.