I think the most important thing that I’ve taken from this class, something that I’ve only really just started to do, is questioning just about everything. Just overall digging deeper. I’ve been able to really working not taking what people say to be fact and noting when they use generalizations and things along that nature. I suppose I’ve been able to do that because I’ve noticed that Sam does push a lot of his opinions to be fact, which is interesting, I think, and it’s helped me be able to further differentiate between the two.
It’s just important to question your surroundings. Take for example the picture of the girls in that sorority how they dressed up like stereotypical Mexicans and held up those signs. Before I would have said that it’s offensive, because I really do think it is. But that’s where I would have left it. I wouldn’t have taken the time to look within myself and figure out why I found it offensive. I probably would have said the same thing that I say now, the signs put it over the edge. But I wouldn’t have understood the struggles that some Mexican immigrants have gone to in order to come to this country. How they’ve walked through desserts, been shot at, even with their small children just to come to this country. And knowing what I know now, I feel like it would be difficult for someone who knew at least a little bit about what it takes to come to this country, to make signs like those.
I’ve also taken away, again something that had only previously just begun to work on, the ability to when I’m in a situation where I feel uncomfortable, figure out why I feel uncomfortable. It could be because I’m around someone who has a disability or because someone has some type of deformity or because I’ve notice that I’m the only black person in a room full of white people. It’s like I try to objectively analyze why I feel the way that I feel. And, I guess when I figure it out, I’ll be able to overcome it and push through it instead of pretending not to notice.
It’s just interesting really. Because I’ve always considered myself open-minded. And I don’t mind expressing my opinions—when warranted of course, like in a debate. But sometimes I guess, just to speak generally, we notice our own hypocrisies. Because you think to yourself this is who I am and I’m not like them, how could they act the way that they act. And you don’t even take into consideration the possibility that someone is thinking that about you. So I think it’s important to take a step back and figure out why you’ve separated yourself from “them” whatever group of people that you pin “them” to be. And just try to understand why you’ve placed yourself above them, whether permanently or temporarily.
I guess, just to sum it up. I’ve taken away the ability to dig deeper.

My main problem with this question is that you’re making a lot of assumptions. You’re grouping black people and white people into two groups of people who are completely uncomfortable with one another. Saying “why are white girls afraid to talk to or even have sex with black guys,” isn’t even a valid question because this isn’t the case for all white girls. It may be true for some, but finding that percentage would take years of research and multiple trials. This question just takes one thought and projects it onto an entire group of people.
So, if you want to know why SOME white girls MAY feel uncomfortable to talk to or have sex with black guys, I think, in my opinion, it could be because they could be giving into the stereotype of who a black guy is. That maybe that black guy over there is a crazy ex con who only wants to harm them in some way. Or they’re stronger and could easily overpower them. And as for the other way around, maybe the black guy is worried that the white girls could be feeding into that stereotype. So in looking to protect themselves, they could be apprehensive in approaching a white girl. Because they wouldn’t want to approach them and make them uncomfortable in anyway. But I’m sure there could be a million other reasons as well, and I’ m not even sure if my reason is logical.
Expanding this out to all racial couples, though, I think the reason that interracial dating and intimacy could be difficult because of the initial lack of understanding of who the other person is. There are so many ways that one person can differ from another, in general, but when you add in the difference of culture, there could be a clash in belief systems, whether political or religious or anything else. There could even be a clash in how their child should be raised. I mean there’s a difference of cultural practices between, for example, an Indian and a Russian, and these differences could pose some types of problems for the relationship.
What could also be a problem is the history that those races have shared with one another. It might be difficult for the grandparents of a black and white couple or a German and Jewish couple to be together. And the clashing of the families could create a strain for the relationship.
Another problem could be that the people entering the relationship or whatever form of intimacy are too concerned about what other people would think about them being with someone outside of their own race to let themselves become fully immersed in the relationship.

I don’t personally think that any one stage is better than or worse than the other. This is because I believe that within each stage, there could be people on an extreme high end of that stage, or an extreme low end.
Take for example people in this fifth stage. I think, and I suppose this could be a generalization, but I think that most people would label this as the best stage to be in. When one is in this stage, they want to learn about other races while keeping a firm foundation in who they are in their own race. This could be great, the person could become more culturally well rounded, and this could help them better understand who they are and their placement in the world. OR, a person could be doing this to gather evidence that their race is better than any of the other races. It could go either way, and it depends on a person to person basis.
Or take for example being in the first stage where someone is trying to seek some sort of acceptance within the white race. If people looked at me right now, a black girl, they’d think to themselves “oh my goodness she’s in stage one.” I’ve gone my whole life being known as the “oreo” or the “whitest black girl” or so on and so forth. One time in the 7th grade a black girl said to me, “why do you act so white? Just be yourself.” Little did she know I was being myself…..
But the thing is I don’t think of myself as being in stage one (or any stage, really) This is just who I am and how I talk. It’s whatever. I’ve moved around a lot, and I’ve lived in predominantly white areas. I’ve even attended a catholic school. And I didn’t think anything of it because it was all I’ve known. And this, I’ve realized, has trickled into my life even after I moved to a predominantly black area of Virginia. I fit in better with the white people there; they were just easier for me to talk to. And they wanted to be my friend because I spoke like them and dressed like them— I won’t count the small stage I went through where, in middle school I dressed like a chick straight out of a rap video. That was just my attempt to fit in so that I’d stop being labeled as white, ha. Even now, the majority of my friends are white. But I don’t think anything of it. It’s just how it is. It’s not like I shy away from black people, because I don’t. I just attract white people, more. I find it rather interesting.
I’m perfectly indifferent to being black. I’m not ridiculously proud and I also don’t hate my race (although if I could be any other race, I’d be Indian because they have delicious food, or Hispanic because they have fantastic hair. Obviously not to say that my race lacks any of these things. It’s just a different take on the same features.)
I digress immensely. So which stage is better in my opinion? None are better, and none are worse. It varies from person to person. I feel like it’s hard anyway, to place a person in one stage because I feel like someone could be in more than one stage at the same time. Or go to stage three and then revert back to stage one. Again, it just varies immensely from person to person. I think the most important thing to understand is who you are as a person while you’re in that stage. How comfortable are you with yourself and the other races around you?

I think trying to decide whether or not being gay is a choice originates from the whole nature vs. nurture debate. The question should instead be “which influences our behavior more” since I think both help to shape who we are. Is it the genetics that we don’t have control over? Is there an invisible “gay” gene that parents can pass onto their children? Or were we born as blank slates and because of the way we were raised and the people we encountered we ended up becoming who we are today?
If I raised a boy as a girl, would he end up becoming gay? It’s possible, but there have been studies to show that this isn’t always the case. What about a child having gay parents? Would this also make them gay? Again, no, not necessarily. Things aren’t always just black and white; people forget that straight couples have given birth to gay children. The lines are murky and it isn’t easy (or even really possible) to find the exact scenario across the board to determine what would make someone a certain way (in this case, gay) It doesn’t always matter how you were raised, sometimes you’re just gay, and it’s nobody’s fault, and it’s just fine.
In my opinion, being gay is not a choice. You hear about the gay bashers, the people murdered for their sexual orientation, the people committing suicide because they couldn’t come to terms with who they were, the people trying to pretend to be straight, turning to religion to help them suppress this “side” of them. I feel like, because I didn’t choose to be straight, I can’t really see someone choosing to be gay, especially in our modern day society where they’re still struggling for the simple human right to marriage.
I don’t think we can always help how we feel. Our emotions are automatic; we may try to ignore them but they still linger in the back of our minds. Sometimes people just fall in love with people, regardless of their gender. And, as long as its two consenting adults, why should any outside parties even care? What I do think is a choice is how we respond to the way we feel. If I chose to sleep with someone, that would be me acting upon my emotions, and I feel like the same goes for someone who’s gay.
So why are there people who believe that being gay is a choice? Well, for one, I think it’s because it’s possible for them to be right. How would we really be able to find out whether or not someone chose to be gay? We could just ask a member of the gay community, but even if they said no, how would we know that they even knew for sure? It could have been a subconscious decision, right? Another reason could be because they’re trying to rationalize why a gay person is gay. If we don’t understand something, we tack some quick explanation into it so that it makes sense for ourselves. Why’s that person gay? Oh, because he chose to be.
It’s complicated, and I feel like we’ll never really know for sure. We’ll just have people going back and forth on either side of the nature vs. nurture debate until the end of time. But when you find someone’s behavior straying away from the norm, it’s easy, I think, to say that they simple chose to act that way. Then you can say that it’s their fault and continue to place yourself on a higher level than them. No one really wants to believe that the way they live their life is the wrong way. But how can we be so sure that it isn’t?

From an economic stand point your choice of not buying a newer cellphone has virtually no effect on the global market. The buying preferences of one lone consumer aren’t what companies care about. If everyone is demanding bright green jackets, but one lone person comes forward and expresses a preference for yellow, the company is still going to keep making bright green ones. Why? Because companies only care about pleasing the majority. They’d go bankrupt if they tried to please everyone; they have to follow the direction that the demand is going.
In my opinion, though, the important thing in making an individualized consumer decision, is why you chose to buy (or in your case, not buy) a certain item. You didn’t want to buy a newer phone because you don’t agree with the fact that it was produced by slaves. Alright, that sounds commendable to me. But how do you know that the phone that you currently own wasn’t produced by slaves, too? What about the other appliances that you have? Do you own a laptop? A car? Any other pieces of technology? Can you say with certainty that they weren’t produced by slaves? If you can, then again I commend you, but if you aren’t certain, then I have to question how knowledgeable you are on current-day slavery.
And if you choose not to buy the latest pieces of technology because they were produced by slaves, then really why stop there? How about paying more attention to the clothes you buy? Are you certain that the clothes you own aren’t a product of slavery, human trafficking, poor working conditions of exploded adults or child laborers? Aren’t these issues important as well? And how about the food we eat? What kind of forced labor was put into their production? I feel like trying to tackle an issue like this could drive a person insane, because it trickles down into so many other categories. We’d all end up homeless, naked, and without any way of communicating with anyone who isn’t right next to us or within walking distance.
So I said that the important thing in making an individualized consumer decision is why you chose to buy (or not buy) a certain item. But in your case I’d like to add a clause: it is also important to be well informed about the issue that you choose to tackle. So how well informed are you about current day slavery and how it has led to the production of our iPhones and other pieces of technology?
The article “Electronics Fuel Unspeakable violence” is obviously one that is quite relevant to this current topic. Although it isn’t about slavery, it insinuates that we, as consumers, are inadvertently responsible for the turmoil that has been happening in the Congo. After I read the article, although I was shocked by the horrific events that had happened to this girl (which of course was the purpose of the article) I couldn’t ignore how il-informed that article left me. It was trying to shock me into not buying these latest pieced of technology, open my eyes to the suffering of others that have made it possible for me to use my laptop to type this blog. But I wondered, what was the Congo’s history? What caused this militia to spark into existence? There was a giant gap that separated the horrific events that happened to the woman and this story, and me as a consumer. I’m supposed to believe that the pursue of metal is the only reason that this militia attacked this poor woman, and I don’t at all buy it, because those resources are found in places other than the Congo. The writer only chose to focus on the fact most interesting to her, instead of the facts most relevant to the reader. I didn’t appreciate it’s attempt to mislead me.
After being so frustrated on the lack of any real concrete facts that that article gave, I read the comments section. The first comment read this: “Its not electronics that fuel unspeakable violence, its lack of civility and conscience in a society torn by decades of war and repression. Demand will always be there, its a question of how its supplied.” And I couldn’t agree more. It is imperative that we as consumers open our eyes to the world issues around us. It’s necessary to know that slavery still exists today. But it is also imperative, when trying to connect us as consumers to those slaves, to state facts and give background information. Otherwise people will be misled into taking improper action to solve these issues. Like, perhaps, not buying a new phone.
I digress alllllootttt. I didn’t mean to ramble. Basically, if you are proud of your personal decision to not buy a new cellphone, then that’s great. I guess that’s all that matters. And as I said, if you are well informed about the slavery that has happened around the world today, and you aren’t leaving these issues at deciding not to get the latest phone, then I commend you. It would even turn into an opportunity to educate others around you about slavery happening in the world today. But again, I repeat, how informed are you really?

I can’t say overall how approachable I’d find you because for me it would really depend on the situation. The causality in the way you dressed—dreads, headphones around your neck, a hat, ect—for a classroom setting is perfectly acceptable. So in that case I’d have to say that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with your appearance and I wouldn’t find you any more or less approachable than I’d find anybody else. I honestly probably wouldn’t even really notice you (I’m a pretty oblivious person in general.)
I think this would apply the same if I happened to be passing you down the street of any area whether rural or in the city. I again, probably wouldn’t even take the time out to really look at you and decide how approachable you were.
There are a few situations, though, where this would change for me. Say for instance you were walking behind me going your own way, but it was at night. Or you were walking in an opposing direction from me at night and we ended up passing each other. Then you’d become less approachable. I’d probably actually be worried for my safety just because you’re a male and I’m a female and your bigger than me and I’d have no idea who you were or what you were likely to do. I mean I’m not too, too worried about things like that (I go for runs in the middle of the night, so I’m really not the scared type) but if we were in a city and I were walking alone at night somewhere where a lot of people weren’t, I’d become extremely aware that you’d either just passed me or were walking behind me.
Also, if you were dressed the same way that you dressed in class in a corporate office, I’d again find you less approachable. I’d actually question what you were even doing in that corporate office, and I’d judge you and wonder how serious you were about working in the corporate world (because who would come into a job like that in jeans, wearing a hat and headphones, and having their dreads down. Your dreads would probably have to be tied back I’m randomly assuming)
If we were at a party, I’d probably come up to you and ask you to dance, just because I have no fear like that.
Overall though, the main deciding factor of how approachable a person is or isn’t, isn’t always how they look (I’m sure sometimes it is) but rather how they act. Like it would again, depend on the situation, but how you act in that situation and how you stand, carry yourself ect. If I saw you dressed strangely out of place in a working area, yet you came off extremely polite, then I’d think “oh wow, that inappropriately dressed guy is really polite” If I saw you in a dark alley and you acted menacingly, then I’d steer clear of you just for self-preservation purposes.
So yeah, basically it depends.

Weird, I was actually thinking about this whole thing in detail yesterday while I was out for my morning run. But okay, I think it’s sooo, so, so hard to decide who the land that we all currently live on really and truly belongs to. I think that’s because we’ve been living on this land for so long (I’m talking generations, as in the plural form of a generation) after it was stolen, really, from Native Americans that the lines become blurry as to who the true owner should be. Would it even make sense to give this land back now? It would be such an overdue apology, that I’m not even sure if we should, because the original people who were kicked off the land have died over a century ago.
Going back to the examples that Sam gave in class, I think they were less relevant than he intended. Because if your parents called you saying that just moments ago the family car was stolen by strange people who had like napalm and machine guns when all that you had were like, sticks (obviously an exaggeration, I know this wasn’t really the case) then you would be like oh my goodness! I’m coming over right now, we’re calling the police and we’re going to try to get our car back. Now, if like four generations down the road, your children’s, children’s, children attempted to get that car back from the great, great grandchildren of the original thieves, eh, the lines start to get really blurry. Does the car still belong to them? I’m less sure. I can’t say with certainty that it doesn’t, but I’m not too sure that it actually does.
Then comes the case of do the Native Americans even have a right to this land. Like I said in my smaller discussion group for sociology, I’m extremely uncertain. Also, whether or not someone has a right to something isn’t really decided on an individual basis. I feel like rights themselves, what a person is or isn’t entitled to is decided by the authorities in that group, even if the authorities only choose for the betterment of themselves and don’t care for the lives that they destroy in the process. For example, do I have a right to kill someone because I didn’t like the way that they looked at me? Society says no. Okay, that was a really farfetched example, but you get the idea that I’m going for, perhaps. Did the Native Americans have a right to their land? The government at the time said no, your land has a bunch of awesome resources on it, we’re trying to expand; it’s ours now. And was this okay? Well of course not. It was beyond morally wrong. Even to simply state that it was wrong is such an understatement that it’s almost completely meaningless. It doesn’t even carry the weight that it should. But it happened.
So it’s like initially, the land should have been theirs; they never should have been kicked off of it. They never should have been displayed and the consequences of their displacement are soooo apparent today. It’s appalling, and it’s like why is no one talking about this? Why is it an issue that’s so unknown? I don’t see people asking our presidential candidates how they’re going to solve this. But now? Today? Should the however many uses of the word “great” grandchildren of the original displayed Native Americans claim back this land? Should we knock down Penn state and give this land back to the Native Americans? Should I go home and help my dad empty out our house, and move to Africa because we will no longer have any land for us here in the US? Should every American who bought a house through legal means follow suite? I don’t know. I’m really not even trying to make it sound outlandish. Who does this land really belong to? I quite honestly have no idea. It was theirs and it was stolen. Does that now make it ours?

I'll be completely honest and say that my views on freewill vs. determinism haven't really changed. If anything, I feel like I’m even more convinced that life mainly revolves around freewill with the determining factors acting more as an end result.
For me, it comes down to this: freewill is always at play in every single situation. To use the example that Sam gave in class, if I held a gun to someone's head and told them not to blink, it would have been my decision to do so. Sure there might have been a lot of factors that led up to that situation, but at the end of the day it was still a choice of mine to grab the gun, even if it didn't seem like it was.
With every decision made, there is always a cause and effect. The cause (or in this case the determining factors) are what led me to pick up the gun, whatever they may be. The effect is that this unknown person now has a gun to their head against their own will. Obviously they didn't choose this situation, but they've made a series of choices that have led up to them being here: maybe I know this person and they've been emotionally abusive. Or maybe I'm a random robber but they only ran into me because they decided to take the subway that morning instead of the bus. Now they have another choice: they decide how they're going to react. They can choose to blink (yeah, you could say who in their right mind would blink, but the choice still exists, you can't just diminish the value of it. Plus, who's to say that I wouldn't just shoot the person anyway? Obviously I wouldn't be in the mood of saving lives) So are they going to fight back? Are they going to do whatever I tell them to? Will I even pull the trigger? There are, just like in any situation, a million choices at play.
Just like the person with the gun to their head, we don't always get to choose the situations that we're placed into. But I often feel like they're just left over effects of the past decisions of other people. Because every design has a cause and effect. Or every action has both an opposite and equal reaction.
If you want to tackle the topic of why there are so many impoverished black people in America, again based off of the statistic that Sam gave in class, I'm sure one could name a million different reasons. Maybe they were born into poverty and they live in a dead zone where the educational system is horrible, or maybe they lost their job due to no fault of their own, or maybe, or maybe, or maaayyybe. There could be so many different reasons, but you could trace it back and find a decision made that landed them there. Maybe their parents got into drugs and that's why they were born into a terrible neighborhood (a decision to do drugs) or maybe their father left and their mother had to raise them alone (a choice of the father to leave), or maybe their family has lived there for generations, but the city chooses to ignore their neighborhood. The problem though, is that with a lot of the decisions we make, I feel like we don't always know the immediate consequences of them until it's too late. I firmly believe that life is mostly just a series of random acts, anyway, So as a result of all of the decisions that we make and the results that they produce (that maybe we don't even see initially, or at all,) we then create the determining factors that cause people to make more decisions. I guess it's an endless cycle. I imagine it by placing freewill as a sort of parent and the determining factors it's children, the things created by the choices that we make. I do agree that they can't really be separated, but I don't agree that they coexist in an equal fashion.

To me, the way that statistics were set up, in terms of who gained the most amount of money in a household versus who gained the least, almost made sense. I say almost because I was a bit confused that Asians were on top. I would have thought that white people would have been number one on the list with all of the races left in some juxtaposed order below them—not even a vertical line. I mean think about it this way, white people are the majority, so much so that anyone who isn’t white is labeled as a “minority,” so with that in mind, one can, after taking a glance at history and seeing how whites have traditionally been the oppressors with every other race looked upon as the oppressed, I’d think that it would be fair to assume that whites should be on top.
At the same time though, a thought like that would only really come about by looking at history in terms of “white people versus the rest of the world.” Yes, Europeans went around to other nations conquering them, destroying their culture, and claiming their land in the name of their own country (cough, cough, the reason why my dad, an Ivorian, natively speaks French) but the world isn’t simply “black and white.”
If one looked at past versions of Asian countries, one would see that Europeans really tended to leave them alone. A good example of this is China, who wasn’t really friends with…anyone. Because of this, they were able to develop and modernize on their own, something that Native Americans as a nation, and many African countries weren’t able to do. If I thought of it this way, I could see an Asian nation perhaps coming in second, but not first because of the reasoning given above for whites being on top. But after Sam’s in class explanation of why Asians would be number one (they live with a lot of people in a house hold, so that brings the overall amount of money being made up) then I was like okay, I suppose they could be on top then.
In terms of blacks and Hispanics/Latinos being the bottom two, this makes sense. When looking at the poverty levels in certain “dead zones,” where there’s an endless cycle of minorities continuously being born into impoverished neighborhoods that don’t offer the proper education in public schools to help them leave, these areas seem to predominantly be populated by Hispanics/Latinos and blacks. I’m not sure why for Hispanics, but for blacks I feel like this reaches all the way back to the post slavery United states. Where blacks were free, but still seen as less than human. So they weren’t able to get the best jobs, but there are always exceptions to every situation.
And of course Native Americans are dead last, not even part of the chart. But nobody talks about the amount of poverty that they live in. So many Americans are blind to the struggles they’re going through. Before this class? I myself had no idea about the amount of poverty and struggles going on in Indian reservations. Sure, I didn’t think they lived in any type of wealth, but absolute dirt poor poverty? And NO ONE talks about finding a solution? My goodness.
If I relied solely on stereotypes though, I’d say Asians are smart, whites are more reliable, Hispanics work hard for less money because of immigration, blacks are rude and incompetent, and Native Americans are invisible.

Honestly the type of reactions that people had in the comment section of reddit over this picture weren’t at all surprising. I think it would have been more shocking if people were accepting and were perfectly fine with the way that she looked. And I’m really not excluded either; I mean if I saw that picture in passing on Google I would have been like “oh my goodness!” It would have completely caught me off guard because that isn’t something that you see every day. But would I have commented on reddit? Would I have started saying all of those awful things about her? Nah, that’s not me. Maybe I would have thought a few things, but I’m not the type to say them out loud. I guess it doesn’t make me much better that I would think them, though.
But think about our society: it tells us what we should wear, how much we should weigh, what styles our hair should be in, where our body hair should and shouldn’t grow, what the celebrities are eating, what we should do for fun, and when someone comes along who looks or acts differently from what we’ve deemed as the norm, we crucify them. We do this in order to feel better about ourselves. It’s a way to affirm that how we’re acting and how we look is the way that things should be. So we say “oh my gosh look at that,” or “that thing is so gross,” even, “how could it not care enough about itself to pick up a razor?” and then we go back to our lives, continuing to struggle over all of our insecurities as we notice nothing but our own flaws. But really we’re better/prettier/more admirable/more concerned about personal hygiene than the girl with a mustache, right?
How do I feel about all of this? I’m embarrassed. It’s ridiculous that one of the ways that we can feel better about ourselves is by putting another person down. It’s remarkable how much we can dehumanize each other, because the second that Balpreet Kaur opened her mouth to speak, we all backtracked. All of the sudden she became this beautiful person worth admiring and looking up to. No, really what happened was we realized that she had thoughts and feelings and was more than that thing that needs to shave and we thought of how we would feel in that situation.
It’s a shame how much our society thrives on appearance, but at the same time it’s how things are and how things will continue to be. And again, it’s something that I’m not excluding myself from. People like Balpreet Kaur in my opinion are strong because you’d have to be to live in a society that flows one way while you aren’t afraid to hold onto your beliefs that so greatly differ from those around you. I’d like to think that I’m strong minded, and I am to a certain degree, but I’m not really. Just like most people my age, I succumb to the power that society holds over me, because I’m afraid of what people would say if I really and truly decided to stand out.