I really don’t think it was the actual party that was offensive at all. If Mexican people get offended by a Mexican fiesta party then Jewish people should be offended by Christmas parties, white people should be extremely offended by “white trash” parties, and basically every single costume that was worn the past one hundred years during Halloween should offend someone. I really think the problem is that people are just way too sensitive. What gets me the most is that if the girls were dressed as white trash or trailer trash with overalls and buck teeth, wife beaters and fake pregnant stomachs, it would be completely fine. Sam said it himself in class. You’re allowed to make fun of white people. In society it is not offensive to do so, that’s just the way it is.
I do understand that the signs in the pictures were extremely uncalled for and unnecessary. So in this case, I don’t think it was the party that should be taken as offensive. The signs are a definite no no, the signs are a definite no no. But I just think we need to be less sensitive individuals as a whole. IThe fact that these words were written down and posted on the Internet for anyone to see really made a statement. The costumes solely, the sombreros and bright colors, were not offensive.
This issue is a tough one. I think that these costumes can be perceived in a few different ways. To these sorority girls it was just a fun thing to do for Halloween. But to people with a Mexican background, this was completely insensitive and stereotypical.
On the other hand, I believe that in light of all of this, Penn State and people in general are definitely going to be more cautious. They will definitely be more cautious regarding costumes but also when it comes to issues regarding races other than what you are. I have friends at other schools who texted me saying that their sorority received information about Chi Omega over their list serves. They received warnings too to make sure everything they are doing and wearing is acceptable. I think this really shows that this issue had a strong impact on everyone.
I think another reason this issue has become such a national conflict is because we all know Penn state is not on the good side of most people in America right now. It is obviously a tough time in our history and I think the media feeds off of the negative attention from our university. That being said, I do think this whole thing has taught us about political and social correctness, and we will use it as a learning experience for the future.

I honestly struggle with this issue more than I thought I would when we first talked about it, and probably more than any other issue we have even talked about in class. Personally, I come from a family who is 100 percent against illegal immigration. My parents are pretty hard core about it, so I have just always thought about it their way and said that illegal immigrants should not be allowed to stay in our country no matter what job they attained here and that they should not be able to stay here while their green card or visa applications are being processed. Obviously Sam has completely opened my mind from that. When we heard Eric’s story in class of how he made it here from Mexico, it really changed my perspective a little.
That being said, my original position on illegal immigration, the one that I have grown up with my whole life, really does not make any sense when looked at from the Native American’s standpoint. Yes I think illegal immigration isn’t helping our country and I wish there was less of it, but at least these immigrants are not staking claims on our land or pushing us off of our own rightful property. At least not yet. And technically all of us who are not of Native American descent are actually illegal immigrants are actually illegal immigrants, so does that mean if we believe Native Americans should get all of their land back that we should also then deport ourselves because our ancestors are the ones who stole their land? Probably not. The whole situation becomes even more muddled with you think about the different generations of ancestors who were actually involved. In some ways I feel as if I really can not put myself in the shoes of the Native Americans. I mean I am completely and fully aware that what happened to them was extremely horrible, but are we then supposed to be held responsible for the actions of our ancestors? We technically had nothing to do with anything our ancestors have done in the past. Because of this I am really not sure that anything can be done to completely alleviate the damage that was done to the Native Americans when they were forcefully pushed off of their land. No one is willing to take that much responsibility for something that horrible that was done to innocent people. So yes I believe now that the Americans who do hate and berate Mexican immigrants who migrate here illegally are very hypocritical. After all, our ancestors did the exact same thing to these innocent Indians who inhabited this land before us. Unfortunately I just don’t believe that anything will ever be done to truly repay the Native Americans for what they were put through.

Obviously many people’s first thoughts on abortions are that they are wrong. It is terrible and inhumane to take a life or a future life, however you may look at it however you may look at it. It is crucial to put yourself in the position of a pregnant woman to actually understand the need for a pro-choice outlook on abortion. You need to have empathy for these women. As Sam said: what if it was your 12 or 13 year old sister or daughter or friend got raped and became pregnant? What if it was your mother or your neighbor or cousin? And worst yet, what if it was you? You would want empathy. You would need empathy.
Honestly, I don’t understand how people can say all of these things without putting himself or herself or someone they love in that situation. But it all comes down to empathy- and that is really something that is spread far too scarcely in this country and even all around the world. If people would stop and think about the subject at hand and think about how they would feel if they were like the group that is being debated, maybe then they would feel for the other group and not say these things without thinking about the implications of them first. I am almost positive that if some of these super right wing republicans were in a situation where their wife was raped and got pregnant, they would completely change their views of how the law should restrict women from abortions.
Yes, it is sad. There are sixteen year olds who get pregnant because of their choice and their mistake and then they have an abortion. There are women who are married and in their thirties and ready to start families but because of medical problems they can’t get pregnant. In situations like this it seems like the best option for everyone would be for the sixteen year old to have the baby and the women to adopt it. But these are not all situations. There are situations like rape. If I were to get pregnant from rape my life would be very difficult, as would anyone’s.
The only thing I see going wrong is that if there were to be an exception to the no abortion rule in order to allow abortions for women who were raped, it would open up a door for every woman to possibly lie about how she got pregnant in the first place. First of all many times rape and sexual assault cases are not even brought to the courts, but in this case in order for an abortion to take place the pregnancy would have to be ruled a definite rape in court, right? Because this also leaves room for wrongdoing in the court room, aka a real rape victim could potentially lose a case while someone else could potentially wrongfully be granted an abortion.

I was personally appalled at the statistics of the strangers kidnapping children. That issue is made out to be such a big deal when in reality only 100 children a year are kidnapped by strangers. I believe that in today’s society a person believes what they want to believe and don’t really care what the other side has to argue. I will even admit that I am one of those people. I also can see that many peoples opinions on certain things can be based on misinformation. The problem is that once someone is on board with an argument they tend to just not want to hear any opposing opinions.
When Sam had us answer the question of how many children we believed got kidnapped by a non-family member each year. The class average was over a thousand kids where in reality it is only a hundred and some. Sam then mentioned that our answers weren’t based on research that we saw, it was based on what we believe to be true, and what we believe to be true we usually always believe is true. It was also mentioned in class how television shows and video games mislead people into thinking what happens during things these are true. Let’s face it; in almost every television show the black guy is the bad guy where the white guy is the good guy. Many people may also not have interest or concern in certain subject areas, and hence are more accepting to information. In class Sam gives us lots of facts and data from sociological studies which most of us wouldn’t have known because we don’t have an interest in sociology. In many situations there are many knowledge areas to take into consideration, but because we are not all educated on all levels, we cannot look at a situation from all angles and perspectives to truly say whether the information we are given is correct or not. More importantly, if we do not recognize that the information we are learning is incorrect, then how susceptible are we to misinformation from a source that is trying to push a view on you. We are headed down a dangerous path in which we no longer dig to find facts. We blindly accept things to be true. If this remains, then we will not be inquisitive people who can form well-rounded opinions, but rather uniformed and unknowingly doing the will of others. I’m honestly not even sure what can be done about the epidemic of opinions based on misinformation because most people would just refuse to believe that their opinions are wrong, let alone be open enough to learn the right facts on which to form opinions.

In class we discussed the conflict of “whose land is it” in regards to the native Americans that originally inhabited the land we love on today. Sam depicted this to us in class by having one students stand by the table and having another student come push him aside, now making it his table. When you look at it from such a scaled-down perspective, it seems obvious that the student who originally occupied the table should receive his rightful property back, but the situation got more unclear as we went along. When we were polled about if we thought the children of the landowner should receive some sort of compensation only around half of the class said yes, mostly because the second generations shouldn’t be punished for the actions of their ancestors. But when Sam brought it closer to home and asked us to imagine someone taking over our actual house and nothing could be done about it, opinions changed. Since in this manner mostly all children think they are entitled to some sort of inheritance, a lot of students changed their minds and then thought they should receive some compensation. Obviously in this day and age if someone came into your home and made you leave it forever we would expect some higher authority to step in and allow us to reclaim our land and possessions. Unfortunately everything becomes more confusing and complicated when we are talking about grandchildren and even great grandchildren and even great grandchildren of the original owner of the land being able to be compensated for their ancestors’ losses.
It seems like a no brainer that if someone’s land is stolen then they should get it back. But as time passes and other people literally set up their lives on this “stolen” land, it seems impossible to take away something from them that they had no control over stealing. They probably didn’t even know it was stolen, honestly. I just feel like there has to be a certain time limit on the accusations of stealing land if anything was ever going to be done about it. But when you look at it on a larger scale, like with the native Americans for instance, we literally have wiped out almost their entire culture’s old land. They are left with nothing while we prosper to the fullest extent. To me, it is obvious that something needs to be done for the native American Indians, and something that will actually help them. Not just setting up reservations for them and their families and tribes to live on. Even on the reservations that are set up now the Indians technically only own three percent of that land, and the businesses set up there don’t even benefit them whatsoever because the money doesn’t go to the native Americans.

Tuesday’s class really made me realize that no decision I have ever made has been without determinism OR free will. There is a little bit of each in every decision we make in our lives. This means the decisions I made throughout my life that eventually brought me to Penn State were all determined by something other than just free will.
Obviously in the younger years of learning like kindergarten and first grade, determinism played a bigger role than it does now. If your parents pushed you hard to do your homework and pay attention and actually pay attention and learn in school, then you did it. And that probably made you a lot better off than you would have been had they not pushed you that hard. So basically that was less your free will and mostly your parents’ determination. Granted you did have the free will to not obey your parents and teachers, or maybe your parents just didn’t push you, but I know in my experience my early life was controlled more by my parents and home environment than my own free will to decide things.
As I got older I was naturally able to make more of my own decisions, but the thought of my parents’ disappointment or even punishment if I didn’t do the right things was always on my mind. At this point I feel as if determinism was still outweighing my free will to make decisions, but this clearly can vary from person to person; my personality was just more “people-pleasing” to my parents. I have always hated to disappoint them. In high school I feel like I had the most free will in my decisions. I decided what to wear, what to buy, what to eat for lunch, etc. I had to push myself to get the grades I needed to get into the colleges I wanted to go to. My parents definitely backed off more at this point in my life in order to allow me to get used to having to fend for myself and make sure I had the self-motivation to prepare on my own in terms of classes, homework, and exams.
In the end I feel like I ultimately had the free will to act however I wanted to. I just knew that that could mean that I wouldn’t get into the colleges that I knew I had the potential for. I still believe that it was no one’s decision but mine in terms of how to act and prepare myself in high school, despite the repercussions of not doing well enough. The fact that my parents pushed me hard in my early life definitely allowed me to make the decisions that I have, but ultimately it was MY free will to do well enough to get to where I am now.

I’m honestly not sure if there is one specific reason for the differences in salaries of people from different racial backgrounds. At first I had no idea what any explanation for these huge gaps could be, but some discussions in class kind of helped me start to form my own opinions and explanations.
When the Asian girl came to the front of the room to explain her point of view on why she thought Asians were the ranked the highest in household income, I was very curious to hear what her explanation was. The details she gave us definitely made me form the same opinions that she held. She described to us that it was a very expensive process to be able to come to the United States from Asia, so for the most part only families that were already well off were the ones who came to the United States from Asia. She also explained that schooling and universities are much cheaper in Asia than in America, so most people who do come to the United States from Asia have already been well educated by universities from there. Then for the most part they would attend grad school in America and from there only be set up to make even more money in the long run. Another reason Sam put out there is that many Asians come to America not just with themselves or their immediate family, but they come with multiple generations and extended family members who may all live in the same house, which means there are more working people under one roof and in turn generates a higher household income. I think those explanations are the perfect fit for why Asians are ranked at the top in terms of household incomes.
As for the other three races on the other hand, I don’t think the explanations can be that clear-cut. If we’re talking in terms of migration again, many Hispanics probably come to the United States illegally and don’t have a large amount of money (or people for that matter) to support them once they get here. This means they are basically starting from scratch, in a new country with nothing. Honestly, from my own personal experience, I believe that another reason Hispanics and African Americans are on the extremely low end of the spectrum as far as household incomes go is that there is still racial prejudice in the United States. I mean I don’t think it’s that hard to see at all... Even as a white person I can see it. I do see it every day. Harsh stereotypes of Mexicans, Latinos, African Americans, etc. all still exist. There is most definitely some sort of prejudice still occurring in our country today that prohibits many people of color from getting jobs that they are probably well deserving of.

I think Dr. Jones’s demonstrations made by far the most interesting class so far this semester. His ways of thinking and teaching reminded me of Sam’s in some ways because he tried to make us feel so comfortable with racial topics that we have always been a little apprehensive about. As we know, the only way to feel more comfortable with these topics is to confront them head on and face our fears.
The students who volunteered for the storytelling activity were supposed to do just that: face their fears and be forced to be comfortable saying any words to any people. As we know, this did not happen. The story got shortened, twisted, and changed multiple times throughout the process. One thing that I can’t say actually surprised me was that when the “N” word fell off out of the story, it was when a white boy purposely left it out. I don’t think I blame him whatsoever because I’m sure I would have done the exact same thing. He obviously did not feel comfortable saying the “N” word, and especially not in front of 700 other students. Just because he was told to say the word in no way means that everyone in class would have accepted it without feeling stung, hurt, or judged. In fact I feel like there was almost a guarantee that someone in the class would have felt very angry and upset and would have spoken out his or her opinion to the boy. So I definitely agree with what Dr. Jones said about how particular words can have complete control over a person, and that in itself is what would have stopped me from using that language. Our society has taught us that there can and most likely will be extreme consequences for comments such as the ones we heard in class, so it is completely understandable that the story got changed in that way so quickly.
I think Dr. Jones taught us all a valuable lesson that we cannot automatically believe any story we hear. Stories are so easily changed when they go through different people, and we always need to take that into account before we know what to believe. As Dr. Jones puts it, stories go through different “filters” when they get told by so many different people. The people’s backgrounds, races, and cultural beliefs can all change what particular details of a certain story they think are necessary to be told to another person. I think we now all need to take into account how little information we may actually be getting when we hear a story from someone. We need to take the time to do the research and check the facts before we continue to spread unnecessary rumors.

First off, I think Thursday’s class alone was a perfect example of how much music can inform us of things we aren’t familiar with. Just after one day of speaking to Pedro via Skype and listening to Omar’s story, I already feel more comfortable with discussing the Middle East and its people. Although our cultures are completely different, music is an easy way to begin to bridge the gap between us.
I think hip hop is a great way to spread information about anything, honestly. Music is so important to people’s everyday lives so it’s a perfect way to communicate to people you don’t necessarily know or know anything about. Music could be used as a platform to bridge the east and west because even though we may not speak the same languages, music is a universal language. It’s so natural and common to listen to music so it’s and relaxed and laid back way to learn new things about people, cultures, and religions all over the world. It is not as much of a process as actually sitting down and learning new information; it is more of an enjoyable and easygoing way to be able to understand more about people who we don’t normally have communication with.
In a broader sense, art in general (not just hip hop and music) can also be used as a universal guide to languages and cultures from all around the world. Art has been around since literally the stone age. Cave paintings have been found all over the world and we have learned so much about the past and its cultures just through these paintings. To me, art is important because the racial/religious/ etc. barrier that usually exists is gone. When you look at a work of art you can’t tell if the artist was black or white or Jewish or American. You just look at the work and interpret it however you choose. Also, the race and religion of the viewer is completely unimportant. Different people from different cultures can look at the same piece of art and interpret it in a completely different way. Art is a hugely universal language that will help us to understand cultures from all around the world with ease.
Another thing is that different artists obviously share completely different experiences from all aspects of their lives, so by listening to multiple rappers, singers or writers, we will get to experience different people’s perspectives on the same cultures, religions, etc. Like Sam said last week, the only way to become comfortable with certain topics is to face them head on. We need to educate ourselves and others about the Middle East its cultures before we can understand the appropriate way to feel and express our views about them.

For me, personally, I know I definitely feel a little bit anxious or uncomfortable when I’m around someone with a disability or another “difference” as Sam called it. It’s not that I feel like they should be treated any differently from me; my fears stem from the fact that I might say or do something to offend them. The problem is that I just haven’t been exposed to enough people with disabilities in my life to be able to speak comfortably and have a normal conversation knowing I won’t offend anyone.
I loved when the girl who was in a wheelchair spoke in class about this subject. She explained how sometimes her friends make comments about taking the stairs and just completely forget about her disability. At first I thought I would be offended if I was in her position, but then I came to realize that them not thinking of her disability is actually a huge compliment. Her friends have become so comfortable with her wheelchair that they forget it’s there. That’s exactly the point of Sam’s question and I think that whole concept is amazing.
I do believe we should all be able to become that comfortable with any disability. Just because someone is different from our perception of normal doesn’t mean they deserve to be treated any differently than we are. The only way to be completely comfortable with another person’s differences is to be exposed to them. Another key to being comfortable is being able to confront the issue or disability and learn from the person how we should address it, if at all. The more we face the issue of the disability, the more comfortable we will be in the end. Like Sam said, I think we just need to focus on the difference or disability so much that we no longer notice it even exists. No one should be judged by a difference or disability. Everyone deserves equal treatment no matter what the circumstances. What if Albert Einstein or Thomas Jefferson or Abe Lincoln were in wheelchairs? Maybe they would have been overlooked or not looked up to as much as they were and as they deserved to be. But in the end this disability would not change any of the great things these men did for our country. They would still deserve to be famous for all their accomplishments throughout history.
So in my opinion, I do agree with Sam. I think the concept of “bringing something into the universe just to let it go from our universe” is amazing. We need to have the courage to address someone’s disability that is making us uncomfortable (“bring it into our universe”) and focus on it so much that we are able to disregard it and “let it go from our universe.” I think it’s an awesome concept.