Given this day and age I would feel that it would take a lot of evidence of future detriment for me to act on someone’s life. Let me start by saying that I wouldn’t take much for me to kill someone if my family friends or lively hood is threatened. However, I can’t seem to think a single instance that doesn’t fall under any of those circumstances that I would be willing to put my life on the line for. Anyone that could put their lives on the line for something that doesn’t personally affect them should not be making such rash decisions. If another person’s life was on the line then I would probably not think twice about saving an innocent life at the risk of my own. I would think that most people would try to find a way out of a life or death choice like that but I would jump head first to save someone while risking my own life. It just comes at a reflex to me. I don’t even think I just do. I probably would not put my life on the line if no one’s life is at stake. I feel like the folks in the Middle East struggle are fighting because both sides feel physically threatened. Palestine is bombing Israel while Israel is air striking Palestine. Given both of their situations I think that they are justified in both of their crusades over the conflict area. Now American soldiers fight to kill because they too feel threatened physically by these terrorist from the Taliban. There are very few if any instances where a person would risk their like or kill for anything that doesn’t involve lives themselves. Most people I know wouldn’t find it hard to kill if they were threated. Some people would find it easy to kill however, if it was someone they disliked for no reason. the KKK killed many colored people during their time of influence and I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t hard for them to take the sheer number of lives that they took. An even better example is the Nazi systematic genocide of the Jews. They probably had no problem murdering the Jews and some even probably enjoyed the act. The ability for some people to kill innocent people for no reason is shocking. I can understand the killing of people through collateral damage in the quest to target a bigger villain but just random acts of murder of the innocent is truly a sign of psychosis. People that feel so strongly about a random group of innocent people that they would kill them all for no reason is definitely an internal issue that need to be addressed. People should not kill innocent people for no reason with that much ease.

My thoughts on immigration are quite simple. I do not think its fair for people to come into the country illegally. Now, with that being said I don’t think that it’s fair to punish the children of illegals for the crimes of their parents. I think that if a child is skirted over the boarder they should be given the rights of an American. I think that the borders need to be tightened more so to further curtail illegal immigration, but it is my strong belief that children shouldn’t be accountable until they are of average age of adulthood. Every pro-immigration advocate likes to use the example of the Indians having this land before Americans; the fact of the matter is the Americans of the past took the natives’ land, not us. I refuse to pay for their mistakes, it sucks that the natives lost their land in the early times of the founding of America but it is not going to help me by feeling bad about it. The Jews aren’t still mad at Germany for the holocaust, Nazi killed scores of Jewish people and completely stifled their growth but the modern Jews aren’t looking at every modern German as a Nazi because that’s just not true. I feel bad for the natives but I can’t fix their problems by giving up the land that I worked for even if it was theirs before. The modern natives no longer have a right to this land the past ones that got robbed of it do have a right to however but they aren’t around anymore. Looking back to the immigration issue, the fact of the matter is it’s not my fault that Mexico isn’t desirable to Mexicans. They have no right to illegally trespass. If it’s just because their country is in hard times that they should be allowed in then why doesn’t every country that has hard times be allowed to get into our boarders. Mexico is a lot better off than other countries but unlike Mexico, other countries don’t have the luxury of adjacency that Mexico geographically possesses. The illegal immigrants need to find a way to make their country great; they can’t just flee it, that won’t fix any problems. Now if they wish to flee then the immigrants must be subject to the same parameters that other aspiring legal immigrants are subject to. They need to apply and go through the correct legal channels in order to gain access though the borders. Thousands of people gain access to the country legally every year, there is no reason we should give rights to people who just figured out how to jump a fence. Now I won’t be so extreme to say that we should offer them medical attention and basics if the make it over but they should be deported and not detained.

The first dude seems to give off an artsy kind of persona. I feel like he would be the one that is musically talented and passionate to his work due to the fact that his outer appearance reflects some sort of devoted audiophile persona. The dreads, hat and t-shirt would not make this the kind of person I would be trust with serious tasks. The second guy seems kind of lax in his presence which causes me to assume that he is a lazy or nonchalant person. Where the first two guys both generally share the same features, by the way he slouches and has that thing in his mouth; he would not be the type of person that I would be inclined to talk to. I’m practically put off by his demeanor because I don’t carry too much respect for people who have the “I don’t care” mentality because that is a useless view of life. The first girl seems jolly in appearance with an approachable vibe. Trust is being given off by her so I would see that as more desirable in most aspects of her life. The third dude is not giving off a lazy vibe but an unconfident nerdy one. He seem like he has lost to the more confident dude many times in his life. The fourth guy gives of an intimidating vibe. He kind of has that thuggish vibe which isn’t too bad but definitely not good. He looks like he plays some contact sport. The fifth guy gives off a dark vibe and I’m not talking about his skin. He seems sort of sinister. He’s probably the person you wouldn’t want to run into in a dark Manhattan alley. And the Sam’s wife just reminds me of that second grade teacher that always throws the best Christmas parties. Let me be very clear that I am not ashamed of my views because they are probably the aggregate of how most people would see these folks. I am a black man so I feel like these views aren’t race driven because if I was on this, would probably not be looked at as badly. Now with all that being said, there is one contributing factor that draws people to others and can make the world of difference in first impressions. This factor is the main reason why I would receive good impressions on first appearance. The factor is smiling. If every guy just smiled then they would give off a friendly and approachable vibe that people would be drawn to like the two girls did. Instead the boys all came off as someone that is completely undesirable in the normal mainstream society we live in today.

I think that affirmative action is not an ideal solution to the inequalities in our society. I think that it tries to fix inequality with more inequality and makes people more reliant on these racial handicaps in order to get what others are working for still. With that being said then, affirmative action may not be an ideal solution for the racial inequalities but it is definitely a necessary one in this racial situation. The major fact of the matter is the black race was stifled for centuries while other races were prospering and moving forward. In order to get the true racially unbiased society, we need to get to the point where all races are at the same starting line so the race starts fair. Affirmative action gives the necessary policies that help the people that that have been systematically undermined for decades and allows for them to have an equal chance at prosperity and success. Without affirmative action, colored people would only continue to maintain their current social status that is not only ridiculously low but completely not their fault. These policies allow for the people on the bottom to actually have an opportunity to rise to the level of those who are trying as hard as they can to prevent that from happening. People on the top need to understand that it is not truly winning unless you are competing against a worthy adversary. People could try to make the argument that if the previous analogy is true then people winning with the help of affirmative action aren’t truly winning. Well, that would be true if affirmative action was a cheat helping people who already have power. That is not the case. Affirmative action would not be need if the races were made equal from the get-go. The fact of the matter is that affirmative action, if anything, is not a punishment for those people who weren’t oppressed but a payment to those who were. There will come a day when affirmative action is no longer necessary but till that that day comes then, affirmative is crucial to allow stabilization of fairness and resources in our society. I don’t that there is anyone that can say that world we live in is fair but it is our duty to whatever it takes to make this world as fair as we can make it. People like to blame affirmative action on things that they didn’t get. Affirmative action only levels the playing field, the fact of the matter is that the people that don’t get things due to affirmative action need to see it as them not getting if the situation was ideal and every one was on an equal grounding. That’s what affirmative action really does.

The thing about people these days is that they don’t take in to consideration the fact that what they just heard could be inherently incorrect. The act of taking controversial news at face value is ignorant enough but many times these people use these misconstrued values as the basis of their opinions on the situation. It is very dangerous when people do this because they could potentially be allowing outside forces to taint their minds voluntarily. People need to check their facts especially the ones that require a controversial position be taken by the observer. This trend is increasingly apparent in the 2012 election season. People take the information from the mainstream media sources and trust that their biased news is in the interest of everyone when in actuality it is only for the benefit of whatever belief they are trying to coerce u into. For people to fall into this trap is shameful. People need to learn how to build their own opinions and stay true beliefs. With that being said I believe that not being attracted to the bearded woman is perfectly natural. I respect the fact that she isn’t ashamed of her appearance but I do not feel any remorse for finding her unpleasing. There is a reason that the majority of men don’t find facial hair attractive. The same reason why Asian eyes were more preferred by people in the region and other eyes in the area became rarer is the same reason the facial hair on girls has become an abnormality. On average, when most women don’t shave their face, they don’t grow substantial facial hair. Natural Selection, the science of evolutionary choice, has chosen facial hair on girls as undesirable and it can’t be a choice influenced by society. This is not a society based issue but a deal of human nature so it wouldn’t be accurate to say that men that don’t find her attractive don’t have the balls to stand up to society’s view of beauty when it wasn’t society that made that choice in the first place. She doesn’t deserve to be made fun of but if she is abnormal, then there is reason that people don’t like it. It should be understandable people get put off by guys. The fact of the matter is people need to understand that there is a reason the majority of society think a certain way. Most of the time the consensus is the choice that is the most optimal for the people in the society and there is nothing wrong with that. The idea of “majority rules” allows for the people to get the most good out of a limited resources unlimited wants society.

People these days have an underlying hatred towards the Middle East that is completely unjustified. The quote that was given in class affected me the same way no matter what name was sighted to it. However, it was quite shocking, to me, to see how many people had a feeling change when the citation was corrected. Some people were more apathetic towards the Graham then Ahmadinejad while some people just felt a different distain for the religious advisor then the initial disgust they felt towards the Iranian president. One of the two views is clearly more acceptable than the other but I, however controversially, would go as far to believe that both are unacceptable responses. Both responses react to the response differently based on the context by which it is presented; the context being the person saying the quote. This quote is unacceptable in any context. If this quote was dictated without anyone’s name cited to it, it should be seen as ignorant at the least. The fact that people change their views on an statement based on the person saying, no matter how small the view change, is not pleasing to the society that we are striving to reach. Even more to add to the fact that the view change was based on a skewed bias the American populous already has towards the Muslim religion. It has gotten to the point where it is social acceptable to mock a legitimate religion in the name of national security. When some people were opposing president Obama in the 2008 election, people actually said that they didn’t like them because he was thought to be a Muslim. Although that is not true but even if it was true, it should not make a difference if he was a Muslim because it is widely known that the government is separate from religion. This is the primary ideology that our country was founded on. The fact of the matter is that is against everything we value in this country to hate on any religion. The scary thing is that there are too many officials in the US government with these heinous views of Islam and with their powerful offices, these are the people that are making these crazy decisions based on random accusations fostered a false xenophobia that was indoctrinated into their personal ideologies by people who prostituting their power by exploiting others ignorance for their own personal gain. The true false view of the Muslim religion comes from people who have a vested self interest in seeing the religion fall and the culture behind it disintegrate and furthermore assimilate into a more westernized social order. Although I would die for my western culture, it is my choice and that choice should be given to anyone no matter where they are from and what they believe.

I know I might come off as cold when I say this but I didn’t feel much when I saw the pictures. And I might take it a step further when I say that I feel no remorse for not feeling anything during the presentation. I am a person that believes that the lives of the youth lost, however objective as this may seem, is a form of collateral damage in the war on terror. Although it is unfortunate that children had to die for a war they probably had no part in, the presentation didn’t not seem to address the fact that it was not the United States’ sole intent to cripple the nation by killing civilian youth, but to take out strategic targets within that specific area of ordinance. The fact of the matter is that the US military has been the most powerful force in the world. There is too much knowledge and technology and too many different kinds of people within the military to think that these casualties were murdered for no senseless reason. if this was the case then the situation would have been made more apparent to the public. These kids just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Although this is a fact of life, it all still just makes the military look bad. The targets choose these towns and villages full of families and children for this specific reason. These targets know that if they are found in these areas, the US military will have to think long and hard about striking them because the target is surrounded by youth. They know that US military would have to make the choice whether to leave the valued and potentially threatening infidel at large and able to strike our homeland at any time or to execute a gun run that would result in many civilian casualties that would demonize the United States to both its own citizens and the citizens in the warzone country making it easier to get more people to join their war on the west. There seems to be a problem these days with people making decisions on things that they have absolutely no knowledge on what so ever. People who have not taken a single economics class in their lives are making decisions on the economy that people who have studied the field see as complete idiotic. Most people would take the statement the “soldiers are social workers with guns” and imply that there is no need for the soldiers to even fight with firepower and that the theme of warfare is obsolete. Although I do support the statement, the fact of the matter is that they are social workers and they are put in a position that they need to carry firearms to protect themselves form an attack which is very likely in their eyes in a place where defense in the form of a fully automatic M-16 is necessary. There are also people these days that clearly have no clue on how the world works and think that all problems can be solved without strategic loss. When the day come that we fight a war that has no collateral damage then that would be the same day that the world would be cured of hunger and cars will run on hopes and dreams. I challenge someone to find anything in life that doesn’t have strategic loss. The decision to take a life, even that of an enemy, is never easy but is necessary in order to get the job done. To imply that this was an action separate from its true intent is completely inappropriate.

After moving to the east coast 8 years ago, I was in for a culture shock. My family was fortunate enough raise my sisters and me in an upper middle class development in Reno, NV my whole life. The neighborhood was predominately white but had a substantial Hispanic population coming in second. This mix of cultures, although then I didn’t realize it till now, fostered a society that had little to no racial tensions. Everyone was truly color blind in the sense where “Emily” wouldn’t think twice about hanging with “Jose” or “Ahmed.” When I moved east, one of the first things I realized is that race is seen very well on this side of the country. Although the people here aren’t in whole “racist,” racial jokes and stereotypes were the main source of conversation and humor. My parents moved us to another upper middle class neighborhood in the east with a predominately white population. At the school, the other students (mostly white) took a particular liking to me very quick. I wasn’t too sure why because I didn’t act any differently than I acted back west but these people almost idolized me. It wasn’t till one of my closest friends till this day told me, that I understood why. The people of the school were not expecting me to act the way I did when they saw me. Due to my Nigerian upbringing, I didn’t talk with an urban slang like the “black” people they saw normally. I also dressed more preppy and came off a lot less intimidating then other “black” people with my same build and presence. However, to my discourse, I was then coined the nickname, “the WHITEST BLACK KID.” At first I hated the name and thought they thought low of me but when I told my family about the situation, they informed me that it was the exact opposite. They may think little of black people as a whole but because of the way I carried myself, they didn’t think little of me. These kids saw in me, what they wanted to see in all black people. They respected me enough to consider me one of them. This was so true that the kids would go home and discussions about me at the dinner table. One kid even invited me home to have dinner with their family. The family was so interested and hospitable to me, which too wasn’t shocking until he told me that his family had been out spoken white supremacist and hated all blacks, except for me. Although it is not a good thing to be a white supremacist, I can only help but think that if more people acted like I did there would be no more black people that the white supremacist could hate. So, in theory, the way I was raised has given me opportunities that most black people don’t have on the east or west coast even though race is viewed a lot differently on both sides.