fix the shading on the children's faces!

This is truly a sad situation. People wanting the artist to change the shade of the child conflicts with so many of our so called freedoms. First it conflicts with the first amendment. The artist should be free to express himself however they want to. It shouldn’t have been a problem if he made the child as black as night or as white as a toilet; it’s their creation and I’m sure they were commissioned for a reason. In also should be free to be ourselves. This event is going to send a very strong message to the children of our nation. It’s already been proven that even small children think it’s better to be light skinned; I can’t begin to imagine how this is going to impact them.

we cannot but chuse to hear

The fact that this oil spill is still spilling is crazy. It's been months, why is this still occurring? What’s also crazy to me is that people are stilling buying BP gas. You would think they didn’t know anything about the oil spill. If we stop buying BP gas, then eventually they will go out of business. While I do feel bad for the people who are going to lose their jobs relating to the company, I don’t feel like this is the time to care. The company should’ve been more responsible. Now countless generations will have to pay for their mistake.

Quiz 10

Quiz 9

Reflection 16

Transsexuality is when someone feels that they were born in the wrong body; for instance a biological male may feel that he is indeed a women. Inter-sexuality is someone who is born with a mixture of male and female parts and there's three kinds; true hermaphrodite (a person with both a testis and an ovary), male pseudohermaphrodite (someone who has testis and female genitals but no ovaries), and female pseudohermaphrodite (someone with ovaries and male genitals but no testis). I don't think there necessarily more cases of people being transsexual or inter-sexual but I do believe that people are talking about it more. In older generations, subjects like this were avoided. If someone had a child who was born inter-sexual I strongly believe that child would have been disposed of right there in the delivery room and the parents wouldn't have felt any remorse. If a parent had a child who was transsexual, I doubt the child would come out for fear of being reprehended. I think the parents would sense that something is 'wrong' with their child and they would have tried to correct it or would have felt forced to put them in a mental institution. But in our day people are starting to become more aware of things like this and that can go either way; you have the people who say "oh okay, that's fine" and you have the people who will say that this is morally wrong and a sin. On talk shows you see young people who were transsexual but their parents felt the need to help to child become who they really felt they were. Like this one young lady who always complained to her parents about feeling wrong, "like she was born in the wrong body." Her parents sought a specialist in the field who evaluated their daughter and then with everyone involved go ahead, the daughter got hormone treatments and is now a son. Their new son is thrilled about the change and says he now feels normal. Now of course a lot of people criticized this mom for letting her child go through this before even hitting puberty. But for me the important thing is that the child is happy. This also says that people can sense these things at an early age. As time progresses, I think we're going to see more kids with similar stories; its important that as educator we are knowledgeable about the subject and can present this to our classes, bias free.

Reflection 15

I think that people are born homosexual. Sometimes when parents have a child who comes out as homosexual they say that they knew it all along. Even in cases where the parents say they didn’t know I think they’re just in denial. To be honest I think it’s more normal for a parent to be in denial about their child’s sexual orientation than to just accept it, especially with our parents and grandparents generation. They grew up in a time where people believe that anyone who wasn’t straight was mentally disabled. People who were gay were usually outcast of society and were sent to mental institutions. Normally the parents see signs that show their child aren’t behaving in accord with gender roles. If they see that their daughter, per se, is into sports and doesn’t like dolls and plays in dirt, they’re most likely going to reprimand that child. They will force their daughter to play with dolls, make sure she never gets a chance to dig in the sand box or play ball. They probably believe that if correct the behavior early on in the child’s development they can prevent that child from being gay. But the thing is, if people learned how to be gay they we would be able to correct their behavior. We could be able to send those children to ‘sexual orientation camps’ in order for them to learn how to be straight and function as society wants them to. But because that’s not possible I believe that people are born gay. The article also talks about either/or and all or nothing. Either you’re one thing or another. Most likely people are going to associate what you are with good or bad. The problem with that is it doesn’t work with most facets of society. People aren’t perfect angels or devil’s advocates. They’re usually mixed with traits of both and the mixture is evident on a spectrum. This is also true when it comes to sexual orientation. Most people aren’t all gay or straight but fall somewhere on the spectrum. You might have a day where as a female you find yourself looking extra hard at another female. But the important thing is that you realize that doesn’t make you gay nor does it make you a bad person. This article really cemented everything I previously believed about the subject at hand.

Reflection 14

Sometimes I think the United States just doesn’t care; The Tale of Two Islands clearly shows us that. How can you write into law that because this person is colored differently from the other we’ll listen to their case and decide if they can stay and the other needs to go back? I am a firm believer that if you’re going to say something applies to one group that it needs to apply to all groups. No one deserves a special law giving them special privileges. I can’t imagine what that session in congress was like. “Okay today we’re trying to establish a law that will allow all white Cubans who are middle class to enter our country but the black Haitians must be sent back to Haiti, no matter how bad their conditions are.” Who do these lawmakers think they are saying that Haitians just want to come here for economic reasons only? None of the politicians have been in Haiti and walked in those peoples shoes. It’s really funny to me that President Bush is the one who suspended Haitian political asylum screening requirements. After the earthquake in Haiti in January, we quickly saw former presidents Bush and Clinton trying to get up to donate money to their cause.[ I have to say though that Bush didn’t seem sincere in his asking for support; he was fidgety, spacey, and obviously reading from a teleprompter. It just didn’t seem real; especially consider Katrina] I guess he forgot about Executive Order 12807. I personally believe that in order for someone to seriously leave their home country, something must be terribly wrong. No one wants to leave the country they consider home [except some Americans after Bush was given a second term]. No matter what someone says, their reasons for leaving can almost always be traced backed to economics. When there’s no money, there’s no food. When there’s no money, there’s no decent shelter. When there’s no money, it’s extremely hard to meet any of your basic needs, let alone anyone else’s. When people flee to America, it’s mainly because there are trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. This can even be said for the Mexicans who cross the border to sell drugs; they’re trying to make money to support their families. This country has problems and letting people come over here to better themselves isn’t going to make anything worse.