Racial Resentment

This week in class, we discussed different racial attitudes in present day. One of these ideas was that black Americans continued to have resentment towards whites because of their mistreatment for hundreds of years. It was hard to believe that blacks were still mad about everything that happened with the slavery, segregation, and civil rights even though all of those situations had been corrected. It was especially inconceivable because many blacks have not even lived through the circumstances that they are angry about. So, to me, it seemed unreasonable to believe this.
I forgot about the topic until I was taking the train home one night. A young black man, probably in his twenties, was talking on the phone very loudly, swearing and basically yelling. In the seat behind him sat an older white woman and her grand daughter, who both heard this man speaking but tried to ignore it. After the black man failed to realize how obnoxious he was being, the old white woman decided to speak up and said calmly, "Excuse me, could you keep it down and stop swearing? My grand daughter is sitting right here and she can hear every word you're saying." Immediately after hearing this, the black man went off on a rant about how he will do what he wants without her permission, and said things like "Your people don't own me anymore," and "I'm a free, black American." This experience really changed my perspective on what we had talked about in class. It was obvious to me now that a percentage of black people felt that way about whites. However, it still confused me why they felt that way.
According to Wikipedia (Wikipedia), the African American race is the most impoverished race in America with 24.7%. Non-hispanic whites are the least impoverished with 8.6%. This is a very distinguished difference in wealth between two races. It would not be surprising to me if this isn't a coincidence. A line can be drawn from the poorness of blacks today to the oppressing of blacks for centuries. Do you think blacks have resentment towards whites because of this, or are they angry because of what their ancestors had to go through because of the white man?

Do We Care About Justin Bieber?

This week in class, a student brought up a point about news on the internet. She stated that it's pathetic that a majority of the news we receive is about celebrities, instead of more important current events.  As a result of this, I went on the popular news site, msnbc.com, and found stories on Kate Gosselin, Britney Spears, and Oprah Winfrey. One particular story that caught my eye was on teen singer Justin Bieber, who apparently pelted a water balloon at a state trooper while fooling around back stage. The link for the story is here: Justin Bieber.
My first thought after reading this article was: "Why do I care?" Kids where I live do stuff like this all the time. Now, if Justin Bieber does it, it makes headlines? That's not right. I would say it's wasting space on the website. I would rather be more educated on what's happening in the world right now, instead of being stuck inside the shallow, superficial world of celebrities. On the other hand, some people find it entertaining and funny to hear all about the whereabouts of celebrities. Is it necessary for celebrity news to be all over the media?

Lies

This week in class we briefly discussed the concept of lying and reasons why we lie. It got me thinking whether it was really ever OK to lie. What if you were protecting yourself or others? Then again, the reason why you most likely might be protecting them is because of an even bigger lie. This thought reminded me of a movie I saw recently called "The Invention of Lying." A summary and some pictures from the movie are (click ->) here. Basically, the movie takes place in a world where everybody tells the truth. I believe this could never happen because trust is too big of an issue in the world. Even the leaders of our country, like Rod Blagojevich, have compromised the confidence this nation has put in them. Perhaps it is necessary that politicians lie because the public doesn't want to hear the truth. There is a lot of pressure on politicians these days to have clean images, and we only want to hear what we want to hear these days. Why not just keep everybody happy? Tell me what you think.