WHAT MAKES A PERFECT PARENT

I thought the authors did a good job making correlations between all the different examples which they gave. One can’t really say what makes one a good parent, in my perception there are no books or written work which can make one a good parent. because every child learns differently, let’s not forget that nurture has something to do with it, the environment and the surroundings, like in the book the author mentions about changing neighborhoods and how the child will develop well, however he also says that it doesn’t matter, and I would disagree because we are forgetting the fact that school are funded by taxes which are paid by those citizens, in other words if the child is in a neighborhood where there are good kids, less crime, and well developed people, then the child is likely to be good. Although there will be that percentage of kids who are not affected by the environment and will keep on being bad. In the book the author says that white kids are better than black kids academically and this is because of how they are raised and based on their environment. So shouldn’t he conclude by saying, indeed environment does have an impact on the development of the child.
the author makes a correlation between the number of books in the child's house and how smart they are, where he concludes saying the number of books in a household doesn’t mean the child is a good reader or smarter, and I agree with his comment because I know kids who happen to have libraries in their homes but have no clue what is in the books. The number of books has no correlation with how smart a kid can be. I was glad that the senator who the author mentions in the book, whose plan was to send a book to every child didn’t work out because; it would have been a waste of the tax payer's money.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE CRIMINAL WENT?

The beginning of the book the author talks about Nicolae Ceausescu. who happened to have been communist and banned abortion in 1966 in Romania, however he goes on to say that there was a difference between babies who were born before the law was passed and those who were born after the law was passed, these babies who were born after the law was passed were criminals and had a higher chance of being uneducated, but the question that I wanted to ask was, what was the difference between the two children and how come these babies who were born after the law was passed were more of criminals? when the author talks about the idea, where in the economy the crime rate drops when the economy rises, I wonder where is the correlation between the two, what does crime rate have to do with the economy? It is true; there is less crime when more people are employed because no one is thinking of stealing from the other. We see this in neighborhoods where there are more educated people; one hears little or no crime. i like when the author talks about increased reliance on prisons. if prisons are made so that, when ones goes there, they are treated like prisoners, then people would be scared to go there, and less crime would be committed. However when we look at prisons today, they are like luxuries. Prisoners are treated like they are on vacation. They get three meals a day, have cable, have a gym, and all they do is sleep all day, then how can anyone not be discouraged to go to prison. Today there are people who go to jail to escape their issues, because in prison one doesn’t have to worry about their next meal of the day because the government provides it. Our taxes pay for their meals. The population in prisons is increasing. I think if they made prisons a little more strict less crime would be committed.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE CRIMINAL WENT?

DRUG DEALERS

I thought that the text was interesting, and I have to say that so far am enjoying this book, the different topics that the authors talk about. However back to the point, why do drug dealers still leave with their moms? When one defines a drug dealer, they tend to say rich, always on the street or maybe have a lot of guns, but all that is true except for the part where they have a lot of money, well at least not all of them. I used to think they had a lot of money and were well off not until I read chapter three of freakonomics. I found out that the reason why drug dealers live with their moms is because they don't make enough to pay for their housing and in my mind I was asking myself, then why put yourself through all that danger if you’re not making a lot of money? Well most people join gangs or sell drugs because they have a need to belong and they want to be a part of a group that accepts them for who they are and gangs give them that. When they join gangs they become a part of a family and as we know, in a family one is willing to do whatever it is for a family member, so they are willing to risk their lives. I thought that the statistics in the book were interesting, where the chances of them dying are one in four. One thing that surprised me was TJ who after he graduated from college, he went back and did what he was doing before which is drug dealing, and I though drug dealers were uneducated but I guess I was wrong. I would never have thought that one would graduate from a four year institute and use his degree to sell drugs on the streets. Overall I enjoyed reading chapter 3.

KU KLAX KLAN

i was intrigued by the reading and i thought it was interesting how the Ku Klax Klan came about. i was surprised that the president of the country had something to do with the killing of so many people, and no one did anything about it. not only did they actually kill blacks they killed people of all races and region that were not pure whites. its sad to see that in the book the author mentions about hilt er, how he got the idea of killing the Jews from the ku klax klan, which i for one don't believe, because what Hitler did was nothing like what they did, although it was some how similar, he wanted to erase an entire race. i have never heard of anything like this in my life, how people can hate a race so much to an extent, and no one could do anything about. it was like they had a power which given to them by someone so high, i just don't see how one can have the power to kill another person. they say that ku klax klan doesn't exist, but its not true. it still exists and one can tell when they see one, they have websites created so that they can keep their groups strong, which i believe the government can do something about, but they Constitution protects them.

GENDER

we live is society where gender is a huge issue and what defines a man from a woman is not nature but nurture, which is what society defines how a man or woman should look, dress, sound, act, walk, and so many.but that's because this has been going on for centuries and as we grow we are taught that if you are a girl your supposed to act a certain way and so if you are a boy.and to my perception, that's what i believe in and that's how humanity was meant to be. women are supposed to bare children and men are supposed to provide for the family, however things have changed, men are getting married to other men and women are getting married to other women, to me its something that shouldn't be allowed in society, if this is going on, then how are we supposed to produce off springs, we cant change human nature and if this keeps on the world may come to an end, that's my point of view. although at the same time i believe that there is shouldn't be discrimination between men and women, they should have equal rights. the book talks about standards between men and women in America, if you are a woman, you have to be a certain way, skinny, big boobs, blond, six feet, and white and if you don't fit that ideal image then, you have to try to be, because that's what is defined as beautiful,women go through so much to try to fit that image and some end up dying because they want society to accept them. we all know that we were all genetically made different and there are somethings you just cant physically change but the media tell us differently.

MOCK FEMINISM

the reading was really interesting and i enjoyed it, usually when black write plays or movies, they tend to want a black person directing it, however this time the director was a Caucasian and i wondered why she would want a white male to direct a movie about what goes on in the ideal life of a black woman. in my perception, i figured that i guess, she thought that he would have done a better job, but this goes back to stereotypes, how they say that black women are aggressive, loud and obnoxiously annoying, and white women are quite and respectful, so to see that in the film, a black man has a white wife, but there is a black woman who wont leave them, who wont accept the fact that its over is so stereotypical. i personally thought that the way they portrayed the ideal black woman was just not right, not to forget the fact that cigarettes were a huge part of their lives and alcohol.
we all have our own perceptions of how we perceive things and everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but what makes the difference is, if what you think is really the truth or is that the way you choose to think.

why are the blaxck kids sitting together

The reading was pretty interesting and i have noticed that as a student at Penn State. Alot of the students tend to socialize with other students of the same race and, going to a high school where the student body came from more than 60 countries but we all got along and we looked beyond our differences, i found it ironic that poeple isolate themselves based on race at a college level. the reading talked about alot of things and i didnt know if it had to do with race or stereotypes about black people, like the fact that David would be followed around the mall by a security guard, or the fact that women would hold their purses tighter becuase he was black or six feet.
i disagree with the comment that the psychologist William Cross made, where the black child values the dominant white culture, because i have never met a black person that wishes they were white, i am not sure what time he is talking about, but i according to my knowledge, i would argue that he talking about the racial period and my reason being is that maybe they had been treated that they thought that if they were white, they wouldnt be treated they way they were.but still i dont believe that there was a time that black people valued white people as the dominant race, althought thats what the racial period potrayed them to be.

Chapter

I have to say that i thought that the reading was really interesting, and i enjoyed, it basically talked about stereotypes. and how we use them today. stereotypes are very common in today's society, knowing that in America there are a lot of different races and groups, people create these stereotypes that tend to be very offensive to other races. In high school i took a class, and we talked social issues in society, and one of our assignements was to write stereotypes that we had heard about different races, and when i read this chapter i was reminded of the horrible, false things that my fellow classmates had wrote about other races, and how some students thought that they were true. one interesting one was that, "all Africans stink" and i found it to be very offensive. I thought it was most horrible thing that anyone could say about a group of people. i think that stereotypes are false statements of hate that people say about a certain group of people.

Black Bart

My opinion is about black Bart is that, black people created him so that they could have something to relate to, when you watch simpsons, what you see is the ideal white family,but they neglect the fact that other races like blacks would find a character like Bart interesting, so in sence the producers of the show are aiming to certain group of people, however when the blacks find Bart intruiging, they create him in way that they would be able to relate to him, by drawing him a certain way, writing things that he would say if he were black , and they indeed buy them.infact we find this in alot in popular culture, where we create different versions of a character to fit a certain group, like barbie, during slavery there was no black barbie, it was after blacks were free that they started making black barbies. blacks have always been the minority and still today they are trying to adjust to a society where they once had no power, so that they can make the environment suitable for them.

READING AND WRITING ABOUT TELEVISION

okay, so i was reading chapter 2 of the "world is a text" on how we pay for our television and i didn't know that there were three different ways of how we pay for television.apparently we buy the television sets, then we buy the cable and finally through advertising. i found that to be really interesting, so in other words by advertising a commercial and you sitting there watching it, your paying your time to TV. Advertisers choose which program they want their commercial to be shown on. the producers of the TV shows use elements of literally interpretations to get customers,like using different lenses, where they use someone else's point of view to sell the product, in other words, they create these TV shows and advertisements aiming at certain type of people, by putting themselves in the viewer's shoes, they create what the viewers might be interested in , depending on the age, size, and type.

what is my name?

my name is Imelda, well to be honest, i dont really know how my parents how came up with my name, although i have an aunt who i share the same name with, and i happen to like her alot. i remember my mom telling me a story about her staying with my aunt when she was pregnant with me, and how helpful she was during that time. she told me that, she was the nicest person that she had ever met, sweet, friendly, and dedicated. and in my guess she named me Imelda because she wanted to be more like her, because of the qualities that she carried.she probably thought that if she named me after her, i would grow up to be like her, a sweet, friendly and dedicated child.

i like my name, because its unique and at the end of the day it doesn't really matter where my name came from, all that matters is that i like it. am sure when my parents named me, they had a good reason to why they had chose name Imelda out of all the other names.