"Understanding Sexual Orientation"

In my point of view, article explains that heterosexuality and homosexuality were a continuum. A number of studies have been published over the past decade reporting that 5% or less of adolescents were aware of homosexual feelings, a finding also inconsistent with Kinsey's data. These studies have rejected prenatal hormones and rearing by homosexual parents as influencing sexual orientation. If Kinsey's data are correct and 40% or more of adolescents are aware of homosexual feeling the findings of these studies are invalid. Two replications of an initial study with representative samples of medical students found over 40% of both males and females currently aware of some homosexual feelings, consistent with Kinsey's conclusion. The ratio of reported homosexual to heterosexual feelings correlated with opposite sex-linked behaviors in the male, supporting the validity of the subjects' reports. If subjects representative of other subgroups of the population are investigated with this easily implemented method and report similar data, this theoretically and sociologically significant divergence of belief concerning the incidence of the heterosexual/homosexual balance would be resolved.

I think labels like homosexual and heterosexual can be useful, but I think we still have a lot of progress to make as far as some being more acceptable than others. People should be able to label themselves as homosexual if they want to without fear of being treated differently for being so, and I think a lot of the gray area that exists between homo and hetero exists as a result of that fear. The bad kind of gray area where people can’t come to terms with their own sexual and emotional needs, rather than the good kind of gray area that Michael Stipe seems to know all about, where he realizes that labels can be irrelevant as long as you are comfortable with who you are and what you want. 

A Different Mirror by Ronald Takaki

An Article, A Different Mirror by Ronald Takaki  explains the perspectives of people who come form different cultures and how they are accepted by the American people but also Ronald Takaki does a good job in taking this events form the past and attaching them to modern day society and how the idea of racism has not disappeared.A on going theme is us against them because on one side the owners who are bringing this racism to the different race are saying they are just doing this action to make sure this other race doesn't have more power than the Americans.Were the other race is saying that the treatment which are being brought on by the masters is unfair and nobody should be treated like that also how the slave's don't have any rights which makes it unfair.I learned one thing that this fear that Americans have form other races did not die in fact it is still growing we as people should work together to resolve this issue.Also the idea of racism actually causes the morals and the values which this country was founded on would be lost. 

 Takaki brings together a multitude of voices to tell the rich, complex story of the non-Anglo peoples of the United States: African Americans, Asian Americans, Indians, Jews, Latinos, and more. He begins with the colonization of North America by the Europeans and "the racialization of savagery", whereby the Europeans came to believe that the Indians were different from and inferior to them, and that this difference was based on race and skin color. Then he goes on to examine the experiences of other peoples, taking a roughly chronological approach and devoting each chapter to a specific group and their experiences in a particular period.

“Doubly Divided” :The Racial Wealth Gap

 

The article analyzes the discriminative role of government between the long-term historical differences of wealth and power between the immigrants of European ancestry and immigrants of colors, giving specific examples of the legal discrimination between Irish immigrants and the Asian immigrants, particularly the Chinese and the Japanese, the appropriation of Indian lands, the slavery of the black people, and the exploitation on the Latinos.

In the United States, there have always been misconceptions that people of color now have equal economic opportunities and access to resources as whites do and that one’s economic prosperity depends mostly on one’s own efforts and imaginations. However, observations and data analysis show that there is still a wealth inequality among people of different color. In addition, current wealth gap among people of different races in the United States is constructed by the unequal institutional opportunities given to them in contemporary United States as well as throughout its history.

there has always been a wealth gap among races.   Historically, blacks were owned by whites as slaves in a system of most uneven opportunities. Numerous data and facts prove that there is still a racial wealth gap. I think that previous institutional racism and inequalities have impacted on the formation of racial wealth differences.