Have you ever told a lie? Was it just for fun? Was it for something deeper? Was it to save someone?
There are terms like white lies and not telling everything, let’s talk about them. Here are your tasks for the day:
By Christopher Chao
List five stereotypes about the opposite sex:
List five stereotypes about religion:
List stereotypes about people outside of your race:
Have you ever suffered from prejudice or changed your mind about a stereotype?
I went to Michigan with my father. We wanted to buy women clothes for my mother in Taiwan, but the salesperson, a white female, didn’t want to help us. She just left. Later, a black woman came to help us. My view on white and black people changed that time.
I have a teacher who graduated from UCLA and is teaching English part-time because he said that he liked to help people who wanted to improve their lives. I thought that every well-educated people just wanted to have a great job with good pay.
By Akira
Freedom does not stand alone. It has to be paired with obligations and responsibilities. These obligations and responsibilities should be the guidelines and perimeters in exercising your right to freedom.
By Christopher Chao
Have you ever had your right(s) taken away from you?
I want to talk about my family’s story, when my parents were still young. Taiwan was like North Korea. President Chiang was the President until he died, then his son carried on to become the President.
People could not criticize the government, and people did not have the freedom to go to other countries, unless you were a government official or an exchange student.
My parents could move to the US because they applied to an American university and were accepted.
Should there be guidelines or perimeters in exercising one’s rights?
I think it depends on different situations. In Los Angeles or New York City, many people live very close to another. When you exercise your rights, you should not step on other people’s. But in Texas, I think everyone taking a gun is part of daily life.
What about those who massacred the people at Charlie Hebdo office in Paris?
If those people don’t agree with Charlie Hebdo, they can sue or go to court or protest, not use auto rifles to kill people.
Never judge a book by its cover. Don’t generalize. People are not the same.
We’ve heard theses statements repeated over and over again, yet we still do the same mistake.
Stereotypes can be good or bad or even neutral, and they usually affect a group of people that share the same traits, such as race: White people are arrogant, Black people can sing well, Asians are good in math; subculture: Goth people wear black, gay people are good interior designers; sex: women are weak, men are violent; and religion.
However, there’s a destructive version of this concept and it’s called prejudice. Prejudice is the negative attitude or feelings towards a group of people of the same traits. And it’s prejudice that has lead to discrimination and death.
Your task for the day:
The year 2015 began with multiple murders and attacks in Paris. Two gunmen killed twelve people at the Charlie Hebdo office. In a nutshell, Charlie Hebdo is a French newspaper that publishes articles and cartoons designed to shock and provoke people, namely organized religions, politicians, and gays. The two gunmen were members of the Al-Qaeda, the same group who flew the United Airlines Flight 93 and Flight 11 into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
The argument here is that publication like Charlie Hebdo is merely exercising its freedom of speech, but some people cannot take the joke.
That said, let’s examine this closely in writing. Here are your prompts for the day:
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