This was a really interesting podcast, and it made me look at things from different angles. When talking about drug use, we are biased to believe that it only happens in the inner city and low-income neighborhoods. However, it’s often the filthy rich who use drugs just as much. So why do we not consider the rich housewife who smokes weed or does other drugs a problem? What if that rich family makes millions a year from selling or distributing drugs, millions that they don’t even need? We do we only judge people from a lower socio-economic status that might be making their living off drugs and bringing food to the table from the money they get from selling drugs?

This podcast also helped me look at the current breakdown of the opioid crisis in a different way. I never realized that disabled people with chronic conditions and lifelong pain are now being denied access to the drugs they need to be able to function and keep living, and for their pain to go away. I also didn’t know that the government was reducing access to disability checks, so they are not getting any government support to get access to the help and medications they need to continue working and living their normal lives. While I do think we need to do something to get a handle on the current opioid crisis, there needs to be a difference between taking drugs away from children and communities and taking away medically necessary drugs from disabled people. Maybe there needs to be stricter regulations on access to those drugs, but those who need them to survive shouldn’t have to struggle without them and be labeled in the same group with drug addicts.

I took the Transgender IAT test, and my result suggested moderate automatic preference for Transgender people over Cisgender people. I was surprised by these results, not because I have anything against transgender people or I don’t see them as equals, but I don’t know any transgender people in my life and I don’t interact with any transgender people on a daily basis, so I assumed my implicit bias might leave more towards cisgendered people since that is what my brain is more accustomed to. This makes me question the reliability of the test. With the transgender and cisgender celebrities that were shown, I was more familiar with a few of the transgender celebrities, such as Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox. Therefore, when their pictures were shown, I was very quickly able to identify them as transgender because I knew them before going into the test. I didn’t know all of the transgender celebrities, but I knew more than I did the cisgender celebrities that were on this test. I would be curious to see the results if I knew more of the celebrities, or all of them. I think that part of this test is testing your reaction time as well, and not necessarily your bias towards one group or another.

I found this podcast to be really interesting, and first I’d like to talk about the conversation of white culture. I would love to hear other people’s thoughts on this, because it is something I have often thought about. In my opinion, there is more than one type of white culture, because not all white people fall into the same category. Same with black culture, Asian culture, etc. No race falls into a single category. Not every black, white, Asian, Latino, family is the same, and what about all the different countries that all races come from. There are Asians that come from the Philippines, and Asians from India, and their “Asian culture” can’t be put into one category. There can be many types of black culture, white culture, Asian culture, because you can’t put race and ethnicity into the same category. I bring this up because throughout my lifetime, I have heard countless of people say that white people don’t have culture, or that white culture is just stolen culture from every other culture. But I have also had people say to me that I do have culture because I am not American, even though I’m white. In their eyes, American culture isn’t white culture. The people I have met in my life say that white Americans don’t have culture, but if you’re white and from another country, then you do have culture. They’ve said to me, “Oh yea you’re different, you’re not American white,” even though I have lived in America most of my life and have adapted many American cultural things into my life. That’s why I’m curious to know where people draw the line. Even though I am from another country, I am still white, so wouldn’t that be one type of white culture? Maybe I am wrong, but I think within any racial culture, there can be multiple cultures.

I also wanted to discuss the fact that I love the diversity and representation we are beginning to see in Disney, Hollywood, and media. Showing kids of all races and ethnicities that they can be on TV; they can be superheroes and anything they dream of. I think this is incredibly important. When children only see black actors as drug dealers or Latino actresses as maids, this is what conditions our brains to create these implicit biases, snap judgements. It was nice for me to hear in the podcast that there is a way to disrupt these patterns and stereotypes from building in our heads by feeding ourselves new types of television and media. Like the podcast said, exposure is the best way to reduce implicit bias, surrounding ourselves with different music, movies, and people with different thought patterns as us, from different places/cultures, with different experiences. This will help us break down biases, and hopefully as diversity continues to increase on our screens, the next generation of children will be a lot less judgmental and biased.

Since normative ethics are universal or cultural truths, universal rules of good and bad, and relative ethics are rules of good and bad to each individual person, there are countless of ethics and truths that one needs to consider on a daily basis. Now when talking about normative and relative ethics, what stood out to me the most in the podcast was that in America, and I’m sure in other countries as well, we can’t even decide on what our laws should be. Throughout the recent election year, I have often thought about the two political parties and why our country is so divided. How is it possible for people to be on such opposite ends of the spectrum with every law, amendment, and decision? How can two people who live in the same neighborhood think so differently, as if they lived on different planets? However, listening to this podcast helped me understand this better.

I grew up in Finland, a small country where 97% of the population is white, Lutheran, and agrees on most political decisions and laws. However, the U.S is such a large country that there are millions of cultural groups within just one state, let alone the entire country. There are so many cultural differences in different geographical areas in the U.S that there is so much room for ethical differences and division within the country. No wonder the country is so divided because if everyone is following their cultural relativism and their own individual ethics, there are so many truths and rules to consider. On top of that, one person can belong to multiple groups, which only expands their exposure to different ethical beliefs. Someone could be Muslim, live in the South, and be a healthcare worker. Between those three, there can be countless of normative ethical differences within one person’s life.

Then we have collective rules, like most people can agree that murder is wrong. But what about our own individual ethics. For example, under murder, there are topics such as abortion. Most people collectively agree that murder is wrong, but is abortion murder? What if the woman was raped, does that make a difference? What about the death penalty? Should someone be sent to death because they killed someone, an eye for an eye? Some people think yes, some people completely disagree. There are so many things to consider and so many cultural and individual ethics that it can often lead to intense disagreements even between family members who grew up in the same household. With America being such a large country with so many different cultural groups, it makes more sense to me now why it is easier for America to quickly become very divided.