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After thinking about our conversation in class and reading some of my peers comments online about how to deal with categorization- I've had a slight change in heart.

Most of us argue that by educating more people, we will have to deal less with the negative reinforcements of binaries/ categorization of gender/ sexual orientation and various other forms of identity oppression but I somewhat disagree. In ADDITION to educating people, I think we have to also deal with high levels of impoverished communities and Popular Culture. As an educated, moderately liberal but very open minded and accepting person, education has not been the solution towards eradicating the judgmental/ binary qualities within my character to be quite frank. There are many times I go to my home environment, whether it be with family, friends or my neighbors and I am already targeted for being that person who broke out of the ordinary and went to college.  Many times I am already targeted for "assimilating" or for thinking I am better than everyone or that I am a know it all. Coming home, I am very excited to share some of my learnings and that's not always acknowledged, so sometimes I stay quiet in the face of ignorance/ hurtful words. Regardless of how educated someone is, I really think we have to address how we our socialized in terms of our culture (I guess this is still under the branch of education but...), My ancestors come from the carribbean which is not as much of a forgiving place when it comes to violating the gender/ sexuality norms as taught not only through human interpretation of our source of religion, but from our families as well. To be very clear- 300 years from now the United States may be more of an open progressive country, but our world will always have 3rd world/less fortunate countries, and when people face adversity they usually turn to their faith which is primarily of religious background. If the way our religion interprets sexuality/ gender relations is oppressive, then guess what those people will mainly be? .... oppressive.

I don't mean to be a super pessimist but I don't ever see the world being in one stable state of human relations and as unfortunate as it is, the only way to lead the path towards education, I strongly believe we have to deal with impoverished communities and then popular culture. I believe that popular culture is reinforced by youth/ adults in impoverished communities because it brings them a strength of identity, so if the main stream (ex: music videos) acknowledge homophobia then I guess it's ok for everyone to jump on the band wagon huh? (sarcasm should be read in that previous statement).

But I hope I've made clear that what I intend to say is that education, economics and popular culture must work together in this struggle. To state education is the answer is too broad of an accusation, too simple a solution, and releases us from our responsibility to be decent towards each other too quickly.