1) I was trying to define what I thought it meant to be 'well educated', something I strive to be. Here's what I could come up with:

'As in you are incredibly well read, your critical thinking and reasoning skills are majorly up-to-par, you can look at a situation in several different ways, and are up on the history of people, places and things that you love (or are historically, politically, socially, etc significant).'

Overall, it's as if you are a plane above everyone else, in regards to just being so well rounded in the area of thought.'

2.) Okay, so I was typing a post on a messageboard about Antonio Banderas and I started thinking about how he is deemed 'sexy' partly due to this accent.

This got me thinking about the 'Latin lover' stereotype and about how other singer/actors fall into this stereoype (Julio and Enrique Iglesias, Antonio, othere I cannot recall at the moment). Then I started thinking about how it was interesting that a hallmark of this stereotype was the 'sexy' accent.

That led me to contrast this with the other stereotype (though this one is as damaging as the other is flattering) sometimes placed on men with accents that speak Spanish, and that is ok the lower-class, and usually the gardener. How many times have you heard someone jokingly reference a gardener with a thick accent? Perhaps others know of a more middleman, middle-of-the-raod stereotype, but I don't.

I think this is interesting that there are these two major polarizing stereotypes. It made me really think about this, in regards to how there seems to be no middle man, and how this is unforunate.

It's as if minorities have to place into two different glass boxes, and will never have the tools to break free. Maybe I'm reaching here, but it made me recall what I've learned in regards to how Black women were Jezebels or Mammys or how Black men were studs or deplorable during certain parts of history (and so some extent, now).

This a all so interesting because of what it says about the at the head of the racial hegemony here in the United States. One could argue that those that constantly reinforce these stereotypes are afraid of losing ground to those they descriminate against, and thus all they can do to keep them down (and themselves up) is to cast an all to far reaching net over whole populations.

I wonder if this ever will be stopped and if groups of people can just be looked at as individuals with individual traits. As grains of sugar rather than sugar cubes. Or, grains of sand, not whole beaches.

Will we ever achieve this?

Anyway, these are my thoughts. Any comments or thoughts to add on?