the classification of people into different categories.
For instance, Martina Navratilova and Elton John, two persons I admire tremendously, are categorized as 'different' on the basis of an intensely personal matter.
'Special' children are put in a separate category because they have different needs and then they are further classified.
We categorize people who don't look like us or think like us or believe in the exact same things we believe in. And then we label them.
We allow a vague thing called 'society' to classify us and then put us into specific cordoned-off areas or ghettos forgetting that we all come from one source - scientifically and spiritually...
Have we stopped to think that these 'different' people might think of the so-called politically-correctly-born people as different? To one set of 'different' people, everyone else is 'different'. Come to think of it, we are all different....each one of us, in our own way....
In the haste to classify, we forget that first and middle and last we are all human beings and that includes all 'categories' of people. This is our primary and, to my mind, our only identity. Everything else comes next - sexual preference, physical/mental/emotional challenges, color of skin, place in society, belief system....all come second. The common thread that runs through us all is our human-ness.
Martina Navratilova says, It's sad how people are scared of people different from them.'
It is this fear that creates self-doubt and it is this 'Self-doubt', that Iyanala Vanzant says, 'steals dreams, denies hope and assassinates faith.'