Related to the tendency, I think, to pigeonhole people; it's an abstraction ...

Fr. Massingale on Rev. Wright - Commonweal blog:

I am seen through the prism of the only black men that they “know.”

This is one of the deepest tragedies of racism or any social prejudice: It robs one of the freedom to be an individual, to be “me” rather than a “category.”

Read the whole thing.