Assigned racial categories cage black people into self-occupancy

Evidence

Unfortunately we learn early on the categories to which we are consigned. They work like cages, trapping us in images and assumptions about our capacities as we, perhaps like those black children in the museum, watch others extend their wings and fly. The categories are numerous: thugs, welfare queens, the underclass, absent fathers, criminals, affirmative action babies, lazy, irresponsible, unteachable, etc. It is one of the terrible ironies that this country so efficiently convinces us to occupy that place as our own—even when everything about the category says we are “less than.” — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 545

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The legal self-identification requirement for ethnic groups constitutes self-racialization — Mareike Riedel, Islamophobia, Racial Discrimination…, 57; Mixed-race individuals are classified as black under the hypodescent rule — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 721