Objective category overlap can diverge sharply from individuals’ subjective perceptions

Evidence

What we have just portrayed are exemplars of actual or objective category overlap. Yet this actual overlap may, of course, not necessarily be mirrored in individuals’ perceived or subjective perceptions of overlap. Thus, there may, in fact, be considerable discrepancy between the actual and perceived overlap of categories. For example, while it is certainly the case that one can be black and Italian, and indeed there are a number of black Italians, racist supporters of the Italian club Juventus have abused the Inter Milan player Mario Balotelli with a chant that … “A negro cannot be Italian” (reported in The Observer, 13 December, 2009). This offensive chant clearly rejects the notion of overlap between the categories “black” and “Italian,” despite the fact that Balotelli was born in Italy and that he has been a star player in Italy’s under-21 national team. It is these subjective perceptions of category overlap, and to some extent the discrepancy between actual and perceived overlap, that are captured in the concept of social identity complexity. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 523

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The Balotelli case shows how category boundaries and belonging are contested — fits the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ piece’s theme of identity/political signaling, and more directly the framing of who counts as in-group in ‘On Sacrifice’ contexts.
• CANDY: A football crowd chanting ‘a negro cannot be Italian’ at a Black player born and raised in Italy is a sharply tellable fact about how social categories get policed.
• SEED: Potential essay: subjective vs. objective social category membership — how identity ascription overrides biological/national fact, using Balotelli against other cases like national-team eligibility disputes.
• XREF: connects to: Rules of perceptual appearance are objective, not subjective-psychological in origin; Subjectivity can fuse with objective form without blotting it out — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 96