Unmaskable physical traits like skin color reduce people to nonpersons

Evidence

Finally, there are still in the modern city, as there were in the preindustrial city, what we might call unmaskable diversities. Skin color is perhaps the clearest example, although there are others: facial structure, age and sex (although both of these latter depend to a considerable degree on costuming), and highly visible deformities. To the degree that such physical attributes are thought to have social significance, they become important appearential clues. The situation of the black man or woman in the United States hardly requires elaboration here, although note might be made of the fact that until recently, skin color has operated rather like a uniform in rendering its “wearer” a nonperson. The underlying similarity between the complaint of the nun that no one ever looks at her face and the assertion of whites that “all Negroes look alike” is unmistakable. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 487

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to the reader’s stated purpose — civil inattention weaponizing detachment against marked bodies — and to Simmel’s blasé observer. The nun/“all Negroes look alike” parallel echoes how Lofland’s spatial identity categories render strangers interchangeable.