labels

I'm really so tired of lables lately. Labels like white, black, poor, wealthy, middle class, southern, northern, foreign, elitist, democrat, republican, independent, and on and on. Really, these are way for us to categorize what we know in order for us to make sense of the world. In basic psychology we learned that when we see someone we begin to categorize them. First we define their gender, then their race, then who knows what. But those two are so important to identify when we meet someone that if they aren't clear, we are really thrown off.

I understand that this is just the way the mind works, but we want so badly to put people in categories beyond their gender and racial identity and sometimes it makes us blind to who someone really is. When we meet someone at a party, we ask questions about their socio-economic status, thier political views, where they are from, their profession, etc. So by applying those labels, we can fill in the blanks with all of our facts and judgements that we have filed away somewhere. What right do we have to jump to such conclusions about someone who may be so different from us? Shouldn't we give them the chance to show us who they really?