" Italian or Irish or Nigerian American. We wore Brooks Brothers or Izod or Polo or Levi’s, we opened our mouth and said one word about abortion or taxes or God or radical Islam or military service or Bush or Obama or Fox or NPR or we said we were from Mississippi or North Dakota or the West Village or Boulder and within the time it took to say “box” we were in one. We’d somehow gotten to be straight white males or gay African American females first, and human beings second, and if you claimed the eschewment of label you’d be mocked, dismissed, labeled as a naive rube from beyond the Adirondacks. “How "

― Roland Merullo , Dinner with Buddha