It's being seen as a thing instead of an individual. It's prejudice - judging people based on how you think they are instead if finding out how they really are. It's thinking that people who possess one particular quality all have great rhythm and like fried chicken, or maybe they like to drink a lot and eat potatoes, or maybe they all swagger, carry guns and think they own the world. It's about not seeing me as Jeri, who lives in a small town in New Hampshire, plays fiddle and who did NOT vote for George Bush, but seeing me as a stereotypical American.

When busbiter wrote "And then you go and tell other governments who to run their countries, when you lot had slavery, and you still in some parts of the ones who want to bring back slavery to your country," he was talking to me, and every other American reading the message.

I've never told a government how to run their country. My government may have, but not me. I also had no more responsibility for slavery than anyone else alive today. I can't make the KKK and skinheads go away, and I sure as hell didn't create them.

So I hear "you" and I assume he's talking to me, and blaming me for all those things.

Busbiter didn't upset the American nation - he upset me - Jeri, who lives in New Hampshire, plays fiddle and didn't vote for Bush. I get upset because I want to be treated like a human being, and I get irritated when I'm treated like a nameless thing in a big lump called "Americans."