Bridging cultural differences is challenging enough when people agree on the labels used to describe those differences. But when someone believes a label ascribed to them doesn’t fit, all kinds of hot buttons are pushed.

Let’s take race as an example. Most people assume that race is a biological concept. Whether this is true or not, though, is being hotly contested among physical anthropologists, the one group we would expect to have the definitive answer.

What we do know is that the meaning assigned to one’s race is what makes it significant. So how does it work when people believe that the label ascribed to them doesn’t fit?

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