a sense of joy and then a panic

It also, needless to say, creates an essentializing view where having whatever characteristic that marks you as being a member of a marked group, be it your skin color, way of speaking, sex, clothing (incl. religious dress), age--whatever happens to be relevant in any particular context--limits you to the marked status that it's bound to by history. This because people tend to think, "one form, one function/meaning," being black = x, y, z; being a woman = x, y, z; and that really only does a disservice to individual freedom, individual variation, individual choice and opinion, and also those characteristics that get excluded, which are invariably what the marked can't share with the unmarked--rationality, humanity, power, mercy, objectivity...