(Picture me saying this in dramatic tones, standing on a podium wearing robes and frequently howling "Fools!")
For a perfect Bayesian, it works. For humans, not so much. Just having a category exist makes us develop silly beliefs around it. If they're categories of people, we start loving our category and hating others - the ingroup/outgroup dichotomy. We treat ourselves as default and other, er, others, increasing the status differential. If a power structure already exists on top on that, forget it. It's really not innocent.
Upvoted for the flavor text and the anvilicious necessity.
Recently, I have noticed a cultural bias for the United States running through LW threads. It is perhaps to be expected of an English-language website, but for one that is about, among other things, overcoming bias, it is important to recognize one's own.
Aspects of the bias I have observed include:
I'm not the first to raise such concerns, either.
By comparison, e.g. the English Wikipedia strikes me as an example of an international English-language project that's relatively successful at recognizing and fighting systemic bias, and a whole set of template messages to mark articles with identified problems.
To quote Wikipedia itself:
The reason I haven't mentioned other obvious biases, such as gender, age, education, or First World biases, is because those (in my experience) tend to be more subtle here on LW and because I'm myself subject to some of them. However, I might cook something up on them later.