I outwardly define people by groups because it is rhetorically effective/practical. Inwardly I actually judge on a case by case basis if I have the luxury. I mean, if you're walking alone on a street at night (ceterus paribus) and some figure in a hoodie is approaching you at an angle and with an air/swagger very well suited for one who's about to mug you you're rather safer if you assume they have ill intentions and give them a wide berth over trying to say Hi to them. Otherwise, just say hi. This assumes the figure looks like a total stranger, however. If they get a bit closer and I recognize their face then I just say Hi and say what's up. Friends are friends even if they don't look like it at a distance.
Hell, we'd probably make jokes about that kind of thing to the point they deliberately put on the hoodie and tried their very best to make it look like they were gonna mug my ass. A dark and downright offensive sense of humor from the prospective of the wokies is pretty much a prerequisite to get me to let my guard down and put you in the category of a true "friend" as it were

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It is a sad fact and hard learned lesson that
most people (at least in my direct experience) think in rhetorical and aristocratic terms (my milieu is filled with Beta's and Delta's with a few Alphas that I ironically get along with quite well somehow but that's likely because we don't tend to discuss things like politics and religion and when we do, well, we're all Christians and I'm basically an anarcho-capitalist of the Hoppe strain so that helps a lot when ya really think about it).
Thus, best adapt and deal. Ya might not like it and ya may wish it was some other way, but "hopes and dreams" with nothing to back them up IRL mean exactly diddly dick. This is why the

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axis is a thing. Hopes and dreams wedded to practical methods of achieving them. Like I've put it elsewhere, the likes of me are "applied engineers" in our heart and soul. "Good Enough" is "Perfect" in our minds. If it gets the job done (without crossing any major moral lines if we're not utterly broken souls) it's what we're gonna do. Let the

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"theoretical engineers" stew about how bad we're fucking it all up in their cushy ivory towers. Far as I see it the lights are still on and the toilets still flush so my "stupid" solution worked just fine.
If it's stupid
but it works, it ain't stupid.