This is a weird question for me, because on my mother's side of the family, the nationality rather than skin color is what is identified with. "Polish" is a very big part of who they are and that has somewhat affected how I view issues of race and ethnicity.
My own pet peeve on the subject is when, in the name of "diversity", there's an Asian girl, a Hispanic girl, a black girl, and a very blonde, blue-eyed white girl. I have medium-brown hair and green eyes - what does that make me? (In fact, for much of my childhood, I assumed that my eyes - which actually are my best feature by far - made me ugly because "pretty girls in books" almost always have blue eyes, and the few that don't have brown eyes.) I remember thinking back to that feeling when I read an article about how nonwhite children are reluctant to play with non-white dolls and act as if the white dolls are somehow "better". The dolls I remember were usually blonde and blue-eyed (or sometimes black-haired and blue-eyed, or rarely brown-haired and brown-eyed), and it did - in a very subtle way - make me feel like I was un-pretty. I know it's not quite the same magnitude as being another race, but I think that gave me some empathy.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2005-04-03 05:02 am (UTC)My own pet peeve on the subject is when, in the name of "diversity", there's an Asian girl, a Hispanic girl, a black girl, and a very blonde, blue-eyed white girl. I have medium-brown hair and green eyes - what does that make me? (In fact, for much of my childhood, I assumed that my eyes - which actually are my best feature by far - made me ugly because "pretty girls in books" almost always have blue eyes, and the few that don't have brown eyes.) I remember thinking back to that feeling when I read an article about how nonwhite children are reluctant to play with non-white dolls and act as if the white dolls are somehow "better". The dolls I remember were usually blonde and blue-eyed (or sometimes black-haired and blue-eyed, or rarely brown-haired and brown-eyed), and it did - in a very subtle way - make me feel like I was un-pretty. I know it's not quite the same magnitude as being another race, but I think that gave me some empathy.