Mr. Charlton Brooker has succinctly and humorously writted something I've felt for a long time....
"I bet I judge people by their skin tone all the time. It's hard not to. I grew up in a village the size of a shallot. Virtually the only black or brown faces I encountered on a regular basis were on TV, where they were portrayed as villains, heavily-accented jokes, or – occasionally – patronised as put-upon saints. I thought none of this had affected me, but it burrows in there, even if you're not aware at the time. When I moved to London as a student and found myself surrounded by every race imaginable, I'd often be surprised by the dumbest things, like the black girl I knew who was hugely into indie music. A little voice in my brain kept squeaking that she should be into rap or dance music really. You know: anything with drums. Without realising it, I'd been programmed to expect her to behave according to a bewilderingly narrow set of parameters.
Still, even if I couldn't stop thoughts like that from springing up, I'd at least notice their absurdity. Trouble is, being a bleeding-heart liberal wuss, it's easy to "over-steer" and wind up being patronising. Sit me in a room full of black people and – initially at least – I'll be consciously scanning my every utterance, painfully wary of causing offence, paradoxically keen to prove how utterly blind to skin tone I am. End result: a slightly forced joviality, like meeting your girlfriend's parents for the first time."
So, so true. I don't really have much more to add.
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