This is not meant as an excuse but as an explanation: What happens sometimes ( and I am an of that ) is that someone is born and raised in a place where there are no “other” ( the word bothers me but I cannot find another one that fits better ). Until my mid teens I had never met someone who wasn’t white and catholic. This had been a fact for centuries. Other skin colours, nationalities, religions existed, but it was something you saw on tv when they passed american movies.

When I arrived in Canada I met people from everywhere and I quickly got used to it, but for years, and even if I try not to I still do from time to time, a person’s hair and skin colour was going to be the first thing I used as a describer because it was still the “not like me” trait I noticed first. It did not mean it was worse than me, or better than me, just different. it is hard for me to explain ( english is confusing as a fourth language… ) because I have the feeling that when I say different, people understand it as “not equal” which is all sorts of weird for me.

Now, I make the conscious effort and try not to use the term different because I know it may be hurtful to certain people, and try not to use skin colour, or hair colour as a first describer because I have learned about the historical context in the US when I go there. But the formative years are important and when you are raised in a place that has minimum or no people of colour (I know it is the standard term in this site but it feels insulting to me because of the direct translation into my native language is just wrong ) and those that there are have no history of being oppressed it is hard to develop another culture’s ethical rules.
As an example of this, I went to Chicago once where I met a black student from Gabon. During the party I mentioned to someone else something like “You see my black friend at the bar? He is studying (something or other) too.” Discussion ensued about why I didn’t say african-american. “But he is not american!” didn’t cut it. The consensus was that I was supposed to say just african. That I found very rude because it would reduce his nationality/culture to the entire continent. Anyways… in the end I relented but left the party with a very unseasy feeling about it and the whole race/colour situation in the US.

Ok done now. As I said, not giving an excuse, jsut explaining a non-american point of view….

And, even today, some white people adopt children of color because they are “cute.” Some of these adults really are, at least that moment, incapable of realizing that the majority of their life-long relationship, assuming the parent lives to see the child to adulthood, will be with a teenager & then adult of color who is not necessarily going to be “cute” to them.

When I hear white people saying that non-white child is “just so cute,” cuter even than white babies, I’m aware of the difficulty that many whites have in dealing with adults of color.

(PS, FWIW, I’m white.)

However, my point was that specifying the race of a person you encounter doesn’t necessarily mean you’re extending their traits/behavior to all people of that race. It might just be a way to mark an unusual circumstance.

Believe me, I really get the not being seen as a human being thing. People in Korea are regularly shocked by my existence – gaping mouths, pointing, laughing uproariously when I speak to them (in Korean or English), staring for minutes at a time, etc. – and I get spoken to just as often as not in the lowest/rudest language even by children and people in service positions because they don’t consider me a person to whom politeness or decency standards apply.

But I also don’t assume that *everybody* who notices or comments on my whiteness/foreignness is necessarily dehumanizing me by doing so. A lot of people legitimately just see it as one component of who I am, and I’d be missing out on a lot of close relationships if I automatically assumed they were being racist. I think it comes down to individual circumstances and how things are expressed.

PS I’m not trying to diminish your experiences because our circumstances are obviously different. I feel like I’m whitesplaining a bit and I just want you to know that’s not my intention!! <3

And whether black people might do it is irrelevant. I’d actually assume that a black woman badmouthing a ‘skanky white woman’ in the way described DID have preconceived, probably negative, assumptions about white women. But white women are not racially othered in general society, nor are we talking about black people qualifying white people’s race, as that is a TOTALLY different situation, so the point is moot because the impact is so different as to be incomparable.

What I find really refreshing in all the photos is the lack of branding on anyone’s clothes.