> FWIW: Several of my role models - if you include people who are not alive, people I've only read about - are not white males.
But you didn't and don't lack for options.
I'm a straight white man from America. No matter what personal, family, and economic difficulties I've faced:
- I have literal decades of seeing other white men in a variety of roles. I can pick and choose from the stereotypes I want to put in high regard, emulate, or dismiss, not 3 or 4.
- growing up, there was no blanket treatment of me or people others decided I was like outside of choices I made. I could adopt "redneck" habits/dress, or "frat boy", or "nerd", or "jock", but I had control over whether I was identified as a "thug", or " aggressive", or "professional".
- Because "my" culture was broadcast everywhere (TV/movies/books/magazines), I was never regarded as "weird" or "threatening" because people weren't accustomed to anything I'd do or say or how I'd dress.
As a kid, I was freaked out by the first black person I met, because his palms were a lighter color than the rest of his skin. That's a stupid thing to be freaked out by, but it was _different_ to me because I didn't see it anywhere. It wasn't "normal" My skin color, in return, was very "normal" looking to him, because fish-belly-pale is hardly a skin color that is hard to see in any community - just turn on the TV. Growing up in a more diverse area I would have seen more and wouldn't have had that reaction - but turn on the TV and it was still monochromatic.
As a kid I regularly teased a girl in my grade (a friend!) for her hairstyle, because it wasn't "normal". Of course, it was quite normal - if you have those genes, or see anyone that does. Again, put me in a more diverse world and I'd have seen it...but what did she see on TV? in movies? on magazine covers?
And there were "black" TV shows, and "black" magazines...but everything else wasn't "white" - it was "normal". Which meant "not black".
I had, and have, the liberty of choice because "normal" includes me, and I can choose if I want to include it. But if "normal" was defined to exclude me, what kinds of choices would I have? I might become a "well-spoken" and "clean" black man!