Calling something exotic emphasizes its distance from the reader. We don’t refer to things as exotic if we think of them as ordinary. We call something exotic if it’s so different that we see no way to emulate it or understand how it came to be. We call someone exotic if we aren’t especially interested in viewing them as people — just as objects representing their culture.
Fantasy author N. K. Jemisin on The Unexotic Exotic (via thebooksmugglers)
This. So much this. I hate being referred to as “exotic” or hearing ethnically Chinese people referred to as such. It’s bad enough hearing it and being of mixed ethnicity and having no idea if the person who’s saying it in my presence has any idea if I am and they’re trotting out the casual racism because they don’t know I’m not the same as them and think they’re “safe” to do so.
Incidentally, for those who might not have already guessed, I’m not entirely white.