Wanna know what got me? Significantly worse than that.
I came across an essay by Ursula LeGuin, in which she objects to a screen adaptation of A Wizard of Earthsea: objecting to it in significant part because, as she points out, Ged isn’t white. (I don’t think I’m finding quite the version I remember reading; but here’s one similar.)
And as I read that I realized – LeGuin straight out tells you in the book that he isn’t white. Very clearly; and more than once. And, despite having read that book multiple times – I had been imagining him as white anyway. My back-of-the-head assumption had been so strong that it overwhelmed the evidence of my eyes.
That was very much a whack upside the head. And I needed that whack.