I grew up in the middle of nowhere, in a place in Lincolnshire called East Heckington. I defy you to find it on the map. I lived there for nearly a decade and even I'm not sure where it is. A place that wasn't so much forgotten by time as a place time never found in the first place. But one of the oddest off-shoots of this sheltered upbringing is that there were no non-white people for miles. And back then even the TV was pretty much all white people, so on the rare occasion the TV was used as an actual TV instead of a monitor for the Mega Drive (what Americans know as a Genesis), I only ever saw white people. So imagine my surprise when I moved to Derby and encountered people from India for the first time ever. I'm ashamed to say I thought there was something wrong with them. Like they'd all gotten burned or something. I was 10, OK? We're all allowed a dumb moment or two.
Thankfully a young lad called Sunny showed me that the colour of one's skin is irrelevant. When I injured my leg all the 'White Power' racist idiots in my school left me in pain, while Sunny was the only one who helped me, despite getting constanty bullied for being different. He didn't care, he was a good kid who wanted to help. That's how I encountered and then bypassed my assumptions about skin colour.