I've been trying to follow parts of this discussion via emily_shore's link collection, and even as the clueless white girl that I am, I think that Patricia C. Wrede and Lois McMaster Bujold have been making complete fools out of themselves and have offended lots of people (including their own readers) with their ignorance and their casual dismissals.

The rollcall at deadbrowalking was also quite the eye-opener for me: There were people on that list whom I recognized because I had come across their fanworks or their meta or their squee -- and I had never assumed them to be FOC. Unless someone quite explicitly talks about their ethnicity or culture, I still seem to regard "White female of European stock" as the LJ default. Which is rather telling, I suppose, and I should work on that. :(((