I must ask this, even if it reveals a lot of ignorance on my part.
I happen to be a Caucasian female. Whenever I'm reading fiction, I will always picture characters as being white, unless there's a description that makes it clear the person is non white.
I need to ask you who are not white, what do you picture? Do you default to your own race/ethnicity/subgroup? I have thought about this for years, but never felt comfortable asking any of my (far too few and far between) African American friends this question. The anonymity we have here emboldens me.
Thanking everyone in advance for the answers.
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The Romans were there, and most of them didn't look Middle-Eastern. And you can bet that nobody picked on their kids. Furthermore, the Romans weren't the only non-Middle Easterners there at the time.
It's appalling that so many Americans are ignorant of the fact that populations of antiquity were quite mobile and migrating all over the place. Not to mention that many of them were in trade all across Europe and into China.
Good grief, almost 300 years before the Romans were in Jerusalem, Alexander the Great had been to the Punjab region of India--with a massive army behind him. And that army came back, too! Without him, sure, but they did go there and back, within a few short years.
We also know from the Edicts of Ashoka that Buddhists had made contact with leaders in the Seleucid Empire in at least the 3rd century BCE. The Seleucid Empire, for those who don't know, extended from modern day Kazakhstan to--oh, look: Jerusalem!
Those are but two examples of how mobile people were then. There were plenty of other cultures that were just as much on the move and mingling all over Europe and Asia--and many of them were in the Middle East.
That's why it makes zero sense to say that someone from the region absolutely had to have X physical features. Is it likely that a Jerusalem native would have classic "Middle Eastern" features? Sure, but it's not 100%, or even 70%, certain that someone from there would look like X. Because Jerusalem in the Classical era was not a monoculture when it came to anything, including physical traits.
Far from it.
Chalk up the European paintings feeding the Western idea of what the guy looked like not to cultural bigotry per se, but to how artists paint the features of the models they have available to them. They are also just as susceptible to their culture's beauty ideals as anyone else, and the physical ideal that most of these paintings derive from were from the Renaissance. That era's Brad Pitt was most likely Cesare Borgia. Gee, if the paintings of him are remotely accurate, who could blame people for basing a physical ideal off him? Just look at him!
$1000, Alex. 
No judgement!
I'm personally bad at picturing people in books except for VERY vaguely. But most of my favorite books, I'd already seen some version of it (movie, TV show), so I have a sort of pre-conceived image usually.
That being said, for anyone familiar, the casting for The Expanse was one of the most brilliant casting jobs EVER. I can't imagine ANY actor portraying Jim, Amos, Chrisjen, Naomi, or Alex any better (or even competently). Amazing job.
Am I still making sense? Did I ever?... ::slowly backs away::
If it isn't explicitly stated or strongly inferred in the opening passages, I kind of assume whiteness. But of course I'm a white male.
