What, according to the author, was the one thing about the whites that was most enviable?

Maya feltwhites are beautiful. One of the main themes of the introduction is race and appearance; Maya already establishes that she wanted to be a movie-star looking white girl as a child, and tried to deny her real appearance. Connected with the idea of race is beauty, as Maya describes images of blond hair and blue eyes as the paragon of beauty, and says her appearance is merely a "black ugly dream" that she will wake out of.