Yeah, HI!
I'm having trouble with my housecarls being racist towards my PC.
If I play a Nord all is fine, they will follower me and everything works fine.
If I'm playing ANY other race, Elf, Imperial, etc... they will not follow me.
I don't even get the Dialog options to tell them to follow me.

Any ideas/help would be cool. I have the latest 1.3.1 patch and no mods installed.

Strange, my argonian and my breton have had a housecarl ffollow them.

Hmmm... that's odd. I'm an Imperial, and Lydia has been loyally carrying my burdens for ages now.

Can't say about the others, as I haven't done any of the other Jarl's quests.

Breton PC and Lydia go fine together. She followed me anywhere. Only asked her to stay at home because I wanted a Dark Elf to accompany me to Windhelm

I had a redguard character once and Lydia followed him and carried his burdens too... Maybe your popularity is very low?

Only problem I've had with housecarls is that every time I step into Proudspire Manor, Jordis the Sword-Maiden keeps asking me if I'm lost or some such statement. It's as if she doesn't acknowledge that she's my housecarl and Proudspire Manor is my house.

The game likely thinks you still have a follower, so the housecarl (or anyone else) will not give you the option of following you until you dismiss your current follower. There are threads that discuss this issue if it turns out to be the problem.

Ah-ha! I think I found the problem... when I get Lydia assigned to me, she wasn't being added to my current follower faction and it was causing her and the other housecarls to not have the follow dialog options.
So I just typed in addtofaction 5C84E 255 and all is well again.