The racism of forgetting faces

[Ozgirl75]

I have a question that I truly hope can be answered in a friendly and informative way as I really hope I can ask it in the right way.
My children go to a school which is probably 40% white, 10% Indian-Australian, 40% Asian Australian (mixture of Chinese, Korean, Japanese, mainly Chinese) and the remainder a mixture of other cultures.
Since my boys have started, it’s pretty common that my brown haired, white skinned child is referred to, especially the Asian parents by the name of various other brown haired, white skinned boys. I’ve never minded - they probably do look similar if you don’t know them well. My older child hasn’t had this as he has distinctive white blonde hair.
I was reading on Twitter the other day that one of the most annoying micro aggressions is when white people get Asian people muddled up for each other - because they see them as all looking the same.
I would love to know - I genuinely don’t mind when my boy is confused for another white boy, but is this because I am white that I don’t see it as a problem?

I read a study where everyone is much more likely to recognise diversity in a race which is their own race/ethnicity. So if you showed a Chinese person 20 pics of a white British person and 2 people were twins they would be less likely to pick
Out the 2 twins than a white British person would.

A white person would struggle with the same
Tasks but of pics of black African people etc.

My boss always calls me the name of the one other dual heritage black women in our work of 300 staff!!

Isn’t there a thing where the police won’t allow a white person to identify a black person from a line up and vice versa because people easily mix up faces when it’s not their race?

Cross racial identification is much less consistent than facial recognition within your own race. There has been quite a lot of research ion it. It is an actual thing that exists rather than a so called micro aggression

I think we can tell differences better between people like us. I’m quite bad at mixing up older people
So it’s not just race.

I’m terrible with faces unless I’ve seen them multiple times

I would be awful with doing a police line up of any race

I think I read the same study as the first poster. Theres also a cultural/national divide as I remember but the details are hazy...

I dont know if i agree that this is racism exactly. When i moved from my village in ireland to the sprawling diverse metropolis that is London, i might have been guilty of this. To begin with. And i would have been embarrassed about that.

My son looked so like another boy, my mother nearly brought the other boy home from school once 😅

But it's not for me to say whether it's right or wrong for non white people to find it annoying, so apologies for that inference my first post.

That’s my wondering really - it doesn’t feel like racism when it happens to my son, but is it possible for a white person to ever actually feel racism? But it’s the exact same thing (I think!) that happens when a white person mixes up two Asian or black people, so is it racist/micro aggression then, but not to me because I can shrug it off due to my whiteness?
I’m trying to do a lot of reading and understanding about this because firstly I have a lot of Asian and Indian friends and am very keen to not piss them off, and also mainly because I am sure I have asked stupid questions in the past because I’m interested in other cultures and beliefs/foods/geography/history and am keen to continue to show an interest in other people but in the right way.

I have face blindness www.nhs.uk/conditions/face-blindness/. So fail to recognise people a lot. Sadly I'm sure I have offended a lot of people this way

It's not racism. It's how your brain works.

There was a study with babies where they were shown pictures of gorillas ( I think) and humans they didn't know. Their brains didn't stimulate any recognition for any of the pictures. They then spent a period of time looking at pictures of gorillas and then families introduced images of the animals in to their every day life. They retook the test and the babies could then differentiate between each gorilla ( brain stimulus)

I used to visit friends when they lived in Sweden - they were not ethnic Swedes but had lived there many years and had many friends from around the world as well as ethnic Swedish friends.

On one occasion at a BBQ on one the many islands so beloved of Stockholmers, I swear I couldn't tell one Swede from another. I pride myself on being very culturally/ethnically aware but all the women were of similar height, blonde/light brown hair, slim and tanned; all the men were tall, blonde, tanned and rugged! There was one small brown-haired Swedish chap and he stood out!

It's not racist to think people look alike.

The more time you spend around people ( or animals) the more you'll be able to notice the differences between each face

All cows look the same to me, but I bet the farmer knows which one is which

It’s interesting. @Onceuponatime1818 does it make you feel that it’s a racist or micro aggressive act when your boss calls you the wrong name, if you don’t mind me asking?

@Westfacing funnily enough I’ve kind of stopped watching American tv shows as I can barely tell the women apart! They all have such a specific look these days.

@Ozgirl75

Well 9 years later I find it very rude, and it’s clearly a mistake. I don’t think she’s a racist. She’s done it before in a whole staff meeting, then tried to make a joke about not having her glasses on.

I teach in a school where only 20% of the kids are white and kids often moan to be the teachers call them the wrong name, for example Somali girls getting confused as each other.

There is a huge difference between the above mentioned cross-racial face recognition, and getting the names of (eg) the only 2 Asian women in a small office, where all have worked for years, consistently confused.

@Onceuponatime1818

I read a study where everyone is much more likely to recognise diversity in a race which is their own race/ethnicity. So if you showed a Chinese person 20 pics of a white British person and 2 people were twins they would be less likely to pick Out the 2 twins than a white British person would.

A white person would struggle with the same
Tasks but of pics of black African people etc.

I've come across this too.

Although I've appologised to some blonde haired women that I've muddled up this morning as it takes me a long time to match names and faces.
The obvious descriptions of hair colour, age and build were broadly similar but if they stood side by side the difference would be obvious. Our brains latch on to the strongest short hand features.

Thanks @Onceuponatime1818 I have to say, even I would find it rude if anyone kept on doing it, especially for 9 years! Even if it isn’t racism it’s purely bad manners not to learn people’s names - and it stands out if the only person whose name she can’t be bothered to learn is yours.
It’s interesting, when my son started school he was in a class of 16 and all but 5 were Asian and I did find them a bit tricky to tell apart at first (as I probably would have in a class of all white children if each one of them had the same colour hair) but after a very short time it amazed me that I had ever got them mixed up and I had no trouble at all remembering who was who.

I’m terrible with twins too

There’s a set of twins at work and I still mix them up despite them being there 6 months plus.

Twins are sent to confuse us!

Thanks so much everyone, I’m just going to bed now so not ignoring anyone, but thanks so much for your comments.

I've read that in India many people find it difficult to even tell the difference between the faces of white men and women. I don't think it's racism at all - but if your boss or someone you knew kept doing it after you had corrected them a number of times then i think that is rude and suggests they're not interested in making the effort to learn what you look like and i would consider that bordering on racist (unless they were face blind and were the same with everyone).

I work at a hospital in a surgical ward with lots of grey haired 70 - 80 something mainly White patients ... I'm afraid that I do forget their names & faces unless there's something really stands out about them!

It's a nightmare if I run into them when they come back for an Outpatient appointment!

Like pp have said this is not intentional racism it is the way our brain processes faces, we develop face recognition expertise at a very early age, the first few months of life, based on the faces we see around us, so starting with our families. Research has shown that babies recognize faces within their own race, better than a race they haven't had experience of by about 3 months old. One test is a face recognition test where the babies are shown a photo of a face to look at, then that face next to a photo of a new face of the same race. Babies will look longer at a new face if they recognise it as new and different to the first one. When it is the race they are familiar with they recognise the new face as different but when they are shown two faces of a race they aren't familiar with they show recognition that the new face is different to the first one. More exposure to different races can improve face recognition but it does get harder as you get older because it is biological and established in our brains so early on.