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 think it can be both

Some people don’t view other races as individuals in the same way they think nothing of making assumptions and when mistakenly called them the wrong name are not apologetic but just make an excuse

We have all mixed up names and most have probably confused people but I wouldn’t say that racism never has anything to do with it

I think there is a huge difference between genuinely struggling to differentiate people's faces while trying your best to do so, and what I have heard from certainly racist individuals 'oh, they all look the same' referring to x race.

@Soubriquet

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?

I don't think so, otherwise people who had been a victim of a crime by someone of a different ethnicity to themselves would be at a massive disadvantage, wouldn't they?

oh god, I do this at times. I am pretty faceblind though, but the other day I muddled up an asian man who i say hello to when walking the dog, to the asian man who works at the pharmacy, as they also have a similar build as well as hair I can see how it could be seen as a microaggression, but so many of us use all sorts of signifiers to tell one person apart from another. Obviously all Chinese people dont look the same any more than any other race, but im kind of relieved to hear that it happens the other way round too

@Soubriquet

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

Me too - if I meet someone on the street ‘out of context’ chances are I won’t recognise them. I have a neighbour who I’d only met briefly twice - then the bugger shaved off his beard and I walked straight past him in the lobby (he was ‘young man in flat 12 with the blonde beard).

When ds was little there were 3 boys in the nursery class that everyone got muddled - Italian, north after an and ME/European. Even I was calling the wrong child once when I was rushing at home time (in my defence - they all had the same build and same hair, same uniform and shoes, and they were coated in mud that day - including their faces).

@Soubriquet

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.

I know twins who are so alike 👩‍🦰👩‍🦰 but I can tell them apart ... when they're standing beside their cars! 😂

You've said they probably do look similar though, so maybe that's all there is to it? DS looks very similar to one of his friends who is in the same class. Other parents and teachers have sometimes got them mixed up, it's nothing to do with race.

I find that in schools people group students by personality types far more than race.

E.g. every school I have ever worked in I have been confused with the other female English teacher who started at the same time as me no matter how different we look. I get emails from staff members regularly that are meant for my co-worker as I don’t teach the student they are referring to.

With students of names alliterate I get them wrong a lot as I say the one that comes into my head. I once had a black student I had just called by the name of a white student say ‘miss, can’t you tell us apart, I’m black and he’s white?’ to which I responded that he was behaving how the other student usually behaves and that I often got the other boys name wrong too. I think it’s a good example of how things are often not racially motivated, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be offensive to the people whose name you have gotten wrong.

I also can’t tell half of my current year 9 girls apart as they’re all in masks with long straightened hair of varying shades.

Finally, I often call my only child a range of names before I get to his (brothers, pets, step-siblings). So maybe I’m just bad with names

The thing is, most African Americans have curly very dark hair & dark eyes.

Most Asians have very dark straight hair & dark eyes.

Most Latin Americans have very dark straight hair & dark eyes.

In contrast, white people are especially likely to have diverse hair & eye colours. This makes them easier to tell apart in a randomly selected group.

If similar-age same-sex strangers lack very distinctive hair-eye-skin colour, or noses, I struggle to tell them apart. I'm usually ok once I get to know people, then they start to look different after all. I may actually be better at distinguishing voices than faces.