Mistaken identity and race

[Furchesterbaby]

I know this might be a sensitive subject. I'm genuinely not wanting to cause any offence but it's something that I've wondered and wouldn't exactly feel able to speak about.

I work for a very large organisation, it's very multicultural. On a number of occasions over the years there have been incidents where two people that are black have been mixed up with one another, and it's turned quite heated and was deemed a race issue. I.e them accusing people of thinking all black people look the same.

One example was there were two guys, both were black, both had long dreads, very often new people would get them confused with one another. They were very similar in that they were the same height, both wore glasses, I knew them apart, but could see how a new person might get confused. One of the men would get very angry and once in a training session had a big rant about it and it being racist. The most significant thing in all of it was that both men had the same, fairly unusual first name, so it really could have been just mixed up surnames.

I've seen similar over the years and it's always deemed racial ignorance. It happened a few weeks ago where a young trainee was sent to ask a question, she approached the wrong person and was snapped at "I'm not X, X is the other black person".

The thing is, over the years I've regularly been mistaken for other women with the same hair colour. I worked on a team for many years with another woman, we were both red but the similarities ended there, yet we were always mixed up. There's a lady on my team now and we are the same height, hair and both wear glasses, people are always coming up to me asking if I'm this other person.

My son gets mixed up with a child at school, another boy until teachers get to know them.

So my question is aibu to think that this isn't about race?

I need to say, I'm not denying the racism and stereotyping goes on even now. I'm not trying to pretend it doesn't happen or that it's not an issue anymore. I'm not going to pretend that as a white person I can fully understand how it is to be discriminated against because of my colour. I've literally just felt at times that these things weren't about that, but I accept if there's something where I'm missing the point.

If anyone has Netflix I'd suggest watching the new series 'dear white people' based on a film that covers some of the issues on the thread.

Why are people trying to argue not making the effort to distinguish your colleagues because they both have dreads and glasses isn't racist? It is racist by the very excuse being the Afro hair or some other random aspect that they can't change, if a teacher refused to recognise your child as he/she was one of three children who had the same hairstyle even though they all looked very different?. Can you tell your dog apart from another of the same breed? Yes of course you can but they are a completely different species so surely you wouldn't be able to.

Faithless12 because it's not always down to people not making the effort. I simply CANNOT do any better at this. My disability makes it impossible for me. I do it to all races - it's not me being racist.

I really struggle with faces. If two people are about the same stature and have similar hair I easily get them mixed up, whatever colour their skin is. I've gone up to my white colleague and asked him where he is after he had a haircut, not realising I was speaking to him! I know this can be a racist issue but I don't think it always is.

After hearing things like this, and much worse, and hearing comments like "black people look the same" for a few years, even if they were a bit sensitive (I don't think they were) I think it's understandable.
For example, if a red head grew up hearing comments like "oh sorry Emily, I thought you were Sarah, you're both red heads! Are you both Irish or something?" and obviously the odd more severe racist comment too, going to work and being mixed up for another red head would get to Emily more than it would somebody who had never really faced things like that.
Especially when it comes to locks considering all the controversy they can sometimes cause. Heck, just having afro hair can cause issues sometimes, let alone locks. It happens, it makes people feel like shit, being mixed up with another just adds to that feeling.

A good explanation of microaggressions (as mosquito bites), and why a seeming small mistake can get a big reaction.

tv.fusion.net/video/354460/how-microaggressions-are-like-mosquito-bites/

Oh I've done that when a colleague was wearing glasses BlueSunGreenMoon, utterly horrifying!

Statistically glad it's not just me! That was my most embarrassing one. I had a near miss on a night out when a woman started talking to me, and half way through said "you don't know who I am do you? It's me, Name from Old Work". I managed to convince her I'd known all along...I think I did anyway.

VoiceofReason are you making excuses based on the fact these people that you mix up have features i.e. Afro hair (which they have no control over)?
Would you be irritated if a teacher confused your child for another?

There is a condition where people find it difficult to recognise faces. People can have it to different degrees.
I suffer from it slightly. I find it difficult to recognise less familiar people out of context. I hate it.
I can imagine for some they would find it difficult to recognise between very similar people.
Its not always ignorance or racism. This condition is more common than you realise.

I was going to post about face blindness, it's a recognised condition but not everyone who has it is diagnosed. I actually know 2 people with it, it's not that uncommon.

Suffer and raspberry - people have posted about it 100 times on this thread.

Reading the thread is good protocol especially in sensitive issues because it's starting to sound like people just want to push something which is a very real issue under the rug.

I also have a degree of that. Out of context I find it impossible. I work on clothes, voice, context more than faces.

I used to find it hard sometimes to pick out my own child in the playground as she was in uniform and looked like most of the rest of the class!!!

(And when I lived abroad my colleagues of a different race always mixed me and my same-race colleagues up. We are trained to look for different things from birth. Never crossed my mind that they were racist)

Still more fun to assume racism.

It's a check your privilege situation. One of my black colleagues gets me and my manager mixed up. We look nothing alike, but we're the same height, build and age. As it's possibly the only time in my life, ever, that I have been classified by my race, it's not my 'go to' assumption that that's why she confuses us, although it probably is.
The guy in the op with the same hair glasses and first name as his 'confusee' needs to give his head a wobble though.

^^ microagressions. Yes, that's it. Colleague confuses me for my manager in the context of me being enormously privileged. Guy with glasses, dreads and same name is being confused with another and it's one more bloody microagression.

Speaking from personal experience, I am white, and I don't think I have actual prosopagnosia but I think it does tend to take me a bit longer than average to distinguish between new people who look a bit alike, and a lot of these instances have been between two white people.

I work in a school. Rather like someone else upthread, every time I go into a new class I tend to have particular problems memorising who's who among all the boys with short brown hair. They genuinely all do look a bit alike to me at first, unless any of them have another very distinctive characteristic. So after 2 days I might be able to think to myself, "OK, Danny's the one with freckles and an upturned nose, Michael's the one with the very thin face, but I'm still not sure which is which of George, Alex and Tyler." And then after a couple of weeks they will all look so distinctive that I can't imagine how I ever thought they looked alike - except maybe from the back.

Off the top of my head, I can't remember confusing two black people who weren't twins, but then there are very few black people in my town as a whole so I haven't had the opportunity for a while. I think I would be very likely to make the same mistake with the two guys with dreads and the same name, unless they were usually in the same place at the same time and I could compare them side-by-side. There would be no intentional malice in it but I can see why it could be upsetting.

m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_55b0009be4b07af29d576702

The error isn't racist the first time you make the mistake, as you may not realise how your brain works. But once you're an adult, and aware of the issue, I think it probably is.
Just quoting my earlier post here. Was totally hoist by my own petard last night. I mistook a (blonde, aged 30ish) woman at my (very small) exercise class last night for a (very slightly) similar one, and asked her how her injury was coming along. Obviously, I'd got the wrong woman... despite having talked to her for weeks. In my embarrassment, I remembered this thread...

VoiceofReason are you making excuses based on the fact these people that you mix up have features i.e. Afro hair (which they have no control over)?
Making excuses? So my disability is an excuse? (something I have no control over)
I worked in a school and I was hopeless at identifying the children. All in the same uniform made many of them indistinguishable from each other for me - the boys particularly! It was only the very distinct children who I could reliably identify.

You have no idea just how debilitating it is and this thread demonstrates just how judgemental other people are about it - like I'm making it up, not trying hard enough and being racist.

EmmaWoodlouse now imagine that you are simply unable to see the details that you describe - the freckles, thinner face, the nose etc. Imagine that all of those features just blended into each other, that when you tried to summon up someone's face in your mind, you got nothing. That's what I deal with all of the time.

I look at like this:

once is a mistake
twice is unconcious bias
third time is sexist/racist etc.

Or for some of us

Once is confusing because the difference is almost undetectable
Twice is embarrassing because despite knowing there are two people you can't tell them apart
Third, fourth and onwards you simply avoid using people's names and call everyone "hiya" which works until someone suggests you "Go and speak to x" and you have to do the walk of shame around the office trying to identify them

third time is sexist/racist etc.
Or the person making the assumption of racism is being disablist and completely ignoring the possibility that there is a genuine inability to tell the difference.
Continuously ignoring that and being accused of making excuses is far more than just a microaggression.
How about - 3rd time: I wonder if that person has real difficulty in telling the difference between people.

Well, I don't know if I'm being racist but I know I would find it harder to recognise a chinese person I met once a few years later. That's probably some evolutionary thing. Maybe a failing too, I'll put my hands up to it. I know if I met and got chatting to a woman of my own race and then a few years later saw them out of context I would recognise them but I'm not confident I'd be so good at identify somebody I'd met once a few years ago if they weren't my own race.

I accept that this is just a perception but it seems to me that there is more variance in my own race.