To think that teachers should be able to distinguish BAME students by name?

[maggiethecat]

I have 2 DDs at different secondary schools and we have recently been having animated table discussions arising from the BLM protests. Both girls separately experienced teachers repeatedly confusing their names with the handful of other BAME students in the class. 13 yo DD cannot understand why she is repeatedly confused with another BAME girl who is much taller than her and unlike DD wears glasses. Apparently the offending teachers do not have this memory deficit with white students in the class

Sorry but yes it is a race thing! Misindentification only succeeds in reinforcing the racist narrative that all black people look the same. Yet another racist daily microagression.
I had exactly the same thing happen with my son. He was one of two black boys in his school.
It's a small school with 7 children per class.
The other child was constantly in trouble and my son often blamed. I mentioned it once to his form tutor, then I raised merry hell with the head teacher. Who then emailed all staff with the two boys pictures. Different physical build, hair style, the other child wore glasses?!

I also worked at the same place for ten years and was often called by the name of the only other black female colleague.The only similar physical feature was we were both black.

It has been scientifically proven that people may have trouble distinguisging faces of a different race to their own. Nothing racist about it as it cannot be helped, just nature.

Isn't it racist to accuse the teacher of being racist? Mixing up names is a common problem. We all do it. Address it by all means as it's annoying. Has the teacher done or said anything else to make anyone think she is racist? The fact she hasn't mixed up anyone else's name in their presence isn't proof she hasn't done it.

@maggiethecat YANBU. Classic Mumsnet that people are trying to obfuscate and find any excuse possible other than the really obvious reason of racism. It's a well known problem of white teachers doing this to non-white students. For decades, in multiple countries. It's lazy racism, plain and simple.

The BBC were recently called out on this, getting the names of black MPs mixed up with other black MPs and captioned wrongly. This is really poor behaviour.

Its likely not a race thing. Its likely a language thing. NOT the teachers fault.
For being able to differentiate between sounds properly/instinctively , you need to be exposed to them early in life. So you are best in your own language, others are more difficult- and for speakers of another language , the confusions don’t always make sense.
I’m not from the uk - a lot of english and irish names sound exactly the same to me - Robin/reuben/rupert/ronald for example
Emma/anna - impossible

People that don’t have a problem with it haven’t any idea what it’s like to experience or witness it.

I have.

I remember one hostess in a local expensive restaurant who called every single Asian man she saw, completely non ironically, “Mr Patel”. And their wives were all Mrs Patel.

At university, two Black men in my year of just 30 students were constantly called each other’s names. Same for the Chinese and Japanese girls. When pulled up, the lecturer, a woman in her sixties said, “I just see all these black faces!” and giggled.

Teaching in a boarding school, with many international students, regarding the Chinese girls in the House I worked in, their House Mother saying, “I’m always forgetting which one is which, they all look the same to me.”

Your NAME is important.

Why do you think all slaves were reduced to the N word?

Why do you think in concentration camps, and jails in the past, people were reduced to a number?

Because it’s dehumanising. It gives you the clear message, you are not important enough to remember or to have an individuality.

You are just “one of the black kids”, they are all the same aren’t they? Shaniqua or Shantay or something?

It’s disgusting. And if you don’t have a problem with that you are a problem.

I agree that some people get names wrong I work in a small class in a special school and stay with the same children all year but still mix their names up. I even called a boy my sons name a while ago. I mix up my own children as well. It's usually when I'm trying to do more than one thing.

This is completely different to what I have seen by one woman I work with who I reported in the end she refused to learn the names of two boys in my class saying she couldn't tell them apart. One was of African decent and the other Indian. She seemed to completely dismiss the fact that not even attempting to learn their names was a bad thing.

As a secondary teacher I taught over 600 students on a two week timetable.

the parents then sit down and you can't remember the child's name?

Either a print out of the class photos, or ask them to remind you of their surname so that you can find them quickly, or bluff your way through without using their name. Seating plans really help in the classroom but not useful elsewhere. I'm terrible if I see students outside of school, can't think of their names at all! I did also not recognise my own uncle once when working in a shop because he was wearing a hat and I wasn't expecting him to be there so perhaps I have some kind of face blindness.

@Chienloup good for you having the memory skills for that. Shock horror I also have to brush up on the content before teaching sometimes as I've forgotten some of it. We are all human after all.

I do this, I’m a secondary teacher.

I’m acutely aware of it when I mix up the names of BAME children because I know it sounds like I’m racist. I would hate my students to think this was the case.

I do it with lots of children - white, BAME, different sexes, I’m particularly bad with sibling names. So, I’m really hopeful that my students see enough examples across lots of groups, that they don’t think I’m biased.

As soon as I’ve said it, I know that it’s wrong, and correct myself e.g. “Daisey, sorry, Michaela”. I’ve always assumed it is my dyslexia (once I’ve made the mistake once, I make it a lot, I’d assumed it’s a categorisation error...).

I’m not trying to denigrate the experiences of BAME people on this thread, But, is there any possibility it’s not always racist?

It could be a race thing - unconcious racism. The teachers should of course make an effort.

I must say I used to teach and got the quiet kids mixed up if they had a similar look - often the girls with stright dark blond hair who didn't make eye contact, and the boys with standard issue identical hair cuts and similar colouring. I taught 150+ different children and it was sometimes hard to keep the children who never made eye contact distinct in a busy moment, especially in big middle set classes with 31 children - those classes usually have some dominant chanracters and behaviour issues are a massive mental plate juggling exercise. When thinking about the children in a calm situation, when writing reports etc. I knew them apart.

I would say I worked in Japan for a few years, in an area with very few non Japanese residents, and most of my colleagues found it impossible to tell me and the one other white woman who worked in the area apart. We taught at different schools but visited each other regularly, and my colleagues would address her by my name if they saw her without me, and vice versa. In my opinion we looked nothing alike - she was taller, thinner, had white blond straight hair, and I was shorter, plumper, with curley dark hair. My colleagues didn't see the difference... People do have thier "eye in" to differences they are accustomed to looking for I guess.

Obviously because BAME people are discriminated against in countries where they are in the minority, non BAME teachers need to be very aware of not perpetuating this and make more of an effort to know their BAMe students apart. As a white teacher in Japan I was able to laugh it off (especially as I wasn't really building a long term career based on my reputation there, so it didn't much matter if my colleagues couldn't distinguish me from other white women), and the power dynamic is completely different between a white teacher and BAME teenager in the UK, obviously.

I'll put my hand up, guilty as hell.

I do supply so lots of names. One long term supply I constantly got one girl's name wrong, I kept calling her the name of a girl at a different school, she just 'looked' like she should be called X not Y.

Things can easily throw you off as well, I once took a group to visit a uni, I was chatting to one of the students and said, "£You look different, is it a new hair cut" to get the reply, "No miss, I'm not wearing hijab".

It can be a race thing. When I get a new class and have to start learning names I subconsciously put them in categories (long blonde hair etc). Depending on the class, I could well put “the black ones” in the same mental group. I’m not justifying it. I think it’s an example of unconscious bias that many of us are guilty of without even realising it.

I have 2 children each year in my class who I muddle their names up all year. It really isn't just to BAME students, it happens each year regardless of the children in my class. This year it was 2 girls one was blonde, one was dark haired so do not look similar in any way at all. A few years ago it was two boys who both had names beginning with the same letter.

The children say I am forgetful and one child this year even said regularly, I'll remind you at the end of the day miss because you will have forgotten by then!

This was discussed at the school where sil teaches, as a 3 teachers (all white) were confusing BAME pupils with each other to the point where they were even giving incorrect information to parents. The head basically found that BAME teachers never confused white or BAME pupils’ names, it was only the white teachers (it is a multicultural area). Cue a lot of race awareness training until eventually one of the white teachers put a BAME child in danger (assumed the BAME man collecting her was family despite him not being on any kind of list at school) - that is when the head was quietly told to retire.

Since the head was replaced with a more effective one who didn’t accept any racism, the same white teachers have never made any mistakes confusing BAME pupils. Sil was saying they make far more of an effort to learn names now as they know they’ll be dismissed if they make more mistakes.

I teach in an inner London school where the vast majority of pupils are BAME. None of us have this problem.

At school, throughout the years until I moved to a school outside our town, I was always called my sister’s name (two years older). We looked nothing alike. Our first babes are nothing alike (sister’s name is one syllable beginning with L, mine three syllables beginning with B- so nothing even remotely similar sounding).

Had nothing to do with race nor ethnicity (last name is ethnic Eastern European).

My DH went trough school brung called George. Not his name nor anywhere near it. He reminded his teacher of previous student named George, called him that and it stuck.

It happens to a lot of us and it’s not a BAME thing.

I have mixed up two BAME boys once in my primary school and I was absolutely mortified. I didn't teach either of them but one was in my class one day and I called him by the other boys name.
But to be fair, I confused two white girls in my class for an entire year. They didn't look that similar they were just both just very similar in personality and it became a bit of a joke that I got them mixed up. I was pregnant and blamed it on baby brain but I couldn't tell you why I just couldn't separate them.

I am finding it interesting that so many teachers struggle with mixing up names as I genuinely never have had this struggle un the schools or universities I’ve taught in. I’m also BAME. I do think that if you are a permanent member of staff, it’s correct that if you repeatedly mix up names you should face disciplinary action. Even if race plays no part, it’s dangerous as detailed above and demonstrates a real lack of care and contact.

It's really hard to read some of these posts and the level of excuses. And no, it's not the same as if your white son has his name mixed up with another white boy 🙄
I did this once. Its unconscious bias I guess. I would not describe myself as racist, but it csnt have made the student in question feel very good. Have never done it again. I now pay very close attention to names that sound culturally different to a white British name. If a name is hard to pronounce, I ask once, and I get it right. Anything else is laziness.

I do think "categorisation" can lead to mix ups. I often confuse the quiet boys or the dark haired girls too. I don't think this is racist, just poor memory.

@TooOldForThis67

Isn't it racist to accuse the teacher of being racist? Mixing up names is a common problem. We all do it. Address it by all means as it's annoying. Has the teacher done or said anything else to make anyone think she is racist? The fact she hasn't mixed up anyone else's name in their presence isn't proof she hasn't done it.

How could it possibly be racist to suggest that the teacher would be being racist?

There is wilful refusal to understand the issue here from some. Usual MN blindness.*

And this the usual response.
Teachers confusing two students names repeatedly definitely happens in all white schools too.
I’d be amazed if ( older, because it gets worse with age) BAME teachers didn’t have this issue.

It’s a separate issue to not learning the name itself, which is more about familiar names. My Irish friend is called Eilidh. I don’t think she’s been in any class where the teacher hasn’t asked how to pronounce it. Although people know her name if it comes up written down they still struggle.