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

Is it also racist if it happens the otber way round? As said above, i‘m not english. most english and irish names sound pretty much the same to me , so I mix them up all the time.
I don’t mind english people mixing up my name with others - it just doesn’t feature in their usual name repertoire, so is hard to remember/distinguish from others

My Irish name has been mispronounced, changed to something else or even swapped for a common English boys name throughout my school days and beyond. I have even been told I'm pronouncing it incorrectly. I politely pointed out that as it is my name I do know how to pronounce it.

It is annoying, and despite correcting lots of people my name is more often than not pronounced incorrectly.

I was also mixed up with another girl at school who had similar Irish colouring.

I don't think it's necessarily a BAME issue. I think it's anyone without an English name.

A few people have this problem.

I’m pakistani, there was a chinese boy at my secondary school. He was called Gerard, lets imagine I’m Muhammad and my brother is Asim (who looked nothing like me and had much paler skin than me (our specific ethnic group has paler skin and typically green eyes)). We would all get called by each other names, or sometimes “the other one” a geography teacher used to spefically call us Hamza and give us detention if we refused to answer to it, knowing we wouldn’t be believed when we complained, and he was right about that.

Now at work (well, when we were all at work) I get mixed up with the only other brown man in my department. I’m six foot, green eyed, bearded, paleish skin (think southern italian) and have a fair bit of muscle. He is about 5’3” at the most, no beard, thin gray hair, very dark skinned with a fairly big beer belly.

I once had a new boy of African descent start in my class and I asked his Mum how to pronounce his name. She told me but then added, “at his last school, they just called him x because they couldn’t remember how to say it.” This was 3 years ago.

I'm a teaching assistant and have been guilty of this. I have felt absolutely terrible about it afterwards but when you have to suddenly cover a class you don't know that well, sometimes you get names wrong. The kids are usually very quick to correct you...

I think this is sadly very true. I have friend at work who has a very long Nigerian name that she shortens to the first three letters of her name. A lady on our time always says " I can never remember your name "Ola" I'll call you "Anna" instead." Pisses me right off she could just remember a three letter name. The same woman also insists on calling a Asian lady in our office an Anglicised version of her name. Its the same fucking principle wether you are black, white or Asian, Chinese. We are all usinquly recognizable. I can understand if people are getting called a siblings name ( I always did in school) but to have apparent amnesia over a black pupil's name and not a white pupil's name is shit.

Tyranttoddler - It's the implication that just because the teacher is white she must be racist. Can you see how that looks? Goes both ways.

It's not all teachers. OP, YANBU to want your daughters teachers to get their names right. But many of us make the effort with ALL our students.

In my school (multicultural) there was a class with triplets with names that all started with the same letter. They are black girls. I never taught them but I made sure I could tell them apart and call them by the right names. But not because they were black, just because it's important to children that they're identified by their name. I did the same for all children, regardless of race, religion, family circumstances. In one school there were three pairs of same-sex twins, one black, one white and one Asian. I learnt to tell them all apart.

YANBU to want equality. But many teachers already do this for their students.

When I worked at a very mixed comp loads of kids and parents would confuse me with another couple of teachers.
All 3 of us were young white women with dark brown hair and light eyes. The students and parents who mixed us up were always black.
I just accepted that it was harder for black children to tell us apart because we looked so different to them.
I was young then and prided myself on being able to learn every name within my first lesson with a class.
Now I’m old and teach in a very white school and get kids name wrong rather more frequently. I’m always careful to point out to students that I am not confusing them as people, just their names (which is true - they are absolutely distinct individuals in my mind but sometimes names get the better of me)

Teachers have regularly mixed up my daughter with another girl in her group friends , they’ve been at school for 9 years .
To be fair when I’ve had the 2 of them out together more than half a dozen times I’ve been asked if they are twins !
They do have an uncanny resemblance for not being related
I imagine it’s even more difficult for the teachers when they are in uniform..
They are white ..

People who say it’s easy to tell people apart and remember names should bear in mind that it’s easy for them. For whatever reason others don’t have great facial recognition. I introduce myself to people I’ve met before and call others the wrong name. I mostly can’t recognise or name celebrities. I tend to use the most obvious thing that distinguishes them from the majority to try to pin it down. Red hair. Big beard. Chinese. Big earrings-wearer. Unfortunately sometimes that just narrows down a group rather than pinpoints and yes that can mean mixing up people with a minority ethnicity. I don’t do it deliberately because I’m a bigot. I can’t help it.

Bloody hell, wait until menopause hits, you can't remember your own name some days!
Fwiw I'm not a teacher, but used to work as a riding instructor, so would teach hourly lessons of up to fifteen people for six hours a day.

There was one individual whose name I could never remember, she was white with a common name and the harder I tried the less the name would stick, I was mortified but honestly wasn't lazy or not bothered, it just seemed as if I would get a complete mental block, so I can understand that some teachers may have an issue, and it may have nothing to do with race.

Btw I’m not saying no white teachers who confuse names of BAME students are being racist. If the OPs dds think the teacher is being racist they probably are. Lots of racist teachers around. And sexist so it may be a girl thing too.

I've done this with several students I work with, both BAME and white students. I am always deeply embarrassed by it as I think it's incredibly important and yet I don't seem to master it as well as others.

I can also watch entire films and read entire books and not recall the names of even main characters. I have to identify them all by circumstance, or relationships...'eg. the sister of that main character who went out with the girl who liked to eat pistachios ' I will be able to tell you in great detail everything about them however.

And this is the same for my students, I might get their names wrong but I know them in great depth as individuals, what they're good at, what troubles them, every story they have told me - I have a rich knowledge of them as individuals, that I think might far exceed many of my colleagues who have mastered names, but my brain for some reason just attached little significance to names.

@TooOldForThis67

Tyranttoddler - It's the implication that just because the teacher is white she must be racist. Can you see how that looks? Goes both ways.

I do see what you're saying, but I don't believe that white people can experience racism, so no, I don't think it's possible that the op is being racist towards the white teacher.

YANBU. I used to work at large law firm. Partners all earning millions of pounds and for the most part white, male and privileged upbringing. In a team of 50 white lawyers there were two black male lawyers - one very tall and slim the other shorter than average and stocky. One white male partner - who had no trouble at all with 48 other names - for the life of him could not get the names of these two black lawyers round the right way and called them the tall one and the short one. Both black lawyers moved to other firms and that firm still wonders why it has no senior black lawyers.

I find it easier to remember names if kids do look a bit different. So if there were fewer BAME students per class I'd remember. Pronunciation I may well get wrong if I hadn't come across it before.

I don't think it's necessarily to do with race but maybe just a teacher with not good facial recognition skills. It happens with white children too. DD being one. At both primary and secondary school she has had 'lookalikes' and has often muddled up with them, too many times for it to be just coincidence. It happens. Oh and the current 'twin' who is one of her best friends is a good half a head taller with a markedly different hair colour.

Of course it's a race thing but it's not unique to BAME students.

There's lots of interesting research to show that everyone struggles to differentiate between people from other races. I think it's call the familiarity problem or something, and is to do with the the way our brand are conditioned to read micro differences in those we see most often. So yes white teachers will confuse black students, and black teachers with Asian students, and Asian teachers with indigenous students etc etc

Doesn't make it ok, but it's not as simple as laziness to not learn names.

It’s not just BAME students. I was confused with another girl constantly at school. We looked nothing like each other.

@TinyPigeon

Of course it's not a race thing says white poster with no clue.

Well I'm mixed race and I don't necessarily think it's a race thing either. But maybe that's just the half white side of me with no clue talking...

I studied Japanese at uni and one lecturer specifically said she couldn't tell 4 of us apart. We were all 20 year old white women around 5ft 4 ish with dyed blonde hair. To us we looked nothing alike. Isn't it called 'the other race effect' when you're more able to distinguish between people of your own race?

I thought it was well known that people of one race have more difficulty telling apart people of a different race. The cross-race effect. It's not specific to a white teacher and black students.
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It's not intentional or malicious. The white teacher will genuinely find it more difficult to tell their black students apart. Awareness of the issue could help mitigate it though.

This is interesting. I'm a supply teacher and as I do day-to-day I don't always learn all the children's names.

I have however noticed that I have struggled a few times with BAME children, especially black boys for some reason. I try to use a seating plan which helps but if they're not in their seats for example in P.E. or in the playground I have to really try. I think maybe I'm more worried about getting it wrong for the reasons you've stated op.

So if I get a white child's name wrong the kids tend to just brush it off but if there's only two black boys in the class and I mix them up it's like I'm not seeing them as individuals. Even though that's not the case.

@SpillTheTeaa

Well yes it would be nice if anyone was called by their name but I don't think this is a race thing personally. Look how many children teachers teach. Especially in secondary school. I'd struggle to remember any name.

My eldest daughter has been referred to my her youngest brother's name. Would not take it personally. Likewise I do not look like my sister but I was repeatedly called her first name in school. I think it is very unfair on top of the teacher bashing repeatedly to accuse them of racism because they called one girl by another's name.

I am white and i
was brought up in an exclusively white community . I work in am overwhelmingly white environment and last year I confused the only two black women who work there. I have spoken about it with them and they each said to me that they have trouble distinguishing white faces. I wondered if they were just being kind.
I would hate to offend .Does that make me racist? It's a genuine question as I really try to meet everyone I meet with kindness and respect .I dont believe I am but I have had to work to note their differences in a way that I dont have to with people who are white.