To think it's wrong to say all people from a certain race look the same?

[pregahes]

Someone said this to me recently, AIBU or are they?

It's lazy thinking and bordering on racism.

Stereotyping an entire race by claiming they all look the same is not just ignorant but harmful in my opinion.

It's not bordering on racism, it is racism.

I think the reason is because you're less used to seeing them. Where I live is 96% white. I started a new job five months ago and the team is probably 90% Indian. It took me a lot longer to start telling people apart and remembering their names because I'm less used to seeing Indian faces or hearing their names, on a daily basis. Now that I know everyone better I can see that they all look and sound completely different! It would be rude to say they all look the same, but it's not racist unless you treat them differently based on that.

It is racist to say they all look the same but there are common facial features between people. This has caused a huge problem with facial recognition software as it was programmed to see white faces and therefore didn't recognise African American facial features to differentiate between people and provided 'matches' that weren't.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/police-facial-recognition-technology-cant-tell-black-people-apart/

I was about to type exactly this.

I mean factually, people of certain races do share features that make them look more similar than Caucasians. For example, Japanese/Chinese/Koreans all have thick dark hair (unless they dye it), brown eyes (unless they wear contacts), similar skin tones and often similar builds. Whereas Caucasians can naturally differ in eye colour, hair colour etc. I have a Korean friend who came to the uk as a teenager and said the first thing they noticed was how different everyone looked from each other over here!

Massive oversimplification. The world is far more diverse than you are giving it credit for

But there is a reality where certain cultures rarely marry outside of their own culture/race, so the visible diversity of features is significantly reduced vs visible diversity here in the western world. We have to remember that we live in a society where mixed race coupling is normal compared to countries all over Asia and Africa.

That's just reality.

It's racist to say. There is science behind humans inability to distinguish people from different races. Interesting article https://amp.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2011/aug/15/people-other-races-look-alike

it doesn't mean people from certain countries look alike though!

Yes it’s racist, it’s not racist to comment that people have commonly shared features which are quite similar, but unless you’re an anthropologist or something I can’t see much reason you’d have in day to day life to start discussing racial features.

It's racist to say 'they all look the same' because of course objectively they don't. But I don't think it's racist to say 'they look the same to me' or 'I can't tell the difference' (although it's not something I would ever voice personally as it's pretty rude and dismissive) as it is a known scientific fact that all races find it hard to identify and differentiate between people of races who are not their own, especially if they don't mix with those races or see them in their daily lives.

On holiday in Egypt my dh and I were asked by a local if we were siblings as we look so alike. We look nothing like each other.

What were they saying exactly? Race is mainly based on physical attributes and it's well known that people find it easier to recognise the differences between people from their own race which conversely makes people from other races more difficult to distinguish between.

So to this person everyone black or Asian may look very similar, but if they were black or Asian they would feel differently.

All that said if they just came out with something like 'all black people look the same' I couldn't really imagine anyone actually saying that sort of statement in any positive way so I wouldn't be surprised if they held negative/racist views about that race.

I have heard the same said about white people.

I wonder how many white people would feel shocked, indignant, confused or upset to hear other nationalities find white faces equally difficult to distinguish if they are not regularly exposed to them.

@acatcalledjohn that’s not the same as ‘all looking the same’ though.

There’s a difference between labelling a race as ‘all looking the same’ and struggling to differentiate between people. I live in a 99% white area, I don’t have much exposure to people from different races but when I do I would generally say that I find it ok to tell people apart. Occasionally maybe I might because of similar shared features and my lack of experience, but that is my problem and responsibility to solve by learning .

Presenting it as a “them problem” rather than a “you problem” is the issue - it’s harder to distinguish between multiple people of one race if you hardly know anyone else of that race, but that’s not “because they all look the same”, it’s “because you’re not very good at spotting the differences due to inexperience”.

@Talipesmum absolutely - that is a much more eloquent way of putting the point I was trying to make!

Wow. I live in Cornwall, an overwhelming white area, and I cannot relate to this at all. I worked at a Chinese and could immediately tell the Chinese chefs apart because, shockingly, they are different people.

It IS racism ! No doubt about it btw ! Can't believe people still think this way.

It's a fact that people in general find it easier to differentiate between people of their own race. However that doesn't mean that people of any other races 'all look the same' so to say so is completely ignoring their own racial bias, and yes, completely racist

I work at a university and struggle to distinguish between the Caucasian girls with long blonde hair or the lads with trendy mullets and skate clothes.

Not contributing anything to the discussion other than to say yes, it’s racist to make that generalization but I do struggle to distinguish between people with similar characteristics when there a lot of them.

I am very scared to admit this in real life, but when I watch Korean things I do struggle to remember who is who. I'm probably a massive unwitting racist but those are the facts. I don't like feeling like this.

Unless you actually look properly at someone then you tend to pick up on superficial details which may tend to give marked similarities between people of the same race. I suspect its one of the reason eye witness reports are so poor.

My understanding is that people learn what differences to look for as they grow up based on those around them. So Caucasian people may look for hair/eye colour whereas that isn't much help for people of African origin. So when the instinctive markers are the same it makes people harder to distinguish. You kind of have to consciously learn what to look for.

@TeenDivided completely agree.

But the issue is that rather than look at themselves as with the issue due to their exposure, or lack thereof, of other races.

Instead they say it's because the race 'all looks the same' . I think this is what makes it racist, not the admission they find it difficult to tell certain races apart,

Whilst I think it's a clumsy thing to say, there is definitely a difference in how easily we are able to tell people apart based on distingushing features we are more familiar with.
A very good friend of mine is from the Caribbean and she came over to England on a scholarship and she said to me that she thinks all white people look the same, especially all blondes for example. Not racist, just a lack of exposure to the nuances of Caucasian faces 🤷

People of African origin? Africa is made up of 54 different countries. Why wouldn’t it be much help from those of African origin?