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.

Not racism. Myself and DH were in a multicultural city and visited a bar. Got talking to the staff. They actually asked us to guess where they were from. We got it right, Brazil, Russia, Germany. It was very obvious.

That's a fairly Eurocentric view. Caucasians can look similar to other races who are not used to seeing them - it can be hard to differentiate between the features you have identified (hair/eye colour etc) - they are visibly different to YOU.

The problem is not "African Americans all look so similar" its badly written software, badly trained models, bad testing, bad specification by a default west coast white frat boy mind set.

Its entirely possibly build models which accurately depict both sexes and all races - it just requires that to be in the design and requirements instead of sloppily assuming that the default human is white and male.

Best post on the thread and 101% factual

Thank you.

Yes, you can't say things like that, but my Japanese colleague said that she can't tell the difference between all the old white men we work with and everyone thought it was very funny. So how racist it is seems to depend on who's saying it and about who.

That Warbutons ad makes me laugh

I began working with a group of children of Pakistani heritage.

I did struggle initially to work out who was who and wondered why?

For me, these children all had dark hair, straight hair, dark eyes and skin.
Their names were also very similar and initially unfamiliar to me. Lots of Habiba, Hariba, Ariba, Amira, Samir, Safir. I admit I was confused at first and found it hard to find distinguishing features and match to a name.

In my other groups of children, white skin, but red/brown/ black/blonde hair, curly/straight hair, green/ brown/ blue eyes and with names that I was already familiar with. Easier to sort out, given the distinguishing features.

Of course once I got to know all children individually none of it was a struggle.

It's commonly said about white people in some parts of the word but one can assume that it's not considered 'racist' there!

Yes. That it. Just yes.

I really struggle with this. I cannot tell the difference between the black men in my workplace. This means I sometimes address person A thinking it’s person B. I find it easier to tell the women apart as they have different hairstyle and clothing. I don’t think of myself as racist, I just genuinely find it difficult to distinguish.

When I started watching Korean dramas, at first I used to find it hard to tell some of the characters of the same age and sex apart. After a while I began to see the differences really easily and it was so obvious. I think it is because we are used to looking at certain characteristics to tell people apart and for different races you would look at different things.

If you're not exposed to types of faces before a certain age, you do lose some ability to distinguish individual characteristics. Definitely a scientific study, more than one, done on this. One where they showed babies several different monkeys and the babies were able to distinguish between them where adults couldn't. Then they stopped showing them to the babies and they didn't retain the ability. So it was just a window of time and if exposure wasn't kept up, they lost the ability to distinguish between them. Makes evolutionary sense that we'd need to tell who was who within our own locality but not so much with people outside it.

It works both ways tbh. The Australian netball at one point all had long blonde hair in ponytails and they were tanned and tall and slim. It couldn't tell most of them apart on tv.

This

my dc’s primary school was 70% black. Mainly Caribbean, Nigerian and Ghanaian.

i know they don’t all look the same, but I realised my cues for recognising people are hair colour, skin tone and eye colour.

once I got my “eye in” and started consciously looking at facial features rather than hair colour etc it became easier to recognise individuals. Then it became obvious that each person looks very different.

asian people I don’t have a problem with for some reason. They are as easily recognised as white people.

i have known non- white people who struggle to tell us apart, so I do think it is as simple as recognising different features within races.

White people to me seem to have a lot more variation of features

That’s your cultural bias though. To other cultures, white people look much of a muchness. Case in point:

Oh god yes, dd was in a dance team for years and I really struggled picking her out. When they all had the same hairstyle and same clothes, they just looked like blonde ponytails to me.

I actually find many American dramas a struggle recently, especially the teen/young adult ones.

attractive white American bloke in his 20’s, with dark hair and brown eyes. 3 of them. Can’t tell who’s who. Same for tall thin white blonde girls.

can’t remember what it was but I remember nearly giving up on one drama as I really couldn’t figure out which character was which for several episodes.

Apples and pears. Your colleague is saying she has difficulties distinguishing between white men, not that all white men look the same.

One is lazy racism, the other is acknowledging a personal difficulty adjusting to looking at different recognition points.

There is a lot of research that shows it is harder for people to distinguish between people of races different to their own. It is due to seeing lots of examples of your race as a child. You know who is uncle, grandad or dad. You see lots of examples of your own race.

There was a case in America years ago where a man, who was black, raped a white woman. The woman studied the man’s face during the attack and the police made a quick arrest. The man protested his innocence but the woman confirmed it was him. The jury convicted him and he was sent to prison. The jury and all police involved were white.
Many years later the convicted man met another man in prison. The two of them looked very similar. Through conversation the first man established that this new man was indeed the rapist.
The first man was set free and the case resulted in changes to the rules regarding police and race (I know). They now try to have someone from the same ethnic group questioning someone and looking through evidence.

Omg. Who said that to you and in what fucking context? A Tommy Robinson rally?
Did you tell them they can't say stuff like that, else risk causing affray and getting a slap? It's illegal to use racist language and if someone of the race of which they spoke was present it could easily be a police matter.
I'd be absolutely horrified if someone said that in front of me. And I'd tell them so.

Here we go.
This has a lot about the research and the case I mentioned.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p08pp710?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

In a random group of Europeans, you're more likely to have a variety of hair colours which is probably the easiest thing to make a note of to distinguish on first sight.

If everyone has the same hair colour and style (much more of a thing with men than women to be fair) then you're looking at more subtle differences that require more time to take in and attach to names.

My daughter has a friend at a sports club who has the same colour hair, worn in the same style (plait), length is slightly different and they're a subtly different height and build. The coaches still occasionally get them confused, and I (and the other mum) have to look more than once to identify them if they're on the far side of the hall. They don't look "the same" but they definitely do look superficially similar enough that you wouldn't instantly tell them apart, especially if they aren't next to each other for a direct comparison (pale blue eyed redheads for what it's worth).

It depends what you are most used to seeing. I grew up in a 100% white village. I now live in a large city. My kids have Chinese, Korean, Indian and Pakistani kids in their classes.
I find it difficult to distinguish between eg Indian and Pakastani kids and Taiwanese and Chinese. I remember when their class photos were published in primary school, I could never name who was who. I’d never say it though!
I find it difficult to distinguish the Spanish and Italian kids too and groups of white kids who all have, for example, medium length brown hair and dress similarly.
Maybe I find it difficult to recognise faces in general. I look for hair colour and hair length mainly.
I worked with an African woman for three years. She frequently changed her hairstyle from short to long but I didn’t have a problem recognising her in the work environment. Sometime after I left that job, I bumped into her on the street and didn’t recognise her at all with a new hairstyle that I didn’t associate with her. I was embarrassed at the time. Later I thought that I had put my memory of her behind me when I left the company as had never intended to stay in touch and maybe that was why I didn’t recognise her. The mind is a strange thing.

Similar story involving Alice Sebold, author of the book “The Lovely Bones”.

https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/27/anthony-broadwater-falsely-convicted-lawsuit-settled-alice-sebold

Man spent 16 years in prison because he refused to say he was guilty of it. Whole case was mishandled from the beginning.

It only came to light because an executive producer from Netflix read the book (if I recall correctly) and hired a private investigator because things weren’t adding up.