fickle | You All Look Alike! : International Blog Against Racism

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You All Look Alike! : International Blog Against Racism

So, shameful confession time.

I can't tell the difference between Chinese, South Korean, North Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese just by looking at people. I know the difference if I'm looking at a map, obviously, but people? No.

Likewise, I don't really expect white people to be able to tell the difference between Bengali, Indian, and Sri Lankan people. Not unless they've spent a significant amount of time in one of those countries.

See, I have a friend from Bangladesh who was insulted when someone mistook her for being from India. I get asked if I'm from India all the time, and I usually just laugh and say "No, Sri Lanka" because hey, at least they were on the right continent and that's something. But when I think about it, I wonder if maybe I should take it a little more seriously because the sentence "Oh, but they all look alike" sounds so ignorant to me.

At the same time, though, I think the idea of thinking everyone of a particular ethnicity looks alike is more insulting if you're failing to distinguish between individuals as opposed to knowing what country they come from. Consider the two scenarios:

Person A: Hi, Chamithri!
Person B: ...I'm not Chamithri. I'm Dilkushi.
Person A: Oh, sorry. It's just that you all look alike to me.

versus

Person A: Hi! Listen, I was wondering, I was thinking about going to India for the summer and do you know any good places to visit?
Person B: No, sorry, never been there.
Person A: But aren't you Indian?
Person B: No, I'm from Pakistan.
Person A: Oh, I'm sorry. Everyone from thereabouts just looks alike to me.

To me, the second one is a lot less offensive because the differences are subtle enough that I wouldn't expect them to be able to judge people's origins by their faces or skin color. The first one, however, is just plain rude because it means that not only are you not paying attention to the people you meet but you're also trying to brush it off by lumping everyone into a big mass of brown or black or yellow or whatever color.

If anyone ever said "All white people look the same to me", they'd be considered an idiot. If they said that they can't tell the difference between people from France, Germany and Italy based on appearance, it would probably be allowed to slide.

Moral of the post? Appearances can be deceptive, and of everyone on my flist, I know the ethnicities of only very few of you. If you want me to try to guess yours, leave me a comment daring me to guess, and I'll have a try. No getting offended if I get it wrong! XD

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Hmm, alright. This sounds fun ^^ Care to guess my ethnicity? I think you may know but let's just see XD

I find this post very interesting, I do. *nods*

LOL You know mine - and my relatives, too xD If you didn't, I was going to ask if you would guess the relatives, but too late for me XD Interesting thing to try, good luck :)

Oh f, I can't tell the difference between Chinese, Korean, and Japanese people. And I frigging am Chinese. Same with white people. There's a difference? Yes, doesn't matter where you're from, I can't tell the difference between the countries. I can barely tell the difference between people on an individual basis, but that's because I have an awful memory for faces.

But that might just be because I really, really try not to be able to make a difference. When people ask me what race I am, the thought running through my mind goes along the lines of, 'Why do you give a shit?' What difference does it make? I've always said that, no matter how ashamed I am of this country (and oh yes, there is lots of shame nowadays), I consider myself American. Who happens to be Chinese. But I consider myself American. And I honestly, honestly prefer people just not to ask because unless it's going to make a difference, I really don't see why it should matter.

^^

I think, maybe if you work with two people of of different ethnic descent that are from the same continent, or same area of the continent, you should attempt to learn the differences and be able to tell them apart. If they're your friends more so.

But real honest? People just look alike. Period. They really, really do. I was asked when I was younger if I was CHINESE. Not even CLOSE. Nothing against Asians, granted. I think they're gorgeous, but they do have similar features to Native Americans, which is where the mixup stemmed from, as I DO have Native American blood in me. Apparently a few people at my school thought I was French, also. x___X No idea where that one came from. My female boss thought me and my mother were Canadian just because of how we pronounce salmon. Some people think my father has Italian blood in him, and my boss from work actually thought my VERY WHITE LOOKING mother was MEXICAN. Because, well...there ARE people from the middle of Mexico that look like the winter Texans that come down here from CANADA, MINNESOTA, MICHIGAN, WISCONSIN and so forth. All the way down to blond hair and blue eyes.

Hispanics (heck, this goes for Americans as well) look like a lot like everything. They can look Asian, Native, like they're from some exotic island, and even African American. With all of the mixing going on, the distinctive differences are softening, and in some cases, they didn't fully exist to begin with.

Personally, I don't think someone that can't tell the difference is an idiot or ignorant. I think people shouldn't even assume and just ASK.

Also, I won't be so cruel as to even ask you to guess with me. ANYONE would fail, unless you recall everything I've told you.

So....

Irish, Dutch, Native American (this includes tribes from the Northern part (one of my ancestors from my maternal side was on the Trail of Tears, in fact), and Central American part), Spaniard. There is suspected British roots, but I've not been able to trace it back or figure it out, really. And that possibility of Italian roots on my dad's side.

I.E. Fuck it all. Just call me American. ;D I was born here, raised here, I am FROM here, everything else SHOULD not matter.

All white people can look alike to me, in certain groupings. For the longest time I was getting Meryl Streep and and another actress whose name and face escapes me right now, all confused.

And Cameron Diaz and Gwyneth Paltrow kind of merge together.

And in highschool all the white girls in leather jackets with long curly hair and preppy clothes just all -blurred-

I do not get black, brown, red or golden people confused, however. Maybe it's because I grew up learning how to identify differences in those features and in general white people were lumped together as tourist and then I came to America and there weren't just isolated groups anymore.

-Witchwillow (refusing to use her journal to post comments)

I don't understand why people would be so offended by someone not recognizing their ethnicity. I mean, I wouldn't expect everyone to be able to know that I am part Lithuanian just by looking at me, even though anyone who is familiar with Lithuanian features would know immediately. The only people outside of my immediate family from whom I would expect that would be a former classmate's family, but that's because they're also Lithuanian. And if anyone looked at my extended family (not physically, but in terms of attitudes and values), I wouldn't expect them to know that we're Irish. And I wouldn't expect anyone to know that I'm technically (regarding blood and lineage) primarily Scottish unless I'd told them explicitly.

It might just come down to that I'm a Euro-mutt no matter what way you look at it, so that it doesn't really matter to me outside of an ability to try and find some sort of appreciation for the past. Sure, my family loves to bitch about the British, but I honestly think that it's just them clinging to some aspect of kinship that they never personally experienced, so they need to keep it living on, in a way. But for me? We're all just people, regardless of where we came from; our backgrounds just help us find our way to where we presently are.

In France, the Korean students were very upset that everywhere they went, people kept thinking they were Chinese just because they are Asian. And I know lots of Chinese who would be upset if anyone thought they were Japanese. In the first situation, it's being proud of their ethnicity and upset that people don't give it as much general notice as other cultures. Personally, I don't like how Chinese is the default Asian culture. In the second situation, it's lingering animosity from WWII. For both situations, I think the reason why people cared about misjudging their ethnicity is because people judge people they see based on these physical cues. Race's relation to racism, I think, is that people take these racial markers and relate that person to generalities and the history of a certain race. I think it's this (mis)association that people react against.

While general education would help, it would be nice in some regards to separate people from their ethnicities, because I don't think ethnicity equals culture, which does play a strong influence on a person's character development. As others have mentioned above, just being Chinese doesn't mean one feels very well in-tune with Chinese culture. And there are ethnic Canadian who grew up in Japan who feel more in touch with Japanese culture than Canadian culture. Ethnicity is easier to pick on because it's something physical unlike someone's cultural background.

Going back to you very first point, I can sort of tell Chinese, Japanese, and Korean apart; I look for subtleties in eye shape, nose shape, and bone structure, but even then, it's largely a guess, because really, none of us, be it South Korean, Quebecois, Sri Lankan, or Rhwandian. I think 1994 Rwanda showed us just how little the difference based on these physical structures is, but how big of a deal we could make it.

As for your question, feel free to guess, but I'm pretty sure you know it. :)

I is terrible with faces. :( Of all races.

Guess for me?

Strangely, my only talent when telling people of different ethnicities apart are telling the major European groups apart. I can tell a Spaniard from a Frenchman from a German-- but don't ask me to tell a Brit from a German. I blame it on lots of exposure to French people in highschool.

Granted, it only works on natives, so it might be mostly cultural cues that I'm picking up on, but I can think of at least three visual cues for a French person off the top of my head and how to differentiate them from the Spanish.

Wow, missed out on this one. XD

Person A: Oh, I'm sorry. Everyone from thereabouts just looks alike to me.

I sort of feel that people can just apologize without going "everyone there looks alike to me," because... it is a problematic statement to me. I say this as I admit that even though I'm Chinese, I generally can't tell Asians apart without other signifiers (hair and clothing tend to give it away for me).

I used to think it was no big deal until I started reading more Asian-American history, because then, I learned that non-Japanese Asians would walk around with "I'm not Japanese" buttons during WWII so as to not get harassed on the streets or worse, be mistakenly interned. Ditto with Asians insisting that they weren't Korean during the Korean War or Vietnamese during the Vietnamese War. And of course, it's not just past history -- Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American, was bludgeoned to death in Detroit in the 1980s because he was mistaken for being Japanese (the American car industry was feeling economic pressure from the Japanese car industry). And a lot of Asian stores were looted and burnt down (particularly Cambodian-American stores) during the LA race riots because people weren't distinguishing between other Asians and Koreans. And Sikhs are being harassed and murdered because they're being mistaken for Arab terrorists.

So that made me look at "But you all look alike!" in a different way... because in a non-racist society, yeah, I don't care at all if I'm mistaken for another ethnicity because people make mistakes. But after I found out about the history behind it, it makes me a little sick because it can so quickly slip from "Oh, I can't tell the difference" to hate crimes against all Asians.

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