Context
We sometimes bar people from entering our library. I was looking over the descriptions of these patrons today and many of them included the following: black male; black hair; brown eyes.
Commentary
Why yes, I am going to talk about racism today but perhaps not in the fashion you're expecting. As I read these descriptions today I was trying to figure out if it's redundant to say "black male" and "black hair and brown eyes," given that these characteristics are true of the vast majority of black males. Not all, of course, but many. On the other hand, when you're giving a description of someone it's a bad idea to make any assumptions.
Which brings me to something we frequently talk about when discussing racism: the belief that all black people look alike to white people. This isn't strictly true of me, but it is true that I often have trouble distinguishing between people who have chocolate-colored skin and black hair.
I'm not being disingenuous. I don't know if it's because I'm white or I was raised wrong or I have weird cultural touchstones, but when I first meet people the first physical characteristics I look at are skin color, hair color, age, height and weight. And by "age, height and weight" I mean "relative to me." So I have found myself in the situation where I met two dark-skinned ladies with black hair who were taller, wider and older than me and was unable to distinguish them until I got to know them better. They also happened to be black. In my defense, as a person who teaches a lot of senior citizens, there are a number of light-skinned, grey-haired, older/shorter/thinner than me women I can't tell apart, either.
Certainly the situation becomes much less dire-looking if we remove the word "black" from the description of people we can't tell apart. In fact, is this a case where overgeneralization is running in the opposite direction? Is the problem that all black people look alike to me? Or is the problem that when two people with some similar characteristics look alike to me the assumption arises that I see all black people as being the same? Or worse, that all white people see all black people as being the same?
What did you see today?
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1 comment:
I've read that this is common - people of one ethnicity finding it harder to distinguish people of another. I had that problem at Stamps when I was teaching there, and students from the black community mixed me up with another, about the same size, teacher with dark hair. They also confused two young "white" girls.
I'm sure it was harder for me to tell "black" students apart, also.
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