This is not Rain, people

by guest contributor Angry Asian Man, originally published at Angry Asian Man

As we all know, Rain made his Hollywood debut in the live-action big-screen adaptation of Speed Racer, which opened over the weekend. The high profile role, along with his recent heralded dance battle on The Colbert Report, has set the stage for his career crossover into the United States. Unfortunately, for some people—including one of America’s mostly widely-read celebrity magazines—he’s just another random Asian face…

In the latest issue of People, they’ve got a brief interview and profile of Rain, talking about his role in Speed Racer. Too bad the guy in the accompanying photo is not Rain. Not even close. That’s actually Karl Yune (brother of Rick), who also has a small role in the movie… but is clearly not the South Korean supermega pop star in question. Ouch. You gotta love it: Rain, is that really you?

Colossal mistake. Alas, it seems that all Asians do look alike. Or at least, some editorial staffer at People thinks they do. That’s racist! This is what happens when there aren’t a lot of Asians in media/entertainment—when you actually get one, nobody knows how to handle it. Let’s face it, this was probably way less likely to happen with a white celebrity. I expect Rain’s publicity people are going nuts over this, and not in a good way.

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Comments

Ali wrote:

I can’t believe this! This shit is absolutely less likely to happen to a white celebrity. Gossip rags are known for misidentifying pics of black people all the time. I guess if you aren’t white the staff at People (and so many others) don’t feel you’re worthy of being properly identified in a phucking photo!

In other news, Rain is thinking about dating in the US! Where do I sign up?

Posted 13 May 2008 at 8:47 am ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:

What black blog tracks when magazines misidentify black celebrities? Is it Bossip? Nice to see that Asians are part of the party too. Welcome y’all!

@ Ali – say what? I gotta go make some phone calls…

Posted 13 May 2008 at 8:53 am ¶
bug_girl wrote:

Cripes.
Wasn’t there a thing on CNN a while back where they had mixed up several black US congressmen?

Sigh.

Posted 13 May 2008 at 9:32 am ¶
The Cruel Secretary wrote:

*headdesk*

@ Ali and Latoya–y’all can keep Rain. Is Karl or Rick Yune thinking about dating in the US?

Posted 13 May 2008 at 10:23 am ¶
Daomadan wrote:

Ooo, Rain dating in the US? Sign me up!

That magazine on the other hand….just needs to stop production. What good is People for besides wasting the 5-10 minutes before I go in to get my hair cut?

Posted 13 May 2008 at 10:58 am ¶
sylvie wrote:

sometimes i can’t tell white people apart. like if i were to lose a white friend inside an REI store or a Volkswagen dealership, i’d be screwed.

i totally kid.

i first saw this rain/yune mix-up on justjared.com. you should see the comments! people who are defending the mag say “oh, i have an asian friend/relative/coworker/mailman who says its even hard for asians to tell each other apart.” some dude even went into “oh, it’s because asia is isolationist so there’s less variation in their facial features.” bollocks. y’all are just lazy when it comes to people of color.

http://justjared.buzznet.com/2008/05/12/people-magazine-rain-karl-yune/

Posted 13 May 2008 at 11:18 am ¶
The Cruel Secretary wrote:

OK, Latoya, Ali, and Daomadan–perhaps we’re looking at Rain and the Brothers Yune wrong. Instead of our wanting them for our individual selves, we must consider them the way “Sex and the City’s” Samantha viewed one of Charlotte’s lovers, nicknamed Mr. P***y: these men need to spread their fine-ness to some women (and a few guys) all over the world…

…Sendhil Ramamurthy, on the other hand: I think Persia and I got a lock on him.:-D

Posted 13 May 2008 at 11:24 am ¶
Ali wrote:

@ Latoya – The blog Undercover Black Man has a fun post called Misidentified Black Person of the Week. Unfortunately it’s not updated on a weekly basis (which I’m certain isn’t for lack of material). They have a great entry about Fred Wesley being misidentified as AL SHARPTON in Rolling Stone (of all places). How do you even make that mistake! Reuters has been known to eff up in this arena as well.

Call whomever you can girl, I’m tryin to get on that list!

http://undercoverblackman.blogspot.com/2007/02/misidentified-black-person-of-week.html

Posted 13 May 2008 at 11:27 am ¶
Daomadan wrote:

Ah, good point Cruel Secretary. And as long as I get Naveen Andrews and Gackt all to myself.

Posted 13 May 2008 at 11:29 am ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:

Haha –

Yes, TCS, I think we can agree on that one. We can share Rain and then let him free. Daomadan, you can keep Gackt. He reminds me too much of an anime character. The farthest I venture into that realm is MatsuJun.
(Jun Matsumoto)

Posted 13 May 2008 at 11:33 am ¶
Daomadan wrote:

Ah, MatsuJun. Now I’m also thinking Hyde and Kimutaku (Kimura Takuya).

Posted 13 May 2008 at 11:37 am ¶
Ali wrote:

Good point indeed Cruel Secretary! But I refuse to share Andre Royo and Sung Kang! Refuse I say! I’m keeping my two favorite celeb crushes all to myself!

I can’t wait until the first Korean celebrity is misidentified as a black celebrity (or vice versa). That will be the ultimate mashup!

Posted 13 May 2008 at 11:43 am ¶
Daomadan wrote:

Lee Jun Ki would actually edge out Rain for my favorite Korean celeb…so you can have Rain girls (and boys!)

Did anyone see the dance off between Rain and Stephen Colbert? Wasn’t that posted here awhile ago?

Posted 13 May 2008 at 11:55 am ¶
The Cruel Secretary wrote:

@ Ali–”I can’t wait until the first Korean celebrity is misidentified as a black celebrity (or vice versa). That will be the ultimate mashup!”

And you know where that’ll appear? “Us” or “OK!” SMH

Posted 13 May 2008 at 12:01 pm ¶
Carmen Van Kerckhove wrote:

Step off, Ali! Sung Kang is mine. He is my (up until now secret) no. 2 celebrity crush, after Mr. Reeves.

Posted 13 May 2008 at 12:07 pm ¶
Ali wrote:

@TCS – So sad and so true. Either one of those two, or possibly the New York Times. They’ve really been slipping lately so you never know…

Posted 13 May 2008 at 12:10 pm ¶
Ali wrote:

@Carmen Van Kerckhove – I can’t believe I’ve outed your secret celebrity crush! Don’t even tell me a fight to the death over Sung Kang is brewing here in the comments section, because it is so on! He, like me, originally hails from the great state of Georgia and I do love the Southern boys (no redneck).

Posted 13 May 2008 at 12:19 pm ¶
*M* wrote:

Its not that serious or a race thing. A website mixed up Jamie-lynn Sigler current husband for her ex-husband. http://perezhilton.com/2008-01-28-ooops
It happens.

Posted 13 May 2008 at 12:37 pm ¶
Erica B. wrote:

Damn… I pay little attention to popular culture and even I recognize that isn’t Rain in the picture. You’d think a magazine that specializes in celebrities would have a clue.

It’s not that hard to tell most people apart. Black or Asian people look “alike” about as often as white people do. I think the hardest time I had distinguishing three people from each other was at a job in Boston — they were all Irish-American, same height, same features, same accent. Luckily two were named Mike and one was named Mark, so I was pretty safe. (Although it was rather embarrassing when I asked Mike the VP for a part report I was supposed to be getting from Mark the Engineer…)

Posted 13 May 2008 at 12:54 pm ¶
Persia wrote:

sometimes i can’t tell white people apart. like if i were to lose a white friend inside an REI store or a Volkswagen dealership, i’d be screwed.

Laugh all you want, but I’m white and I’m horrible at telling white actors apart– usually I can do it best by voice. I liked the Robert DeNiro Ronin but I had trouble telling a few of the side characters apart. But it’s a celebrity magazine’s job to tell these people apart!

TCS, yes, Sendhil is ours. I think I get T.M. Revolution on the nights I don’t have Sendhil.

Posted 13 May 2008 at 1:19 pm ¶
The Cruel Secretary wrote:

@ Carmen and Ali–if you two are gonna fight, then Sung Kang needs the Mr. P***y treatment. Peeps fighting over the man just isn’t worth it…

::looks out and winks @ Persia::

Sendhil is *still* ours, friend.:-D

Posted 13 May 2008 at 1:22 pm ¶
lowercase tasha wrote:

@ M

Oh, you scared me there for a second. For a moment, I thought you were talking about Jamie-Lynn Spears, not Jamie-Lynn Sigler. I was like, “Oh no, that poor girl, pregnant at 16 and a divorcee?”

For real though? Rain is in “Speed Racer?” I was gonna check it out for Christina Ricci, but I’ll be looking for him too. I have to add that to the list of films I need to see. I still haven’t gotten around to the Harold and Kumar sequel.

You know what I did see last weekend, and everyone should check for it. David Mamet’s “Red Belt” with Chiwetel Ejiofor as a principled Jujitsu instructor who gets caught up in the mixed martial arts fighting world.

Posted 13 May 2008 at 1:32 pm ¶
Ali wrote:

@TCS – I can go for that. But I call exclusive access to Will Yun Lee on SK’s off days!

Posted 13 May 2008 at 1:47 pm ¶
Anonymous wrote:

Totally flabbergasted. Just. No.

Posted 13 May 2008 at 2:01 pm ¶
RainaWeather wrote:

not even close. I just saw Speed Racer. It was awesome, as was Rain.

I absolutely agree with the writer of this article. Visibility has a huge part to play in this. When I was younger I could not tell one Asian person from another. Not because I didn’t think Asians mattered, because there were none in my school or in my area of town. That all changed once I got to middle school because there was a large Vietnamese population. So my being able to differentiate between Asian people was directly related to actually seeing Asians in real life.

Posted 13 May 2008 at 2:02 pm ¶
DivergentDana wrote:

But who does it happen more often to, *M* that’s the question. For instance, if one out of every 9 times it happens to whites and one out of every 3 times it happens to Asians, it may mean that it’s about race. For instance, there are men who get sexually harassed, but that doesn’t make sexual harassment by and large, not about gender or sexism. Yo, dibs on Se7en! I just saw my first episode of Heroes last night… I involuntarily sighed when SR came on screen, I swear.

Posted 13 May 2008 at 2:03 pm ¶
Orientalista wrote:

Did no one at that magazine read the copy? There’s no way that man in the picture is anywhere near 26.

Posted 13 May 2008 at 2:21 pm ¶
Carmen Van Kerckhove wrote:

@Ali Damn you have good taste!

Will Yun Lee was smokin’ in that show “Thief.” Did you ever catch that? Too bad it got canceled. It has some really compelling race stuff in it.

Posted 13 May 2008 at 2:22 pm ¶
Daomadan wrote:

Will Yun Lee was smokin’ hot in Elektra…probably the only redeeming thing about that movie.

Posted 13 May 2008 at 2:35 pm ¶
Ali wrote:

@Carmen Van Kerckhove – Great minds think alike! I first saw Will Yun Lee in an awesome film called What’s Cooking (I watch it everything Thanksgiving, lots of good race/culture/sexuality/generational gap stuff). I will have to check out “Thief.” I’m a fan of anything that includes WYL, especially if he’s looking smokin’!

@Daomadan – I so can’t believe you just mentioned Elektra! He is the ONLY reason I subjected myself to that.

@Orientalista – To me that’s the most hilarious thing about the whole mistake. Even if that were Rain he’d have to be like the oldest 26 year old ever! Nothing about that man in that photo says “popstar nearing the apex of his career.”

Posted 13 May 2008 at 2:51 pm ¶
Cara wrote:

maybe we covered this already but….isn’t that Karl Yune?!….seriously, he and his brother (Rick Yune) are two of the hottest men alive!!! How could you mix that up……LOL

Posted 13 May 2008 at 3:23 pm ¶
vodalus wrote:

seriously? no one wants old man Andy Lau?! well, I’ve got dibs in that case!

Posted 13 May 2008 at 3:31 pm ¶
Daomadan wrote:

vodalus: Andy Lau is definitely on my list! Also Jet Li. We just hadn’t moved from Korea to talking about actors from China.

Posted 13 May 2008 at 3:56 pm ¶
*M* wrote:

DivergentDana are you seriously trying to compare a picture mix up to sexual harassment? Yes beacuse they both cause so much pain an suffering. magazines/newspapers are not perfect, the print retractions and mistakes all the time. It really is not that serious, this is not going to stop anyone from learning and growing. focus on important things, like sexual harassment.

Mod Note – *M*, this is a warning. There are well documented patterns of mistaking minorities for one another, even when they look nothing alike. While mistakes tend to happen to white celebrities, it is not as frequent nor as consistent as incidents involving non-white celebrities. Also, please go and revisit our comment policy. Phrases like “it’s not that serious” and “focus on important things” don’t really fly around here. The next comments you post in this vein will be deleted. – LDP

Posted 13 May 2008 at 5:27 pm ¶
DivergentDana wrote:

“DivergentDana are you seriously trying to compare a picture mix up to sexual harassment?”

I was attempting to explain the fact that varying correlations can also occur due to a causative factor to you and reveal the folly of your “it happens to white people too…. sometimes” argument… but evidently, you’ve taken the broken pieces of said argument and decided to build a wee strawman. Your resourcefulness and knee-jerk indignation intrigue me. I can’t help but see sexual harassment as an important issue — it screwed up my youth quite a bit — but I also realize that it’s a highly gendered issue, and guess what? I can walk and chew gum at the same time…. I hope someone never tells you that you should stop being concerned about sexual harassment and focus on something important like world hunger, because you aren’t the only one who has that move in their playbook… then again, perhaps if someone does break it out on you, you’ll finally discover how condescending it is.

Okay, here’s another one…. this is just pretend, and I’ll stay within the realm of media. Say, 9 out of 10 fashion editorials that feature black models include jungle motifs (ex. animal prints, exotic plants, cages and the like), but 1 out of 10 fashion editorials that feature white models do. Does that 1/10 for white models negate the much greater propensity for black models to be featured in the aforementioned manner and totally exclude race as a causative factor? What say you?

Posted 13 May 2008 at 6:36 pm ¶
Joanne wrote:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Rain make People’s “Most Beautiful People” list just last year? So they should know who he is.

So disappointing.

Posted 13 May 2008 at 6:39 pm ¶
Medusagemini wrote:

Are we all claiming cute Azns? Rain, Gackt and Se7en are all taken…Is Daniel Henney still available? If not, he’s totally mine.

Seriously though, I hope they do more than just print a correction, who reads those anyway? They should give him a story to make up for it, just cut out the next story about Shiloh. I swear there was a 4 page story about the baby who can’t even talk yet.

Posted 13 May 2008 at 7:58 pm ¶
Kaonashi wrote:

Ugh. This is why you keep your fact checkers when you cut your magazine staff.

I can’t believe that no one put Tony Leung and Tadanobu Asano (aka my pretend Baby Daddy) on their yum yum list! Gackt is yummy but so strange; he’s THAT boyfriend (you don’t spend the night at his house EVER and if he’s over your house you sleep with one eye open and let all your friends know he’s there because you don’t totally trust him, lol).

I’d also like to go clothes shopping and generally hang out with Miyavi; he looks like he would be a blast to hang out with!

Posted 13 May 2008 at 8:28 pm ¶
lunanoire wrote:

I didn’t realize that Kevin Spacey and Russell Crowe were both in L.A. Confidential playing 2 different people, so I was confused when one character died in a scene and appeared alive and well in the next scene.

Posted 13 May 2008 at 8:41 pm ¶
lunanoire wrote:

Not that it’s the same as confusing 2 APIA celebs who get little exposure in US media

Posted 13 May 2008 at 8:46 pm ¶
JDsg wrote:

@ sylvie (#6): Well, truth be told, there is some merit to their argument (“oh, i have an asian friend/relative/coworker/mailman who says its even hard for asians to tell each other apart.”), although what Asians (and the rest of us) have more problems with is not in distinguishing between individuals but between different nationalities. One of the first questions I was asked in Korea was if I could tell the difference between Koreans and either Chinese or Japanese. And while I can do that a little better now (after living in Asia for six+ years), I still make mistakes. And I’ve also been known to confuse the names of some of my students; two Vietnamese boys in particular I used to mistake for each other because there’s also some truth to the latter comment (”some dude even went into ‘oh, it’s because asia is isolationist so there’s less variation in their facial features.’”). It’s not that Asia is “isolationist” (hardly), but some of the ethnic groups in Asia, especially NE Asia, do have a lot of similarity in facial features. People from South and SE Asia tend to be more varied in terms of facial features, which makes recognition easier.

Posted 14 May 2008 at 12:06 am ¶
InJM wrote:

Didn’t Reuters mix up the picture of Miss Japan and another woman?

As a side not, when I saw 40 comments, these were not the comments I was expecting

Posted 14 May 2008 at 2:00 am ¶
lm wrote:

“What black blog tracks when magazines misidentify black celebrities? Is it Bossip? Nice to see that Asians are part of the party too. Welcome y’all!”

Glad one of the cool kids said it first.

Also glad no one has yet tried to co-opt Robin Shou.

(There may, however be a fight in the Jet Li line.)

Posted 14 May 2008 at 2:39 am ¶
stella wrote:

Funny how they don’t make the same mistakes when it comes to white Australian and British actors. In any case I have first dibs on Yul Kwon.

Posted 14 May 2008 at 6:08 am ¶
stella wrote:

One last thing! Have you guys ever seen Shiny Ahuja???? That’s HOTNESSS.

Posted 14 May 2008 at 6:11 am ¶
Whitney wrote:

Is anyone here missing the fact that People is run, in fact, by People, and that people (and People) make mistakes? People get misidentified all of the time, and it is due to the fact that weekly magazines are on a tight deadline, and the editors are overworked. Magazine editors are not perfect and there are a lot of celebrities out there, in particular a lot of new ones, so don’t always jump to the “they’re racist” card. People (not the magazine) make honest mistakes. As an editor myself, I often see mistakes about everything in the media. While I do think that it is important to discuss how nonwhites are often seen as similar-looking and how this is a problem, I don’t think that confusing two actors is racist. I think it’s laziness.

That being said, I think that People needs to rethink their editorial staff. I also think that People owes Rain an apology for their mistake.

Maybe I’m just a skeptic. It’s the skeptic in me that wants hard evidence that proves that white celebrities are less misidentified than nonwhite celebrities.

Posted 14 May 2008 at 8:22 am ¶
Persia wrote:

Whitney, I think one of the things we need to do in our conversations is realize that racist thought and behavior doesn’t have to be bigotry– it can be pretty subtle. It’s as subtle as someone seeing an Asian person’s photo and thinking, “Yeah, that’s Rain,” rather than checking themselves and saying, “you know, I’m not always that good at identifying Asian faces, I’d better double-check.” That may be laziness, but there’s a lack of self-awareness there that’s racist.

Posted 14 May 2008 at 9:13 am ¶
Whitney wrote:

Or perhaps simple ignorance. I think that it’s important to talk about racism and various forms of it, whether it be intentional or accidental, but I think that it’s even more important to be a little more optimistic and consider that it could have been an honest mistake, and not to jump to conclusions and call People mag racist. I think we need to give the benefit of the doubt first, ask questions, and then determine wether it is ignorance or racism. I also don’t think that it is fair to call someone who is ignorant a racist, because some of us aren’t so lucky to be around a diverse group of people and learn about diversity.

Posted 14 May 2008 at 2:53 pm ¶
Whitney wrote:

However, if People mag has a history of doing this, then I definitely think that they aren’t hiring the right people, and some form of action needs to take place.

Posted 14 May 2008 at 3:08 pm ¶
The Cruel Secretary wrote:

“I think that it’s important to talk about racism and various forms of it, whether it be intentional or accidental…”

Exactly, Whitney. Ultimately, that’s what this post and what commenters like Persia are getting at, between the imaginary man-sharing and man-dibs.:-D Even if what People did was an honest slip-up, it was still racist because the magazine misidentified two Asian men who look nothing alike in a country where the stereotype of all Asian people (or “all _________s look alike–fill in your racial/ethnic group) looking alike exists. To those of us have seen and heard this stereotype again and again, this gaffe is just the latest manifestation of that pattern. We’re just calling People on the BS. Regardless of the magazine’s quality, they still have to be accurate, including accurately identifying people in pictures. If I’m not mistaken, that’s Journalism 101.

And, IMO, it always doesn’t take being around a diverse group of people to learn about diversity. It helps–it *really* helps–but a person can be around a rainbow of folks and not understand a thing about racism. It also takes making the decision and then actually learning about diversity. Anymore, there’s a plethora of info at the click of a mouse. So, unless the fact-checkers at People lack computers or access to a magazine or a book (there are books on racial etiquette, for pete’s sake!), then this mistake, as Persia stated beautifully, “may be laziness, but there’s a lack of self-awareness there that’s racist.”

Posted 14 May 2008 at 4:14 pm ¶
The Cruel Secretary wrote:

::finishes talking to Whitney and hears commotion in the Jet Li line::

Uh-uhn, Daomadan and lm. No scrappin’ over Jet Li, friends. He gets the Mr. P***y treatment…sorry!:-D

Posted 14 May 2008 at 7:25 pm ¶
Sewere wrote:

::Peeks over the mounting of work he has to finish in two days::

Wow! Fighting racism against Asian men with a love-fest for Asian men?!?! Only on racialicious

Ahem… in the interest of full disclosure, if this hetero-man were ever to find himself in bed with B.D. Wong, he may find himself deeply reconsidering this hetero thing.

::hangs hand in air for hi-five:: Y’all feel me, right?
…..

::desperately:: riiiiiiight?!?!?

Posted 14 May 2008 at 10:04 pm ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:

@ Sewere –

Yes, we are pushing toward a united future, one fine ass man conversation at a time.

BD Wong? Hmm…I think he’s gonna have to battle it out with Andy Lau for the hot grown ass man title. And I think my stars align toward the greatness of Lau…

Wait, wait – almost forgot about Sung-soo Kim. Born in ‘75, so I’ll consider him a grown ass man as well.

http://wewantsimplelove.blogspot.com/2007/02/kim-sung-soo-general-hotness.html

Damn.

Speaks for itself.

(Oh, and dear readers, does anyone know where I can find Delicious Love and Sex? English subs are nice, but not necessary – I’m in it for the nekkid parts.)

On third thought, maybe I will move with Hae back to S. Korea…

Posted 14 May 2008 at 10:48 pm ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:

Oops, this link is better:

http://male.thedailymodel.com/kim-sung-soo/#more-202

Posted 14 May 2008 at 10:49 pm ¶
Persia wrote:

Sewere, we won’t judge you.

…unless this happens and you fail to take pictures.

Posted 15 May 2008 at 9:52 am ¶
The Cruel Secretary wrote:

::high-fives Sewere::

Couldn’t leave you hangin’, friend. Yeah, BD Wong gets me all sultry, too. I watch Law & Order: SVU (as problematic as it is) just hear him roll some psychology of his tongue….

::fans self::

Posted 15 May 2008 at 9:57 am ¶
The Cruel Secretary wrote:

::TCS hands Sewere a digital camera::

Posted 15 May 2008 at 10:18 am ¶
Sewere wrote:

Latoya: BD Wong? Hmm…

TCS: Yeah, BD Wong gets me all sultry, too. I watch Law & Order: SVU (as problematic as it is) just hear him roll some psychology of his tongue…

Sewere: ::reaches for TCS’s fan:: Lawd hep me, them intellectuals, they get me all the time.

Posted 15 May 2008 at 3:34 pm ¶
Sewere wrote:

@ Latoya,

Born in ‘75, so I’ll consider him a grown ass man as well.

::shakes grown ass fist:: Young whippersnappers!!!

Posted 15 May 2008 at 3:55 pm ¶
Whitney wrote:

I personally think that Daniel Dae Kim from Lost is the sexiest. He’s gorgeous. But then again so is Naveen Andrews. Thank God for Lost!

Posted 16 May 2008 at 2:24 am ¶
The Cruel Secretary wrote:

@ Daomadan, no fighting with Whitney over Naveen, either. Hug it out, coordinate your calendars, flip a coin, break bread, whatever…just no throwdowns.

LMAO @ Sewere.

Posted 16 May 2008 at 10:20 am ¶
Daomadan wrote:

@TheCruelSecretary: Alright, we’ll just have to sit down and make sure we pencil everyone in to our calendars so there aren’t any mix-ups.

Posted 16 May 2008 at 11:17 am ¶
Nina wrote:

Well, lets discuss it. Do all Asians look alike? We generally read that as “Do all Asians have the same facial features?” The answer to that is NO.
But the question we are also asking is-
Do all Asians look alike? Meaning, do their facial features SEEM indistinguishable to other people. The answer is- depends.
YES, MOST “races” do find it harder to distinguish between people of other races.

I find that all “white” infants look the same to me as many of them have no eyebrows, no hairline to define their face shape and very little variation in hair and skin color. As opposed to african american and latino babies who often come in many different shades, have hair and eyebrows at birth so their shapes are easily visible.

The key features I use to tell babies apart isnt available to me when looking at certain infants.
For non-Asians in Asia, the seeming lack of hair, eye and skin color variation means people have to use OTHER markers to tell one individual from another. We have to relearn how to recognize faces.

In my family, we can distinguish between the one with light beige, honey beige and sand beige skin. Chestnut brown, dark brown and auburn brown hair. To outsiders we all have the same color skin and hair. They dont see (or need to see) the variation that we do.

So is it racist or wrong to not be able to differentiate individuals whose features are not familiar? I’d say no.

The error is in not checking and double checking and triple checking to be sure that you have not made an error.

Posted 16 May 2008 at 1:22 pm ¶
The Cruel Secretary wrote:

@ Nina–”Do all Asians look alike? Meaning, do their facial features SEEM indistinguishable to other people. The answer is- depends.
YES, MOST “races” do find it harder to distinguish between people of other races.”

Umm…most “races” don’t find it harder or easier to do anything, friend. Now, there are may be some members of a particular race who may find it hard to distinguish other people of other races, and, well, that’s on those particular people not the burden of the “races” themselves. Hiding or rationalizing what you personally do behind the multitudes of a “race” doesn’t strengthen your argument or justify your behavior, IMO. It may not be your intention, Nina, but it comes off like you’re rationalizing an willful unwillingness to learn the facial features of a “race” whose members have very distinctive features from each other.

Sorry, all APIs and white folks don’t look alike, not even as babies. And I think this post and the comments definitely attest to the phenotype-discerning skills people from different races have developed in regards to other people of other races….and our problem with people who don’t.

Posted 16 May 2008 at 3:04 pm ¶
JDsg wrote:

@ TCS: …but it comes off like you’re rationalizing an willful unwillingness to learn the facial features of a “race” whose members have very distinctive features from each other.

I don’t think Nina’s comment was in defense of those people who choose not to acknowledge their ability to tell others of another race apart, the “willful unwillingness to learn” as you put it. After all, Nina also wrote, “We have to relearn how to recognize faces.” From personal experience, I’d say that this is true to a degree. I’ve been living in Asia since 2001 (and my wife is also Asian; Malay, specifically). When I lived in Korea, for a year, I found myself having to learn the names to all my students every month. For certain people I could do this quite quickly, others not so much. Some of my students became friends, others I barely knew. (It didn’t help that people might drop out unexpectedly and you may never see them again.) Guys I found to be relatively easy to distinguish; for me, the young women (most were university students) were the ones whom I had the most difficulty in identifying. Many of them had “homogeneous faces,” for want of a better term. Their facial features were very similar; their hair color and length were oftentimes identical. Koreans, I eventually discovered, have very similar facial features that distinguish them from other ethnic Asian groups; for example, many Koreans (although not all) have very prominent cheekbones. But it took time for me to learn the differences between individuals; how to “taxonomize” a new set of facial features that I was not familiar with.

When I moved to Singapore, I found the process to be much easier. Just as North America is a melting pot of European ethnic groups, Singapore is largely a melting pot for Chinese ethnic groups (there are 56 recognized ethnic minorities in mainland China, nine ethnic minorities not officially recognized, and 24 groups of Taiwanese aborigines). With these more “heterogenous” faces, the Chinese in Singapore are much easier to tell apart than the monoethnic Koreans. Still, even after six+ years in Singapore (and one year in Korea), I still sometimes stumble (as I wrote above in comment #41). Today, I have no problems telling the two boys apart, but for a while, I confused “T” with “L,” and vice versa. That wasn’t any “willful unwillingness,” that was just learning to distinguish between two boys who have very similar features.

Posted 16 May 2008 at 8:41 pm ¶
TierList E wrote:

I believe the ability or inability to distinguish between a certain group of people is based off a kind of unconscious mental shorthand. It takes up more brain power to indiviualize people, which becomes unecessary if they’re just going to use stereotypes to put everyone in the same category anyway.

As soon as people start seeing a group of people as individuals they’re going to have to recall specific faces to determine individual characters, personalities, talents and values.

It’s like me calling every blue shaded color blue but a designer can very easily find the many nuances in that shade with no difficulty. Mentally assigning all of those names and memorizing what goes where will have no benefit for whatsoever me but can be much more worthwhile to others who rely on it.

Posted 16 May 2008 at 10:36 pm ¶
TierList E wrote:

*me whatsoever

Posted 16 May 2008 at 10:38 pm ¶
Whitney wrote:

@Daomaden–LOL!!! I’m so glad to find another fan of Naveen Andrews! He’s such a badass on that show.

Posted 17 May 2008 at 8:09 am ¶
The Cruel Secretary wrote:

@JDsg and TierListE–though I understand what you’re saying, I simply disagree.

IMO, JDsg, your comments proved a willingness and a mental commitment to learn the distinguishing features of the Korean students, even the two boys whom you said had similar facial features. (I can’t be presumptuous as to why you did this, but I’m hoping you did this because 1) you didn’t want to mix up the students’ grades:-D and 2) acknowledging and respecting the student’s uniqueness and humanity.) You could have easily thought, “Hell, I can’t tell these Koreans apart,” and acted as such during your stay in the country. But you didn’t: you demonstrated a willful willingness to study and learn what features distinguished one student from another.

And TierListE, I don’t have Miranda Priestley’s eyes for the difference between indigo and navy, but I do my best to distinguish facial features of *people* out of a sense of respect for their uniqueness and humanity–something that I hope all of us rely on, friend. And, in the case of those People fact-checkers and editors, they rely on being able to distiguish between Rain from Karl Yune not only out of respect–I bet you they’d die if someone mistook them for someone else out of a belief all folks in their racial/ethnic group look alike–because it’s their basic job duty.

Posted 17 May 2008 at 11:00 am ¶
TierList E wrote:

@TCS- Sorry if I’m saying something clueless, but I’m not sure what we’re disagreeing on exactly.

I don’t know if people who say “all of _race here_ look alike” have a huge respect for the people their refering to. Or at least they don’t have them on their radar enough to respect.

Posted 17 May 2008 at 3:57 pm ¶
Santeriasister wrote:

Good LORD! I’m black and even I now that’s not Bi!!!!! This shizz is bananas…

Posted 19 May 2008 at 7:17 am ¶
mylie wrote:

Wow. I’ve only seen Rain on the Colbert Report and it was dreadfully obvious to me that man isn’t him. Maybe it’s because I was paying a lot of attention to him because he’s gorgey! Ummm, anyway.
I’ve only just recently had this starting to happen to me. My history teacher can absolutely not tell me and this other black girl apart. Our skin tones are somewhat close, I’ll admit, but so are the skin tones of a ton of the other white students. (Not to sound bad here. It’s just there is only one Asian person, and outside of me and the other black girl, there are only two other black people, and one’s male.) But yeah, this is a problem.

Posted 19 May 2008 at 6:02 pm ¶