Looking in the Cultural Mirror

interesting article that scratches the surface about race and culture. But it's an important discussion worth having about culture and how that really makes us black or white. Would love to read how the issue of privilege factors in. Because essentially, part of the reason why the "one drop" rule could exist is due to group's embracing or rejecting people with that in mind.

How do you get to do that - and at such a youthful age!

What a trite article. A baby-boomer's erudite and subjective observations on race relations and not a useful insight into how this hard-wired evolutionary trait came to be or persists in modern society. I'm actually frustrated that I wasted my time reading this. We all could have come to similar conclusions on our own, without the expensive degree. Move on.

Something I've noticed is that I'm able to pick out my own family members -- even, say, third cousins twice removed -- by facial quirks that I've come to associate with my family (the shape of our jaws, the tilt of our eyes, the way our faces move when we smile.) I've wondered if this ability -- which I presume we all share -- has something to do with causing those who are further away from our direct family group to somehow appear less distinct to us? Which makes the question not a "racial" one (I hate the whole race-concept; we're all related, ultimately, and anybody who REALLY can't tell one person from another has a brain defect, literally) but a sort of subconsious method that lets us know, "hey, look, THAT person's more likely to be related to you than THIS one is!", which would be an important thing to know, since interbreeding too closely with direct family members is a bad thing to do.

I understand that there's more genetic variability in people with African blood simply because Homo Sapiens began our evolution in Africa (in the same way that there are more varieties of potatoes found in the wild in Peru because potatoes, as a species, began their evolution there.)

Also, there definitely is some skin-color variation among white people -- milky-white redheads vs. olive-skinned Italians, for example (though I'm part Italian and part Greek and don't have olive skin!) Ultimately, it's all about skin evolving to deal with ultraviolet radiation; anybody who imagines it has anything to do with the humanity of the person inside that skin is cracked!

I loved this. Very well written.

Race is so crazy. Will we ever outgrow it?

The "others look alike" problem isn't limited to blacks vs. whites. Visit the Alllooksame Web site - http://alllooksame.com/ - for quizzes to test your ability to tell apart Asian faces.

I would argue that "they all look alike" may have a lack of descriptive vocabulary component to it. The features we choose and use to describe others varies with culture. When a white person is asked to describe another white person, the first two characteristics chosen are often hair and eye color. These aren't a factor for most Asians. Last time I visited Japan, the Japanese driver's license didn't list eye and hair color: It is assumed the driver has black hair and eyes.

Even after I (a white person) lived in Taiwan a while and could easily tell one Taiwanese from another, I lacked vocabulary to describe the differences I perceived. A Taiwanese-American friend there once asked me to describe our roommate's friend "Sara" and though I could visualize Sara's face, I struggled with what to say. Hair and eye color, not useful. Sara was relatively paler compared to our other Taiwanese friends, but I felt I shouldn't say she was whiter, because that might imply she was half-European, which she wasn't. I described Sara as "the short one," but that was too vague. I dredged up some vocabulary: "moon face," but that didn't desribe Sara and "lucky face," but what exactly does a "lucky face" look like? Did Sara have one? I didn't know. I'd been taught moon face and lucky face in Chinese language class, but not given appropriate context. While this silly dialogue played out in my head over a matter of seconds, the friend became exasperated and said "Well, I guess we all look alike to you." I conceded because I could tell she was impatient, and I felt stupid, not because they all looked alike to me.

You mentioned your wife is African-American: What vocabulary do you / does she use to describe other African Americans? What traits are the focus of description? If you focus on eye color and hair color and texture, one could argue that whites are more varied. If you focus on skin tone, one could argue that blacks are more varied. The focus itself is very cultural.

And can someone tell me what a "lucky face" looks like?

Hi Jefferson,

I've always found this phenomenon to be interesting as well, because it's a case of bias where EVERYONE seems to be susceptible.

You mention, anecdotally, that your accuracy for black faces improved with the length of your marriage. Back in graduate school I had a similar experience: after dating a South Korean woman, I got much better at guessing the specific ancestries of southeast Asians that I met. She had lots of friends in the international student community, so I got lots of exposure and practice.

(I can't say for sure, but I'd bet this skill rapidly declined in the 5+ years since we parted ways.)

One interesting wrinkle that you don't address in your article concerns whether the identification bias is equally powerful among all groups. I would suspect not. If the chief driving factor is experience/exposure, then you could predict that people living in numerical minority groups within integrated communities would be less likely to commit identification errors -- after all, their lives bring them into contact with racial outgroup members far more regularly.

Best,
Steve

YS1227A5 Thanks for the awesome information.To celebrate Christmas,there are great sale promotions on http://www.nikejordanshoes2sell.com/ ,all of air jordan shoes,discount nike air max shoes and nike acg shoes sale,cheap mbt chapa shoes are high quality but also low price as well as good christian louboutin high heel and ugg adirondack boots.

Anonymous on December 23, 2009
Suggestions for future topics are always appreciated.

RTP on December 24, 2009
7:27am—There is a literature on facial recognition (and facial affect recognition). The question of whether we're better at recognizing the faces and facial expressions of people we've never seen to whom we are related than faces of unrelated individuals—controlling for relevant variables—is one that can be studied empirically.

7:34am—You're right in both paragraphs, and I'll be discussing these issues in later posts. There is more human genetic variation in Africa than in the rest of the world combined.

DawnS on December 24, 2009
Thanks for two good points: (1) language limits the vocabulary we have available to describe what people look like; (2) culture influences which features we focus on in comparing individuals. Cross-cultural psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists study these issues, and I'll discuss them in future posts.

Steve Livingston on December 24, 2009
I agree completely! Even though "race" is a fraught topic, general principles of learning and forgetting, conditioning and extinction, perception, and other areas of psychology apply.

Very compelling and provocative. What I enjoy most, is that since this behavior exists cross culturally, it offers an opportunity to emphasize what we have in common, when this topic is usually presented as divisive. Definitely interested in hearing more about the anthropologic issues regarding man's origin from Africa and how that affects diversity in blacks.

I found this article very interesting. I'm a white American, who is married to a mixed race Brit, and we worked in India for 12 years. Most of my friends & family are black or brown. I'm thankful to live in Britain rather than the States, where the races mix & intermarry all over the place, whereas in the States,generally speaking, people still stick to their own race. In the UK, there are millions of mixed race people that consider themselves to be just that - mixed race, not black. It was interesting to see the point about the one drop rule, also, when I was 5 years old, I had a black girlfriend & I used to think, "black people are very nice, but how can they tell each other apart"!