zlacker

> "I picked it up and held it to my face and told him, 'I hope you don't think all Black people look alike,' " Williams said.

I'm white. I grew up around a sea of white faces. Often when watching a movie filled with a cast of non-white faces, I will have trouble distinguishing one actor from another, especially if they are dressed similarly. This sometimes happens in movies with faces similar to the kinds I grew up surrounded by, but less so.

So unfortunately, yes, I probably do have more trouble distinguishing one black face from another vs one white face from another.

This is known as the cross-race effect and it's only something I became aware of in the last 5-10 years.

Add to that the fallibility of human memory, and I can't believe we still even use line ups. Are there any studies about how often line ups identify the wrong person?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-race_effect

>>js2+(OP)
I lived in South Africa for a while and heard many times, with various degrees of irony, "you white people all look the same" from black South Africans. So yeah it's definitely a cross-racial recognition problem, and it's probably also a problem with distinguishing between members of visible minorities using traits beyond the most noticable othering characteristic.