Prometheus 6

Racialicious pointed this one out.

Subject: Do all black people look alike?
2/8/2007 12:59:54 PM

From DAVID MILLS: Ever notice how black people are often misidentified in newspaper and magazine photo captions? I mean famous black people. It’s a weird phenomenon.

In last month's James Brown tribute issue of Rolling Stone, there's a photo on page 48 with this caption: "Brown with Sharpton in 1974.” Alas, the man seated next to J.B. isn’t the Rev. Al Sharpton; it’s trombonist Fred Wesley. (Sharpton pointed this out to listeners of his syndicated radio talk show, saying "it ain't me," according to Richard Prince’s blog.)

Forget how widely exposed Rev. Al’s face is. Fred Wesley is one of the great musicians, arrangers and bandleaders in funk and soul music going back 35 years. The editors of Rolling Stone should know what he looks like.

Lotta more examples. Ridiculous examples. And he got two responses that say essentially the same thing. Here's one of them.

Psychologists have studied this phenomenon for years, to the point where it has become part of case law in some states. In New Jersey, jurors are required to be told that cross-racial eyewitness identifications are less reliable than with people who are of the same "race."

But there has been some dispute about why this occurs. I recently wrote about the latest research, from psychologists at the University of Texas-El Paso, which suggests that it is not a matter of racism -- at least not directly -- but of simple lack of familiarity. Black people are better at identifying whites because they are in the minority, and have more exposure to whites. Likewise, in one border town where Latinos were in the majority, they did worse at identifying both whites and blacks.