Does being faceblind make you racist?

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Falloy
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17 May 2014, 3:42 pm

I have some degree of face blindness and I worry sometimes that I might be perceived as racist, I often use hair colour/pattern to identify people and there is usually less hair colour variation with black and asian people, therefore I am more likely to mix them up. This problem is mitigated if they have a distinctive haircut, facial hair, glasses, style of dress etc.

Of course the same will happen if there are several white people together of similar age and similar hair pattern. When I watch "Game of Thrones" for instance there are a whole lot of blokes with brown hair and beards and everyone is wearing chainmail so I often get completely lost...



linatet
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28 May 2014, 1:03 pm

BirdInFlight wrote:
No, not at all. I have a weird thing -- I'm faceblind about white men with shaved heads! (I'm a white woman, so that's one for the books, hahah!) I have a terrible time telling white bald men apart, seriously.
.

that's because people with prosopagnosia rely heavily on things like hair to identify people! If you take out the hair we are lost.
If you notice all the prosopagnosia tests are done with hairless faces, so we can't use this to recognize them, only the features.



linatet
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28 May 2014, 1:07 pm

glider18 wrote:
Here is an interesting article for you to consider on this issue:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/neur ... look-alike

thanks very interesting!
and it fits with what I was saying. The group I have the hardest time telling apart is blondes. Sorry but if there are two blondes in a movie I WILL confuse the characters.
Sometimes funny things happen, like I am watching a movie with my sister and a (possibly blond) person is shown talking to a guy. Then I am like: "what the hell? hasn't Paula just traveled to India? :?" my sister is like: "what???? who traveled to India was Paula's sister! " "Paula has a sister???" I thought all the blond girls were the same character 8O this is not a rare ocurrence. And people wonder why I have trouble understanding movies :lol:



Shadi2
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28 May 2014, 1:15 pm

Its not racist to notice someone's race.


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AceofKnaves
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28 May 2014, 3:07 pm

Sometimes I feel racist though. It doesn't make you racist. I am a visual thinker, so I don't remember names, unless I see a name tag. All I have to go by is what they wear, which tend to be uniforms, their skin tone, and their height.

So when something like

"I talked to another gentleman around here"

And the lady is like, "oh who would that be?"

"He was tall and had dark skin."

lady, "jerome? or micheal?"

me, "he was black I'm pretty sure,"

lady makes an ugly face and then kind of tries to keep her compsure, "micheal"

It isn't that I am trying to be rude or racist. Its just how I visualize the world around me.