March 6, 2008

Visual Cues and Racial Identification


*Chinese? Japanese? Korean? Take the test at alllooksame.com

Right now I'm reading Digitizing Race by Lisa Nakamura. ***Just a quick fyi, I only linked to Amazon as it provides user reviews and a quick summary of the book. I am not trying telling anyone to buy it, nor am I receiving any monetary gain if you visit Amazon or buy it. The chapter that I finished reading reflected on the notion of race and the internet. Within it, Nakamura discusses how people use visual cues (i.e eye/hair colour, lip structure, etc.) in order to identify race in others.

Nakamura uses the site AllLookSame, a tongue-in-cheek critique on the tired stereotype of Asian people looking the same, as a case study. A viewer is invited to take the test where the viewer is shown pictures of an Asian individual. The user must then decide whether the photo is of a person of Korean, Chinese, or Japanese descent.



Dyske Suematsu, founder of AllLookSame, claims that:

...for those who love Asia and Asian cultures, to see small distinctions is a sign of their love and respect for the cultures. And in other situations, to see no difference can also be a sign of love and respect. If one feels that the act of “labeling” itself has something that inherently promotes prejudice, then one would have to stop using language altogether.

Suematsu goes on and also mentions that AllLookSame is a joke, but one that celebrates the differences and similarities among Asians.

Lisa Nakamura agrees with Suematsu and states:
[s]ites like alllooksame.com and others like it demonstrate the ways that the Web can produce sites that express concerns that are unique to particular cultures and can perform what Faye Ginsburg calls cultural activism.


Ultimately, AllLookSame serves as a website to question the notion that race can be deciphered through visual means. While each culture inevitably does have their own unique subtleties, it is hard to tell a person's race/ethnicity based purely on visual facial clues as indicated by the test.

Visual cues/stereotypes shouldn't serve as guidelines into examining race. Especially with the rise of Internet photos, it is easier and less offensive if you do not assume race based off visual cues. Flip the stereotype around and you can have the same idea if all white people look the same. Look at my picture in my About Me section. Visually speaking, can I not be thought of as American, British, Italian, etc?

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