The title is shit and confusing, so let me explain.
I’m a white latin american who lives in a latin american country, so in my environment there is very few asian people, in fact, in my region there is so few asians that if there is one in a friend group, they will automatically be “El chino” or “La china”.
Anyway, I understand there is a phenomenon that when ur not used to hang out with people from other races, you might see people from other specific race as “they look the same”. This is part of the reason why so many people in this part of the world thinks that “asians look the same” when that is absolutely not true. It might also happen that some asians also think all white people look the same. And yeah, in a limited genetic pool, many people will look similar.
Anyway, I like asian media and I consume Jpop, Kpop, and I’m starting to try and get into watching more dramas. The thing is when I face the “they look similar” barrier so I have a hard time differentiating people.
I can identify well for example the Black Pink girls, GIDLE girls, Mamamoo, half of the BTS members, etc, just to give you an idea, but sometimes I’m stuck playing a game of “Oh, this is X? No, I think that’s actually Y, nah, I’m wrong, really is Z”.
Is kinda stressful sometimes, not being able to differentiate people in dramas or groups and trying to hang on certain identifiable features to do not get me lost.
Is there a way to kinda “train” myself into identifying Asian people and differentiating them better?
I hope this post doesn’t sound racist, is not my intention at all. I’m just looking for some advice. Thanks.
Fun semi-related story. I used to work in an open kitchen where a lot of the cooking staff would interact with the customers pretty regularly. Quite often me and two other men in the kitchen would get confused with one another. I gave a guy some marinating tips one week. He comes back in a few days later and waves me over to tell me how well it went. Except he didn’t wave me over, it was a coworker he thought was me. I’d have people bring up previous conversations when I’ve never seen them before. After the 3rd time that kind of thing happened, it clicked. The 3 of us who got confused with each other were just very generic young white guys. One of them wore glasses and I sometimes wore them, sometimes wore contacts. Who I got confused with changed on whether I wore glasses or not, but it happened constantly in the years I worked there. And it was always other white people getting us confused. Looking like a generic white guy is 100% a thing.