Thursday, March 29, 2007
Music class
Emma and I have been attending a music class at a neighbour's house for months now. Emma loves it, she asks for music class all week long. The guy who runs it is great... except for one thing. A few months ago, I met another neighbour who also adopted from China. Her daughter, Maya, is one year younger than Emma. I invited Maya and her mom to join our music class. At this morning's class, as well as at many others in the past, the teacher mixed up Emma and Maya. Why is it that he can't tell them apart, being that there's a year's age difference between the two, Emma has long hair, Maya's is short...doesn't seem to help. Yet, he can tell the 3-4 brunette one year olds apart without problem and that's no easy task....
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5 comments:
Hmm, That is a little upsetting.
I mean, at that age, isn't there a height difference if he has trouble with facial features?
Sigh...
Very Strange...Do you think he just doesn't really pay attention? If he is teaching little kids you would think he could get their names right!..oh and usually you can tell a child who is a year older apart from a younger one!!!duh
Annoying and it still happens even as an adult, just this week a stranger said to me I look like that doctor on Grey's Anatomy. I apologize to Sandra Oh, because we have different ethnicities, facial features, skin tone and body type. BTW strangers have also told me I look like Lisa Ling, Lucy Liu, as well as other women they know or see (they usually say girl rahter than woman too), you get the picture, to them we all look alike.
Take care, Lin
If it's any consolation...my girls are 3 years apart and I mix them up all the time!
Okay, truth is, there may be some kind of subconscious "they're both Chinese" identification going on. But it may be more about Ch features, than Ch race, if you can believe that the difference could mean anything.
NLJ has another Ch girl (another adoptee, in fact) in her class at preschool, and I've heard at least two of the teachers mix them up in the last month (six months into the program), then self-correct. LOL, NLJ has curly hair while the other has stereotypically straight hair!
It's different than the teachers doint it, but I sometimes do the same thing with, say, two blonds I don't see often, or two tall bearded guys I've just met (I would likey mix up Malcolm and Gary if I only saw the two of them once a week.)
I've repeatedly had the horrifying experience of calling the Yangxi daughter of one of the two Chinese moms in our travel group by the other Chinese mom's daughter's name (I don't do it to the second girl, who we see a lot more often.) I don't know where that is coming from, but I'm embarrased every time I do it, and I worry that the mother I do it with thinks that I lump her, the other mom and their daughters together (the two women are very different and their daughters are very different.) I do think I'm doing a subconcious recognition of the mothers' Chinese background, and I think my worry about it makes me more likely to do it, but as I say, I do it with Caucasians, too. I'm really trying not to do it and have thought long and hard about why it's coming out ... I will keep thinking about this and keep trying to stop it. Ramble, ramble ... I've been known to do it with people who have similar working lives, or other significan non-physical things in common, too, so I would really like to believe it's not motivated by some kind of low-lying racism on my part.
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