"They all look the same."

[Autumnleaf]

I often work in an area of town where one group of minorities, African Americans, are concentrated. The people I work beside are mostly of this minority as is our customers. Today a recent immigrant of Sudan, African, came to pick up their order and a clerk asked a senior clerk if it was the right person, the customer did not know english to tell us herself. The senior clerk said, 'probably, because they all look the same.' All the clerks, African Americans, laughed as my jaw dropped...

I looked at the clerk who said it and she shrugged and said, "Seriously, dey do."

Any comments?

 

[Beanieboy]

This is something that has been said to African Americans for years. Think about it. "I was robbed by a black guy. What did he look like? You know! Like a black guy - braids, flat nose, brown eyes..."

So, given that this is the culture that they live in, where they experience racism first hand, what were you expecting to come out that? Understanding? Treating people different than them with courtesy?

I remember, as a boy of 6 or 7, askling my mom, "Wallace looks just like his younger brother. They have the same skin color, the same hair color, and the same eye color. How do they tell each other apart?" My mom answered, "I don't know." And she didn't.

Same kind of thing. Black people look very different from one another (you aren't going to confuse Diana Ross with Tyra Banks. You aren't going to confuse Chris Rock with Eddie Murphy or Denzel.)

But people said the same of them.

If you don't know the people, you think they do look alike.

 

[quatona]

I am the sort of guy who - when there are three men of the same race, about the same age and with a similar haircut are characters in a movie - cannot keep them apart. So I can relate.
"They look the same" is not a statement about the persons in question, it is a statement about the speaker´s ability to differenciate, about his perception and the way his mind works.
Determining a main characteristic, and ignoring all others is a basic mechanism of creating categories. We tell apples from bananas because the apples all look the same (and so do the bananas) for purposes of this distinction.
If different things look the same (in which I would give the speaker the benefit of meaning "too similar to distinguish"), the observer does not have acquired a sufficiently high resolution of perception for the purpose in question.