Here’s the thing. I am Chinese, and I won’t lie, I see where you guys are coming from.
White people have a lot more variation in their physical features, specifically - colour. Hair comes in various shades of browns, blondes, blacks and reds. They curl, or are wavy, or sleek and straight. Eyes, too, range from flat grey to opal blue to forest green to hazelnut brown. There’s a lot that can distinguish you from other members of your ethnicity easily and that’s your colour.
Chinese people, on the other hand, have more or less the same natural hair colour, and more or less a similar natural hair style, that is - straight hair. Pinpointing the difference between faces is most certainly a lot more difficult than looking at the differences between a person’s whole stature.
Of course, as some have correctly mentioned in the comments, it’s rather unfair to make a comparison between an entire race/skin colour and a single ethnicity from a single country. A Swedish person can still look notably different from a French person on account of their differring ethnicity, although they are both ‘white’. But regardless, it’s true that the natural wide variety of hair colours and eye colours are pretty much unique to white people.
Black hair and brown eyes are dominant traits, after all, so it’s incredibly unlikely that any Chinese or East Asians who show similar features will naturally create any colour variation via their genetics.
This is, of course, considering only people’s natural appearance. Fashion trends leading to different styles of make up, dress, hair dye, contacts etc. can of course be an incredibly important clue as to a person’s nationality - but that’s obvious.
And you know what, I can even back up your confusion over people’s appearances with psychological evidence. That is - the cross race effect.
What this means is that, on the whole, people are more easily able to identify and recognise the faces of people of their ‘in-group’ - nominally their ethnic group, or in some cases the ethnic group they are more familiar with depending on their environment - than those belonging to the ‘out-group’.
Part of the reason is the practice effect. You’re ‘white,’ you grow up in a ‘white’ country, and you see white faces more than Chinese ones? You’re obviously better at distinguishing white faces than Chinese ones.
But also, people process faces of in-group and out-group members differently.
With in-group members, faces are processed holistically, i.e. as a whole, a sum of all its parts. You take in everything about that face and the way everything comes together to form it - everything that makes that person’s face individual. This is how faces are typically processed, which is actually different to the other way other objects are processed.
With out-group members however, faces are processed more featurally, more similar to the way you would process objects. You look for specific features which help you categorise the people you see into their respective identities, rather than considering their face as a whole. You identify them based off their features.
Aaaaaand back to that hair/eye colour debacle, most of the time, you don’t have a lot of variety to work with. You’re forced to look for smaller identification details - eyes shape, nose shape, eyes position, the way they talk etc. And that’s much harder, which makes you feel that they all appear very similar.
Well, you just nailed it! That’s all I wanted to say - AND you explained it all with science and everything, which makes it even more justified and true! So why is it still racist?
Well, here’s something to start off with. Just saying ‘Chinese people look alike’ on its own does NOT mean the same thing as saying ‘all people of the same ethnic group share the same features’.
In case it’s not obvious, in the first sentence, you are specifically singling out Chinese people.
Think carefully about it. Why did you specifically pick out Chinese people for your statement? Why have you decided that it is Chinese people who are representative of this idea of a lack of individuality?
Yes. Telling people they look alike, or, as it is more often put, telling them that they all ‘look the same to me’ suggests you don’t think of them as individuals. Just one big block of ‘Chinese identity’.
Often, people say this with a careless shrug, or a pulling of the face. They’re just, like, the same people anyway. Why do I need to bother to distinguish them?
And other people might look at the earlier part of my answer and say: See! It’s scientifically proven that Chinese people look the same - you said so yourself.
See, the thing is - if you think like that, then you’re the problem. You’re shifting the blame on to other people, and you’re using that science to ‘prove’ it.
But if you read carefully, the science doesn’t say ‘Chinese people look the same’. It says - you can’t process the faces of other people right. It is absolutely not on them to change their natural born appearance, nor is it anything to speak of as though you’re blaming them - as if they could help that! It’s up to you to make that effort to distinguish them, to look at them as individuals, and to treat them for who they are.
That said, I am certain there are people who genuinely struggle, and are afraid to say for fear of being misunderstood. To all of them, I want to say that the science proves that the phenomenon is natural. If you do find it difficult, then just give it your best shot. You might make a mistake, or fumble, and it might be awkward, and a little embarrassing, or funny - but all that will come from that is you will be corrected, and you’ll learn, and most importantly, you’ll be forgiven.
But even then, try not to make a comment about it.
No one wants to be told that they’re not special, or individual.
To clarify, I don’t believe this is a statement which is uniquely racist when targeting Chinese people either. On the grand scheme of things, it’s definitely on the tamer side of the ‘racism’ scale. Regardless, even with the best of intentions, it’s a rather thoughtless, and, quite frankly, rude statement to make.
There’s a million far more interesting things you can remark about a person and their ethnic group than just their natural born appearance. I suggest you consider thinking about something like that instead.
Edit 15/06/2019: Corrected my phrasing, thanks to some sensible comments pointing this out. Also added the psychology of the cross race effect and holistic and featural processing into my answer as extra tidbits for anyone who’s interested.
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