A 95% White Community

When I moved to Wylie at age 4, it had a population around 10,000 and was 95% Caucasian. I cannot remember encountering anyone from a different race until I was in intermediate school (5-6 grade). Even then, I can only think of about 4 people who were African-American, and a couple of people who were Indian. The brother and sister who were Indian were easy to tell apart because one was male and one was female. However, no matter how hard I tried, I could not tell the boys who were African-American apart. To me they all looked the same. They were not in my ingroup, or people in the same social group as me; they were part of an outgroup, or social group that I didn't belong to, that I had very little contact with, so I thought they were more similar than they actually were. This is called the outgroup homogeneity effect (Linville & Jones, 1980).

As you can probably guess, as an ignorant 5th or 6th grader this mistake got me in a lot of trouble one day. I avoided as much as possible calling these guys by their names not because I didn't know them, but because I couldn't tell who was who. Inevitably, one day, I could not avoid saying one's name. I had a 25% chance of getting it right, and of course I didn't. So what else am I supposed to do but try again? Wrong again. It was not looking to turn into a good situation, so I just stopped and prepared for my punishment. He came close to me and asked, "Why don't you know my name? Is it because we all look the same?" I had no choice but to answer yes because it was the truth, and I'm not good at lying. A flash of fury ran across his eyes, but then he said, "It's okay, you all look the same to me too." What a relief. This insight helped me to understand that not just African-Americans look the same, but anyone in our outgroups looks the same. Luckily, the more I became acquainted with people of different races, the more I was able to realize the subtle differences between all people.

Linville, P. W., & Jones, E. E. (1980). Polarized appraisals of outgroup members. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38, 689-703.