Yuen: Why two Asian American musicians had to announce they’re not the same person

After years of being confused for the other Asian American female musician in town with a head of shaggy curls, Meghan Kreidler experienced it again. But this time, she was too tired to laugh.

She was walking out of a Twin Cities record store when an acquaintance who had seen her indie rock band Kiss the Tiger several times mistook Kreidler for Diane. As in Diane Miller, a close friend of Kreidler’s, as well as a hip-hop artist, and host of “The Local Show” on Minnesota Public Radio’s 89.3 the Current.

“It bothered me in a way that it hasn’t before,” Kreidler said. “I can usually shake it off, but it was like, ‘This is getting a little old. It’s been years.’ ”

Later that day she shared on Instagram that she and Miller, shockingly, are two different people. Kreidler says she’s been mistaken for Miller on a weekly basis, at concerts and music stores, on the street and on social media where well-meaning fans erroneously tag the wrong woman.

Miller says it’s nice to be recognized in public, assuming the stranger gets it right.

“If you’re sitting down at a restaurant and someone says, ‘Hey, so-and-so’ and identifies you as the wrong person, at first it might be funny. But if it happens over and over again, you’ve got to understand that it would be annoying,” says Miller, who reposted Kreidler’s social media announcement. “It actually is hurtful.”

Kreidler and Miller aren’t naive to the fact they share some physical characteristics. They’re both in their 30s, are a blend of Asian and white, and have dark wavy hair. The two have even performed together, with Miller occasionally joining Kreidler on stage with Kiss the Tiger. If the camera hits them at the right angle, they could pass for sisters.

But let’s say you saw Kreidler belting it out at a live show wearing a black moto jacket and literally seconds later you noticed Miller in the crowd in a plaid button-down and a cardigan. Would you assume one of them had superhero-like powers to change costumes in the blink of an eye? Or would your cognitive reasoning kick in and help you understand that they are two separate individuals? Sadly, the former happens more often than you’d think.

“It’s a microaggression. But that’s the thing. Over time, it builds up and becomes something more cancerous than when it first started,” Kreidler says. “It’s just like people aren’t really seeing you.”

This kind of thing obviously happens to people other than Kreidler and Miller, which is why they’re talking about it, even as they acknowledge it’s not the most egregious error to harm humanity. In mostly white settings, experts say, the phenomenon is more likely to affect people of color who share the same race or ethnicity.

(The opposite is true, too. Simply put, the science shows that it’s easier to identify people of your own race than those of other races. But research also suggests that nonwhite people are better at identifying white faces than vice versa, particularly if they are people in power.)

Here in the Midwest, when you get constantly mistaken for the Other Asian - and your supposed doppelganger is someone you respect - the experience can feel both flattering and demoralizing. It’s happened to me so many times that I, too, made a similar public announcement: I was not my friend and colleague Nancy Yang. You start to second-guess compliments from strangers and co-workers: Are they really talking about me, or is it the Other Asian?

For Kreidler and Miller, the misidentifications started to ramp when their career paths accelerated around the same time in the Twin Cities music scene. Miller, who was born on a remote Alaskan island and spent much of her early life in Fargo, made a name for herself in the Upper Midwest as a rapper, music journalist and singer-songwriter, as well as through her previous job booking talent for the live-music venue Icehouse in Minneapolis.

Kreidler, a Minnesota native who relished being a “competitive speech nerd” at Eagan High School, is a successful stage actor whose magnetic performances have fueled Kiss the Tiger’s rise. The band is now one of the Twin Cities music scene’s most in-demand acts of recent years. Back in 2018, Kreidler and her bandmates were so blown away by videos of Miller singing that they reached out to her, a stranger, and invited her to tour with them in California. Miller didn’t hesitate.

“I listened to their music and was right away compelled,” Miller recalls. “I was inspired by it, and it was cool to see other Asian women running bands, too.”

Miller and Kreidler became fast friends and have never missed an opportunity to lift each other up professionally. Which is why being mislabeled as the other garners a complex marinade of emotions. They connect on a deeper level and admire each other’s artistry so much that “getting mixed up for each other is complicated,” Kreidler says. It’s a blessing and a curse to enjoy so much success that strangers approach you on a sidewalk mistaking you for a friend you think the world of.

The encouraging part about the science of cross-race facial confusion is that while humans aren’t perfect, they aren’t powerless, either. They can take steps to help prevent them from making these flubs again and again.

Here’s what the researchers advise: Study people’s faces. Get to know people from different backgrounds more deeply. Jim Tanaka, a facial-recognition expert and psychology professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, told the BBC that the more diverse your social circles are, the easier time you’ll have distinguishing faces of a race different from your own.

“Who do you hang out with? Who are your friends? That seems to be a better predictor,” Tanaka said. “You have to care.”

I think that’s the simple plea from Kreidler and Miller. Twin Cities music community, please care and try get this right. See these powerhouse women as the individuals they are.