Identity Politics: My Professional Look-Alikes - Jason Riley, WSJ

When I was a little boy, people regularly told me that I resembled the child actor Gary Coleman, star of the popular TV sitcom “Diff’rent Strokes.” Coleman was short and had fat cheeks. I didn’t appreciate the comparison. I thought I was much better looking.

As an adult I acquired a different doppelgänger, not a famous actor but a fellow opinion journalist whom I happened to befriend after moving to New York in the mid-1990s. His name is Robert George, and for the past quarter-century or so people have been confusing us with each other. It’s a year-round phenomenon, but it gets magnified around the holidays when we attend more social gatherings. On some level the mix-ups make sense. Physically, Robert and I are roughly the same height, with the same build and dark skin tone. Both of us have shaven heads, wear glasses and run in politically conservative circles. Nevertheless, we’ve both been amused over the years at how long the confusion has persisted, not only among strangers but also among people who have known us for decades.

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While I was waiting for an elevator in an office building one day, a man approached me and said, “Good to see you again!” He could tell I didn’t recognize him. “We met at a party last week,” he continued. “Don’t you remember? We even took a picture together.” He whipped out his phone and produced a photo of himself standing next to Robert. I tried to tell him it was someone else in the picture, but he didn’t believe me.

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Robert and I enjoy comparing notes, but we don’t take offense or try to read some deeper meaning into these episodes. We understand that well-meaning people can make honest mistakes. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) once encountered Sen. Tim Scott (R., S.C.) and mistook him for Sen.-elect Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.). According to New York magazine reporter Ben Terris, the late senator approached Mr. Scott, “stuck out her hand, and told him she had been rooting for him and was so happy to have him serving with her in the Senate.” Ever the class act, Mr. Scott played along. “Thank you so much,” he replied. “Your support means a lot.”

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The libertarian legal scholars Ilya Shapiro and Ilya Somin are mistaken for each other so often that Mr. Somin penned a definitive guide to telling them apart and published it online. “I thought #IlyaConfusion was fading,” he wrote on Facebook last month. “But tonight, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett made it great again by ascribing to me an incident involving Ilya Shapiro.”

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