"Did you get a lot of reaction to that Super Bowl commercial?"
"What Super Bowl commercial?"
Sam Rubin, entertainment reporter for the "No 1 morning show in Hollywood", has just made an epic blunder – confusing his guest, actor Samuel L Jackson (who's black), with Laurence Fishburne (he's also black, and also an actor), who really did appear in the commercial.
Jackson's reaction is classic. He tells the squirming reporter: "We may all be black and famous but we don't all look alike." And he doesn't let up: "You're the entertainment reporter for this station and you don't know the difference between me and Laurence Fishburne? There must be a very short line for your job."
What makes the error even worse is that the Super Bowl advert played on Fishburne's high-profile role in The Matrix – a film which, as anyone with the vaguest movie knowledge would know, Jackson never appeared in. And after Rubin – who's been with the TV station on which this exchange plays out since 1991 – has apologised unreservedly, Jackson offers some friendly advice on how to tell his black guests apart: "There's more than one black guy doing a commercial. I'm the 'What's in your wallet?' black guy. He's the 'car' black guy. Morgan Freeman is the other credit card black guy." He could have gone on to mention Danny Glover, who's regularly been confused with Freeman.
It's hilarious. But at the same time, it will strike a nerve with many black people who've faced similar mistaken-identity incidents in their own lives, especially those who work in industries or organisations which employ, you know, more than one of us.
Kamal Ahmed, who's about to become the BBC's business editor, used to be a colleague of mine at the Guardian, and I lost track of the times people thought I was him. Yes, he's tall and black, but we really don't look like each other at all – he's got hair, for starters.
And even now, when I introduce myself as working at the Guardian, I can be asked: "Are you Hugh Muir?" "No?" "Gary Younge?"
The former equalities chief Trevor Phillips has been knighted several times, but unfortunately for him (if he's into that kind of thing), never by the Queen – only by several media reporters who think he's broadcaster Sir Trevor McDonald.
It can be funny, but at the same time it's a reminder of your outsider status – that you can be grouped together with people who may have little connection to your own work and have distinctly different skills and abilities. It gives the lie to those colleagues who claim "I don't see colour" when you're made aware that you're being judged by precisely that yardstick. It's a reminder that, as one of a small few who've broken through, you're still not quite seen as belonging to the organisation or its culture. If you're talking to a co-worker and it becomes apparent that, as they judge you, in the back of their mind they're thinking of someone else, then you've lost your individuality.
Of course, this applies to all visible minorities. Women in most workplaces are now present in large enough numbers for this not to be an issue, though there are clearly areas (such as senior levels in business or politics) where the breakthrough hasn't yet happened.
And there are sectors where the confusion doesn't happen because there simply aren't enough people. My wife, for example, works in the chemical industry and she's always been the only black woman in her workplace. And what about people with disability? How many companies employ, say, even two wheelchair users for there to be any mistaken identity?
So maybe Jackson should see it as a sign of progress. After all, in Sidney Poitier's heyday in the 1960s there would have been no one else to be confused with (though, thinking about it, maybe Harry Belafonte?) And whatever, in those days black stars certainly didn't get any Super Bowl commercials.
