Overcoming PC Color Blinders

We went to the Temple last night along with several people from the ward. As I was walking through the lobby a very pretty black sister came out of the "women's" area and needed to communicate something to her husband who was in the "men's" area. So she asked me if I could try to find him. She described him as medium height with very closely cropped hair and his name was Mike. Now I could just march in there and start asking for "Mike." But, there was a very large 600 pound elephant in the room nobody was acknowledging. After a pregnant pause I asked her, "...and is he black?" She confirmed that he was. Now armed with this information I knew I would have no trouble at all identifying her husband in the midst of largley white-bread Mormon America.