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Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5062
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2007 - 12:47 pm: | 
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Unique Names – Yes, Even Condoleezza – Play a Major Role in Perceptions of Their Bearer
Date: Tuesday, March 27, 2007
By: Jackie Jones, BlackAmericaWeb.com
In Shakespeare’s play, “Romeo and Juliet,” once Juliet Capulet discovers that Romeo Montague’s family is the archenemy of her own, she suggests that it is who you are, not what you are called, that matters.
“’Tis but thy name that is my enemy. Thou art thyself, thou not a Montague,” she said.
Some latter day researchers, however, would argue that a rose by any other name definitely is not so sweet, especially when it comes to some of the more creative names that many black Americans give their children.
A series of studies have revealed that job applicants with names that sound black to employers, such as Tyrone and Tamika, are less likely to be called in for interviews, and when they are hired, they tend to make less money than those with more “traditional” names.
Marianne Bertrand of the University of Chicago and Sendhil Mullainathan of M.I.T. conducted a field experiment from mid-2001 to mid-2002, in which they submitted 5,000 applications from phantom job candidates for about 1,300 classified ads for administrative, clerical and customer service jobs. Half the pool of applicants had names that were particularly common among black people and names that were common among whites.
Applicants with white-sounding names, such as Emily and Greg, needed to send about 10 resumes to get one callback, while candidates with black sounding names, such as Lakisha and Jamal, needed to send out 15 resumes to get a callback -- even if the resumes were about equal in the quality of education and experience, according to their research.
But the impact of a name reaches even deeper than job applications for adults.
A study by David N. Figlio, the Knight-Ridder professor of Economics at the University of Florida and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, showed that a pupil’s name might affect teachers’ expectations of her academic ability.
Further, Figlio told BlackAmericaWeb.com, “A name has a really powerful affect on how the young people perceive themselves, as well as how they are perceived.”
“There are particular attributes from a statistical perspective that are likely to be given by more educated families, black or white, and some by lower educated families, black or white,” said Figlio, who has created a computer model that analyzes names in a way that reveals the educational and socio-economic status and the likely race of the subjects’ parents.
The statistical computer model, Figlio said, can look at the likelihood a person came from a certain background and can predict, fairly consistently, the odds of success as an adult based on the name and the placement of certain letters in the name.
As an economist, Figlio said, he looks at tangible outcomes in education and researches their underlying causes. Currently, he is on sabbatical at Oxford University in England, studying how ethnic minorities around the world are treated in schools.
“Not every name is linguistically alike,” Figlio said. “If you were to see a child with a K in the middle of her name, that child is three times more likely to have a mom who graduated from high school than a child with a Q in the middle of her name.”
So, Figlio’s research found, that teachers would expect more from a student named LaKeisha than one named LaQuinisha.
Also, more common black names, like Keisha, Ebony and Malcolm, fare better than names that sound completely made up or don’t have an easily referenced meaning.
Mister Mann Frisby, 31, an author and freelance journalist who has gotten more than his share of questions about his first name, said he loved being different.
Frisby said his mother wanted him to have a unique name, one that would command respect. She had been talked out of naming his oldest brother Mister, Frisby told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “By the time I came along, she decided to go for it.”
Frisby said he never caught heat about the name from his peers, while growing up. On the contrary, he said. “People were fascinated by it," he said. "Everybody was so used to it. Teachers loved it.”
He said Mister was a rather tame name compared to some of his neighbors and classmates, who had such names as Pac Man (pronounced “Pock Mon”) and Oceanboomie. And that having a common name wasn’t always the best thing for some children.
“I lived in the projects with a boy named Charlie Brown. He caught it all the time,” Frisby said.
It wasn’t until Frisby arrived as a freshman at overwhelmingly white Penn State University that he ran into people who thought is first name was unusual.
“White men would say, ‘What do we call you?’ I would say, ‘Call me Mister; that’s my name. There’s nothing else; there’s no shortcuts,’” Frisby said.
Frisby said he believes people often have to live up to (or sometimes live down) their names. The author of novels "Blinking Red Light" and "Wife Beater" and the nonfiction "Holla Back … But Listen First: A Life Guide for Young Black Men" said he has had no problem as a writer with the name and that it helps people remember him.
“There’s power in a name,” Frisby said. “For me, Mister Mann Frisby, being a writer and journalist, nothing could be better. When I meet someone named Mister, I get excited. It’s like we’re in an exclusive fraternity. I take pictures and everything.”
Frisby also pointed out that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has reached unprecedented success in academia and politics with one of the more unusual sounding names. Before the State Department, Rice was President Bush’s national security adviser and before public service, Rice had been a provost at Stanford University.
“She made it,” Frisby said. “She has the ultimate ghetto girl name that made it. She works at the White House. C’mon, it may as well have been Shananay.”
Figlio, however, said there is a scientific explanation for Rice’s name and her success.
The name Condoleezza, he said, “has a lot of linguistic attributes that work in her favor.”
Children with a Z in the middle of their names are more likely to have better educated parents. That and the fact that Condoleezza is derived from an Italian opera stage term, con dolcezza, meaning "with sweetness," gave Rice an edge that a purely made up name that may not have a meaning does not hold for other children, Figlio said.
Figlio said pressuring parents to give their children certain names is not the answer.
“I think that parents should continue to name their child whatever they want,” he added. “They just need to keep that in mind and let her know society may treat her differently because her name is different, but give her an extra dose of props from her that she can achieve.
“Fundamentally, a name is the very first gift parents give their children. It may be the name of a relative or they just like the way the name feels or it is reminiscent of a positive place or experience,” Figlio said. “We need to do things: One, society needs to change it’s notion of stereotyping people on the basis of their names and not just by race. Two, people who want to give their children these names need to be their children’s first and constant advocate, before and after they start school.
“If a child has that strong underpinning,” Figlio said, “then that discrimination won’t be so strong.”
http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/bawnews/uniquenames327 |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 9090
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2007 - 12:59 pm: |
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Condelessa (Rice)
Oprah (Winfrey)
Colin (Powell)
Denzel (Washington)
LaBron (James)
They seem to have done okay in spite of their odd/atypical names, I think.
Foks should (with maybe the exception of using naming their kids after alcoholic beverages) be free to name their kids whatever the hell they want to name them. And shame on the REST of us for supporting or justifying bias against Black children simply based on their bearing a name that they themselves had no part in creating. |
Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2171
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2007 - 01:34 pm: |
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aint this ol' news?
Also, I think this issue really pertains to folk searching for low level jobs...?! |
Renata
Veteran Poster
Username: Renata
Post Number: 1928
Registered: 08-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2007 - 02:02 pm: |
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Colin isn't VERY uncommon among whites. |
Renata
Veteran Poster
Username: Renata
Post Number: 1929
Registered: 08-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2007 - 02:04 pm: |
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We had almost named our son Donovan, but decided against it. We went with something a little more old fashioned. |
Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2173
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2007 - 02:50 pm: |
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right colin is british, and its pronounciation has sometimes been americanized.... |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8118
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2007 - 07:20 pm: |
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I thought "Colin" was a good ol Irish name. |
Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2181
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2007 - 08:04 pm: |
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perhaps...LOL! I know Americans, often, mispronounce Powel's name, whose the child of Jamaican, and therefore would pronounce it the way the brits or Irish do... |
Latina_wi
Regular Poster
Username: Latina_wi
Post Number: 321
Registered: 08-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, March 30, 2007 - 06:47 am: |
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When I found out Powell was Jamaican I was like 'Figures. Only us darn Jamaicans would give a kid seemingly normal name and then insist on that pronuciation'.
LOL, gwaaan CO-lin!
As a child with an unusual (but in no means ghetto) name I myself felt I had to live up to my 'uniqueness' and be this extremely special and amazing person my name perceived me to be.
Praise de Lord that I am eh? He he! |
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