What it's like to be a white woman named LaKiesha

And your reason for doubting it would be?

As an American, I found most of this article strange and difficult to believe.

Russian

Sounds Russian or Slavic to me.

Does Oleksii sound like Alexy?

People turned a lot of Z's into S's and things like that.

That's a big reason why there are so many similar spelled surnames. They'd write it down 'wrong' at Ellis Island, and that's what you were stuck with. Oleksii, Oleksy, etc.

I agree with you that Machuga doesn't sound black at all. Maybe Hispanic if you're pronouncing it 'Mah-choo-gah'

As an American with an Italian last name I've experienced some of this personally. It is ridiculous. Oleksii is a cool name and I imagine how it is perceived here depends a lot on how you pronounce it when introducing yourself. My family has always pronounced our last name with an emphasis on phonics to make the name sounds "less weird" or easier to pronounce for Americans.

Interesting that this submission got flagged. I wonder why?

That one struck me as strange as well - "Machuga" doesn't sound like a stereotypically African name at all. And an image search for it brings up a sea of pasty white faces. Maybe Tim met somebody from an area of Africa where it's a common name and he mentioned it or something.

I feel like the reporter asked around the office for people who'd had these experiences, and Tim mentioned his, so he put him in the article.

As far as immigrants "whitening" their names in the early 20th century, it's pretty common, for whatever it's worth... My wife's last name is Gage, but her grandfather changed it from Gadzeki after he lost a local city council race for what he felt was his "damned Polish last name" (his words). This was in Detroit, and he worked for Ford, which at the time, had a fairly strong culture of "Americanizing" recent immigrants. There was a massive wave of anti immigrant sentiment in the 20's and 30's targeted at Irish, Italian, and Eastern European immigrants, and it lingered for many decades afterwards.

Also, the first name bias is quite real. I dated a lady for most of my late teens - mid 20's named Ticia (pronounced Teecha, rather than Tisha). She's Ojibwe Chippewa, but this was rural TN and SC, so race is treated as a very binary black/white checkbox, and she falls into the "white" category. However, Ticia is a "black" name, for the most part. I lost count of the number of times I saw blatantly rude reactions when she introduced herself.

Then let me ask you this,if a person has ancestors that were never victims of the "stacked deck" such as immigrants and they happen to be of a race as defined by the government which had been victimized,should they benefit from these reparations?

How about european immigrants that just arrived in the US within the last decade,should native minorities have better opportunities than them?

And what exactly is race? Ancestry? National origin? Consider this list: north african arab,turk,spanish, white skinned mexican,brown skinned egyptian,light skinned indian,albanian and south african with european ancestry. Lets say these people and their families immigrated to the US in the late 80's and had children immediately,their children will be treated very differently from each other. Which race are they? The south african is white but the mexican is not so white?

The law has no business defining race or using this social construct for systemic inequalities. This breeds so much strife,resentment and division and is not sustainable.

When you benefit one group, if you in the process benefit and harm other groups unfairly you're only shuffling around inequality. I believe the end result is even more unfairness and injustice to even more groups of people.

And I think you're missing the fact that you're not actually breaking any laws by telling people you're one race or another. Saying, "by law in the US she is considered white" implies there is some legal repercussion, which was likely cause for jumasheff's confusion. I could only imagine that happening if there was some sort of fraud involved.