Why Your Name Matters
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
- tclark - ttclark - thclark - thoclark - thomclark - etc.
The first ones being already taken, I got "thoclark" as my login. I'm not sure why, but I became extremely upset at this, almost as if I was having an anxiety attack. I think the reason was that in no way, shape or form did I view "thoclark" as my personal identity, and for someone to assert that "tho" was me was akin to being charged with a crime I didn't commit. I wasn't comfortable with the thought of having to type that in multiple times per day, and I definitely wasn't comfortable telling others what my new professional email was.
They changed it to tomclark after a lot of pleading, but I'm curious as to why I had became so upset. I think the whole process would have been a lot better if I had the opportunity to choose my own login/email instead of someone saying, "hey, this is you now!"
Has anyone here had such a reaction before?
I know it shouldn't really matter, but it did.
What happens over time to change how we perceive ourselves?
I think your question is a good one though. I change my online identities subtlety over a fairly long period of time - and they seem to be converging towards my actual name and away from anonymity.
A good example of this is noted director Ang Lee - whose real name should be Lee Ang.
Indians also face name issues, mostly because of the length. 20-30 character names are not uncommon.
(Also, the Indian subcontinent is part of Asia.)
As a Jamal, I've found it pretty effective to use young white men as a proxy to push projects in the direction that I think they should go in. White kids fresh out of college (at least of late, maybe past 5-10 years) seem to be less racist than their older peers, and really impressed that you're older and you know a lot of stuff.
Sadly, I think that this generation's freshly graduated white kids are less racist simply because they have had less direct experience of black people than their parents and grandparents, who moved as far from black people as they possibly could. A professionally intimidating black person (because I have 15 years experience and they have 5, not because I'm that good:)) as a living, breathing reality in front of them is a fascinating novelty that they have no idea how to react to. They may rap at you sometimes, though. Ugh.
This article gets a bit bogged down in the "name" aspect of the thing, though. Race is a cultural construction designed to rationalize outgroup discrimination, and consists of a bunch of markers that people use to determine which group you should be placed in, and therefore how you should be treated. A name doesn't have to be "Da'Quan," "Monique Washington" will work as well.
Some white people. Not all white people. The qualifier is important. With it, it's a true statement. Without it, it's a racist slur.
Why is that relevant? Does being a middle class white have an impact on your ability to discern the truth? Why "I am a middle class white and i can see that" and not, say, "I am a fisherman and I can see that."?
But as to your point, consider these statements:
1. Middle class whites use faulty logic in Hacker News discussions.
2. Some middle class whites use faulty logic in Hacker News discussions.
Notwithstanding the results of any studies, do you not see that there's a salient difference between the two?
You where using a spurious "logical" argument to excuse racist views.
Really? What makes that so obvious?
> You where using a spurious "logical" argument to excuse racist views.
Which racist views am I excusing? Because I don't think I'm excusing a racist view at all. Quite the contrary.
The only thing I've actually said that you could legitimately judge me by is that it important to qualify the statement "if you sound (or look) like you're black then white people won't hire you, or listen to you" because if you don't qualify it then it sounds like you are making a statement about all white people, and this statement is only true of some white people, not all white people. So if you don't qualify it, it's a racist slur, no different from saying, "Moslems are terrorists" or "black people are criminals". Some (but not all) Moslems are terrorists (and so are some non-Moslems), and some (but not all) black people are criminals (and so are some white people), and some (but not all) white people are racists (and so, by the way, are some black people).
Do you actually disagree with any of that?
It's all about tribal identification. I don't mean tribes in the historical sense but more akin to Godin's idea of tribes. They're the people you identify with. It's pretty well established that people like people like themselves. This isn't really that crazy. It's easy to see that liking people like yourself isn't the same as hating people that are different, it does often mean you don't respond as warmly though.
Names, just like race, is just one marker, as you described it, that defines what tribe we belong to. We are all in the business of quickly assessing the situation and placing people into tribes mentally, probably unconsciously, as soon as we meet them and we will adjust our perception as we learn more about them, of course.
The point of these rambling paragraphs is that I don't think this is the same as racism, though it certainly can become racism when taken to the extreme. A good example is our friend groups. If we like a certain music, a certain type of game (DnD) then you're likely to end up in a friend group with a very similar set of interests.
This gets expanded to the work place in an interesting way. Lots of hip trendy employers say things like, "We wanted to build a company we loved coming to everyday". Well, in order to love being at the office every day you're going to have to like the people. Does this mean they have to be perfect matches for someone you'd place in your friend group, in your tribe? No. But it does mean they're going to have to match on some of those markers.
Companies talk about "cultural fit" when hiring, hell it's on the front page here pretty regularly. In my estimation this isn't that far from not hiring people based on race. Instead we're not hiring based on some other set of markers other than race. What we're really talking about is cultural-ism where we discriminate based on particular subcultures, and markers for those subcultures.
I won't argue fairness or anything like that but I do think it's important to explore the ideas that we discriminate against people regularly and only ascribe malice when it's down for racial reasons.
(Not that it should matter but I'm black and I run a team of about 16 people (all white) doing sales/product management/project management/ software development in the South)
Anyway, that's just my personal observation from hanging out with friends with less conventional lifestyles over the years.
(My other theory would be that the kids raised in less conventional ways, would be more likely to follow their passions, and enjoy their work, rather than becoming a corporate lawyer or accountant. Probably have less mental breakdowns or mid-life crises, but this is all speculation on my part).
On the other hand, it definitely seems like we could be looking at an instance of correlation. My educated, left-wing parents chose a fairly unusual name and that also reflects how they raise me. So it's hard to disassociate any of my name from my upbringing in deciding any impact on life outcomes. Probably the best studies in this are the ones comparing siblings, but even those are susceptible to third variables (perhaps second children are more likely to get a common name, and are certainly raised differently).
Changing your name is just hiding the symptom, not the cause.
That's especially funny due to my interest in cryptography, and counter surveillance.
I have considered changing my name, but I am undecided. Advice?
Though honestly, given the state of bureaucratic snafus, changing it might be wise.
The only time it'd be good to change your name for professional reasons is if you're coincidentally an investment banker called Bernard Madoff, but even then that could possibly be worked in your favor.
In the first study, they weren't looking at the number of "Doctor Dans", they were looking at a subset of people and placing them all along a graph and watching for trends in performance not based on a name, but based on the popularity of the name. These strike me as different things, but I'm no expert in these (or any) type of study.
No, no, no! Because correlation is not causation. Period. The prevailing social science nowadays isn't psychology but pseudology.
Hardly seems worth getting upset over.
For instance, if some immigrant is willing to change his name (as stated in article) he would probably be willing to make other things that would make him blend better into the new society, which could mean he was earning more. In this case name change is just a symptom, not the cause.
The consensus was I needed to change the name of the main character because "people called Tom can't be mass murderers."
We had two people with the name "John Doe", and the mail scheme at the company resulted in john.doe@company.invalid.
The second one got... john.doe1@company.invalid
There are other ways to solve collisions: j.doe@, j_doe@, maybew one of those has a second given name, whatever.
A resume can be an extremely noisy signal, and the best statistical signal might be the ethnicity implicit in the name. When you actually meet the person, you get a lot more information, and the employer might rely less on the person's race as a source of information/bias.