Through the many summers (Won’t say how many) of my life, I have seen new ploys come and go, that were meant to change how we feel about ourselves. Seems just as we start to get our self-esteem revved up and ready to take on the world, something new comes up.
Watching a show on ABC News, I learned that ‘job applicants with "black-sounding" names may face bias from prospective employers.’
It seems the fact that many African-American parents are returning to their roots by choosing names that sound uniquely black, has been found to be bothersome in the workplace.
Employers say that non-race-identifiable names like Mary, John, Phillip or Susan are more acceptable and likely to be employed than race-identifiable names like Shaniqua, LaKquan or other African sounding names. The way the story went is that the study looked at 5,000 résumés of a group of young professionals who didn't quite believe the name on top of their résumés could make that big a difference. However, they were soon proven wrong. The resumes with white sounding names received a 50% call back rate over the ones with black sounding names. As a matter of fact, the article actually quoted one young woman who was considering changing her name to ‘fit’ in and become employable. To me, this is unacceptable. That is equal to ‘shuffling to please the master.’
When my eldest granddaughter was born, I named her SaNaundra and instructed her from her very early years, not to let anyone change her name. She had to lock horns with a teacher who assumed that ‘her grandmother’ had misspelled Saundra, and tried to change her name. Well, long story short, I flew from Monterey, CA to Oklahoma to meet with the teacher and set the record straight. Let’s just say, she has never had a name problem since.
I realize that our self-worth should not be defined by our names. That should be defined by that ‘something’ deep down inside and our personal self-assessment, self pride and accomplishments. None of those things should be measured in terms of dollar earnings, but by what we give back to humanity in service.
However, if we take the time to educate ourselves and our children, we, and they should be measured by education, training and ability to do the job. The fact that they got from point A (no education) to point B, a degreed education, should be enough to make our skills usable in the workforce. In all honesty, this is really nothing new. In the 1960s and 1970s, I went through the same thing, but we called it what it was: Racism. Are we supposed to go back and embrace our slave sounding names, again, in order to be accepted by white corporate America? Should we discard our pride in ancestry just to be accepted by mainstream America? I should think not.
If enough lawsuits are filed on behalf of the people affected, it will stop. This is just another means of control. The old folks used to say, “The only way to get a mules’ attention is to hit him in the forehead, as hard as you can.” In this case, if you hit the culprits in the pocket hard enough, they’ll learn to accept the Shaniquas, LaKquans and other African sounding names. I will say this to the parents, do not let society force you to change the way you name your children. Just be prepared to teach them that they have a right to bear that name with pride. I must admit, that even then, what is most likely to happen is that it will just go underground as it did in those early years. Kid not yourselves, even though the law says that a past employer is not supposed to give negative report to a potential employer, it is done every day. There is an underground network that say things off the record, and those things are never repeated, except through the ‘grapevine.Bottom line is that if we bow down to this kind of name pressure, we may as well buy a set of kneepads for each member of our family; for surely we will have to live the rest of our lives on our knees to ‘fit in.’