Walking while black at Yale University

I can't believe he wrote a column about it as well.

And, because he writes for the New York Time, he wrangled an apology out of both the dean and the police chief:

The dean of Yale College and the campus police chief have apologized and promised an internal investigation, and I appreciate that. But the scars cannot be unmade. My son will always carry the memory of the day he left his college library and an officer trained a gun on him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/26/opinion/charles-blow-at-yale-the-police-detained-my-son.html?rref=collection/column/charles-m-blow&_r=0

In addition to leaving out that the cop involved was African-American, he also left his kid's dopey name out of the column.

Here's some background for the column Charles will be writing about 16 months from now:

Tahani Tompkins was struggling to get callbacks for job interviews in the Chicago area this year when a friend made a suggestion: Change your name. Instead of Tahani, a distinctively African-American-sounding name, she began going by T. S. Tompkins in applications.

Yvonne Orr, also searching for work in Chicago, removed her bachelor’s degree from Hampton University, a historically black college, leaving just her master’s degree from Spertus Institute, a Jewish school. She also deleted a position she once held at an African-American nonprofit organization and rearranged her references so the first people listed were not black.

The dueling forces of assimilation and diversity have long battled for primacy in the American experience, most acutely among African-Americans. It’s not clear that assimilation has gained an edge here in the waning days of the decade, but the women’s behavior — “whitening” the résumé — is certainly not isolated. Ms. Tompkins and Ms. Orr were among the more than two dozen college-educated blacks interviewed for an article about racial disparities in hiring published last week on the front page of The New York Times. A half-dozen said they had taken steps to hide their race, or at least dial back the level of “blackness” signaled in their résumés.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/weekinreview/06Luo.html?_r=0

 

About a year into my doctoral studies I was at a dinky little regional academic conference and saw a really interesting presentation. The authors ginned up a bunch of resumes for entry-level managerial applicants, but manipulated ONLY the names. So, for a given resume, they had one version with John, another with Robert, then one with, as the NYT article put it, "a distinctly African-American-sounding name." Then, they asked students at three schools -- one a generic state university, another a mid-level private university, and the third an HBC -- to review the resumes and rank them (there were lots of resumes, and each particular resume was seen only once by a given evaluator).

Routinely, the resumes with the African-American sounding names were ranked lower. This was true even at the HBC. I was floored.

Now, these weren't high-powered scholars, and there may have been major flaws with their study -- I never saw it appear in print anywhere, so that suggests the work likely had some issues -- but the germ of the idea still was astounding to me.

 

Oh, I believe it's true.

And, it's why the whole idea that whites, or especially conservative, or rural, or Southern whites, are specifically racist, or more racist than the sophisticated liberal whites, in the Northeast, or even African-Americans is such bullshit.

And, yet, a guy like Charles Blow, who is convinced we live in a deeply racist society, and who wasn't burdened by a dopey name, goes ahead and gives his own son a name he's going to have to overcome to succeed.

 

Tahj definitely sounds like he has struggled so far, only majoring in biology (not chemistry!) at Yale.

He'll probably end up on welfare.

 

Oh, look, he'll probably be fine. And, if anyone fucks with him, daddy will tweet about it, and write a column about it, which will result in the reversal in any decision made that would adversely effect young Tahj's career.

But, in a highly competitive field, there's no saying that his "distinctly African-American-sounding name" might not hurt him in an application process.

 

I think Freakonomics did a whole podcast built around this study:
Freakonomics » How Much Does Your Name Matter?

 

Not so related, but my favorite Yale-related story about race:
Re: Who are you? | Big Think

 

Why does the kid's name matter? Because it's ethnic-sounding?

Dude can't name his kid what he wants? What the fuck is wrong with you?

 

BTW, Taj or Tahj is an Indian name, from Sanskrit, and means crown.

 

On a side tangent, I've read studies on women who have male sounding names or use initials are more likely to be hired.

Here's a thing on that and other reasons why your name matters

How Your Name Affects Your Success - Business Insider

 

Really?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/magazine/a-boy-named-dana.html?_r=0

 

I'd like to think names that look or sound female or "minority" wouldn't sway me one way or the other, but I suspect I'd be biased against Sindee, Jaxsen, Maddicynn, etc.