http://www.post-gazette.com/lifestyle/20031125blacknames1125fnp2.aspStudies find that Afrocentric names often incur a bias
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
By L.A. Johnson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
When T.J. and Anika Flannigan gaze into the smooth,
sweet, cinnamon-colored face of their 14-month-old
daughter, they see the promise of all she'll become.
They expect her to grow into an intelligent woman who
fearlessly faces life's challenges and perseveres, and
they selected her name to reflect these
characteristics.
Assata Akili Flannigan.
Assata means warlike or she who struggles, and Akili,
which is Tanzanian, means bright and smart.
"It's like willing it to be true," says Anika
Flannigan, 24, of Wilkinsburg.
The name is meant to define her -- not diminish her in
others' eyes or expose her to undue discrimination.
However, a recent paper from the National Bureau of
Economic Research indicates that some employers
discriminate against job applicants based on the
Afrocentric or black-sounding names on their resumes,
regardless of their education, job experience or
qualifications.
In the research paper "Are Emily and Greg More
Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?" University of
Chicago economics professor Marianne Ber-trand and
Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics
professor Sendhil Mullaina-than sent out close to
5,000 fictitious resumes in response to more than
1,300 help-wanted ads in The Boston Globe and the
Chicago Tribune.
Resumes were randomly assigned a variety of very
black-sounding names, such as Lakisha Washington and
Jamal Jones, or very white-sounding names, such as
Emily Walsh or Greg Baker.
Two higher-quality and two lower-quality resumes were
sent out in response to each ad. Black-sounding names
were randomly assigned to one of the higher-quality
resumes and one of the lower-quality resumes.
The resumes with white-sounding names received 50
percent more call-backs for interviews than those with
black-sounding names. Resumes with white-sounding
names received one call-back per 10 resumes, while
those with black-sounding names received one call-back
per 15 resumes.
"Both my colleague and I were immensely surprised at
the results," Mullainathan says.
Before they started their research for the paper, they
informally asked human resource managers, academics
and others involved in hiring what they thought the
research would reveal.
"A lot of people said we would find reverse
discrimination, and a lot of people who felt there
would be some discrimination thought we'd find a small
gap," he said.
However, the 50 percent difference in responses is a
far larger gap than anyone anticipated and is evidence
that discrimination is alive and well, the researchers
said.
"Part of what I like about these types of studies is
it doesn't matter what you expect," Mullainathan says.
"The data is going to show what the data is going to
show, and you can't manipulate it, consciously or
subconsciously."
Higher-quality resumes, listing more skills and
experience, yielded 30 percent more call-backs for
whites but only 9 percent more for blacks.
"That, to me, was the most depressing part,"
Mullaina-than says. "When you show you have skills,
you should get a huge return, and [blacks] didn't."
Bertrand and Mullainathan found the amount of racial
discrimination uniform across the industries
represented -- which included sales, administrative
support, clerical and customer service jobs.
Equal-opportunity employers were found to discriminate
as much as other employers.
"It doesn't make me angry because I've basically
decided that's how this society is, and I've not even
put myself in the position to where I need to be
accepted," says Anika Flannigan, who runs a catering
business from home and plans to home-school her
daughter, Assata. "I know I'm different."
People shouldn't worry about their child being
discriminated against because of his or her name, she
says.
"They're going to be discriminated against anyway,"
Flannigan says. "I don't think we should be trying to
fit in; we should be trying to build our own
businesses and support each other."
Aki Jamal Durham and his fiancee, Aliya Farrish,
already have decided against giving their children
Afrocentric or black-sounding names.
"It's not that we don't have a sense of pride in our
African-American heritage, but sometimes you have to
avoid these blatant and obvious pitfalls," says
Durham, 31, of the Hill District. "We have agreed to
give our children more conservative-sounding names so
that they may not have to deal with that type of
discrimination."
Their children will be raised knowing and being proud
of their black culture, but they won't need
Afrocentric or black-sounding names to do that, they
say.
"If I demonstrate that I can compete on an equal
playing field, it shouldn't matter what my name is,"
says Farrish, 28, of Point Breeze. "But because of the
way society is, as a black person, you don't always
have or want to put all of who you are on your
sleeve."
In a 1995 University of Pittsburgh study titled
"Preschool Children's Selection of Race-Related
Personal Names," associate professor Jerlean E.
Daniel, Ph.D., and professor Jack L. Daniel, Ph.D.,
asked 182 black and white 4- and 5-year-old children
in Head Start nine questions related to positive and
negative behaviors and character traits. The "Guess
Who Game" asked the children to assume they had moved
to a new neighborhood where they didn't know anyone.
In your new neighborhood, guess who is the smartest
person in school: (a) Kyle or (b) Malik? (With girls
they used the names (a) Sarah or (b) Shaniqua.)
In your new neighborhood, guess who is lazy: (a)
Lashonda or (b) Victoria? (With boys they used the
names (a) Jerome or (b) Dylan.)
In your new neighborhood, guess who looks the nicest:
(a) Desiree or (b) Rachel? (With boys they used the
names (a) Tyrone or (b) Tyler.)
In your new neighborhood, someone punched someone.
Guess who did it: (a) Tiara or (b) Rebecca. (With boys
they used the names (a) Andre or (b) Matthew.)
The researchers used some of the names most frequently
given to white and black children in Pennsylvania
between 1990 and 1993, with each name statistically
being strongly identified and much more common with
one race or the other.
They found that white children selected black names
significantly more often for negative than for
positive behaviors. White children also selected black
names more often when the questions involved girls,
indicating that stereotyping may be greater for black
female names.
"They don't come out of the womb thinking that," says
Durham, stressing that media and parents shape
children's opinions and understanding of the world.
For positive character situations, the children,
regardless of race or gender, selected black girls'
names significantly less often than boys' names.
"It's real typical," T.J. Flannigan says of the
findings of both studies. "As long as you have TV in
the world, it's going to be that way. Of course you're
going to start to stereotype like that."
In the final question, where children were asked who
looked most like them, 86 percent of the white
children chose white names, as did 58 percent of the
African-American children. This finding echoed the
landmark 1939 Clark and Clark doll study in which
black and white children indicated preferences for
white dolls.
"How does an African-American child say he looks like
a Kyle when there are [at least in the early 1990s] no
black Kyles?" says Jack L. Daniel, the University of
Pittsburgh's vice provost for undergraduate studies
and dean of students. "It could be they're picking the
higher-prestige name and they assign the name that is
affiliated with white as the high-prestige name."
For example, Kristen vs. Keisha or Todd vs. Tremayne.
"Nothing could be further from the truth than to say,
'Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will
never hurt me,' " says Daniel, also a professor in the
communications department. "Names will hurt you."
Words often become euphemisms for concepts, and people
have all types of associations with names.
"Marilyn represented beauty just like Britney and
Beyonce represent things about sexuality and beauty
today," says Daniel, who is scheduled to discuss his
research on ABC-TV's 20/20 early next year.
Durham believes his black-sounding name has prevented
him from getting some call-backs for jobs. And since
Sept. 11, 2001, he's felt even more acute
discrimination from some prospective employers who
think he is Muslim because of his Arabic first name,
Aki, which means "my brother."
Names that suggest a foreign heritage, in fact, also
may prove problematic for applicants. Former New York
Gov. Mario Cuomo, jobless upon graduation from law
school though tied for first in his class, was advised
by his law school dean to change his name. He
considered adopting the moniker Mark Conrad but
eventually landed a prestigious clerkship at the New
York State Court of Appeals under his given name.
Since his survey results were released in May,
Mullainathan has been talking to human resource
managers and others involved in hiring who are as
surprised as anyone at the findings of discrimination.
"They aren't doing this intentionally," he says.
"Firms and HR managers and the people who do the
hiring are really keen on trying to fix the problem."
Mullainathan is optimistic that correcting the problem
may not be as difficult as people think.
"They make a decision about most [resumes] in 10 to 15
seconds," says Mullainathan, who is studying how human
resource managers read resumes. "It's hard not to let
your implicit biases kick in, no matter how
good-hearted you are, and these quick impressions are
prone to mistakes."
Simply spending more time going through resumes might
reduce the call-back gap, he says.
Some also differentiate between names derived from a
foreign country, language or culture and those that
parents have created.
"I really don't like the made-up names like
LeMichael," says Farrish, an administrator for a small
nonprofit.
"When you give a child a name like Cristal or
Mercedes, you almost put them in a box, and every day
they're reminded of these materialistic values," says
Durham, who works in marketing and promotions.
"That speaks to values and what you want your child to
grow up being associated with -- an expensive
champagne or a virtuous moral?" says Farrish, whose
first name, Aliya, means "exalted" in Swahili. "When
they're given these bastardized names, they have to
defend them and I think that's an unfair burden to put
on a child."
In a National Bureau of Economic Research paper titled
"The Causes and Consequences of Distinctively Black
Names," NBER's Roland Fryer and the University of
Chicago's Steven Levitt found in studying California
birth data that in the past 20 years, distinctively
black names may be indicative of being born into a
lower economic class, but that they have no bearing on
how successful people with such names end up in life.
Daniel, speaking in defense of Afrocentric and unique
black-sounding names, says such names are all part of
black creativity.
"No different than jazz, blues, soul or rap," Daniel
says. "Everything we touch, we add creativity to it."
Some parents want to create a unique identity for
their child.
"You take the young African-American parent who wants
to imbue dignity in her child. She uses her creativity
and comes up with Latifah, Lashonda," he says. "Even
with names such as Lexus, parents want their child to
have the highest aspirations and be the best, just as
Lexus is the best of its kind."
T.J. Flannigan knows firsthand that having a
white-sounding name isn't necessarily an advantage in
ultimately getting a job, though it has helped him get
his foot in the door.
When searching for an electrician's job in Ohio, he
always received a warm reception over the telephone.
However, when Thomas Jefferson Flannigan showed up for
the personal interview, jaws dropped and brows
furrowed because he wasn't the Irish lad they had
expected.
"You could see a definite shock and sort of reaction,
like
I'm-going-to-have-to-go-through-with-this-now-that-he's-here
kind of look," says Flannigan, who works as a barber
and hopes to turn his hobby of producing and writing
music into a career.
He believes parents should name their children as they
wish but that they should make sure the name has
meaning.
"Take time to really name your child and investigate
it," he says. "Every time you call their name, its
meaning will be in their subconscious."
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