[lbo-talk] Re: Black names

[joanna bujes]

"However, the type of name chosen turns out to reflect the parents' 
socioeconomic status as well as their race. For example, a 
distinctive "black" name is much more likely to be chosen when the 
mother is unmarried, when the mother has other children, and when the 
mother is in poorer health (as signaled by a lower birth weight of 
the child). In data available only for the 1990s, a more distinctive 
black name is also associated with lower parental education and lower 
per capita income in the mother's Zip Code."

My own experience does not bear this out. My daughter goes to an elementary school that is 85% black. Most of the children come from two-parent, middle class families; they are highly motivated to learn and obviously come from very stable, close-knit families. 95% of the black children at my daughter's school have "black" names.

When my daughter was in second grade, I had to research the name of every kid in my daughter's class (for fun/games) and although there was one black "kelley," every other black kid had a name whose provenance was either Swahili or Arabic/Muslim.

So, I don't know about the research quoted above, especially if its wonted aim was to prove that employers are not racist. If there are employers who are not racist, I have yet to meet them

Joanna