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everybody at least subconsciously profiles people on so many levels that make no sense. Not that it can't be proven wrong or overcome, but it still happens.

I strongly doubt it's common enough to matter. Back when I worked at Krystal in Georgia, plenty of my black coworkers had "black names" like Shaniqua, or at sometimes just unusual names like Byron. Upshot; we were all working, and these "black names" were just not unusual. (And let's not forget "Barrack Hussein Obama". Crickey!)

The places that actually have a lot of black Americans are the places where most folks will give it the least amount of thought, except for a few hicks and tin-foil hat skinheads nobody'd wanna work for anyway.

Besides, individualism is one of my favorite themes about American culture. It's why you can find low-class Americans upset about taxing the rich, while Europeans throw fits to keep entitlements high.

And why places like Poland here require you to pick a name off a list.

I know subconscious profiling happens, but so does naming your child something from your own culture, and if we're going to disapprove of one of these, no way in hades am I siding with the no-Shaniquas-allowed employer.

[Edited by - JoeCooper on December 27, 2010 5:29:35 PM]

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Original post by JoeCooper I strongly doubt it's common enough to matter. Back when I worked at Krystal in Georgia, plenty of my black coworkers had "black names" like Shaniqua, or at sometimes just unusual names like Byron. Upshot; we were all working, and these "black names" were just not unusual. (And let's not forget "Barrack Hussein Obama". Crickey!)

I'm not saying it's necessarily bad, but you can't expect that people won't judge people by their names at least partly. People judge people for a lot less than that.

And Barak is an arabic based name that means blessed. Not really outrageous by any means. I think what he's talking about is more names like Jermajesty Jackson, and to quote a blog about it:

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And what's with all the prefixes, like in JaMarcus? Or Da'quarius, which combines two weird trends in one name: prefixes and unnecessary apostrophes.

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Original post by way2lazy2care Quote: Original post by JoeCooper I strongly doubt it's common enough to matter. Back when I worked at Krystal in Georgia, plenty of my black coworkers had "black names" like Shaniqua, or at sometimes just unusual names like Byron. Upshot; we were all working, and these "black names" were just not unusual. (And let's not forget "Barrack Hussein Obama". Crickey!) I'm not saying it's necessarily bad, but you can't expect that people won't judge people by their names at least partly. People judge people for a lot less than that. And Barak is an arabic based name that means blessed. Not really outrageous by any means. I think what he's talking about is more names like Jermajesty Jackson, and to quote a blog about it: Quote: And what's with all the prefixes, like in JaMarcus? Or Da'quarius, which combines two weird trends in one name: prefixes and unnecessary apostrophes.

The whole thing is silly. Yes, people judge you for all types of trivial things. But let's not pretend that someone is not judging "Barrack" in the same way their judging "Ja'Marquis". The minute a non-Anglo-Saxon name pops up, it's being judged. And no one is going to look up what "Barak" means anyway.

Well it's hebrew just like my names (Joe Dan) but it's certainly less common in America and the only "Hussein"s Americans know are the late King of Jordan and the guy we just smashed.

But anyway, yeah I get you that it might happen that way.