11 ms·
6 Words: 'My Name Is Jamaal I'm White'
- viach 11y agoMy english is far from perfect, but there are effectively 7 words, no?
- adestefan 11y agoThe contraction "I'm" is only one word.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- hittaruki 11y agoIt seems to be considered a single word. Not sure if these are valid references, but: 1. https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091003034818AAssnmO https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091003034818A... 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraction_(grammar) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraction_(grammar)
- mathgeek 11y agoThere are six words, but it isn't a proper sentence. That was the part that I immediately noticed.
- amyjess 11y agoIf you add punctuation, it'll work: "My name is Jamaal; I'm white."
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Kenji 11y agoI don't think the other people are at fault here. I think it's reasonable to assume that someone with a stereotypically black name is black, just like it's reasonable to assume that a random IT professor is male based on the fact that 90%* actually are. As long as you owe up to your error when you notice it (and e.g. apologize). It's a reasonable optimization that works out more often than not. The problem only starts when the treatment of the person depends on the category they belong to and if that difference in treatment is not based on reason and evidence. *example, may not be accurate
- irl_zebra 11y agoWe all make decisions and assumptions based on our past experiences. It's perfectly natural that if we keep seeing the same input leading to the same output over and over, we begin to associate that input with that output. Sometimes the input doesn't lead to the output, which helps us inform our future actions, but there's nothing inherently wrong with making assumptions and taking actions based on our experiences.
- Retra 11y agoWe all have to make decisions based on incomplete information. This means the decisions you make are approximations; their accuracy is contingent upon a lack of good information. It's not about assumptions per se: whatever you assume will be partially wrong. With that said, if you want a high degree of accuracy in matters like this, you're going to have to give up many of those highly efficient heuristics we've evolved. That may not be a good idea. Instead we develop more heuristics that tell us when to apply simplifications and assumptions, and those will often fail.
- emodendroket 11y agoYes and no. Surely the people handing his credit card to his black friends after receiving it from him have reason to know better. Besides that, I think the point is not just that people assume he's black, which would just be a curiosity, but that that assumption shapes their attitudes toward him.
- deleted 11y ago
- jrells 11y agoAs a white guy with a (very mildly) African American sounding name, I have had similar experiences. When I meet people in person after emailing them they sometimes seem surprised, and some later admit they expected me to be black. The worst example was when I was told by someone renting a room on craigslist that they couldn't rent to me because I was a "security threat", even though I had hardly said anything about myself. It must be tough for those who face that kind of attitude constantly and are unable to escape it.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- zxcvcxz 11y agoNot that guy, but I've considered changing my name so it sounds more exotic and unique. From what I've seen, people with "generic" or biblical names don't seem to get chosen as often as they used to when it comes to academic and prestigious stuff. It would be nice if people could use two or three names legally. Like when you use multiple emails.
- amyjess 11y agoI was born with an uncommon last name. It caused me a lot of distress because nobody could properly spell or pronounce it. I had electric bills come in with my last name misspelled. My apartment complex had to tear up a lease and reprint it because they misspelled my last name (I caught it before I signed it, fortunately), and I'd been living there for over half a decade when that happened. Edit: it was also a variant form of an ethnic slur (you can thank bigoted Ellis Island officials for sticking my ancestor with the name), which made me really uncomfortable. I hated it. Last year, I had it legally changed. I was changing my first and middle names anyway (as part of my gender transition), so I threw in a new last name in as well (where I live, it doesn't cost any more or require any more paperwork to change your whole name than it does to change just the first and middle). My new last name is a monosyllabic word that's in the dictionary, refers to a common household object, and has no variant spellings. I've never been happier with my name. > It would be nice if people could use two or three names legally. Like when you use multiple emails. As long as you're not trying to defraud people, you can use as many aliases as you want. Of course, you'll still have to use your official name when dealing with the government, but there are companies who will respect aliases and use your chosen alias for all purposes except tax reporting.
- Someone1234 11y agoCouple of off the cuff thoughts: Why can't people use the expression "niger" in context? It was clearly meant as a racial insult, and I think people need to remember that that is the way it is commonly used. Replacing it with a placeholder doesn't make racism go away or make the word less racist, all it does it soften the racism used in that instance. His TSA story is more likely fiction. Is he saying that there are "TSA" in London? And in either case I've never seen the TSA select people "randomly" by name alone (in fact they do their profiling based on appearance, not name, which is arguably even more insidious). Even if they DID select by name, how would he, a selectee know the names of everyone else selected at the same time? The whole story makes no sense and sounds made up (by someone who's never travelled or been randomly selected no less). I've been randomly selected a handful of times, but they don't know my name when they do so.
- ctdonath 11y agoBeen a while since I flew England to USA, but yes there was/is a TSA contingent operating their own screenings on US-bound flights. ETA: "TSA" including any entity providing TSA-style screening at the behest of the TSA.
- Someone1234 11y agoThey're actually contractors, not TSA. I've been stopped by them before. They would have no way of knowing my name BEFORE they stopped me, as they sit physically too far away from ticketing to hear anything and don't appear to have any communication equipment. They just pick out mostly men to run secondary checks on.
- pilsetnieks 11y ago"In January of 2002 I flew to London" — TSA was on the US side; plus their selection procedure might have been different 13 years ago.
- stefantalpalaru 11y ago> make the word less racist You want to associate racism with words? How about "race" used as a synonym for "ethnicity"? > Is he saying that there are "TSA" in London? He could have been screened by the TSA prior to departure from US.
- stefantalpalaru 11y ago> [horrific racial expletive deleted] Nigga please... The only horrific things about a word coming straight from the latin root for "black" are the linguistic segregation behind it and the fact that this segregation is now willingly enforced by the minorities themselves.
- josu 11y agoI wonder who censored the word, if it was The author, the original blog or NPR.
- judemelancon 11y agoIt wasn't NPR, as it was that way in the blog post linked.
- shawn-furyan 11y agoAlso, it's a very editorializing expletive deletion. Relatively serious* news organizations like NPR tend to avoid that sort of thing. If it was their edit, one would expect a simple "[expletive deleted]", or a rewording that didn't call attention to itself. *In using the word "serious", I only mean that NPR is among the organizations that are commonly perceived to be among the most serious news organizations. I'm not being ironic. Neither am I making a personal value judgement.
- josu 11y agoYeah, that makes sense. And also, I should hace checked the link.
- rfrey 11y agoEtymology is irrelevant in emotionally charged discussions. Context matters.
- stefantalpalaru 11y ago
- galfarragem 11y agoI have also an uncommon name for my country/peer group so I understand how he feels but don't take the easy path and make it just race related, it goes well beyond it. Some names have stereotypes attached that makes them a potential liability in your life (job applications, bullying, negative first opinion, wasted time, etc). If I had a dollar for each time I had to explain how to write my name during my life, I would be rich by now. So many famous people have changed their name, there must be a reason for it..
- rburhum 11y agoI guess, for me, I never associate the name Jamal with black - to me it is arabic like Gamal Abdel Nasser. Then again I was born and raised in South America, so Gamal was not a curious name. It was the name that my "white" brother was given to by my middle eastern dad!
- wambotron 11y agoI initially thought the guy was going to talk about being mistaken for an Arab, but I can see the black angle, too.
- jellicle 11y agoDon't worry, for the purposes of discrimination in the U.S. (and many other places, no doubt), stereotypically Arabic names are just as good as stereotypically African-American names. You're covered either way.
- chengiz 11y agoSo the school wanted diversity so they called him for an interview, but they hired him even though he was white. Yeah I don't buy that.
- jdmichal 11y agoMaybe he didn't interview in person? Not everyone feels the need to physically meet someone before hiring them. What does it really say about us, that we so deeply feel the need to see someone before hiring them? It's not like their credentials change with visual contact.
- chengiz 11y agoYour statement is ironic considering the school's purported reason for taking in his application.
- scrumper 11y agoHe makes the point that the school did indeed 'get diversity' - his upbringing is quite far outside the mainstream. Diversity is not exclusively furthered by hiring people with dark skin.
- chengiz 11y agoFor various meanings of diversity different from the canonical meaning that applies here, sure.
- kingmanaz 11y agoIf one's going to play the ethnic etymology game, why not start with the NPR staff's overwhelmingly Jewish surnames? Why is every chance for black/white/hispanic/asian/male-female grievance mined and exploited by NPR, but their own ethnic nepotism swept under the carpet? Why don't NPR's Jews judge themselves by their own standards?
- amyjess 11y agoIt's really sad that somebody would come to HN just to push an antisemitic agenda.
- kingmanaz 11y agoPlug your ears, cover your eyes, and pretend the critic is above criticism.
- feybay 11y agoHow is this "antisemitic"? Jewish people are disproportionately represented on NPR's staff. I don't see this as a problem, but talk about a speck in your brother's eye when you've removed the plank in yours. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
- happyscrappy 11y agoSilicon Valley is a ridiculous festering pool of hypocrisy. Instead of trying to train and hire underprivileged blacks from right next door, Oakland, they fly or outsource them from half way around the world in India. Yet they think they are liberal and caring because they upvote stories like this.
- mafribe 11y agoWhy should people care less about Indians than people from Oakland? Are Indians lower beings than Oaklandians? Given that the US is the wealthiest country in the world, with (in many ways) the world's best educational opportunities, and India is very poor, it is likely that somebody in India had to struggle much harder than somebody in Oakland to obtain a quality education. Hence the Indian is likely more employable.
- forgottenpass 11y agoValley politics are not about politics, they're about social positioning. The trendy viewpoints are just a under-informed belligerent narrative stapled onto mostly center-left positions by low-rent bloggers that can feed them anger-bait. (Not that NPR is that blog (I meant gawker-level properties) but this mental masturbation is one of the more worthless things NPR runs. Lingering racial expectations based on from someones name isn't news when there are ongoing race riots elsewhere in the country.)
- yummyfajitas 11y agoWhy should highly privileged blacks be favored over underprivileged Indians? http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-the-have-nots/?_r=0 http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-t... (Note: privileges the black Oaklandians were born with include the right to work in the US, a highly functional education system where teachers show up to work, 24/7 running water and power, etc.)
- vfa33 11y agoNo doubt that your average Indian experiences a greater degree of poverty than your average Oaklandian, but that isn't the only factor in privilege. Can you imagine what it does to a child when they see someone get shot in the street outside their house, or get their home raided, or lose family member(s) to incarceration / murder / drug addiction? It's a different kind of struggle, and I wouldn't be so quick to say that one group is more or less privileged than the other.
- rayiner 11y agoMy wife, also from Oregon interestingly enough, has an Irish first name spelled in a "black" way (with a 'w' rather than a 'u'). Every now and then, hilarity ensues when she meets someone in person who was obviously expecting someone who looks different.
- metamet 11y agoEspecially if they were expecting a black... uomen.
- efa 11y agoCouldn't help but think of the Seinfeld episode - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsKpShq2X6s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsKpShq2X6s
- laichzeit0 11y ago"In a high school soccer game I was called 'a white man with a [horrific racial expletive deleted] name.'" Horrific racial expletive. That seems a bit... excessive? Let's elevate the horrificness of this word to the point where if someone utters it they get fined or jailed. That should teach 'em. People are so ultra-politically correct these days I'm too scared to open my mouth for fear of offending someone, saying something sexist, racist, "white male privileged", not fat-accepting enough, etc. It's becoming insufferable.
- maxerickson 11y agoThe placeholder was chosen in the context of a relatively personal, informal group blog: http://thepoetryquestion.com/about/ http://thepoetryquestion.com/about/ If you think your sexist, racist, white male privileged, fat shaming thoughts are important to voice, I don't see why you would worry about them offending someone. The motions of political correctness can go too far, but the basic thought, to consider what words might mean to someone else, is a reasonable thing to do if a person wants to communicate effectively.
- feybay 11y agoThe fact that somebody can't write nigger destroys the flow of the article and wrongfully elevates the word. It's just a word, stop giving it power.
- laichzeit0 11y agoThis type of hyped up placeholder is _exactly_ an example of political correctness gone too far. It's exaggeration. My argument is not even against purposefully using words that are offense. It's about how there are so many words that are deemed offensive today that I can't even keep track of what they are. For example, calling one of my own non-homosexual friends a "faggot" or "gay" is offensive. Even though I'm not homophobic and personally find it to be a funny, playful insult. I may or may not be factually correct about this, but in general (I use the word general here in the sense of more than 50%) of those offended seem to be minority groups. I.e. homosexual, African Americans (this is easily to confirm by census results in a country), Semitic groups, etc. The issue seems to be whether we should give up the ideal of not offending people as there exists no such fundamental right not to be offended.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- LordKano 11y agoI deal with this from the exact opposite perspective. I have a very midwestern sounding name and people are often surprised when they meet me in person to see that I am a big black guy. I can be in a waiting room and when my name is called, the person calling me is sometimes surprised when the 6'2" 250 pound black guy responds. I don't really see shock but I do see surprise. I admit, I have been guilty of this as well. When I was working my way through college, I took a summer job at a machine shop. I was told that I'd be working with "Jorel" on a particular shift. I was expecting, for all the world, a black guy. Well, I showed up for the scheduled shift and I met Jorel. He was a young white guy. It immediately made sense to me. I said to him "Your dad is a comic book fan, isn't he?" and Jorel confirmed that he was. Then I said "With that name, people usually think that you're black, don't they?" and again he confirmed that they did. For us, that was the end of it. He was a nice enough guy and we worked well enough together.
- jimbobimbo 11y agoThat ringed a few bells... Being an immigrant with both first and last names that people in US have hard time to pronounce let alone spell, I'd never turn the trick "My parents decided they wanted less traditional names for their children" on my children. In fact, I'm seriously thinking of legally changing my own name to look more American, because I'm tired of triple-checking my name spelling on each document and credit card, and responding to calls from people who cannot pronounce my name at all.
- galfarragem 11y agoI am not black but I also know what it is to be discriminated. Most of people know it also, it is nearly impossible to belong always to the dominant/majoritarian group. I grew up in a low-income suburb. When I went to college I was under estimated and segregated. The poors were, for the first time in my life, a minority. I really know how it feels. But I can also say that whinning about it never made my situation better, almost always made it bitter. Some of the rich, once we got to know eachother, included me in their activities. I believe that this can happen in all majority/minority conflicts if both parts are open minded. The main problem, as I see it, is that majorities don't want to give in anything, and minorities want majorities to give in everything.
- tyrel 11y agoMy name is Tyrel, I run into this a lot of the time as well. I'm from New Hampshire, which has a very small black population (less than 2% I believe). It was always awkward when girlfriend's parents would make a big deal about "Oh my god you're dating a black man?" when they would tell their parents my name. Another story is when I was in college, I joined a fraternity. The only black member at the time was disappointed, when we met he said, "Aw man, I thought you were black!" My last story also is from college. I moved into a dorm where I had a black room mate named Jared. People would confuse him for me, and vice versa, a lot if they hadn't met either of us, but needed something from us. Saying to me "Is Tyrel around? Oh I thought you were Jared..." and the opposite to him I presume. Over all, I don't have many problems with my name, but I do wish it wasn't people's first impression of me. I try to put my face as my avatar on everything, hoping that people aren't discriminating against my name when they do research on me, but that they discriminate for my abilities.