Being Reactionary Isn’t Exactly Solving the Problem

On September 20, 2006, a report aired on abc, which is still available at www.abcnews.go.com that detailed how people's resumes that contained "Black-sounding" names were promptly discarded –no matter how qualified the applicant. What was Black people's response? I distinctly remember picking up a Commercial Appeal, and reading a Black opinion columnist who suggested that Black people should stop naming their children such ghetto-sounding, ethnic names. That seemed to be the general, reactionary, solution to the problem among Black people in the Memphis area. When I started showing in my pregnancy, people would casually walk up to me and say, "Be sure to name your child something white so he can get a job when he grows up." And in anger, I would respond, "I'm fool enough to believe that his father and I did not make all of those sacrifices to become an electrical engineer and a Ph.D.-level, respectively, for my son to have to go begging white folk for a job in 25 years." People could not understand my anger, because they thought they were giving me helpful, though unsolicited, advice.

Here was my thought process on this. Every day, I see people from other countries with Arabic, Latino, East Indian, Samoan, and etc. names. Nobody asks those groups to change their names so that they may obtain better employment. Yet, due to discrimination and also America's long history of taunting African Americans with the "model minority," they can get better jobs and small business loans than the average African American who is out there really struggling to make upward, vertical economic advancement. It is assumed that someone with the last name Ly is simply smarter, and therefore, more deserving of college admission and scholarships than Jamal Anderson.

Now, I'm not writing this to start animosity between Asians and African Americans. The story of Jeremy Lin demonstrates that stereotypes and "fixed pie" mentality can be harmful to many groups. The current animosity between Africans and African Americans or Afro-Caribbeans and African Americans demonstrates the effective nature of divide and conquer discourse. What I am trying to say is that there is something wrong with our system. There is something terribly wrong in a place where a name gets a resume shredded before even reading it. And simply changing names won't fix those kinds of deep-seated biases and prejudices. If not a name, it would be something else.

About 100 years ago, it was skin color and hair texture. White employers, at the turn of the century, would rather hire olive-colored European immigrants who could not speak English than ex-slave African Americans. The solution: Madame C.J. Walker and her line of hair straighteners and skin bleaching creams. Go back and look at old issues of an Ebony precursor, Colored American Magazine, which is available online with a quick Google search. Read the advertisements. You will find that African Americans began straightening their hair and bleaching their skin for the same reasons why people say we should name our children "white-sounding names," for upward economic mobility. Did it work? Hell no. But it did create the first Black millionaire in America and begin a process of making straight hair in the African American communities the norm.

But, in the wake of a horrific tragedy, I have gained a sense of hope about African Americans. Trayvon Martin was shot down in February 2012. His shooter alleges that he looked threatening simply because he was a young, Black man who wore a hoodie. African Americans are outraged, and rightfully so. African Americans and Americans in general are screaming that a teenager shouldn't be dead simply because he wore something to keep the wind off his head. In years past, African Americans would have advised one another to simply stop wearing hoodies so that we appear less threatening. But this time, it is different. This time, African Americans realize that it is not us who need to change, but the system of racial profiling and discrimination that would allow someone like George Zimmerman to gun down a young, Black man without even being arrested. So, African Americans have come out in their hoodies, screaming for a change to the system, and demanding justice for the family of this young man. There is growth at last, but I'm very, very sorry that a young man had to die for us to reach this point.