Raven-Symone Are You Judged By Your Name?

Thursday during ABC’s The View segment entitled “Are You Judged By Your Name?”, the opinionated Raven-Symone stated ” I am very discriminatory against words like the ones they were saying in those names. I’m not about to hire you if your name is “Watermelondrea”. It’s just not gonna happen, I’m not gonna hire you.”

Raven-Symone doesn’t want you guys to see her comments as “racist”, in fact she feels “discriminatory” is a better word and I must agree with her on that. Discrimination is an unfair, biased, unjust, one-sided judgment and it’s not limited to race as we can see. Named Raven-Symone Christina Pearman at birth, Raven-Symone has sparked a conversation we should have discussed many moons ago.

Just how much are we discriminated against in regards to our names, thus leading to a legal name change? According to the Bureau of Labor Statics data earlier this month, the unemployment rate is 5.5? overall and 9.2? within the black community. On the surface the numbers may bring comfort to some however we must consider that many are underemployed. How many “Watermelondrea’s” of the world have been hired to fulfill the affirmative action quota yet aren’t given weekly hours or fair wages to live off?

I have a friend in her 20s who recently named her daughter a more common, “white” sounding name. When I asked her inspiration for the name, she quickly replied ” I want my baby to be able to get a good job “. I died! You see my friend is a dark skinned girl named Brittney and while she does get responses to her applications, her name doesn’t change the outcome when she shows up ” black ” nor has it changed the fact that after the interview, only fast food spots callback to offer her a job.

Unfortunately, Raven-Symone isn’t the only black person who feels this way. Truth is many of us are in a position to hire or be an amazing reference for someone with a creative, ethnic sounding name but we choose not to. We choose not to associate ourselves with those who look like us yet have names that state their ” blackness” well before they are seen. We sit in classrooms, doctor offices and other places where individuals names are called aloud and we laugh at any name that we wouldn’t want as our own. We laugh at African, Muslim and “ghetto” names, all of which we have been taught to hate, and we show our respect for “white” sounding names which we have been taught to love.

In the midst of chin checking Raven-Symone, let us also acknowledge, examine and shift our own discriminations in the black name game. Check yourself when a person of color tells you their name and rather than learning how to pronounce it correctly, you ask if you can call them ‘such and such’ for short. Check yourself if you are ashamed of your ethic name and have created a more suitable ‘nickname’ for the approval of others. Check yourself if you have named your child an approved name in hopes that it will deflect their . Check yourself if you’d rather blend in than stand out.

And Raven-Symone I’m going to need you to check yourself before you’re position to hire girlfriend least you learn the hard way that it’s Bernie, Dane, Michael, Paul, Jim and the likes embezzling millions of dollars from their workplaces, not the folk with the “ghetto” names.