About Those Black Names

One of the bittersweet legacies of slavery in the black community is the giving of names to children. Social psychologists believe it started as a way to at least assert some control over slaves lives in a era when slaves didn’t normally have last names. A gifting of a small “uniqueness”, in a world where black people were seen as chattel.

Along the way, black mothers have created a number of distinct, and sometimes unique “black” names.

Is Your Name Limiting Your Career?

Folks my age remember way too much employment discrimination during the 60′s, 70′s, and 80′s to feel quite comfortable with the new job hunting techniques such as visual resumes and social networking. Potential employers, through medical databases, background checks, and credit bureaus have way too much power and ability to potentially discriminate as it is.

The prospect of giving them even more information opens the door  to some truly frightening abuses.

Youth unemployment today is at it’s highest level since the Great Depression, 52%. Unemployment in some cities is pushing 20%. White Collar unemployment, for people with College Degrees and demonstrated skills is over 7%.

Many companies now use search engines and sophisticated software to parse through potential candidates. The simplest of these programs search for “keywords” such as accreditations sponsored by outside companies or organizations. These might include for instance a network certification for someone looking for an IT job or a finance certification from someone looking for a job in the financial services industry. The negative trade off of this is that these tools discount real on-the-job experience in favor of certifications. But these are gatekeeper hurdles faced by all job seekers. There are “special” hurdles for black job seekers…

Hat Tip to The Grio on this one –

The New Jim Crow – Plessy vs. Ricci

Not groundbreaking – but a solid talk about race in America in view of the recent Ricci New Jim Crow, justifying racial discrimination, by the Supreme Court 5 – Thugs in Robes. Professor Robert Jensen on The color of the race problem  is white.

If one was looking to hire a History Teacher, you could indeed design a test asking questions about certain events or figures in History. If such test included a requirement to name 5 Emperors of the Han Dynasty, or 5 Shoguns in feudal Japan – it would indeed test the knowledge of history beyond the standard Western European History taught in the US. A well studied American college graduate could answer the question – however, so could a Chinese born or Japanese born individual who had studied grade school or high school equivalent national history as part of their primary education in their native country. Ergo, if one were to pick a random group of 50 American born college graduates with History Degrees, and 50 Chinese or Japanese born people who had completed High school equivalent education in their birth countries – it is likely the Chinese or Japanese born applicants would test as more “qualified” than their higher educated American competitors. Despite the lack of college degrees.