From the New York Post:
Americans make racist assumptions based on names, study finds
By David K. Li October 7, 2015 | 9:42am
Americans draw racist conclusions about people they’ve never met just by learning their names, according to researchers who were “disgusted” by their own findings.
The study, published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, asked subjects to describe their feelings about imaginary characters with stereotypical white names, such as Connor and Wyatt, and stereotypical black names, such as Jamal and DeShawn.
“I’ve never been so disgusted with my own data,” said lead author Colin Holbrook, an anthropologist at UCLA.
Test subjects were read a short story about a man — with either a stereotypical white name or black name — being bumped at a bar, and then verbally berated.
Test subjects were then asked to describe what they imagined that man to look like and what he did in response to that contact and verbal assault.
“A character with a black-sounding name was assumed to be physically larger, more prone to aggression, and lower in status than a character with a white-sounding name,” said Holbrook.
* And then he fainted.
* This might be a good place for me to tell my Jamal story. Jamal organized an over-30 basketball team, and invited me to play on the otherwise all-black squad. He said it was $30 per man for the entrance fee and uniform, and I wrote him a check on the spot. After the “season” was over, he said to me, “You know something? You’re the only guy who paid me.”
* The pathetic snowflake should resign and work at an inner city day care.
* I Wanna Be Black by Lou Reed (1978)
I want to be black
Have natural rhythm
Shoot twenty feet of jism, too
And fuck up Jews
I want to be black
I want to be a Panther
Have a girlfriend named Samantha
And have a stable of foxy whores
Oh I want to be black
* I bet Colin Holbrook lives in a mostly white neighborhood, far from scary low status blacks who he assumes are prone to aggression.
I looked up a picture of Colin Holbrook. Every white soft and weak looking guy like him that I know are scared shirtless of blacks and avoid them like the plague.
* Aren’t all of these assumptions justified? Isn’t one of the main liberal complaints that blacks are kept low status because of racism? Different races are obviously different in size. As for aggression, unless you’re taking advantage of the cheap real estate in black neighborhoods, then you are tacitly agreeing with this assumption as well.
* Wyatt Earp hung out in saloons, which led him to get into a famous gunfight, in which he shot three thugs to death. That historically true story resonates with the case study’s racism-proving story.
I remember watching the television show The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, which was broadcast during the years 1955-1961 and starred the handsome actor Hugh O’Brian as the heroic lawman. Therefore the name Wyatt strikes a masculine bell in my mind.
The name DeShawn Earp for a dramatic character would strike me initially as a faggy, drag-queen Black who would screech comically if he/she were bumped and berated in a bar.
* A friend of mine who works in corrections says he wants to title his memoirs How Many Ways Can You Spell Antoine?
* Not only are these researchers uncool, they’re so princessy they can’t even manage to gin up some rightous outrage at the ‘racism’ they’ve uncovered. Lefty researchers even just a few years ago would have relished such findings because they provide ammunition for attacking the people they hate. But now a give-me-a-trigger-warning, help-me-avoid-the-taboo reaction seems to set in first . . . .
* Colin Holbrook is obviously a racist, because otherwise why would it even have occurred to him to have conducted a study like this? What put this noxious idea into his head? It’s inherently problematic. UCLA, I demand you expunge this obvious racist from your faculty. He is a disgrace to the study of anthropology.
* What possible point could there be of giving the characters names associated with one race but to draw out racial stereotypes. This was an opportunity for people to recognize an obvious situation to self censor with political correctness. But of course unless 100% did then q e d proof of disgusting racism.
Jamal Jones is playing basketball one on one with Ephraim Goldblatt. What do you predict the final score will be? Correct answer: tie game. Always and forever.
* I’m pretty sure all UCLA offices are (by law) equipped with fainting couches, so luckily no professors were harmed during this episode.
* No one forces black parents to choose freakish names. They choose them voluntarily, and it never seems to occur to anthropologists like Holbrook that black parents DELIBERATELY choose them to be different from typical white names.
Black parents are trying to segregate their kids from white kids by every method they can manage. They harass their kids if they try to talk white. They harass their kids if they study and like to read, etc., etc. They call blacks ‘oreos’ if they act white in any way, shape, or form. Blacks simply don’t want to integrate at all. Boneheads like Holbrook are oblivious to this fact.
* I knew a Wyatt in high school who was about five foot three, emo looking, and as gay as they come.
Never really been able to respect that name properly anymore.
* And if Colin Holbrook had instead used stereotypical Chinese names set against white names would he have gotten the exact same results — only this time:
“A character with a white-sounding name was assumed to be physically larger, more prone to aggression, and lower in status than a character with a Chinese-sounding name,”
‘The horror! The horror!
* I heard this sort of thing before. If there is some data that might be found racially uncomfortable, the researcher likes to preface with something like this guy, ” I have never been so disgusted with my data” and then they go ahead publish it to get the buzz it causes. It like using quotes around a thing to “distance the author from it”.
* Someone gave Jamal his name deliberately. His mother knew that the name Jamal was 1000x more likely to be a prison inmate’s first name than a CEO or Ivy League professor. Jamal’s mother was more interested in “keepin’ it real” and raised him accordingly.
Names have connotations, even within just one race. Like white. Here are some connotations I would personally attach for some white names:
Brayden: Beta, metrosexual, SWPL parents, spoiled
Chance: White trash, lots of siblings, stupid, plays sports, aims low
Melvin: Ugly (cute moms don’t name their sons Melvin, the name is so he doesn’t ever think he’s too good for the family- in case he happens to beat the hideous gene)
Noah: Upper middle class, bookish
Jackson: friendly, athletic
Lance: creepy, pseudointellectual, larping parents took him to the Renaissance Fairs too young and made him weird
There are plenty of normal names without obvious connotations like Chris, John, James, etc.
* I look forward to the followup study involving male and female names. When subjects assume the males are physically larger, that will prove rampant sexism.
* I don’t get what’s racist about the position apparently taken by respondents.
1. It’s obviously true
Ok sure, but we all know that for mentally ill liberals the mere truth is not a defense against racism. but even by that standard this isn’t racist because:
2. DeShawn is *happy* that he’s respected for not taking shit from people at a bar
And I’m not going to say he’s wrong for feeling this way. DeShawns of the world at least have enough dignity to command a certain type of respect and yes this affects how they’re treated; I’m going to need a good reason to step to DeShawn and berate him in public because I will expect him to throw down when challenged.
But even if you don’t like DeShawn’s culture or attitude of masculinity you at least have to say that *by his own lights* DeShawn is not being treated poorly by this respect of his principles.
* Link: “These are the girls’ names that made the teachers blanch – some with comments attached: Adrienne (kiss of death – spiteful, sneaky or both), Alanna, Ashleigh, Britney, Candice, Chantelle (spawn of the devil), Chelsie, Chelseigh, Chloe (nasty, spiteful). Cindy (always a pain in the a**e) Courtney, Cortnee, Cortnie (trouble), Danielle (a nightmare), Jade, Jodie, Jordan (pretty bad for a girl), Kayleigh (a pain), Keeley, Keira (live in fear), Kimberley, Kylie, Leanne, Leigh, Lou-Lou, Mia, Paige, Poppy (hyperactive and not very bright), Stacey, Tyler (lesson disrupter).”
* He got a result he’s not supposed to like, so he says he doesn’t like it and then publishes it, because he’s an academic, and publish or perish.
