Your selective belief tells the larger truth.

Americans are white, obese, obnoxious and uneducated?

The average African is a proud but vioent type of animal wearing feathers on his head?

The Irish are dumb but drunkenly affable?

Jews rule the world as self-interested vermin?

Europeans and the Arabs are principally smelly and lazy

Chinese people are dog-eating aliens from another planet

Conservatives hate black people and are driving for Armageddon (’End Times’)

Liberals are traitorous communists and homosexuals and want to destroy the world with deviance.

Degrees of truth, don’t you love em!

Surely you have traversed the blogosphere long enough to know that you are supposed to be a mind-reader.

I have discovered that it doesn’t really matter what one writes, it is all about perceptions and what folks think you really meant.Thus, a narrowly defined point becomes so broadly extrapolated that it is no longer recognizable……….and this is what passes for dialogue these days.

That’s why we have so many folks literally incensed by “motives” thinking and they are darn sure that they know what’s in the heart of every man.

Well, better go brush up with my crystal ball…..

So let me get this right, LaShawn was being sarcastic in saying: ‘whitest of white traits?’

and was actually hinting that individualism ISN’T a ‘white’ trait, but is falsely (negatively) characterized as so?

If so, er, I guess.

Unless I’ve gotten it wrong again.

Plain speaking is all the rage, I hear!

When in fact the decline began 40 years ago with the welfare state.

Ironically that welfare state has done more damage then segregation.

Not that segregation wasn’t evil… but the social dynamics of permanent victims-status have been much worse.

Individualism is only a white trait if you believe that things like speaking standard English and getting good grades in school are white traits. Do you believe that, John?

Or not?

Here’s what I’ve seen as the great indicators of economic success:

#1 Self-discipline in spending habits (not buying up the whole store every paycheck, saving your money, living BELOW your means, staying out of debt as much as possible)

#2 Being a truth teller. A legit person is rare.

So even if your name is Daquan or Bubba or Earl Ray or whatever, follow 1 and 2 and see economic success for yourself.

And thats it. Education can be a good indicator, but I cant tell you how many people I’ve seen who had high paying jobs and have to spend so much to keep up the facade.

This kind of stuff cuts across all kinds of lines. Conservatives want to cut taxes so they can invest and spend more, liberals want to raise taxes so that the government can spend more. Both wrong. Neither believes in spending only what you have and saving your money.

I call that old school and they’re a dying breed.

As for linkable data—no, I only have personal/professional anecdotes about how names are regarded. I stick by what I said—DaQuan and Anfernee bear no greater burden than Billy Bob and Sally Sue. And yes, hippie names can be a problem, too. Sunshine went to my school, I remember the reactions.

We’ve all heard of Dweezil Zappa. If his surname were not Zappa, Dweezil could be a problem for him—just like Anfernee’s name could.

I made the sister-marrying reference to show how names like Jethro are perceived here. If you get the Simpsons, watch for snippets with “Cletus, The Slack-Jawed Yokel.” It’s no accident the yokel married to his sister is not named Francis or John, but rather “Cletus.”

For a note on the life-outcomes of people with names like DeShawn, the Freakonomics guy wrote in Slate that DeShawn has other problems that keep him out of the game, such as his economic status. This was on the basis that parents who name their child DeShawn tend to be less educated, which has more to do with his eventual station in life than his name ever will.

Note also I am not saying that DeShawn is doomed because of his parents’ status. He can succeed, but his background has more to do with any problems he may have in succeeding than his name will. You yourself already noted that the Jethros of this world are not doomed, either.

I realize names don’t have the same baggage from one culture to the next—a Polish Agnes I knew in high school was mystified because everyone kept telling her that they had a grandmother or great-aunt named Agnes. I had to explain Agnes is an old woman’s name in America. If age discrimination were an issue, she might have to worry about it, but I don’t suspect her name will hold her back much, if at all.

While those studies do show some disturbing attitudes about how names can be the basis of discrimination, no blacks were injured during the course of the studies. The hiring managers had no idea what race the applicants were. I think the better studies for discovering dicrimination are the ones where the applicants are interviewed in person.

Like another poster asked, what about the children of hippies? Moonbeam, Sunshine, Peekabo, etc.?

Love the loaded language. Whites have been “trained” to mistrust non-whites (by their racist parents and racist society, of course), but non-whites have “learned” to mistrust whites (through their own bitter experiences with racism, natch). Nope, absolutely no good reason whites would come to mistrust non-whites on their own, because no non-whites have it in for whites, but of course non-whites will “learn” to mistrust whites, because of course white people will take advantage of non-whites any chance they get.