Yup. I read that pernicious nonsense, and I think about the students with apostrophe names that I’ve taught, and I think about rich old white dudes smirkingly denying these kids jobs when they grow up for no reason other than their names, and I tell you what, a revolution has never sounded so good.
I always thought the middle name thing for serial killers and other heavily reported murders was to protect all the John Does from being mixed up with the John Wayne Does.
It’s certainly true that some people are viewed in a more negative light due to the appearance of excess apostrophes and other punctuation…
…but no immediate examples come to mind…
LOL!
So what did these systems do for your typical O’ names like O’Connor or O’Neal or your D’ names like D’Agostino or D’Amato (and then there’s people who capitalize the “d,” and some who don’t, etc.) If it can handle the last name, it should be able to handle the first, no?
It is true that names often do follow socioeconomic and racial or ethnic patterns. You are correct that the Freakonomic episode discusses this issue.
Where you go badly, crazily, ignoratly off the rails is with the inferences you draw from this:
Like others here, i would make no assumptions. The fact that you would tells us more about you than it does about naming conventions.
Again, you are buying into the very prejudice that you have claimed to be exposing.
It’s one thing to make the observation “Names often reflect socioeconomic status, and some people, due to prejudice and bigotry and thoughtlessness, make unwarranted assumptions about people’s individual character based solely on their name.” There is little doubt that this happens.
But when you argue that a name is a “marker that someone will become” a criminal, then you, yourself, are the person deploying the sort of prejudice or bigotry or thoughtlessness that you claim to be explaining. And the Freakonomics guys would tell you that themselves.
Nowhere in that podcast do they come close to supporting the idea that a person’s name can tell us anything about that individual’s propensity for committing crime. Not once. Here’s the transcript. I challenge you to find me a single instance where they make a correlation between naming patterns and criminal behavior.
In fact, the whole point of the podcast is exactly the opposite: their basic point is that you can’t tell anything about an individual’s characteristics from the person’s name. In fact, Levitt’s first observation in the podcast is that names probably tell us more about the parents who chose the name than they do about the person with the name. And it’s also the point of the first two people they interview, the kids names E and Yo (yes, those are their actual first names). To counter the assumptions that people like you might make about these kids, they point out, at the end of the podcast, that the father of these two kids is a sociologist at NYU.
The whole discussion of the Instant Checkmate company, whose ads ask about criminal records when you type in a “black” name, and ask if you are looking for a lost friend or relative when you type in a “white” name, is designed to point out the way that people (and, in this case, companies) make unwarranted assumptions about individuals based on socioeconomic or racial inferences regarding their names. If you said to Dubner and Levitt that an individual’s name is “a marker that someone will become” a criminal, they would laugh in your face.
There’s even a section of the podcast that seems to have been created explicitly with people like you in mind:
This is you here, getting it exactly wrong. You are taking a meager and unsophisticated understanding of the way that names can often be subject to irrational prejudices, and turning it into the idea that names are destiny, and can actually, by themselves, tell us about the individual characteristics of the people who hold them.
It’s really just standard police procedure. They identify people by their full name. It doesn’t matter if you are arrested for shooting the President or illegal parking.
I still want to know who I’m supposed to assume robbed the gas station based on the names. I mean, I’ve got it down to two (assuming that robberies are most often perpetrated by men), but I can’t narrow it down beyond that.
Are rich old white dudes the only ones who hire people?
What a bunch of prejudiced nonsense. Most rich old white dudes are far removed from the hiring process in the first place, and they generally have too many important things on their minds to pause and sneer at someone because of their name. This is just more of that tired old leftie b.s. of demonizing everyone they regard as a political enemy.
Nope, nor did I say anything like that.
So, Shagnasty says that the person with the stereotypically black name is likelier to rob a convenience store, and how he wouldn’t hire someone with a “black” name, and I make a comment about rich old white dudes, and I’m the one who’s prejudiced? Gotcha.
Reading Starving Artist’s post filled me with the need to apologize to any woman I’ve ever mansplained to. I’m sorry ladies, you are absolutely correct on how annoying it is for someone to explain how you are supposed to feel regarding a situation you have personally experienced and they are just imagining. I will do my best to never do this to anyone again.
With respect, you have no idea what you are talking about. To be clear, the person I killed wasn’t an armed robber. I’m going light on details to protect my privacy, but there was enough shades of grey to my actions that while I got a sweetheart plea deal, I still rightfully went to prison for my actions.
Now, I know that there is an idea that “good people” can kill “bad people” and then it never bothers them again. This is 100% pure Hollywood bullshit. There are people who can kill and it never bothers them again, we call them sociopaths. For the rest of us, especially if you don’t have a supportive social group to help you deal with it, it will absolutely fuck you up. I’ve experienced it myself, and I’ve seen it happen to others.
The three kids who shot the robbers are luckier than me. With multiple shooters, the responsibility of causing the death is shared. Each shooter can tell themselves that they weren’t the ones who fired the fatal shot.
Well, of course if you had been even a tad more clear my answer would have been different. It’s not unreasonable in a thread discussing the shooting of armed robbers to assume that someone making vague comments regarding the consequences of having killed someone and feeling guilty about it, is talking about, you know, having shot an armed robber.
So your only response is to blame me for your assumptions? I’m not trying to be condescending (that means “to talk down to”) but maybe you shouldn’t do that in the future.
It’s not standard police procedure everywhere in the US, not common in the NY area for example as far I can see from articles in the NYT or police activity column of our local paper. I doubt these newspapers excise the third names. At least some infamous three full name criminals styled themselves that way, Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray are examples. And as suggested by those two examples, it seems to be more common for Southerners to identify themselves with three full names, and so maybe a standard official procedure there which might have become more common nationally. But it’s not all driven by the police, and not true of the police everywhere in the US.
It was Winston McDonald III, at the behest of his seductive new stepmother, Elizabeth Olivier. They needed quick cash to pay for a contract hit on Winston McDonald, Jr., so she’d inherit the estate and the son would have unfettered access to his sizable trust fund. Unbeknownst to Winston the Third, Elizabeth was playing him for a sucker and planned to pin the murder on him and run off to Bora Bora with her lover, Donald Ray White. An ex-con with a genius IQ, he masterminded the entire plot from behind the scenes.
There’s one more surprise in store for Lizzy, though. I can’t reveal too much, but let’s just say she’d better pack some warm clothes along with that bikini.
No, they didn’t. They were known as Lee Oswald and Jimmy Ray to people that knew them before their infamous crimes. Neither man used his middle name routinely.
No, my response is to blame you for creating such a vague post that ‘mansplaining’ :rolleyes: seemed appropriate, in an apparently woefully misguided attempt to help you feel better. Given that your situation is nothing like it initially seemed to be (and that you obviously don’t want my help and I’m no longer interested in the slightest in offering it), perhaps the best thing would be for both of us to let it drop. On the other hand if you want to keep it up and turn this into a full-blown shit storm I’m more than up for it. There’s plenty I could say in regard to what you’ve revealed about your situation that I’m certain you don’t want to hear. So my advice again would be to let it drop.
Yes, I see what you did there. And no, I believe I’ll decide for myself what I should and shouldn’t do in the future. But thanks for the presumption. (And here, have another one of these: :rolleyes:)
I thought that too. Hard to say if the person giving the examples was trying for upper class WASP sounding name with III, but McDonald is of Scottish or Irish origin, also African American like most such names. So it wouldn’t clear if Winston III’ is ‘aspirational’ naming rather than stereotypical (and largely imaginary numbers-wise) ‘stuck up patrician’ naming.
Likewise as mentioned above styling oneself with all three names tends to be Southern white. Unless it’s somebody else reading your name that way when you don’t write it that way. Then it’s meaningless, besides the cases where it’s not Southern or white but the person still happens to write that way.
Rare or unique sounding first names often now identify African Americans. A lot of African Americans don’t have such names, but they are pretty rare among people who are not. That’s not a lot different than groups which are recognizable by surname (which is also always an imperfect way of recognizing group from name, but invented type African American first names correspond to a fairly strongly differentiated ethnic surnames along the spectrum I’d say). And forenames in that style tends to correlate with low socio-economic background within the African American community (less certain, but some correlation I believe, and perhaps the most relevant aspect).
So while the debate here as usual revolves around ‘virtue’ wrt ‘racism’ I think it’s a legitimate question whether parents are doing their kids a favor giving them that kind of name. It’s not like it’s some ancient cultural tradition either. Sure people who are hiring should not be looking for ‘clues’ in names, but when it’s obvious you don’t have to look and people don’t control their subconscious, and it’s not all the wonderfully virtuous people at SDMB making all the decisions in the world. Does giving your kid that kind of name help or hurt them? Seems worth asking, though I agree people shouldn’t make negative inferences from names.
Before this gets lost in the shuffle, I want to thank you for this. Shagnasty’s conclusions were so racist on their face that I didn’t believe he could possibly be construing the podcast correctly, but I also didn’t bother listening to it, as the Freakonomics team gets up my nose with their smarminess. Your analysis is appreciated.
During boarding, Donald ducks off to the restroom and tells her to go ahead and grab her seat, he’ll be back in a minute. When the doors of the plane have closed and still no Donald, she looks at her ticket and realizes she’s going to Tora Bora.