Thursday, December 10, 2009

What's in a name?

So I was watching the Tyra Banks show a while back and she was talking about people having racially stereotypical names, and it was interesting how people are perceived based on their name. The audience was shown a group of women and given a list of names for them to match them to the name. Once all votes were tabulated, the women revealed their true names, which most would assume belonged to other women in the group. One of the interesting points made was a black woman named Kim. Most of the audience members thought that a blonde haired, blue eyed woman was named Kim, and the expectations of the name Kim were that she was a cheerleader, homemaker, unintelligent and pretentious. The black woman said that her mother named her Kim in order to stay away from the stereotypes that come with stereotypical black names and would help her succeed. It was a very interesting episode that challenged me how to not pass judgement on just a name alone and not to make assumptions about someone by just learning their name.

1 comment:

  1. Wow, thats really interesting! I never would have thought about the stereotypes that come along with a particular name. It is kind of sad that there are people out there who form negative opinions of others based on something as personal as their name.

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