What's in a name? A lot as it turns out.

What's in a name? A lot as it turns out.

by digby

I confess this surprises even me:

A 2001 study catalogued all the ways in which the term “Black” carried connotations that were more negative than those of “African American.” This is troubling on the level of an individual's decision making, and these labels are also institutionalized: Only last month, the U.S. Army finally stopped permitting use of the term “Negro” in its official documents, and the American Psychological Association currently says “African American” and “Black” can be used interchangeably in academic writing.

But if it was known that “Black" people were viewed differently from “African Americans,” researchers, until now, hadn’t identified what that gap in perception was derived from. A study, to be published next month in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, found that “Black” people are viewed more negatively than “African Americans” because of a perceived difference in socioeconomic status. As a result, “Black” people are thought of as less competent and as having colder personalities.

The study’s most striking findings shed light on the racial biases undergirding the professional world. Even seemingly innocuous details on a resume, it appears, can tap into recruiters' biases. A job application might mention affiliations with groups such as the “Wisconsin Association of African-American Lawyers” or the “National Black Employees Association,” the names of which apparently have consequences—and are also beyond their members’ control.

In one of the study’s experiments, subjects were given a brief description of a man from Chicago with the last name Williams. To one group, he was identified as “African-American,” and another was told he was “Black.” With little else to go on, they were asked to estimate Mr. Williams’s salary, professional standing, and educational background.

The “African-American” group estimated that he earned about $37,000 a year and had a two-year college degree. The “Black” group, on the other hand, put his salary at about $29,000, and guessed that he had only "some" college experience. Nearly three-quarters of the first group guessed that Mr. Williams worked at a managerial level, while 38.5 percent of the second group thought so.

I can't imagine where anyone comes up with that kind of illustration anyway, but perhaps I'm missing some important details in the description of Mr Williams that might lead the subjects to make these judgements. But whatever they were it's obvious that this particular descriptor carries some very specific weight.

It explains something I noticed a while back when talking to some police officers investigating a robbery in my neighborhood.As is so often the case they were milling around for hours talking to one another and it was a hot day so I came out an offered them some cold water. We got to chatting and one of the guys told me about how he saw an actor from CSI on the street and couldn't remember where he knew him from. He described him to me as an African American guy with blue eyes. The alleged robber had been referred to as black throughout the entire exchange.

The article goes over the long fraught history of words used in the US to describe our African American fellow citizens and suggests that African American may not be the last one we come up with. I think "American" would be good. Or maybe just "human."


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