I cant pronounce my sons last name

I cant pronounce my sons last name The first time I had my own company, we ignored Martin Luther King Day. And it felt really bad, like I was not living my own values. Now I am careful each year to do something to mark the holiday. So today Im posting a piece I wrote a few years ago, before I had a blog My husband and I didnt argue about my sons first name. We argued about the last name. At first, I didnt have a strong opinion, so we gave my son my husbands name, Rodriguez, even though I cant roll the Rs, which drives my husband crazy. But then I got cold feet. I worried that our son would face discrimination for his name. My husband said, Dont worry, I get it all the time. Hell get used to it. I was surprised to hear that my husband experiences discrimination. Part of seeing someone as a minority is seeing him as other. So, because hes my husband, I dont think of him as a minority. But heres an example he gave me: He worked with a think tank that researched solutions to homelessness. Sometimes when he met with leaders of homeless shelters, the leaders mistook my husband for one of the homeless. This never happened to his counterpart, Jay Alexander . But my husband kept telling me it doesnt matter. He said that to me once a week for nine months until I believed him. What did I know? I have never had a name that identifies me as a minority, so I dont know what its like. My great-grandfather changed the family name so that it would not sound Jewish and his sons could get through the Ivy League quota system. (The change worked, they got in.) In the family tradition of changing ones name for ones politics, I changed my last name when I was in my early twenties because I didnt want to be part of a patriarchal naming structure. (In this case, Im not sure if the change did anything.) My husband always says, Its no big deal. But now I am sure that it is a big deal. A study conducted at the University of Chicago and MIT shows that people who have names that are typically from minorities are much less likely to get a job. In this study, hundreds of fake resumes with very similar qualifications were sent in response to entry-level job advertisements. A resume from a name like Amy Alexander was fifty percent more likely to get an interview than a resume from a name like Latoya Washington. This shouldnt surprise me of course people like to hire people who are like them. And minorities are not running the show in corporate America. In fact, I am guilty, also. Even though I know that diversity enhances workplace success, I also know that managing someone like myself is a lot easier than managing someone whos not like me; its so much easier to lead people who are already thinking in the same way that I am. So I can talk until Im blue in the face about race and discrimination, but I have to admit that I have preconceptions about someone with the last name of Rodriguez and someone whose last name is Alexander. I dont want to have preconceptions, but we cant always control those things. So I thought of changing my sons last name, but then I thought, thats a cop out. I want to believe that we can control how we approach resumes so that we mitigate our preconceptions by reading resumes without reading names. Each of us is more likely to interview more fairly if we do not read names. Its a simple process that will teach each of us something about our prejudices and ourselves. So give name-blind resumes a try. See what happens. And who knows? Maybe one day, that resume you might have skipped will be my sons. I cant pronounce my sons last name My husband and I didnt argue about my sons first name. We argued about the last name. At first, I didnt have a strong opinion, so we gave my son my husbands name: Rodriguez. But then I got cold feet. I worried that our son would face discrimination for his name. My husband said, Dont worry, I get it all the time. Hell get used to it. I was surprised to hear that my husband experiences discrimination. Part of seeing someone as a minority is seeing him as other. So, because hes my husband, I dont think of him as a minority. But heres an example he gave me: He works with a think tank that researches solutions to homelessness. Sometimes when he meets with leaders of homeless shelters, the leaders mistake my husband for one of the homeless. This never happens to his counterpart: Jay Alexander . But my husband kept telling me it doesnt matter. He said that to me once a week for nine months until I believed him. What did I know? I have never had a name that identifies me as a minority, so I dont know what its like. My great-grandfather changed the family name so that it would not sound Jewish and his sons could get through Harvards quota system. (The change worked, they got in.) In the family tradition of changing ones name for ones politics, I changed my last name when I was in my early twenties because I didnt want to be part of a patriarchal naming structure. (In this case, Im not sure if the change did anything.) My husband always says, Its no big deal. But now I am sure that it is a big deal. A recent study from the University of Chicago and MIT shows that people who have names that are typically from minorities are much less likely to get a job. In this study, hundreds of fake resumes with very similar qualifications were sent in response to entry-level job advertisements. A resume from a name like Amy Alexander was fifty percent more likely to get an interview than a resume from a name like Latoya Washington. This shouldnt surprise me of course people like to hire people who are like them. And minorities are not running the show in corporate America. In fact, I am guilty, also. Even though I know that diversity enhances workplace success, I also know that managing someone like myself is a lot easier than managing someone whos not like me; its so much easier to lead people who are already thinking in the same way that I am. So I can talk until Im blue in the face about diversity, but I have to admit that I have preconceptions about someone with the last name of Rodriguez and someone whose last name is Alexander. I dont want to have preconceptions, but we cant always control those things. So I thought of changing my sons last name, but then I thought, thats a cop out. I want to believe that we can control how we approach resumes so that we mitigate our preconceptions by reading resumes without reading names. Each of us is more likely to interview more minorities if we do not read names. Its a simple process that will teach each of us something about our prejudices and ourselves. While studies show that managing diversity improves ones career, people still resist hiring diverse teams. This means the issue of diversity is no longer convincing people its good for the office, the issue is convincing individual people that they are part of the problem. And each of us is. So give name-blind resumes a try. See what happens. And who knows? Maybe one day, that resume you might have skipped will be my sons.