The Root has a question for Americans making monkey noises over black names - What About Those Nontraditional 'White' Names?
“Seriously, I will take your ‘questions’ about ‘weird’ black names seriously when you make fun of Reince Priebus and Rand Paul. White people giving their kids names like Saxby Chambliss and Tagg Romney is a clear sign of cultural pathology.” If names like “DeShawn” and “Shanice” are fair targets for ridicule, then the same should be true for “Saxby” and “Tagg.”
... Like Bouie stated, apparently these so-called “black” names are treated inferior. So it’s completely fine for a kid to walk around with the name “Apple”, but “Laquan” isn’t? Dweeezil, is completely fine. Shaniqua, oh that’s ghetto. A few months ago I noticed someone on Facebook posting the name of their new son, I had to raise an eyebrow. Skywalker? Really, dude? You can name your child after a Star Wars character and no one raises an eyebrow. Now that’s what you call white privilege.
Though I understand it, I'm not really big on the whole "white privilege" argument (actually, I just hate jargon) but I am having a pretty hard time understanding how whites can live in this country, with these demographics, and A) complain it's anyone else that's been ruining the place, or B) can't imagine - with this nation's history and temperament - why anybody else would feel under pressure based on racial animosity.
I figure, when it comes to comfort level, white Americans have always assumed everybody's got it as good as they've had it.
That anyone would deny there are understandable reasons for black behavior - including a current lack of understanding by whites that has undeniably hurt blacks - is, frankly, shocking.
I think I understand it anyway:
As we're outnumbered by whites - as opposed to being integrated with them - besides being shocked, we're supposed to silently die from it:
And, I guess the "good" news is, we still do,....
To be fair, Saxby is an old, old name. Norwegian, I think.
ReplyDeleteLaQwan isn't an old African name.
Also to be fair, I've made fun of Tagg and Tripp and I even made fun of a friend of mine who named his kid Finnegan.
Apple is a stupid name for a kid. And I've never heard anyone who didn't make fun of the name Dweezil.
When I was in school we had a girl who's name was Mary Jane. Her birth name was Marijuana Pepsi. Her mother named her after her two favorite things.