Black Names: What's the Problem?

Jamelle Bouie, writing at the Daily Beast, concludes that the perennial debate among some whites about so-called unconventional black names says more about white ethnocentrism and racial inequality than black culture.

Reddit isn't just a clearinghouse for interviews, animal pictures, and crazy stories. It's also a place where people ask questions and have discussions. Yesterday, one user wondered about "black" names, posing a question to the "Black American parents of Reddit," as he put it. "Before racism is called out, I have plenty of black friends," he noted, raising the question of why he didn't ask these alleged friends. "[I'm] just curious why you name your kids names like D'brickishaw, Barkevious D'quell and so on?" …

If there is a question worth asking about race and naming, it's not "why do black people use these names?" it's "why do we only focus on black people in these conversations?" Indeed, there's a whole universe of (hacky) jokes premised on the assumed absurdity of so-called "ghetto" names. Derision for these names—and often, the people who have them—is culturally acceptable.

But black children aren't the only ones with unusual names. It's not hard to find white kids with names like Braelyn and Declyn. And while it's tempting to chalk this up to poverty—in the Reddit thread, there was wide agreement that this was a phenomenon of poor blacks and poor whites—the wealthy are no strangers to unique names. The popular Netflix show Orange is the New Black, written by a Jenji Kohan (a white woman), was based on the experiences of a Piper Kerman (also a white woman). And in last year's presidential election, nearly 61 million people voted for a Willard Mitt Romney, at the same time that the current head of the Republican National Committee was (and is) a Reince Priebus.

Read Jamelle Bouie's entire piece at the Daily Beast.

The Root aims to foster and advance conversations about issues relevant to the black Diaspora by presenting a variety of opinions from all perspectives, whether or not those opinions are shared by our editorial staff.