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<p>When I saw that list, I immediately thought of Steve Smith, a Olympic Gold Medalist from Michigan State, who also won a NBA championship with the Spurs. (Steve Smith is African American.)</p>
<p>I couldn’t speak on what most Americans do, but in my family’s heritage, emk4, we have been American born back to my maternal great-grandfather. He was a legal immigrant from Ireland. He chose to come here to be American. Not to be what nowadays is often referred to as a hyphenated American. His O’houlihan was shortened(and Americanized) by his choice to Holahan. When he married an American born woman, they had 2 kids, both got common American names at the time. He did not select traditional Irish names for them.</p>
<p>Not to say kity4 he is representative of all immigrants, or of all Irish immigrants, or even that his way of thinking was right or wrong; only to say that’s what that particular new American chose to do.</p>
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<p>Really? Just because it starts with La and ends with an “a?” I guess that LeBron must be French also? </p>
<p>Inasmuch as Latoya might be derived from Victoria, it is hardly a Spanish construction. The La and Le have more chances to be remnants of the way slaves adopted (partially) the names of their owners than tracing to a Spanish or French origin. Or simply being the results of the same whims based on Swahili that gave the USA plenty of names such as LaShonda or La’Quishria, and the … potential discrimination against people who were marked by their parents’ naming decisions. </p>
<p>At least on a casual glance, this study seems legit to me. Parse it how you want, but the same e-mail was sent in each case, so any inadequacies would have applied across the board. As other, similar studies have shown, a clear, albeit perhaps (often) unconscious, bias seems to exist. True, I suspect the researchers were hoping for precisely the result they got, but even if we suppose a certain amount of generous manipulation of statistics, it does seem that there is a non-trivial disparity.</p>
<p>The question I have is how much of an effect this bias actually winds up having. The general social outcomes for Asian-Americans, for instance, are far better than those of African-Americans, even though both of them are shown to be victims of the same mind-set here, so we can’t conclude all that much about the long-lasting impact of this tendency. </p>
<p>One thing to keep in mind is that this letter presents no meaningful information about the student, so what it is showing is that IN A (relative) VACUUM, there is a preference - sometimes strong, sometimes weak, depending on field - for applicants perceived to be white and male. While that is significant and troubling, we are also talking about precisely the scenario in which you would expect unconscious biases to weigh heaviest, since impression of race and gender is really the only thing you have to go on in this situation. In actual admissions and hiring decisions, you’re going to actually have data about the applicant - if the e-mail gave some indication of real knowledge or credentials, I wonder if race and gender would have mattered to the same extent. Also remember that even in graduate admissions, there is some degree of affirmative action for qualified URMs, which would help to counteract the effect of this more ad hoc discrimination (one reason why I support AA, even as I at times question its extent). </p>
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<p>The general social outcomes do receive many inputs, rather than just the effect that this study is attempting to measure. For example, Asian Americans contain a large number of low-generation-number-in-the-US descendents of immigrants who came to the US on student or skilled worker visas; this selects for people of high academic ability and motivation who are more likely to encourage their kids to high academic achievement than non-emigrants from their source countries. Note also that high-generation-number-in-the-US Asian Americans do not appear to be unusually high achieving (consider Hawaii, or Japanese Americans). That may be a much bigger effect on general social outcomes than what this study is attempting to measure.</p>
<p>The study itself might also confound bias with respect to international students with that based on race/ethnicity of American students. The distinction-by-name may be most obvious for Chinese (vs. Chinese American) names, but perhaps less clear with the Indian names, due to parental naming tendencies for children born in the US.</p>
<p>These threads always frustrate me because some likely see more than is there and some will see less than is there.</p>
<p>Dh is an educator, and at his review as a first-year teacher his principal wrote that he favored boys in the classroom, calling on them more often. He was furious by the implication that he was sexist. Trust me, if he were I never would have married him. And yet, the principal showed him the tally sheet, and it wasn’t even close; he called on boys far more often than girls. There was no disputing it. I think it’s helpful for people to realize that subconscious biases do exist, even when they mean no ill intent. It’s all about awareness.</p>
<p>^ Wasn’t there a study a few years ago that showed that boys generally in the US get called on more often than girls, but only because they are called on more often for disciplinary reasons. I believe that when disciplinary events were excluded, then it was found that the girls were on average called on more often.</p>
<p>The study that is the focus of this thread is certainly flawed. As mentioned earlier, the Chinese names imply the students are foreign students or immigrants, and given the difficulty for Chinese speakers to learn English as a second language (my wife is such a person), it would be reasonable for a professor to be less enthusiastic. Also, with regard to the intended African-American names, I wonder whether African-Americans with high levels of education are as likely to name their children in such a manner, so the researchers may have been inadvertently creating a subgroup of African-Americans that are less likely to come from a well-educated family and thus less likely to possess elite academic skills. </p>
<p>Social science is difficult enough to do proficiently when the researchers are determined to be objective, but when they are pursuing an agenda it can be next to impossible.</p>
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<p>And did girls raise their hands to the same extent as the boys?</p>
<p>When making these conclusions, it’s important to consider the confounding factors.</p>
<p>Well, even if the bias is exclusive to people with foreign or low SES coded names, that’s still a problem. But you’re right that it is a different problem, with different implications, than a general animus against minorities. </p>
<p>Speaking as a professor at a research that is 17% international students, I certainly don’t think it is acceptable for professors to be less enthusiastic based on perceived race, gender, or international status. We are paid to respond to students and prospective students. It is our job to answer emails, not a nice part, but part of the deal!</p>
<p>People can concoct whatever excuse they like, they can bicker about whether the names are adequate, but bottom-line, racism and sexism are ugly and immoral. And surprise, international students are subject to racism and sexism in addition to xenophobia.</p>
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<p>However, understanding the components of the problem matters. Lumping racism, sexism, anti-low-SES-origin bias, and anti-international bias together in a confounding way may be less illuminating in terms of understanding the problems and solving them than trying to sort out each type of bias from the other.</p>
<p>But, just by using names, it may not be possible to do this as well as one may want, given the popular perception of linkage between ethnicity, SES origin, and international status for many types of names.</p>
<p>I really wonder if there would be any difference in the results if you substituted an ethnic African name for an African-American identified one, or had used a person with an Anglo first name and Asian-identified last name (i.e, Melissa Chin rather than Mei Chin). </p>
<p>@apprenticeprof, probably not. She’d still be a woman. </p>
<p>just what I was thinking, alum314. It may be documented the teacher called on boys more than girls, but without more info, we really can’t draw reasoned conclusions. It can be tough when we get only a portion of the facts.</p>
<p>except there are dozens of studies about teachers calling on boys more than girls and studies about teachers rewarding boys who shout out answers, but punishing girls. None of this stuff is new.</p>
<p>Yes, the bias is there. There are biases with certain name types even within “non ethnic” names too. I always loved names, and used to have some books and looked at name trends and studies. Yes, it can make a difference in opportunities as to what name you pick for a child. A Thomas Ridgeway Gray, for example will have more opportunities in certain series than a Kai Dakota Gray. Elizabeth Catherine DiPietro will do better than a Kali Beth DiPietro. And vice versa ,depending upon the context. Names like Laquita Leray Smith, D’Shaun Terrell are not going to have the opportunities at times. </p>
<p>I am disappointed that even in the environment of the ivory tower this holds true, but am not all that surprised. </p>
<p>Haven’t read the study, but given the large number of scams being spammed into our email from some foreign countries, I can understand why unsolicited emails from apparent foreigners might not be received with as much interest. I don’t mean to imply that this explains all of the findings, but it may well be a factor.</p>
<p>Good grief. There are no conclusions to be made. Kids don’t act up when the principal is observing a teacher. He wasn’t calling on boys to correct poor behavior. </p>
<p>This is what I mean by frustrating – sometimes a cigar really is a cigar.</p>
<p>I doubt it, mathyone. It would have been plain from the content of the e-mail that it wasn’t a scam, and I assume there was an appropriate subject line that wouldn’t have raised any red flags. </p>
<p>With regards to business professors in this study, 87% of the white males students received a response, while only 62% of the others did. That’s a huge difference.</p>