Checkmark Ethnicity

Having an ethnic name,¹ I sometimes get people expecting me to show up in a Dashiki Poncho with bling. When I show up wearing only the bling, people are somewhat surprised. My name hinders my chances when applying for a job or an apartment,² but in other cases, it really helps me

Having just been accepted to grad school in a really prestigious university, I can’t help but feel it’s partly because of my name. So I came up with a concept. I call it “Checkmark Ethnicity,” or CE for short. Œ for really short.

People that have Œ get to take advantage of the fact that people with similar names were viciously kept from prestigious positions for many years: even if my own ancestors did none of the suffering! Although in my case, they probably did. I mean, my grandpa was a day-laborer.³

Πpeople are basically people that take advantage of the system by pretending to need additional help, but actually just taking personal advantage of the situation. They are people like me, who are vastly different from most stereotypes, but who take advantage of those same stereotypes.

The problem with Checkmark Ethnicity is that the person often has no control over the situation. People see the checkmark, read the name, and assume. I can’t pretend I approve of Œ, but it would be hypocritical of me to disavow it, so instead I’ll just assume it doesn’t exist. I’ll assume ethnicity is value neutral and everyone is accepted or rejected based purely on merit. I can do that because merit is a subjective thing. For all I know, I’m just being paranoid.

1. by the way, my name is Santos Jamal McGoldstein Esq. [↩]
2. Don’t pretend it doesn’t [↩]
3. And a night-partier [↩]