Writing Project 2
In “The F Word” written by Firoozeh Dumas an excerpt from her autobiography titled Funny in Farsi, she talks about her struggles living in America from having a very different name, to not understanding English very well. Dumas uses examples from her childhood and all throughout her life to explain why she feels Americans are ignorant to new and different things. The author would like her audience to be aware of other cultures, and their names and lifestyles. She feels Americans were not open to accept her culture and difference, and instead of embracing it, they made fun and insulted what they were unsure of. Based on the simplicity of words she uses, the mild tempered language she includes, and how relatable her
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She states that changing her name will make transitioning into American schools, making friends, and even possible job prospects will all become easier, people will be willing to accommodate her without such a foreign sounding name. Have you ever felt like you were denied a job based on your abilities or race? Such might be possible, but Firoozeh experienced a whole different form of prejudice. She was denied jobs not because of her lack of education, which consists of graduating with honors from UC Berkeley with a humanities major, rather, she was denied because of her name. Though many places claim to be an equal opportunity employer, that is not always true, but being defined by your name, rather than your skills or education is just ignorant. Firoozeh is reluctant to believe it is a coincidence, but as soon as she began filling out applications with her “American” name, Julie, all of a sudden she began to receive a flood of job offers. That was more than coincidence, that was discrimination. When Firoozeh Dumas, who at the time of moving here, had her maiden name which she left unknown, she was taunted by other school children because of her hard to pronounce name. She failed to mention the twists people made of her name, unlike the amusing nicknames her cousins and brothers received. After coming up with her much more Americanized name of Julie, she was no longer an outsider. All of a sudden,
In "The F Word," Dumas bases her argument and claim around the experiences she encountered regarding her foreign name in America. Throughout the essay, Dumas constantly argues that Americans are often times closed-minded and ignorant to unfamiliar cultures. In coordination with this argument, she develops her claim that not only Americans, but all people in general need to be more open-minded and accepting towards different cultures. She further supports her claim through different anecdotes in the essay. For instance, the anecdotes of her sixth grade class and job résumé story both support her claim. In the anecdote regarding her sixth grade class, Dumas mentions that her classmates were extremely racist and constantly stereotyped Iranians.
Firoozeh Dumas’s essay “The ‘F Word” is not what audience think it would be about. When the audience hears the someone mention the “F” word all sorts of ideas pop into their head. Yet, Dumas twists the meaning of her title into something the audience wouldn't think of when they hear it. In today's American Society people are judged by more than just the color of their skin, for instance in Dumas’s case it was by her name. Society has an image of what everyone should be like from their looks to the name they go by. In the article Dumas explains her experience as an immigrant from Iran to the US. Dumas shows how hard it is for someone to come to America and live with an unusual name. This is blatantly apparent during her childhood because the children would make fun of her and the rest of her family’s name. To counter this, Firoozeh decided to add Julie as an American middle name so strangers would not feel so awkward around her. Julie became the author’s middle name which caused her to play a “double role” in her life. This was because her family knew her as Firoozeh and her friends and coworkers that knew her as Julie. Later, when she became a stay at home mom Dumas decided to be called by Firoozeh again. This return caused her some uncomfortable situations since the “double roles” collided. Dumas states, “make room in the spice cabinet.” because she believes that Americans should be more opened minded to new pronunciations, sounds, and names.
These kinds of behaviors are what caused Amy to think of changing her culture and become more American. Unlike Amy Tan, Firoozeh Dumas struggled with identity. Moving from Iran with her family, Dumas has struggled with teasing and bullying because of her. Dumas’s name Firoozeh means “Turquoise” in Farsi. While living in the US, ignorant people have made fun of Firoozeh’s name. In the essay “The ‘F Word,’” Dumas narrates about the struggles of having a different name that’s always pronounced wrong because ignorant Americans refuse to learn it. She also talks about how her brothers and friend suffered with this too. Dumas not only struggled with ignorant people not pronouncing her name right, she could not get a job. When she was young, Dumas decided to change her name to Julie. Having an American name changed everything for her. Students at her school began to recognize her and invite her to social gatherings. Once she got to college, Dumas changed her name back to Firoozeh. But that became a problem after she graduated because she could not find a job. “After three months of rejections, I added “Julie” to my
Cats, being the wise and majestic creatures they are, love chicken. Friskie, a 28-pound orange super cat is no exception, but apparently he prefers Curly Wings. If, like us, you have never heard of Curly Wings before then imagine the awesomeness of curly fries, but made out of chicken. Anyway, in addition to being a real food (founded and trademarked in 2013) Curly Wings is now also a mobile app that is available for both iOS and Android devices.
After the 9/11 attacks, Arab Americans have reported more occurrences of hate crime and racial discrimination in employment. Researchers Daniel Widner and Stephen Chicoine conducted a research project where they randomly picked out typical white-sounding names and typical Arab-sounding names from reliable sources for fictitious résumés. For the past 15 months, they sent out résumés to 265 jobs. The objective of this study was to
Studies that have been conducted to examine the level of access and employment inequity experienced by minority groups show that with equivocal levels of education and work experience, job applicants who have an English sounding name are requested for an interview up to forty percent more than their competing job applicants who have a Indian, Pakistani, or Chinese sounding name (TIEDI, 2011). Furthermore, the dismissal of the African-Canadian woman discussed earlier is not as surprising when one takes into account that in Toronto, arguably Canada’s most multicultural city; those of African-American descent reported one of the highest amounts of discrimination in relation to those of other visible minorities (TIEDI, 2011). The deduction that can be made then is that there still persists to be a belief that there is a correlation between one’s racial background and their perceived ability to do a job as effectively as that of their Caucasian or other dominant racial counterparts. Such a belief greatly hinders Canada’s workplace as it fails to utilize the skill-sets, knowledge, and qualifications of visible minority individuals that would otherwise benefit the community, and it largely damages one’s ability to integrate into Canadian society as a functioning member treated with equal regard,
In our society, today there are various privileges given to everyone but one I chose to talk about was one dealing with a person’s name. Names are the beginning of discrimination against the African-American population because of the stereotypical so-called “black names”. This is a problem in today’s society because businesses that are hiring applicants can look at a name and automatically make the decision on if they want to give this person chance at an interview or not. For example, there are two applicants one with the name of Bethany and the Shaniqwa, they both have all the same credentials and the same abilities to be able to get the job done thoroughly, but the person hiring will hire Bethany based on her name. That is what it is like African-Americans in the workforce, whether people want to believe it or not. Discrimination can happen in many forms, and because corporations rather not be blatant with discrimination, they find other ways like this to discriminate. What do we go through to try and avoid discrimination? What can be done to stop the discrimination? These are some of the questions I hope to find answers to as I
When Abibatou Diallo was first starting school, her name stopped being so hard to pronounce. Her name stopped being what she identified at all. Her teacher took her name and with no objections from Abibatou began calling her Abby. Thinking about being called Abibatou, just fills Abby with a weird feeling now. Not a single person has called her by her full name in such a long time, that it no longer holds any meaning to her. Abby’s name is just one example of how she has been forced to become Americanized since she began her education.
Ethnic discrimination is a sensitive issue. Responses to questions about job applicants from different ethnic groups are probably subjected to censoring and rationalization (Supphellen, Kvitastein, & Johansen, 1997). In another instance, some employers of different companies were found that they more likely look up background checks on a potential employee if that person’s name sounded more Middle Eastern than another person’s name. This can be a form of ethnic discrimination and racial profiling in the workplace. For example, in a study of 100 large British companies, Noon (1994) found that companies were more helpful and encouraging to a white candidate seeking employment information than to a comparable Asian candidate (Supphellen, Kvitastein, & Johansen, 1997). In other countries, some have taken precautions to make sure that racial profiling can be limited. The European Union has recently shown renewed interest in using such tests to hinder ethnic discrimination in employment situations and to enforce anti-discrimination legislation. For instance, in the United Kingdom, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has the right to conduct situation tests and even to prosecute firms (Carlsson &
As the youngest of four children, it is easy to conclude that Carolyn Clare is quite a mouthful for my three siblings all under the age of 6. On the transport home from the hospital, my three talkative siblings could not say my name properly. My parents exhausted from a baby's cries and children's chatter quickly came to the conclusion that a simpler name might be in order. As we crossed the threshold of my new home for the first time as a complete family, my dad said “Welcome home, CC” and it stuck, unintentionally. My father is very much a fan of the traditional southern double name and in his opinion, Carolyn Clare is stunning and fitting. I'm sure if he could travel back in time to that day, he would change his words to “Welcome home, Carolyn Clare”.
Everyday people are born, and once people are born into their parents provide them with a name that means something special to them, and their job is to uphold themselves neatly and carefully because this name is something no one can take away. Names have a powerful meanings to them. Yet, the power and elegance of a name doesn’t matter to everybody because for those who have names that are obtained for African descent will soon be labeled as people with a “black name”. As seen in a recent debate article posted in The New York Times by author Morgan Jerkins offers a debate about Racism, based on a name and questions the proposal “ How can employers confront the bias those with African American names face in the job market?” ( Jerkins). Debaters of this article argued and provided some conformity for African Americans in detailing and explaining how some social barriers should be dropped for black employees, and that some advisement of employment should be addressed since they can weigh social barriers. While other debaters claimed that there was nothing wrong with this controversy. This topic all comes back to the point where celebrity Raven Symone made a comment about “ black names” and how she wouldn 't hire anybody with a name of this sort. The term “ black names” cannot be changed because this is something they are born with, but instead of work facilities degrading someone on their name, instead they should see what this particular person can offer to the work
In “Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination” authors Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan ask the question of whether having an African American,as compared to White,name decreases one’s chances of receiving a callback when answering a job ad.In order to investigate this query, Bertrand and Mullainathan sent out 5,000 faux resumes to 1,300 job listings in Boston and Chicago. Resumes from actual job seekers,with personal information removed,were obtained from job search websites and divided into high and low quality groups. Furthermore, embellishment of high caliber resumes further reinforced the quality gap. Each job listing received four resumes; two high quality and
Names are a terrible way to understand someone’s identity because names are regularly replicated. In my sixth grade class, there were three Mollys. We all had different backgrounds, different religious affiliations, and different personalities. If our names displayed who we are, wouldn’t our identities all be the same? Instead of staring at names and trying to understand their meaning, one should focus on a person’s personality, for personality depicts our identity. In fact, I have learned from experience to not infer one’s identity based on their name. For instance, in middle school, I was mutual friends with a girl named Kassidy. One Tuesday afternoon, my friend, Katy told me that Kassidy was going to sit with us at lunch that day. I shrugged my shoulders and replied with a casual “okay”. Before Kassidy walked in, I had a whole image of her in my mind: blonde hair, cute pastel colored clothes, and religious, all stereotypes that I thought a person with an innocent name like Kassidy
Since 1998, campus space at the University of Texas-Austin has increased by over 2 million square feet and energy demand has increased by more than 8 percent. However, due to the university's continual investment in combined heat and power (CHP), fuel consumption since that time has increased by only 4 percent.
The more I read about employment law, the more I find the work of a human resource agent complex, to say the least. Every decision made in the hiring process will include several employees who all feel qualified for the position and HR’s duty to ensure the choice is qualified, but that is only the beginning of the process. Also in consideration is the relationship to race, sex and national origin of the hired applicant, but more important are the race, sex and national origin of those not hired in compliance with affirmative action. Thus the questions asked at a job interview are more directly related to HR’s intent than I had ever imagined. Our text refers to three factors that discrimination still exist, and the third are results from field, laboratory and survey studies, which indicated, of applicants in a random job posting all having equal qualifications, participants with white sounding names where called back more than half as much as those with black sounding names (Walsh, 2013). This research also showed disparity in individuals with Arab and South Asian persons, while females reported experiencing discrimination twenty-two percent of the time, especially during compensation and promotion. Discrimination and inequality simply continue to be a part of the hiring landscape in our culture and the most prominent form of rehabilitation seems to reflect a ‘hit em where it hurts’ mentality of high compensation litigation. An article in Inside Counsel indicates