Freakonomics-Focal point

Freakonomics – Focal point.

While watching the documentary on freakonomics, the topic that stood out to me the most was the baby names topic. It was made very clear that names were important and it determined how people perceived you. It was also made very clear that names do not guarantee you to be an absolute success or an absolute failure. A topic that stood out the most in the documentary was the “black” names. I would put this in quotation because this documentary did state that some names do have an ethnicity. We would usually think of someone by the name of Taneisha to be ghetto, loud, and have poor vocabulary. I always wonder why we tend to automatically assume things about a person just by hearing their name. Why is it that the quality of a person is assumed by what they are named? Why do some people tend judge someone upon their name is their name has an ethnicity? As human beings we should be able to look past someone’s name and realize that they could be much more than a name that may seem to be unordinary. We are told in this documentary that names cannot determine where you will go in life. Why is it that someone that may have an untraditional name in society has less chances of becoming hired even if they have done everything that someone with a traditional name has done? Your name has nothing to do with the things that you have accomplished and what you work hard, yet there is still this barrier of stereotypes that may come in the way of someone landing a job interview. You may have struggled as much as someone that does not have a name like Dominic but some people never think about that because of what may be stereotyped in society. Some people may be unfortunate and do not get the chance to be named something like Nathan but that does not mean that you may be ghetto, unpleasant, and loud. Society does not know the way you were raised by your parents, the atmosphere that you may grew up with, and how hard working. Why is it assumed