You never know what's going to inspire an interesting piece of academic research. Imagine for instance that you are a third grade teacher at the very beginning of the new school year. There was a teacher sitting up at the table in front of me. My test scores are going to be as a teacher at the office at JIT.
This was in Atlanta. Correct. I came to a new school and they had just passed out the class list. And on my class list I had first in my statement student and then we had the gender and we were to use the class list to make name tags.
That's what you heard the other teacher worrying about her test scores. And she was angry every every year. I did these bad eight students and my test scores are going to be in the toilet and she ran over to the principal and they had up. And I am sitting there, this new teacher at the school looking at the front of my paper, because clearly I miss him, she took a paper.
Clearly she's received something with more information than I have. And I'm like, wait, wait, what is the matter? What do you know how to test scores? I have a test course, where's that source?
They're like, look at the names, look at the names. What kind of names do these guitar? Jamara, Jamia, Jamia, Leena, Kanaya, Desquan, McWon. They had this natively African American names which apparently led the angry teacher who was white to surprise that they would be poor students and that they may curl up at.
And that is the catalyst to start a research project. That research project would eventually turn into a PhD dissertation. Is title? names and white classrooms, teacher behaviors, and student perceptions.
And the author of this dissertation, Dr. Narwanathakzi and I. If anyone could understand the friction created by teachers expectations over students' name, it might be a black woman who grew up with that name, marijuana fatigue. Last week on frequency on the trail, we asked how much does a name really matter.
So the ultimate question we wanted to answer is does your name matter for the economic life that you end up with? Let's leave Levitt and my free comments for ending call author. Are people who are quote saddled with the stupid black names facing a burden when they enter at the labor market? Levitt, along with the combs rolling fryer, analyze the large rich set of data.
It encompasses the perspective of every person born in the state of California between 1960 and the year 2000. And included the name of the baby, the first and last name of the mother, along with a lot of other information that give you a hint at some economic circumstances. The research could then track these babies as they grew up and see whether their first name affected their economic outcomes. And we were able to see something quite remarkable, which is that the name that you were given at birth seemed not to matter at all to economic life.
So another conclusions. And I also agree with the conclusions just based on my own research, however I can see where someone might question that. That's a thing with research. We're really interested in the end result.
The study shows this, but we miss everything in between, which is why I like the quality of, in addition to the quantity of, gives us those numbers. But the quality of tells that story. Today on For Comics Radio, the story of marijuana Pepsi van Dyke. And what she's learned about the power of the name.
What's wrong with you? Why are you messing with me? From Stitcher and gum Productions, this is For Comics Radio. The podcast explores the hidden side of everything.
Your host, Steven Dumber. Couple months ago, marijuana Pepsi van Dyke received your doctor in higher education leadership from Cardinal Switch University in the lucky Wisconsin. This generated quite a bit of media attention. marijuana Pepsi van Dyke has become Dr.
Meryl Ann. Her PhD from Cardinal Switch University. Marijuana Pepsi van Dyke, yes, it's really well, I have been in the news. Why am I from the time I graduated from high school?
And the world has found me through high school graduation my nesters and now you know you get a PhD but I'll end up on the other stories. And so here we go. You got her PhD at age 46. It's about eight years total.
Some starts and stops and you know, Josh changes and so life. Yeah. What was her graduation day like? It was surreal.
I was just less than you there. I was very humbled. I, you know, I felt like Ryan, I felt like jumping for joy. I remember driving down the highway, right in the steering wheel and swinging out loud a few times.
Cardinal Switch graduates are given the option to reserve classrooms where a large number of guests can watch the commencement broadcast. But she kept her party fairly small. Right, my husband, Frederick, they night my son, I saw your sister, my mother, and a few leases and a couple cousins. I didn't want the public to come.
Why was that? I'm introvert, I'm late back. I'm nervous at times. And so I wanted to just make sure that I did what I need to do for the day.
At the same time, I want to make sure that I'm not minimizing the experiences of the students who participated in my study. And this is a series of research study. Despite some of the jokes and memes that come up about in fact, I didn't want to go to that same way. She was born in Chicago in 1972.
My mom has always been entrepreneur. She has always made clothes on clothing shops, gardening she's been featured in the few artists who are also her gardening skills. My father was a university bus driver. He's a teacher of us for the campuses in Chicago.
Was it your mom who named you or your dad or a combination? I believe it was my mother. My father's a job with this. And he says that he was all her.
And I tend to believe him. Okay, so why'd you choose a name? She shared with me that she believes that my name would take me around the world. And that was always the answer I got my answer.
Hey, she wasn't wrong. No, she was not wrong. Marijuana Pepsi was middle of three sisters. The others were named Kimberly and Robin.
And I asked her if I could get around the world. What was it that when you looked out at me the first time and you helped me that made you go, oh, this is the one, marijuana Pepsi. And so of course there were no answers to that. And she would go to her grave without answering the further that she already has.
I mean, did you at some point ask your mother? Were you smoking a marijuana marijuana? Were you drinking a lot of Pepsi? Did you ever ask her that?
No, I have not ever asked my mother. And I'll just say, I know my mom all of my life. And some questions I don't ask her at all. And leave there.
Meaning your shirt she did or she didn't. She didn't smoke my life. Meaning that I know my mom. I know her personality.
And she is a lover of life. And I just leave nothing at the table. What about you? And marijuana and were Pepsi?
Are you an avid or even occasional particular? If either? No, I have never drank. And I have never smoked cigarettes.
I've never taken a toll. I've literally done nothing. When she was very young, marijuana Pepsi lived with her dad in Chicago. I attended and almost predominantly African American school, everyone to my name, teacher called me by my name, no issues.
I did not understand that my name was unusual until I entered into the fourth grade here in the White House. But Lloyd, much of Wisconsin, he is overwhelmingly white. And it was very clear that marijuana Pepsi was not usual. It was not quite accepted.
And it opened the doors for a lot of teasing and bullying and issues. And not just from the students themselves. I didn't have teachers who will make me. But I guess it was just so interesting.
I just couldn't help themselves. But the questions and the opinions and statements and dragging me to different classrooms to introduce me to other people to show who this logo was who had this name. I didn't see that as they were trying to bully me or put me down. Some of the questions were difficult, however, because they questioned my family.
The type of family that I had. And what type of marijuana would name a child this? Some of our teachers started calling her Mary. And I don't think they did it from a place of, again, being hurtful towards me.
I think they were trying to help me. They saw the way that I was getting on with the students and the people things they were doing. And they wanted to make my life a little bit easier. And that worked right until I placed in the sociality and they wrote Mary Chassen on my certificate.
And I went home and I was saw it in the room. And came back to the school and first everybody else. And do not ever call her Mary her name is marijuana. Do not ever write her name differently.
And she told me you had better never answer to anything else other than marijuana or I'm going to you. And from that day on I was a lot more serious than I was them. When she was younger back in Chicago, school had been a joy for marijuana. I was a very smart student.
I learned to read very early. I was picked to do everything. I had relationships with the teachers and the students overnight here I am at a school here. And not only are teachers looking at me funny, the students are looking at me crazy.
They're surrounding me in the playground, asking me questions. Largarpant so high, you know, my Jackson and high honors and everything under the sun. I thought I didn't belong there. I didn't want to be there because clearly they did want me there.
Something that must be wrong with me. I, you know, I never sat on an interview or I never even shared it ever. But sitting here, I remember thinking about the new suicide. I was nine and I remember that like yesterday.
And I was just hoping that everything would just go away. And then I sat there and said, you know, right, you do that. There were going to talk about you more. She says now there were a lot of reasons she was having such a hard time.
Environmental factors, family issues, the relationship between the students at school, relationship with teachers. It was very difficult to wonder what was going to happen next day. And it was just, it was a lot. I went to too much detail.
You know, the last thing I wanted to do is make a sound like I didn't have people who love me and who didn't take care of me. I did. But sometimes that's just not enough. And in my case, my home environment was just a little bit different between my, I had a very close family.
Very loving family. I've got my mom and we've been raised in with our brothers and aunties. And so there's different types of things that have in families. And so you have that going on.
And I go, oh, board a few more years. I leave home when I'm 15. And before I left home, I was a failing student. I had all of them maybe at D&G.
And I had never, ever given any thought to what I like was going to be like after anything. I was literally living day to day. And I happened to be walking down the street to the store with my cousin, McElkooks. And she was four years younger than me.
And she was bragging about how she was going to be the first person in our family to a college. And I remember stopping in my tracks. Because I said, so this is not about me. In the next day, I went to the council office at high school.
And I ended up going into a credit program. And from then on, I believe I may have gotten over three points. And then from there, another three points something higher. I ended up getting the most improved student award at graduation.
And I was awarded an academic scholarship. And I went to school university. That's my water. In retrospect, the treatment you got over your name was that.
Do you think kind of just the straw that broke the camel's back that led you to become a straight-up student? Is this market? Or do you think that the treatment you got over your name was a big contributing factor to that? That was one of the straws that broke the camel's back.
Again, it's that sense of belonging. And in my case, the life thereof. Were you, I guess, angry at your mom, either for giving you the name that caused the trouble or for insisting that you continue using the name, even when other people were offering you a sort of easy way out by calling you Mary? I've never been angry about my name.
I have never felt that there was anything wrong with my name. Again, I didn't even know that someone even believed that until I moved here. I'm looking at them. What's wrong with you?
Why are you messing with me? All I wanted to do was read my books, fly them in the radar, go school, and go home. That'll be an important moment to put emotions into your mind. But it's hard for me to imagine you wouldn't be resentful at your mom for insisting that you use the name that's causing you grief, though.
I was resentful of it. Again, it's like being named Stephen. If someone called you Stephen and your mom says, no, I want you to see them. That's your name.
I was a full of people bringing me the grief about it. Because again, that's my name when I ask you what your name is. And you tell me it's over. Why do I have to go through the fifth degree?
Coming up after the break, how marijuana have to be turned lemons into lemonade in the form of a doctoral dissertation. And someone's wanting to say, oh, she had to say, do you like the name? Oh, look, she's successful. But in the short term, for an had to be her education institution to get there, you get what she had to go through.
That's coming up right after this. Marijuana has even been like turned things around in high school. And went on to college. Her first major was business.
And that's what I wanted to do. That's what I wanted to do. But she also had the dedication. And she wound up becoming the school teacher.
Even so, she kept her hand in business. That is right. So I don't know where it's not real state company. And did real state investing?
And actually, then real state is alongside the teaching. Now real state for salesines often include the name of the broker. I'm curious if you included your name. Are that where down?
So if they were to say, you know, I have alcohols from someone's. Remember someone stopped as natural side. They're driving off down the street and trying to get the license plate. They take it to the magazine.
I car so many times. It was just ridiculous. So Maryland have to be like a clearly thought longer and harder than most people have the effects of first name. But even this did not prepare her.
What happened at her new school in Atlanta? And her fellow teachers angry response to seeing the class list. My test scores are going to be as a teacher. I'm sick of this is a child team.
I'm like, where's the source? They're like, they want to give the names. Give the names. This kind of response to you would come to learn was not so uncommon among white teachers.
To me, it's jarring to think that this kind of response would be prominent among educators. Because I guess we like to think that if there's a class that people in the world who don't pre-judge and who believe in potential, it would be educators. And I'm curious whether this response affected your view of the field that you chose them. It definitely did.
Not because it made me think it might be an educator. It just reminded me that teachers were not a pencil. We are human. We have the same frequency judgments.
We see something that we deem unusual. We sometimes have the same thoughts. What I was shocked and disheartened to see is that when we have those thoughts, it seemed that we stuck with those instead of saying, OK, I think in this, let me just see. I don't know this person.
Let me just go out from there. And that is the part that sticks with me. The research that Steve Levitt did on Black Names, remember, found that those names didn't seem to influence long-term economic outcomes as indicated by things like neighborhood characteristics or health care status or years of education. But what that research didn't explore was the day to day reality of living with a distinctly Black Name.
It was a big quantitative study. The research band I began to work on as Radistun was a much smaller phenomenological study. The phenomenological study, meaning that I'm looking at the students of the experiences their views and told that they're a voice. The whole point of such a study is to zoom in on each individual day of the point, with extensive group or one-on-one interviews.
Bandike was looking to speak with college students about their experiences in college, but also in high school and even earlier. So she held an open call at her on the matter, the University of Wisconsin-White Water, and shows 10 students who fit her study criteria. My criteria was they had to be, of course, what? They had to be writing to be active and successful as defined as they had met all the criteria for graduate school, acceptance and college, and they must have had name related experiences.
Throughout their academic history and what's we going to talk about and they believe that they had a cyclic black name. When I see those criteria, I'm going to assume and meet them wrong, so tell me that most of those experiences were negative, not positive, and they're wrong. There were positive experiences that I did highlight in the dissertation in general. Many of them were negative.
However, I did not enter into the research study, except that as a researcher, you have to be very impartial. You have to make sure that your own personal feelings. And I especially had to be very careful that the last thing I ever want to do is be told that because my name is Nirmana, that I have bias. So I was just very careful to stay away from that.
I wanted to learn from the students' experience and not with my only experiences on them. The students in Vennel study were named Michael and YK-A-E-L-L. Control-K-E-N-T-R-E-L-L. T-E-A-T-A-L-I-Y-H.
Stavante-S-T-E-Capun-Vee is a Victor. O-N-T of Ashurvi-E. Rudea-R-A-D-A-Y-A-H. D-I-T is a dated E-Y-O-U-N-T-E of Ashurvi.
Shelly's S-H-A-A-L. Vennel is hoping to answer a few fundamental questions. D-S-A-N-A-R-E-W-S-H-I-K-A. Number one, what are the educational experiences students with a single by name?
Basically, what are they going through on the data basis? Number two, what are the impacts of navigating educational environments as a student with a single by name? So, we've gone through this. What happens to you?
And then lastly, what recommendations do they have? So, we think about names for educators and for other students who have to go through like with that same name? So, what do you learn? So, when we look at research on number one, the education experiences of students, the major ones with disrespect.
Disrespect, low behavior expectations, low academic expectations and stereotypes. These disrespect was in two distinct ways. Disrespect was shown towards the students with their names, but secondly towards the students, personally as individuals. The question, what type of person the student was, what type of life they would have?
The question, what type of parent would name their child this? They took us that further. They chose completely different names for the students, even without the students who have said, what are the names of them? Can you give a friend's name to them?
Sure. Control sounds easy to me. It sounds simple, but he talked about teachers always having the roughest types of name, and they would always ask them, can we call you Ken? And he had a quote that I just love.
You can say trepidation, but you can't say control. Can you talk also about the low expectations? Again, I want to be clear, the criteria for the students in your study were that they were academically successful, correct? Correct.
So sometimes when we are doing research on minority students, there is this historical tendency to just like all these many factors of why, because I'm not a company or that, and I want to make sure they know when to come back and say, well, the reason it was this is because the student was just, you know, not able to be successful. And so when you're looking at the low expectations, the students felt like they were expected to be disruptive or to have discipline issues. And like then dug into how these experiences affected the student's academic experience. It put a strain on the student's relationship.
Students have so-called perception issues. They put the student's relationship strong that student can overcome camera and can succeed. When that strain is put in from a very first time, the student's automatically clam up and they talk about how they can't give them themselves. And then the teacher sees that and then they think the student is low academically and treats them as such.
And this is a vicious cycle with a teacher not understanding what's happening and they're turning into this and then a student just pulling back their self-efficacy is ruined. And that's where the self-consumption comes in. In many cases, it altered their future career choices. Several of these students, they were going on to science majors and other signatures and they changed and they went to work with students and not being allowed.
They wanted to be teachers because they felt that they could help other students who are going through this to love their names and not have to put up with this. One person, they said they wanted to do race related studies because of his experiences You can imagine that the effects band aid is describing are not unique to students with distinctively black names. You could imagine students who belong to other minority groups being made to feel less capable than they are. And this drives with other research that seeks to explain the relatively low rate of female STEM students.
In band aid study, she did find that some students had positive school experiences because of their names, but teacher using their name as a conversation starter for instance, talked about cultural backgrounds, but she says this rarely happened with white teachers. When we talk about the positive experiences, those came from African-American and minority teachers and faculty. So here's a question. When you have a distinctively African-American name or any other name that's distinctive, it's obviously something that someone else can latch onto.
And maybe it's even a little bit of a diversion from a more core issue of racism or prejudice or whatnot. Since your study didn't include African-American kids who don't have distinctively African-American names, how can you tell that in the case of the kids who study that was their names that were the cause of this treatment as opposed to simply being black? That was one of the research questions. How do you know that this happened because of your name?
And that's where the stories came in. The conversations that started the issues within those classrooms were because of their name. When a participant talked about having to call in their parents, it was because of the name. So not only did the instructor refuse to call the student by the name, they also told the student, oh, you're not going to be here that long.
It doesn't matter. Just sit down. And the student talked about being so frustrated because what her parents were saying in there to talk with the teacher in principle, the assistant principal gave student a pass to go back to class and spoke in April. And the student said he spoke in April and the assistant principal said it doesn't matter.
Just go back to class. And the principal just said she's the right hand. So he does matter. That's the whole reason we're here because of the name.
I guess just continuing to play out with devil's advocate. Like it could be that those teachers and administrators would have exhibited racist behavior toward a black kid without the distinct name. It's just that there wouldn't be such over evidence of it, right? That is true.
And that's not a part of this study. The names are. And so when the student comes in for that first time and they talked about what happened when they introduced themselves to the teacher. And when the conversation was didn't want to ask those questions, the answer was no, we can have other black students in your class.
Yes. So your findings were really dramatic and interesting. I'm curious how they swared with your expectations coming in. I heard that a lot of them did experience what I experienced, which was surprising to me because these students were so much younger than I was currently.
And I thought that with the change over the years and the types of names now and all of the professional development around class, and race and every diversity that things would be so much better for these students, but it's not. Okay. So let's talk about now, here's what we can do about it in the paper. You talk about recommendations from the students for other students and faculty and so on.
Well, some of the recommendations that the students came up with, basically to be culturally competent to be respectful, to understand that just because a student has a name that an educator may have familiar with, does that mean that there's something wrong with that student or with your parents. It was acceptance of students except in some of their backgrounds, when everything is built out, asks the student how to say their names. They talk a lot about teacher emails, how when teachers were corrected, how they come to an attitude about being told how to say the name. So when you talk about implications for leadership, again, it goes back to educators being self-reflecting, looking at their own personal biases that they have.
Think about when you hear a name or you see something about a student, you don't know them. Think about what triggers in you and ask yourself why it's true that and when it does trigger you, remind yourself, okay, I don't know why this is being triggered. However, I'm going to make sure that I get to know them the way that they are. Let's say I hear you talking about all this and I run a big firm or government institution, let's say in the present United States.
Even though you're talking about, quote, just the names of one such that people, I believe there's probably a lot to be learned here about how we all have different biases and that we often don't even see these biases. Do you have any advice more generally for people based on your research? It's the same advice. You cannot judge someone by their name, by their race.
It is individual. Studies show that when people are actually asked about their tendencies, whether racist or just out of the groups, that they firmly believe that they are being fair and impartial. They have to bring that to the forefront and have those conversations with the Mediterranean and make people aware that it happens. So, for Iron Let It, do make the argument that distinctive we have to in their names did not affect long-term economic outcomes.
So, I am really curious to know whether you think a distinctive we have to in our name or again, a distinctive name in some other category perhaps, is ultimately a penalty for lifelong economic and perhaps other outcomes. When you're looking at these students that were in my study, let's take two of our example. She is a biology major. She has two minors.
A Spanish minor is a college minor. When she graduates, she is going to go on and grads get a PhD in biology. She is going to be successful. Someone is going to say, she had a good idea, but look, she is successful.
But in the short term, over navigating her education institutions to get there, look at what she had to go through. Many of the choices and changes that she has made and many of the experiences that she has had, they were impactful on her. You are seeing the success may come despite the distinctive name and the penalties of it, yes? And not even despite sometimes in a small part because of the people who don't know where there is no way that marijuana depends on how long-term impact because for any of the issues that I have done right now.
I would have stayed in business. I have always been very entrepreneurial. Business minded. I always have students interested in heart so at some point.
I still have been some sort of educator even if I just went into schools and did some work as a business leader. But I think that is a mirror I have changed because it is a deal to my resources as well. I think it has been working most recently at the Lloyd College in Wisconsin. She has been director of student excellence and leadership programs to support low income first generation college students.
The big reason she went into education she says and stuck with it is because she wanted to change how students would look like her or like anyone else or no one else. How those students will receive five rest of the world. Yeah. And I said many times, I cannot wait to the commutator because this is ridiculous.
We have got to give students at this one teacher where they can come in and feed ourselves and have parents that can come in and have a conversation. And I had a conference with this one and she cried throughout the whole conference and I could not understand it. And I am giving a petition at the kitchen and I was like, well, why are you crying? He is doing great.
That is just it. He has never had a good conference. He is teaching him out of school since he was in pre-K. I came in here expecting to hear everything I have always heard and the student was on a role.
He was doing a fabulous job. We are not going to have any random items. We are not going to have no television advertising and no social media whatsoever. We are not going to accept coupons.
We are not going to ask them. What if I told you that this grocery store not only exists but that it is crushing competition. They are not only at the top of the industry but they are at the top of a wide wide margin. We are looking at the economics behind the most unconventional and beloved companies in America.
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