What Race Is Lacey? Intersecting Perceptions of Racial Minority Status and Social Class Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • ObjectiveWe examine how nave raters perception of first name socioeconomic status (SES) is related to the name's perceived race.MethodsStudent volunteers rate the perceived race and SES of first names. We use a logit model to analyze the data.ResultsParticipants are four times as likely to say a White name is Black when they perceive the mother as uneducated, compared to highly educated. While most raters accurately predict a name's race, a substantial minority of college students believe that names given by lowSES White parents are Black names.ConclusionExamining the presence and mechanisms of bias is a vital step in fair and just decision making. This new study adds to the literature by taking an intersectional experimental approach combining ratings of racial and SES categories in a large sample of names.

published proceedings

  • SOCIAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY

altmetric score

  • 3

author list (cited authors)

  • Barlow, M. R., & Lahey, J. N.

citation count

  • 24

complete list of authors

  • Barlow, M Rose||Lahey, Joanna N

publication date

  • November 2018

publisher