From: mday@jukebox.lcs.mit.edu (Mark Day)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american
Subject: "Asians changing names to help job prospects"
Date: 4 Oct 92 17:10:39 GMT
Article-I.D.: jukebox.MDAY.92Oct4121039
Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science

When I was in London I clipped the following article from The
Independent, one of the daily newspapers there.  Although the article
is about Asians in Britain, I thought there was probably enough
similarity of situation that people in this newsgroup would find it
interesting.  Note that an "Asian" person in British usage is a "South
Asian", not an "East Asian" as in the U.S.

--Mark Day

mday@lcs.mit.edu


From The Independent (London), August 31 1992:

"Asians changing names to help job prospects"

by Haydn Price

Unemployed Asians in the Midlands [an area of Britain] are changing
their names to make prospective employers believe they are white.

The young Asians, who fear that they will not be interviewed by racist
employers, are changing their traditional Asian names such as
Davinder, Charanjit and Surinder to the "white-sounding" David,
Charlie, and Sara.

Balvinder Singh, of the Birmingham Council of Sikh Gurdwaras, an
organisation which works closely with Indian teenagers, said: "Some
personnel managers don' want Asians and would prefer to employ whites
and so young Asians are now modifying their names accordingly."

Mr. Singh, who is known by his work colleagues as Billy, added: "The
first stage of discrimination is the application form and these young
Asians are desperate enough to change their names in order to obtain
an interview."

One Asian who amended his name is Shamash Dean Choudhry, now a
financial consultant.  He was "advised to drop Choudhry as a surname
when applying for a post with a large car dealership."

Mr. Choudhry admits that on his application form he "pretended to be
Irish" by calling himself Seamus Dean.  "It worked and I got an
interview and ended up working there," he said.

Research by the Policy Studies Institute shows that one-third of all
employers surveyed rejected applications on the basis of name alone.

During the research, a number of employers were sent two identical
forms, one with an English-sounding name and the other without.  It
was found that many employers only offered interviews to the applicant
with an English-sounding name.

Mr. Singh believes that if Asian unemployment continues to rise the
practices will continue.  Figures from the Department of Employment
show that "25 per cent of the Pakistani and Bangladeshi community and
11 per cent of those of Indian background were unemployed."  This
compares with 9 per cent of the white community.

The department's Employment Gazette said: "People of ethnic minority
origin were more likely to be unemployed than whites from the same age
and sex groups.  The highest unemployment was among the Pakistani,
Bangladeshi, and West Indian community."

However, not all Asians approve of changing names.  Mukesh Murria,
chairman of the Birmingham Institute of Asian Businesses, dismisses
the practice as "immature."

"For economic betterment, those who amend their names are misleading
the community and disgracing their countrymen... even if they get the
job they will never regain the respect of the employer because they
have already tried to mislead him."

He argued that Asians should "stand firm and try to prove to their own
community that they are of worth, and that then [sic] will be able to
prove to others that they are worthy of employment."

Mr. Murria's views are shared by the Commission for Racial Equality.

A commission spokeswoman said that, "although we know employers do
discriminate against ethnic minority applicants, to change one's name
is, in effect, to collude with discriminatory practices and we would
be against it."

[End of article]
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american