I don't want to say it doesn't operate. Some people have been critical of that finding, but I was able to show it convincingly, at least to me. There's a striking commonality among these groups. A number of groups change rapidly in the direction of what's being done in society as a whole. I found this for Asians, Jews, White ethnics and Mexicans.
Blacks are an interesting case.
Their naming patterns are moving in the opposite direction. During slavery, blacks were given derogatory names by whites. They were rarely given formal names. More often they were given a nickname rather than a full name. At the end of slavery, blacks were quite responsive to using formal forms of standard names around them, although this was still a problem because it could have been taken as pushy by whites in south.