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<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><b><span style="font-size:24.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">6 Words: 'My Name Is Jamaal ... I'm White'<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">http://www.npr.org/2015/05/06/404432206/six-words-my-name-is-jamaal-im-white<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">May 06, 2015 4:32 AM ET
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">NPR Staff
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><b><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><a href="javascript:NPR.Player.openPlayer(404432206,%20404626552,%20null,%20NPR.Player.Action.PLAY_NOW,%20NPR.Player.Type.STORY,%20'0')"><span style="color:blue">Listen
to the Story</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><a href="http://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/"><span style="color:blue">Morning Edition</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">7:04</span></b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<ul type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">
<span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><a href="javascript:NPR.Player.openPlayer(404432206,%20404626552,%20null,%20NPR.Player.Action.ADD_TO_PLAYLIST,%20NPR.Player.Type.STORY,%20'0')"><span style="color:blue">Playlist</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">
<span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><a href="http://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/me/2015/05/20150506_me_six_words_my_name_is_jamaal_im_white.mp3?dl=1"><span style="color:blue">Download</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">
<span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><a href="http://www.npr.org/2015/05/06/404432206/six-words-my-name-is-jamaal-im-white"><span style="color:blue">Embed</span></a>
<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">
<span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><a href="javascript:;" title="Transcript Pending"><span style="color:blue">Transcript</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></li></ul>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><img border="0" width="400" height="562" id="Picture_x0020_1" src="cid:image001.jpg@01D087DF.1D7B21D0" alt="Jamaal Allan is a teacher in Des Moines, Iowa. His name has taken him on a lifelong odyssey of racial encounters."></span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><a href="http://www.npr.org/2015/05/06/404432206/six-words-my-name-is-jamaal-im-white" title="Enlarge"><span style="color:blue">i</span></a>
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Jamaal Allan is a teacher in Des Moines, Iowa. His name has taken him on a lifelong odyssey of racial encounters.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Courtesy of Jamaal Allan
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><i><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">NPR continues a series of conversations from
</span></i><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><a href="http://theracecardproject.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color:blue">The Race Card Project</span></a><i>, in which thousands of people have submitted their thoughts
on race and cultural identity in six words.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">People make a lot of assumptions based on a name alone.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Jamaal Allan, a high school teacher in Des Moines, Iowa, should know. To the surprise of many who have only
seen his name, Allan is white. And that's taken him on a lifelong odyssey of racial encounters.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Those experiences prompted him to share his six words with The Race Card Project: "My name is Jamaal ... I'm
white."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Allan grew up in southern Oregon, in a house on 18 acres with a commune on one side and a llama ranch on the
other.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">The origins of his name weren't that remarkable, Allan tells NPR Special Correspondent Michele Norris.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">"My parents decided they wanted less traditional names for their children. ... My dad was a Los Angeles Lakers
fan and they had had a player named Jamaal Wilkes, and that name kind of came up," he says.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">His mother — who was pregnant with Allan's sister at the time — fell in love with the sound of the name. Their
parents named his sister Madera, and they named their son Jamaal — "just to spice things up a bit, I guess," he says.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">As Allan
<a href="http://thepoetryquestion.com/2013/05/28/whats-in-a-name/"><span style="color:blue">wrote for a blog called The Poetry Question</span></a>:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">"Growing up I never thought twice about my name (of course I was next door to a commune, hanging out with Orly,
Oshia, Lark Song, River Rocks, Sky Blue, and more than one Rainbow).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">"In a high school soccer game I was called 'a white man with a [horrific racial expletive deleted] name.'<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">"In January of 2002 I flew to London. I was randomly selected for additional passenger screening. It was me,
Muhammad, Abdul, Tariq, and an old white haired lady named Jenny Smith. Seriously. I'm not sure what was faster, Jenny Smith's pat down or the dropping of the TSA agent's face when I responded to the name Jamaal."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Jamaal means "beauty" in Arabic.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">"Learning the meaning behind it, and, well, the beauty that comes in the sound of the name, I like that quite
a bit," Allan says.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">It's also a name that give him an unusual perspective on questions of identity, race and cultural stereotypes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">When he goes out in Des Moines for drinks with friends who are black, the waitress or bartender often hands
his debit card to someone else — someone black.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">"They're making an assumption based on the name on the card and not paying attention to who handed it to them,"
Allan says. "They say, 'Jamaal, oh that must be the black guy sitting here.'"<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">'We Could Use Some Diversity Here'</span></b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">These kinds of assumptions also spill over into his professional life as a teacher.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">"People usually don't bring it up on a first day, but after I've developed a rapport with the students and they
feel comfortable having open conversations, they'll say, 'You know, when class started I thought you were going to be black,'" Allan says.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">And he uses that as a jumping-off point for more questions: Why you would assume that and what did that mean?
And were you disappointed? What were your thoughts when you actually saw me?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">Many people have written to The Race Card Project about how people make assumptions about their identity, based
on their name.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><a href="http://theracecardproject.com/race-neutral-name-foot-in-the-door/"><span style="color:blue">Race-neutral
name, foot in the door</span></a> — Meredith, Texas<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><a href="http://theracecardproject.com/name-doesnt-match-face/"><span style="color:blue">Your name doesn't match
your face</span></a> — Kimberly Jackson, New York, N.Y.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><a href="http://theracecardproject.com/name-sounds-black-im-not/"><span style="color:blue">My name sounds black,
I'm not</span></a> — Lynea Ramse, Nashville, Tenn.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><a href="http://theracecardproject.com/judge-name/"><span style="color:blue">You judge me by my name?</span></a>
— Chaka Babarovich, Anacortes, Wash.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">The question of someone's name, particularly if it has ethnic overtones, can have real consequence. One study
found that after responding to 1,300 classified ads, <a href="http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html">
<span style="color:blue">applicants with black-sounding names were 50 percent less likely to get a callback</span></a> than white sounding names with comparable resumes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">But the opposite was at work in Allan's case. The principal who hired him told him he was lucky to get the job
because they hadn't been planning to take another student teacher. Then Allan's application showed up.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">"They scanned through it ... and they saw someone named Jamaal who played basketball, listed Muhammad Ali among
his heroes and inspirations, and thought, 'We could use some diversity here, so let's bring this guy on, I think he'd be good for some of our younger minority male students,'" he says. "And, well, then I showed up."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">If someone argued that the only reason Jamaal Allan got the job was affirmative action — well, the joke would
be on them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">The school got diversity with Allan — but not necessarily the kind they thought. Not many people can say they
have grown up between a commune and a llama ranch.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">"They said we need more diversity, we need someone who resonates well and connects with some of the young male
students here," Allan says. "It may not have been because of how I look, but through actions, that was exactly what they got."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">On Allan's first day of work, he showed up at school and introduced himself to one of the secretaries.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">"And she said, 'Oh you're Jamaal, I expected you were going to be' — and there was a very long, very pregnant
pause," Allan recalls. "And the word she came up with was 'taller.'"<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"">"I just sort of chuckled and said, 'Yeah, I get reactions like that a lot.'"<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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