Roland G. Fryer's Freakonomics

This explains how an aspect as simple as a name can greatly affect a person's personality, and features through life. Having knowledge of the heritage that makes a person who they are will greatly improve possibilities on how to improve upon and give acclaim to

The intended audience of Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner’s Freakonomics is made up of middle class Americans and comprised of adults and teenagers with a basic education and a broad knowledge of a wide range of subjects. Since Levitt and Dubner reference a large variety of topics, it is imperative for the audience to also be familiar with a wide variety of subjects or at the very least to be aware of popular culture and government. For example, when Levitt and Dubner reference a Supreme Court case, Roe v. Wade, where a young woman named Norma McCorvey was “...the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit seeking to legalize abortion” they establish their audience as one that would be educated enough to know the fundamentals of some of the most important events in American history (Levitt and Dubner 5). By referencing the Roe v. Wade case, a court case which is generally considered to be common knowledge for Americans, Levitt and Dubner reveal that their audience must be comprised of

What really is in a name? Apparently, there is a lot. In Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s story, "What's in a Name," there is a telling story about a young boy learning the powerful pain and humiliation in the racist practices of American society. Gates illustrates how racism can perpetuate prejudice that aims to take away individual identity and put entire groups of people down. Yet, the fact that Skip was willing to never look Mr. Wilson in the yes again shows that Gates himself was not going to just take the racism any longer, but was willing to fight it in his own unique way.

The author Steven Levitt studied economics at Harvard University and MIT. He is primarily known for his work in the field of crime. The title Freakonomics means a study of economics based on the principles of incentives. The title is related to the book since he emphasizes how incentives drive and affect people’s actions. Although this book does not have a single theme, the main focus of the book is a new way of interpreting the world using economic tools. He explores incentives, information asymmetry, conventional wisdom, crime and abortion, and parenting throughout the six chapters of the book.

What would it be like to grow up with no friends simply because your name was different from everyone else's? Firoozeh Dumas answers this question for all of her readers when she recalls the struggles of her childhood in her story, “The F Word.” Her story is not about the actual cuss word, but rather the struggle she had growing up in America with an Immigrant name. In her memoir, Dumas uses humor to talk about touchy subjects and to make her piece more enjoyable for her readers.

I come from a very large family including; six brothers, sister in laws, and fifteen nieces and nephews. My brother, Joe, married an African-American women and had two sons; however, they look nothing alike. Jeremy, the oldest, looks African-American and Anthony, the youngest, looks white. I chose to interview Jeremy for my paper because I wonder how being the only black child in a large white family impacted his identity.

My name, Daryl Naquin, Jr., represents the fascinating social attitude that males are considered to be the carriers of the family legacy. I contribute to the trend that Virginia Postrel mentions of boys’ names changing slower due to the influence of custom. Unless I were to change my name in the future, which is highly unlikely, this social duty is something that I will inevitably carry out if I were to have a family of my own. I represent my dad, my family, our values, and our aspirations. Moreover, it is interesting to consider the belief across many cultures that one can “stain” the family

In his essay, “As Black as We Wish to be,” author Thomas Chatterton Williams tries to paint a picture of a world where the sight of interracial families was still considered an oddity and shows how, over the decades, society has slowly became more acceptable towards the idea. He begins the essay briefly discussing the ignorance of people during the late 1980’s while also elaborating what hardships African Americans have dealt with over the past century. He explains that even with the progression of interracial families and equality of African Americans, a new problem has now risen for interracial children of the future. While either being multiracial, African American, or White, what do they decide to identify themselves as? This is the major question that arises throughout Williams’s argument. While Williams’s supports his argument with unreliable environmental evidence, as well with other statistical evidence. His argument is weakened by an abundance of facts, disorganization, and an excessive use of diluted information.

Most of our lives we have been called a certain name, whether it was given to us by birth or a nickname that friends have called us, but each of us has a meaning behind our names and I am going to talk about mine. My first name is Jacob, which is a very common boy’s name in this current period of time. I have known Dumont, my last name, to be a French surname because of my father’s side coming from France and Italy. Furthermore, both my first name and last name have meaning of some sort and that is what I will go over in my essay.

Immigrants, since the mass immigration in the 19th century, have been changing their names to sound more American. Most feel that if they add an American name they will be more successful. Firoozeh Dumas’s excerpt “The ‘F Word’” was taken from Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America, published in 2003. Dumas tells her story about what growing up with an Iranian name feels like. She came to America, at the age of seven, knowing that challenges would arise, but what she did not know was someone would change her name into a complete insult and judge her because of it. Hoping she would make it through these obstacles she stepped blindly into the United States. Dumas tells her story by writing with a precise style of writing; using irony, metaphors, and excellent word choice, making it easy to understand her arguments.

One of Beverly Tatum's major topics of discussion is racial identity. Racial identity is the meaning each of us has constructed or is constructing about what it means to be a white person or a person of color in a race-conscious society. (Tatum, pp Xvii) She talks about how many parents

As soon as children are born, their journey through losing their personal identity begins. They are given names like Equality, Liberty, or Union, names that at first glance seem to cause no harm. The rulers give these names in an attempt to showcase the positive outcomes of collectivism. In

At birth everyone is given a name by their parents. Your name is part of your identity and how you are addressed and recognized by the world. The different verities among the population created other names given to different races. These names are offensive, demeaning and are only used to refer to a person in a disrespectful manner. They can also cause a segregation among a nations people, these names are forced upon people weather they are rich or poor, old or young, male or female and are used to describe the same race of people. In the class reading "What 's in a Name? “by Henry Louis Gates he reminisces about a personal experience of his that he had with his father. In the story he describes his father was a hard worker and, because of this he was in high financial standings and, he was well respected and given privileges that at the time was rare for people of his race but he was still black and his name, his individual identity was not important instead he was given a racial identity, this is the only thing he was known as, this type of negative recognition is something many black Americans can relate to. One’s race is a predominant part of our identity and is what causes discrimination.

    Names are a terrible way to understand someone’s identity because names are regularly replicated. In my sixth grade class, there were three Mollys. We all had different backgrounds, different religious affiliations, and different personalities. If our names displayed who we are, wouldn’t our identities all be the same? Instead of staring at names and trying to understand their meaning, one should focus on a person’s personality, for personality depicts our identity. In fact, I have learned from experience to not infer one’s identity based on their name. For instance, in middle school, I was mutual friends with a girl named Kassidy. One Tuesday afternoon, my friend, Katy told me that Kassidy was going to sit with us at lunch that day. I shrugged my shoulders and replied with a casual “okay”. Before Kassidy walked in, I had a whole image of her in my mind: blonde hair, cute pastel colored clothes, and religious, all stereotypes that I thought a person with an innocent name like Kassidy

People with normal names live a privileged life. If your first name is something like James or Emma and your last name is something like Jones or Williams then you have no idea what it’s like to have a name that is unusual or “original.” However, the main characters from the novels The Outsiders and The Wednesday Wars know this feeling too well. Imagine having the name Ponyboy Curtis, or Holling Hoodhood because you could definitely have some trouble fitting in being called by a name like that. The Wednesday Wars is about a 13 year old boy growing up in Long Island during the late 1960’s living through all the politics and opinions in the year but also dealing with small middle schooler problems like having to wear tights in a play and getting bullied by the “big kids”. The outsiders is about a 14 year old boy growing up in Tesla, Oklahoma also during the late 1960’s. However, in this story the kid doesn’t talk about politics at all, instead he talks about his life struggles and real problems like the death of his parents, living a poor life where his two big brothers have to work jobs and not go to school to support them, and his brotherhood with the boys in their gang called the greasers. However, these two boys, despite having very different upbringings definitely have a few things in common, starting with their unique names.