Here is the full transcript of Erika Hall’s talk titled “The History Behind Racial Stereotyping” at TEDxColumbiaUniversity conference.
In this TEDx talk, Business Professor Erika Hall delves into the profound impact of names and labels on perception and treatment in society. She shares personal anecdotes, starting with the careful selection of her daughter’s name to navigate societal biases, contrasting with the more symbolic naming of her son. Hall explores the nuanced differences in societal reactions to the terms “black” and “African American,” revealing her research findings that show distinct perceptions and opportunities associated with each label.
She discusses the concept of semantic prosody, explaining how words absorb the connotations of their historical and frequent usage, as seen with terms like “Negro.” Hall examines the historical contexts of racial labels, highlighting how the Black Power and Civil Rights movements influenced the connotations of ‘black’ and ‘African American,’ respectively. She emphasizes the importance of understanding the history and context of racial labels, advocating for allowing individuals to choose their preferred labels.
Hall concludes by stressing the power of language in shaping perceptions and realities, underscoring the need for conscious use of racial labels to foster positive change.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Shakespeare and the Power of Names
Shakespeare famously penned the quote, “What’s in a name?” He was talking through his character, Juliet, as she pleaded with her lover, Romeo. “That which we call a rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet.” In her mind, names and labels made no difference because it was the content of one’s character that was weighted the most heavily.
And I’ve learned through both personal and professional research that nothing is farther from the truth. My obsession with names first stemmed from my eldest daughter’s birth. I wanted to give her the best chance at navigating an at times biased society. And I knew that a name could be consequential for a child’s trajectory in life because of common research methodology used in my field.
In audit studies, researchers create fictitious resumes that are identical, except they affix different names to the tops of each one. After which, they send these resumes out to real jobs and companies, and they assess the percentage of callbacks received depending on which name applied for the position.
So when it came time to name my eldest daughter, my quirky professor brain kicked in, and I decided I needed a research study to find her the best name that would offer her the most success in life. Seriously, I had a thousand survey takers from across the nation assess each of my name choices on just how competent, likable, and hireable they perceived a person with that name to be.
The Science of Naming
With little sentimentality, the scientist in me chose the name that rated highest across all measures of my study. True story. Now, if you’re a parent of more than one kid, you may understand why by the time it got to the second kid, he didn’t receive the same rigorous investigation. There was no research sample or empirical investigation for my son.
Instead, we named him Kingston, which was reminiscent of his ancestral past. So instead of thinking with the logical, analytical, left side of my brain, we wanted something more meaningful and symbolic. Both my husband and I have Caribbean roots, so naming him Kingston tied him to a history that we never wanted him to forget.
My obsession with names and labels progressed even further when we started to understand the power and complexity of racial labels. So in one-on-one conversations with white counterparts at networking events, I would refer to myself as black, and in response, they would refer to me as African American. It was as if they were replacing black for African American so as not to offend me.
Now, there are technical differences between the two labels where black is more of a global term and African American refers solely to residents of the United States, but colloquially, within this country, we treat the two interchangeably. And I certainly wasn’t offended by the use of either one, but I did find my counterpart’s behavior to be strange.
After multiple interactions like this, I started to wonder whether there was a stigma inherent in the black label that I was missing. So the researcher in me set out to test whether white people perceived black people differently than African Americans. In a series of studies that I conducted with Sarah Townsend, Catherine Phillips, and James Carter, we created fictitious application forms that were identical, except for in one, we identified the candidate as black, and in the other, we identified the candidate as African American. The results shocked me.
The white participants who evaluated the African American candidate were twice as likely to believe that that candidate belonged in a managerial position rather than the same exact candidate, but who was described as black. The African American label led participants to believe there was a completely new candidate, one who was more competent, educated, and worthy of a higher salary. This is like $8,000 that we’re talking about for this label.
It made me think back to my cocktail party participants and wonder whether the black label conjured up all these negative stereotypes, and they were reticent to apply those stereotypes to me. I decided to dig even deeper, to investigate how racial labels even become imbued with stereotypical content, and to do so, I had to go back in time.
Let’s take the racial label “Negro.” Most Americans will consider it negative, or at least old-fashioned. In fact, it was removed from the census after 2010 because of complaints that it was negative, outdated, and reminiscent of the Jim Crow era.
The Evolution of Racial Labels
I realized that this racial label evoked the historical period it gained prominence within. “Negro” was frequently used during a time that furthered Jim Crow ideology.
Therefore, it’s not terribly surprising that it soaked up some of this ideology, and those undertones continue on with the word even today.
Now, the process of a word absorbing the tone of the words that frequently surround it is called semantic prosody. A word gains semantic prosody when it absorbs the positive or negative tone of the words that frequently precede or follow it in natural language.
I’m going to give you an example. “The drug produced increased blood flow in the extremities,” or “The blood caused increased blood flow in the extremities.” If I’m trying to assess a side effect as being positive or negative, which one sounds more negative? Raise your hand if you think it’s the first one. The second one? Exactly.
The second one sounds more negative, even though “produced” and “caused” are technically synonyms with the same definition in the dictionary. And this is because “caused” is typically followed by more negative terms, like death, problems, and damage, whereas “produced” is typically followed by more neutral terms in natural language. Therefore, these terms have absorbed the meaning of the words that frequently surround them, and that persists, even when those other following words are no longer present.
In this same manner, “Negro” semantically soaked up all of the ideology of Jim Crow that surrounded it. And if we want to start to understand the undertones of the African American and black labels, then we can look into their historical context.
Historical Context of Racial Labels
The term African American became prominent after a 1988 speech where Reverend Jesse Jackson declared that Americans of African descent now wanted to be called African American. Jesse Jackson exemplified civil rights ideals after getting his start working under Martin Luther King Jr. Civil rights ideology professed voting and political participation as a means for racial minorities to achieve racial equality.
Conversely, the black label rose to prominence in the Black Power movement, where Stokely Carmichael, who later identified as Kwame Ture, championed its use. Black Power ideology suggested that white supremacy had economically disadvantaged black people, leaving them destitute, racially victimized, and subject to poor socioeconomic conditions.
Now let’s go back to this idea of semantic prosody, because my colleagues and I collected and analyzed over 40 years worth of op-eds in major U.S. newspapers, and found that paragraph segments containing the term black were more frequently surrounded by language reminiscent of the Black Power movement, whereas those containing the term African American were more frequently surrounded by language reminiscent of the Civil Rights movement. Now, these findings aren’t just a historical curiosity, they actually have real consequences.
Consequences of Labeling
In one of our studies, we had white Americans evaluate nonprofits committed to racial equality, except we varied the racial label in the nonprofit’s name. So one of the nonprofits was named the African American Alliance, and the other was named the Black Alliance. Our participants believed that the Black Alliance was significantly more likely than the African American Alliance to have a goal of eradicating racial injustice, to consider Malcolm X their idol, and to have an aim to defund the police.
Whereas those believed that the African American Alliance was more likely to champion civil rights and inequality, and consider the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr., and also have an aim to end voter suppression. These encoded meanings guided how much money white participants decided to financially donate to these nonprofits, and which ones they decided to donate to.
For example, white Americans who wanted to eradicate racial bias were 99% more likely to donate to the Black Alliance rather than the African American Alliance. Whereas those who really wanted to champion civil rights and inequality were 50% less likely to donate to the Black organization than the African American one. These simple choices of labels created very different organizations in the minds of my participants, ones tied to the historical origins of these labels.
The Complexity of Racial Labels
I also want to draw your attention to how complex these different consequences are. On the one hand, I’m telling you that black is related to a candidate’s incompetence, and then on the other hand, I’m saying that it spawns more financial support for a nonprofit geared to racial equality. And I can imagine how these different myriad of consequences might leave you even more confused about which label to choose.
So here are three things we can do to make more informed choices about the labels we use to define ourselves and others. First, to understand the symbolic associations of a racial label, we can situate the label in history. An easy and fascinating way to do this is to use Google’s Ingram viewer, which charts the use of the label over time.
Take the label Latinx, a gender-neutral term used to describe a descendant of Latin America. When was this label used most frequently? We see the rise of Latinx after 2010. What do we know about that time? Well, this time period corresponds with a few pivotal dates that brought gender and sex identity issues to light. For example, the term Latinx became more prominent on Twitter during the tragic shooting at Pulse Nightclub, a gay bar frequented by the Latin American community.
And what does this tell us about current customs and norms? Well, on the one hand, Latinx is still a relatively rare word in comparison to Hispanic, Latino, or Latina. I think this may speak to the marginalization of non-binary people. But on the other hand, the X in Latinx reads well in English, but it flows so awkwardly in Spanish, Latinx, one of the predominant languages of the people that it professes to label.
The second thing we can do is disaggregate the label. When we categorize people into a group, we believe that they’re categorized for a reason and that the people within the group share more in common with each other than they do with people outside the group. So labels can be broad. Think BIPOC, AAPI, and Latinos.
Or they can be more specific. Think Black, Pacific Islander, and Nicaraguan. Often the more specific label is more meaningful, but that’s dependent on the context of its use. So if I wanted to talk about the disadvantages faced by non-whites, I could use the term BIPOC.
But often what we find is that the subgroups do not face the same consequences as the broader group. For example, even though the AAPI label is touted as the model minority because of their high median income, we find that the median income for Pacific Islanders is even less than the U.S. national average. So in this case, using broader group labels, AAPI, rather than specific group labels, Pacific Islander, may blind us to the struggle of the specific group.
Empowering Through Label Choice
Third and finally, allow people to choose their preferred label. This, with the caveat that you’d be repeating a racial label, not a racial slur. And this method takes the anxiety out of knowing which label to choose. Think back to my cocktail parties where I described myself as black. It also allows the self-labeler to reduce the stigma associated with their label.
So research by my wonderful doctoral advisor, Adam Galinsky, suggests that when people self-label with a derogatory label, they’re able to attenuate the stigma in that label, and they’re also rated as more powerful by others.
People often ask me if they should stop using the black label due to some of its implicit stereotypes. And my answer to that is a resounding no. The black label transports me to a point in time where the words that surrounded that label signified dignity, unity, and beauty.
I’m an 80s baby, but it teleports me to the 60s and 70s with “buy black” signs, and “black is beautiful” signs. Back to the music of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, music that nourishes my soul. Back to a time where there were immense struggles, yes, but there was an incredible amount of unity, tenacity, and power.
The Future of Racial Labels
Now, you’ll recall that when naming my own children, I wanted to give my daughter a name that would shield her from bias, but that also tied my son to a cultural path that would nourish his life and guide him in the future. This tension is no different for racial labels. I may have to contend with a world that will box me in when I label myself black, but that label also makes me nostalgic for a cultural past that only my elders experienced.
So I’m going to leave you with a simple solution. The way semantic prosody works, the black label is only going to change when how we use it changes. When black is used to describe professor, president, and vice president, our lexicon will adapt and soak up the positivity of those surrounding words.
If you ask me, I am black without question, and you don’t have to replace black for African American in any of our cocktail party interactions. But until we truly embrace the black label as a symbol of education, intelligence, and poise, mark my words that a rose will never smell as sweet. Thank you.