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Online audit studies have recently emerged as the primary method to examine racial discrimination. Although this research uses distinctive names (e.g. Jamal Washington) to signal race, less than 1 out of every 5 studies scientifically examines any relevant data regarding the perceptions of race from names. Different names treated as black (or white) may be perceived in heterogeneous ways. Moreover, the rate at which individuals perceive a name as black may explain variation within audit studies of racial discrimination. I conduct a survey experiment that asks respondents to identify the race they associate with a series of names. I alter the names each respondent is given, whether last names are included, and whether those last names racially match the first name they are given. The results suggest that names more commonly given by highly educated black mothers (e.g. Jalen and Nia) are less likely to be recognized as black than names given by less educated black mothers (e.g. DaShawn and Tanisha). These differences in the racial perception names predict within-study differences in response rates from employment, housing, and other audit studies conducted in the U.S. in the past decade. The results suggest that a large body of social science evidence on racial discrimination operates under a misguided assumption that all black names are alike and the findings from audit studies are likely extremely sensitive to name selection.
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