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would be more likely to get a callback. The implication is that black- sounding names carry an economic penalty. Such studies are tantaliz- ing but severely limited, for they cant explain why DeShawn didnt get the call. Was he rejected because the employer is a racist and is convinced that DeShawn Williams is black? Or did he reject him be- cause “DeShawn” sounds like someone from a low-income, low- education family? A résumé is a fairly undependable set of clues-a recent study showed that more than 50 percent of them contain lies-so “DeShawn” may simply signal a disadvantaged background to an employer who believes that workers from such backgrounds are undependable. Nor do the black-white audit studies predict what might have hap- pened in a job interview. What if the employer is racist, and if he un- wittingly agreed to interview a black person who happened to have a white-sounding name-would he be any more likely to hire the black applicant after meeting face-to-face? Or is the interview a painful and discouraging waste of time for the black applicant-that is, an eco- nomic penalty for having a white-sounding name? Along those same lines, perhaps a black person with a white name pays an economic penalty in the black community; and what of the potential advantage to be gained in the black community by having a distinctively black name? But because the audit studies cant measure the actual life out- comes of the fictitious DeShawn Williams versus Jake Williams, they cant assess the broader impact of a distinctively black name. Maybe DeShawn should just change his name. People do this all the time, of course. The clerks in New York Citys civil court recently reported that name changes are at an all-time high. Some of the changes are purely, if bizarrely, aesthetic. A young couple named Natalie Jeremijenko and Dalton Conley recently renamed their four-year-old son Yo Xing Heyno Augustus Eisner Alexander Weiser Knuckles Jeremijenko-Conley. Some people change names for economic purposes: after a New York livery-cab driver named Michael Goldberg was shot in early 2004, it was reported that Mr.
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