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The real gateway drug is low self esteem and poor self control
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The thing about Those White People Baby Names is the way they so poetically express the tension between individuality and rigid conformity. These parents all want to name their child something unique, because they value the concept of uniqueness, yet simultaneously they abhor it in practice… ergo, 30 different spelling variations on the most normative possible names. This homogeneity-masquerading-as-diversity is inseparable from capitalist consumer culture and in fact is directly analogous to the experience of walking into a grocery store and being asked to “choose” between 50 varieties of toothpaste with the same exact ingredients, 12 brands of laundry detergent, etc.
Not only that, but have you ever noticed how the same white people who drive vans full of kayeidæn, jessslyin, kielaeigh, and Aelikzandre tend to make fun of the names of their children’s black classmates? Names like Quvenzhané, Lupita, N'deye, and even less “exotic” names like Dawonde, Jamya, Ty'Shara, and Na-Jee (all kids I went to school with). Those parents can throw any random scattering of vowels into the frame of a common name, and they praise the “beautifully unique” white European names like Sioban and Saiorse, but god forbid someone name their child a name linked to a heritage that those parents have no part of.