TRANSCRIPT:
(clapping) CHANDRA: I’d like to introduce Dr. Lester. Dr. Lester is a Foundation Professor of English and one of the Founding Directors of Project Humanities at Arizona State University. Welcome Dr. Lester. (clapping)
DR. LESTER: You do a lot with naming. And I mean not just YOUR name and what it means, but it starts fundamentally with: How do you pronounce it?
FANSHEN: My pronunciation is an American pronunciation of a Mandarin Chinese word. So when I teach ESL and I have Chinese students, they’re like “No. That is not how you say your name.” (laughing) And also they’re like, “So your parents named you ‘turn over’? What is that about?” (laughter)
DR. LESTER: And notice how much we get in terms of racializing names. They’ve done all those bias tests where you have the same application with the same details, but one is Joe and the other is Jose. And Joe gets all the call backs. We start constructing biases around that.
FANSHEN: And we even do it to ourselves. When we have to write our own name, we do worse on the exam. When we have to tell our race, when we have to tell our gender – if we’re women – we do worse on the exam. It’s all internalized as well.
DR. LESTER: So let’s pronounce that. How would you prefer, because that to me seems an appropriate and respectful way to ask. How would you like to have your name pronounced?
FANSHEN: I call myself Fan-Shin. Kahks. Dee-Joe-VAH-nnee.
DR. LESTER: Ok. 1-2-3
AUDIENCE: FAN-SHIN
DR. LESTER: One more time:
AUDIENCE: FAN-SHIN
DR. LESTER: Is that good?
FANSHEN: Yes!
DR. LESTER: Has anyone ever done that before?
FANSHEN: No. Thank you!
DR. LESTER: See!?
(audience claps, laughter)
DR. LESTER: Other comments from the audience?
WOMAN: There was a trigger point for me, during my upbringing it reflected that at one point it was a requirement to be critically responsible but you must be critically invisible.
DR. LESTER: Now what does that mean exactly? Because that sounds really deep.
WOMAN: You have to pay your taxes, make sure that your lawn is correct and so forth…but you could not speak of any indifferences or frustration as a Black woman. As a Black American because then it looks like you’re complaining for all the privileges that you have that others don’t.
FANSHEN: The most frustrating thing of all is to tell someone your experience, and them to question that. And that is happening over and over and over and that’s a big part of the problem. If YOU didn’t have that experience, don’t question whether that is true for me. That’s where White folks have to go. That’s where men have to go for women. That’s where wealthy people have to go for…
DR. LESTER: Straight people for…
FANSHEN: Exactly. You have to start believing the person who’s speaking to you.
MAN: So, how do you address that? I see that situation on a regular basis. How do you address that and bring it to someone’s attention without insulting and understanding what it is that they’re doing?
FANSHEN: We have to be uncomfortable. If they’re not uncomfortable, if you do it the nice way? They – it went like this (in one ear, out the other). And this is the final monologue is the only way I could get to evolve through self-reflection was to have these really uncomfortable conversations and it’s not easy, it took me seven years with my own father, but I think we have to prepare our young people for the discomfort.
DR. LESTER: The best learning and discovery can come falling in a trap and then getting out of it. But the human experience is that we WILL fall into the trap, but it’s how you handle it that determines the content of the character.
FANSHEN: Yes. Definitely.
(clapping)
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