My Name Is Joe
Janinna Martella O. Bautista
West Coast University My Name Is Joe
Not too long ago, there was an article that trended all over the internet about a man who dropped one letter from his name and consequently had more responses because of it.
The name of the man is Jose Zamora. For a couple of months, just like everyone else in this day and age, he would log onto his computer every morning and combed the internet for listings and applied to everything he felt qualified for with the hopes that not too long after would he hear from one of them. He waited patiently for a response but, as time stretched out longer, was met with disappointing results.
With the need and desperation to get a job, Mr. Zamora did something not many would think about when it came to their resume. He dropped the S from his first name. Jose was Joe now and as mentioned on the article, a week after he did this, his inbox was full. According Cate Matthews, writer for the famous website Huffington Post, “Joe” hadn’t changed anything on his resume but that one letter. But what Zamora had done, effectively, was whitewash it (2014).
According to Urbandictionary.com, whitewashing is someone who is looked at as leaving behind or neglecting their culture and assimilating to a white, Western culture (2006). While it wasn’t Mr. Zamora’s intention to leave behind or neglect his culture to, in an essence, be white, he felt the need to do so because of a subconscious preference companies have towards white people.
Not too long ago, our class discussed discrimination and how and if it still does affect the lives of people found under it. While some think that discrimination has died down since Martin Luther King Jr.’s movement, as seen above, it still plays a role in the lives of people who are born of color.
In an article written by Michael Luo of the New York Times, he said, “the strategy of hiding race — in particular changing names — can be soul-piercing.” (2009). This just