Should white women who marry "ethnic" men change their last names?

[Anonymous]

Speechless.

[Anonymous]

Women should keep their names and thankfully more and more are not demeaning themselves to keep others happy.

[Anonymous]

I’m not white but a Black woman. My last name is English sounding. I am able to trace my family back to 1816. My husband is white and has a last name that’s very white immigrant sounding (think German/Russian). I actually shed a private tear because I thought I was alone in worrying about having an ethnic sounding last name, albeit even a white ethnic sounding last name. Black interviewers are often pleasantly surprised when I show my face and I’m Black or I get a phone call and they hear my voice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ugh, OP, this is offensive. First off, don't call people ethnic. Everyone is ethnic in that everyone has an ethnicity. Also putting "ethnic" in scare quotes makes it worse.

Second, there are a million reasons women take their husbands name and a million reasons they don't. In a mixed-race marriage, those decisions can sometimes be easier, sometimes harder. Don't assume anything based on how a couple chooses to handle last name. Taking someone's name is not appropriation if you are marrying them.

Finally, I do think there are white women who capitalize on their mixed-race marriage in order to both claim white privilege while also claiming an elevated status within liberal communities. It's an extension of the "I have black friends" phenomenon. I don't think it's the biggest issue on the race relations agenda, but I do sometimes get an icky vibe from white women who lecture other white people (and sometimes even people who are not white) on race based on their marriage. Informing and raising issues is great, but sometimes white ladies like to get up on their soapboxes and be experts in things, and being married to a person of color does NOT make you an expert on race. Neither does having kids who are minorities.

It gives you a different and potentially very interesting perspective. But there can be a lot of entitlement in the decision to assert that perspective.[i]

Say it louder for the Karens in the back!

Why, if someone lives an experience, does it make them entitled to assert their perspective? I get it if they are implying they are (in the above scenario) Black, when really they are just married to an AA. But if they are stating they are white with mixed race kids, how is asserting their perspective entitled?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is why Trump will be re-elected. I feel like there are so few moderate liberals around.

Agree. Leftism is self-parody at this point and is making things worse.

The same can be said of the far-leaning right.

[Anonymous]

No woman should change her name. What a silly outdated tradition.

[Anonymous]

I think it’s disingenuous for them to do so. Not as heinous but similar to Jessica Krug’s disgusting larceny of places rightly set aside for minorities and the historically disenfranchised.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is it bad form for a lily-white American woman who marries a man with an obviously Latino/Asian/Middle Eastern-sounding name to change to her husband's name or should she keep her own (anglo-American) surname? Of course some women today prefer keeping their maiden names anyway.

I don't know why, but something just rubs me as cultural appropriation or faking diversity when someone like Larla Jones gets married and becomes Larla Rodriguez, Larla Zhang, or Larla Al-Habib. It's like pretending not to be white.

The best is when the lily white woman marries a lily white man that happened to be born in a diverse if not Euro-leaning foreign country, e.g. Lebanon, Turkey, Argentina, and hubby clearly passes for European, yet has an ethnic surname.

[Anonymous]

Why can a woman not change her last name if it is her preference?

[Anonymous]

Well, I know a guy with a German-American last name who took his wife's Mexican-American name which of course was originally a Spanish name.

[Anonymous]

OMG. Cultural appropriation my big fat white patootie. People like you are unbelievable OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No woman should change her name. What a silly outdated tradition.

So what about my kid? What name should he use then? My maiden name (had I not changed it) or my husband’s name? He’s mixed, in case that matters to you. So it would only be half cultural appropriation for him to use dh last name since he’s half white from me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is why Trump will be re-elected. I feel like there are so few moderate liberals around.

Agree. Leftism is self-parody at this point and is making things worse.

The same can be said of the far-leaning right.

I wrote the self-parody comment. Yes, of course. The mouth-breathing far right is, of course, the worst. Just saying this kind of nonsense fires the fascist morons up and makes things worse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No woman should change her name. What a silly outdated tradition.

So keep her father’s name and let her kids have her husband’s name? How progressive!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is it bad form for a lily-white American woman who marries a man with an obviously Latino/Asian/Middle Eastern-sounding name to change to her husband's name or should she keep her own (anglo-American) surname? Of course some women today prefer keeping their maiden names anyway.

I don't know why, but something just rubs me as cultural appropriation or faking diversity when someone like Larla Jones gets married and becomes Larla Rodriguez, Larla Zhang, or Larla Al-Habib. It's like pretending not to be white.

I did it. I did it because it better reflected our family. But an interesting result was that other white people stopped spewing their bigoted comments my way, no longer ignorant of the fact I am married to an Arab Muslim.