I was almost named Mykael Zane Cloud. And by “almost,” I mean I was—for a hot minute. Right until my grandparents, wielding all the subtlety of a segregation-era guidance counselor, decided that name was too ethnic, too bold, too much like someone who might speak Spanish at a PTA meeting or God forbid, ask to speak to the manager in rhythm. So instead of growing up Mykael Zane—the name my mother chose in a rare act of ownership after a life of trauma—I became Brandon Lee.
Brandon Lee Cloud. A name so safe it came with its own khakis. A name that says, “Don’t worry, he won’t rock the boat, he’s probably got a Golden Retriever and a mild gluten intolerance.” It was a name designed for respectability, not authenticity. My first lesson in racial politics was quite literally branded into me: be palatable or be punished.
And punish they do. Let’s talk about what happens when you don’t get the Brandon rebrand. Because if you’re named Jamal, DeShawn, Mykael, Aaliyah, Leticia, Xiomara, or Fatima—you already know. You’ve lived the slow, suffocating drip of invisibility.
Employers say they value diversity, but statistically? They value Emily and Greg. Studies have shown that identical resumes with white-sounding names are 50% more likely to get a callback. That’s not a bias—that’s a rigged game with white-out on the scorecard. And it doesn’t stop at jobs. Try getting an apartment with a name like Rasheed versus Ryan. One gets a tour, the other gets ghosted.
This is the racism you can clock before you even step into the room. It’s in the inbox, in the silence, in the “we decided to go in another direction” emails that smell suspiciously like they were written before your application was opened.
Our names carry histories. Languages. Legacies. They are the poetry of our ancestors, the reclamation of lineage, the attempt to hold something sacred in a world obsessed with uniformity. But to the average gatekeeper of American assimilation, your name is a red flag. A warning sign that you might bring culture into the workplace, and they just got everyone trained on DEI and aren’t in the mood to do it again.
Let’s be clear—my name didn’t save me. I was still kicked out for being gay. Still assaulted in conversion camp. Still survived trauma and violence and homelessness. But it did help me get into rooms I would’ve otherwise been filtered out of. My rebranded name was a Trojan horse: they saw Brandon and assumed they were getting one of their own. Imagine their surprise when the biracial queer atheist with a trauma résumé longer than a CVS receipt walked in.
But what of the names that aren’t changed? What of the people who carry their truth on their resumes, in ink, with no armor of assimilation? They pay a price. They are overlooked, undervalued, and second-guessed. Their name becomes shorthand for risk, rebellion, or incompetence—none of which has anything to do with their actual skills. This isn’t unconscious bias. It’s very conscious. It’s curated. It’s baked into the algorithms and hiring practices of every HR platform in the country.
And yet, we’re told to grin and bear it. Told that if we just worked a little harder, if we just dressed the part, if we just “spoke clearly,” we’d make it. Meanwhile, Chad, who got a DUI and a GED, is now the Regional Sales Director because he “knows people.”
Our names should be a source of pride. But instead, they become camouflage or casualties. Parents agonize over whether to name their child after their great-grandmother or name them something “easier to pronounce” so they won’t be punished by future gatekeepers. This is not just cultural erasure—it’s preemptive surrender. And we do it because we know how the game is played.
I’ve met too many women named Aisha who go by Ashley at work. Too many men named José who just tell white people to call them Joe. Not because they want to, but because they have rent to pay. They have mouths to feed. And in America, your ability to survive often hinges on how easily your name can slide off a white person’s tongue.
So when people tell me, “Brandon, you have such a professional name,” I smile tightly and think to myself, Yeah, it was designed in a lab by people who didn’t want me to have to struggle—but knew damn well I would anyway.
Now, I go by Bee in my personal life. It’s short, stings a little, and doesn’t apologize for buzzing loudly in spaces I wasn’t meant to enter. But that name? That’s mine. It’s not for job applications or landlord approval. It’s for people who’ve earned access. Because if you don’t care to know my full story, you don’t get my nickname.
To the gatekeepers: don’t pretend it’s about qualifications when you’re still filtering resumes by comfort level. Don’t preach diversity when your shortlist looks like a J.Crew catalog. Don’t tell us to be ourselves and then punish us for doing exactly that.
And to everyone out there who’s ever had to whiten their name just to be heard—may your real name find its way back to you. May it be said in boardrooms and printed on diplomas and engraved on awards. Because if the system can’t handle your name, the problem isn’t you. It’s the system.