As we observe the birth of our nation, the July 4th holiday, my heart is heavy as I think of friends who have lost loved ones due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Even if we have not lost anyone close to us, we hear and read the stories of the thousands of people in life and death struggles at home, in hospitals, at nursing homes, in jails and prisons and detention facilities. ALL of us are united in our high levels of fear, dread, and anxiety. The pandemic has brought so much pain and loss: personal, emotional, and financial. Black and brown people are, as always, the hardest hit. Our nation is in the throes of much-needed and delayed reckoning about the distorted and false narrative we were taught, especially as concerns race and all the laws and policies designed to keep black and brown people in positions of subordination. The level of ignorance boggles the mind: last night, at Mt. Rushmore, Trump supporters yelling at Native American protesters/treaty defenders: go back to where you came from. The death of George Floyd and other black men and women has unleashed a level of activism that is astounding. There were more than 4,700 demonstrations during the recent Black Lives Matter protests, an average of 140 per day. Estimates suggest there as many as 26 million people have participated, making this the largest mass movement in our nation's history. Read the full report on this here. And these protests continue, and they aren't stopping. My neighborhood holds a silent vigil that lines our street every Monday evening. All this activism is also a form of patriotism and will propel us forward to help create the fair and just country I wish to live in. This period of disruption has also unleashed enormous creativity: murals, paintings, songs, essays, video, poetry. As I wrote the word "disruption", I flashed on how disruption is typically heralded with admiration and awe in the world of business (think Amazon, eBay, PayPal, airbnb, uber) but often harshly condemned when the disruption forces us to examine inconvenient truths about our nation and who we are and how we got here. But back to art, which often captures -- in images, in words, in sounds -- what we feel but can’t quite say. I am happy to share this poem with the permission of my friend Celenia Delsol, who wrote it. This link to her blog (click here) has the audio version with Celenia reading her poem. All Lives [Never] Matter[ed] by Celenia Delsol What is this uproar Of “All Lives Matter”? As if all of them ever did? As if those first white-faced arrivals Cared about the natives Whose land they stole, Whose women they raped, Whose children they infected With lethal diseases – As if all lives mattered then. As if the African people – Ripped from their continent Shipped like livestock, Sold like chattel, Enslaved to build up A Republic that failed To even recognize Five fifths of their personhood – As if all lives mattered then. As if the brown babies Housed in cages Crying for their Mamis Who were carried across the border To escape worse horrors With the dream of growing up In the fantasy of America – As if all lives mattered then. Oddly, all lives matter When they’re in the womb Before race is revealed, Before mouths want food And souls make demands; Funny how All lives matter then! All lives don’t matter Even when they are “Essential workers” When they drive the buses, Stock the shelves, Nurse the sick At their own peril Without essential gear, As if all lives matter. All lives don’t matter When the plague strikes hard In nursing homes (the old and dying), In private prisons (criminals), In meat processing plants (immigrants) In black and brown neighborhoods (no white people there!) All lives don’t matter! I dare you to tell me “All lives matter,” When taxpayers’ dollars Go to the 1% While the working men, Women and children, Move into their cars, Get in line for food. Do their lives matter? Don’t get in my face With “All Lives Matter!” Don’t question my rage Or B.L.M. placard, Don’t act high and mighty And holier than thou As if my focus On these BLACK lives Makes ME a racist. (Because what you think doesn’t matter). Are you familiar With emergency triage? If it’s losing blood Or CAN’T BREATHE You tend to it first; Unless, of course, You’re a white cop Taking a knee On a black man’s neck. Do you feel me now? If only all lives mattered! [Meanwhile, lest we forget…] Months ago, When the Amazon blazed The rainforest cried, “I CAN’T BREATHE!” Alarms clamored: “The Amazon Matters!” (Not: “All Trees Matter!” Do you see the difference?) Focus attention Where the need is acute. Because it matters! And remember this: If the “lungs of the planet” Cease to work, None of this, Not one of us, Black, brown or white, Will matter. Two more pieces of creative expression that also spoke loudly to me. Let us all do our part to end the two pandemics our nation is facing: Covid-19 and racism. By all means, please send along any art that speaks loudly to you; I'd love to see what moves you. Thanks for taking the time to read my blog and Celenia's poem. Si se puede.

One of the biggest rewards of the work I do as a writer and performer is speaking with students and folks who work with students. On Tuesday, June 16, I’ll be participating in a half-day webinar sponsored by SPEAK Mentorship. Click here to learn more about the organization. I'll be on Instagram Live at 10 am Pacific (1 pm Eastern), that's Tuesday, June 16th. You can find me @irmadherrera. I was introduced to SPEAK Mentorship by Praveen Shanbhag, the founder of Name Coach, a software company whose product helps us learn the proper pronunciation of people’s names. With Name-Coach you can create your own audio nametag to append to your social media or email signature which tells people how YOU say your name. And its free to create your personal nametag. I discovered Name-Coach when a friend sent me a link to a news story in the business section of the SF Chronicle about a software used by colleges and universities to help them say students' names correctly at graduation. Click here to learn more about Name-Coach. When my show, Why Would I Mispronounce My Own Name?, got on stage, I invited Praveen to be one of my post-show talkback speakers to discuss Name-Coach and the impetus for starting the company, and why saying someone’s name correctly is so important. This is the topic of the June 16th Summit and Name-Coach is one of many sponsors. Check out these videos of people sharing experiences related to their names. More videos are available on YouTube just look for #SpeakingMyName. About SPEAK Mentorship SPEAK stands for Support Prepare Empower Aspiring Kids. And Speak Mentorship is committed to developing a generation of diverse leaders across career fields through various means. Among them is putting together a network of committed passionate professionals who are interested in guiding young people toward meaningful career opportunities that may interest them. They work with school districts and individual schools that serve a large number of immigrant students and SPEAK Mentorship is especially aware that all too often immigrant girls are limited by various forces from realizing their full potential. The organization helps students learn how to access and build social and cultural capital and how to support each other and seek support from people who can help them achieve their dreams. It helps them bridge the gap between high school and college by introducing them to colleges and various career tracks. Through peer support networks they can gain confidence and built greater esteem as they gain new skills interacting with each other and with mentors. They learn about civic engagement and explore and develop healthy coping mechanisms to address the social, cultural, and gender-related barriers that often stand in the way of their success. Their home cultures and languages are seen as assets that can assist them in creating successful careers and becoming leaders in their chosen fields. I’m very impressed by what I have learned about their work and am looking forward to being part of their program. Hetal Jani, the Founding Director of SPEAK Mentorship was one of ten women honored by L’Oréal at their 14th Annual Women of Worth Ceremony in Paris in December 2019. The award was presented to her by Academy-Award winner Helen Mirren. How cool is that? Here's Hetal telling us her name story. I am looking forward to tomorrow's conference. It’s free, and if you have time to join us, please do. Registration link for the conference: bit.ly/SPEAKSummit3 Tuesday, June 16, 2020 8:30 am – 12 pm Pacific (11:30-3 pm Eastern). AND my Instagram Live is at 10 am Pacific (1 pm Eastern), please tune it. Thanks for reading my blog.

Friends, I'll make this short and to the point. On Thursday, June 11th I'll be the guest at The Marsh Theater's MarshStream. It's a one hour program with Stephanie Weisman who is the Founder and Artistic Director of The Marsh Theater. Mostly Q&A and performing some excerpts of my show. Since my one-woman show, Why Would I Mispronounce My Own Name? is very much about prejudice and racism, you can be sure we will have lots to talk about. Please join us. Thursday, June 11, 2020 7:30-8:30 pm (Pacific Time) Join the Zoom meeting by clicking here. If the zoom room is full, head out to The Marsh's YouTube Channel by clicking here. Why Would I Mispronounce My Own Name? played for five months at the San Francisco and Berkeley Theaters between October 2018 - March 2019. I plan to be back on stage at some unspecified future time with an updated version. The work is always undergoing some changes in response to current events. Learn more about my show and the Marsh at their website, by clicking here. Hope to see you on Zoom.

Before the nation rose up in protest two weeks ago, the 24/7 news cycle was Covid-19. Here and there an occasional "infotainment" story caught my eye. The announcement that Elon Musk and his partner the Canadian artist Grimes had welcomed a new baby was a fun distraction. I was especially intrigued by their son's name -- X Æ A-12. Episode 9 of my Stairwell Teatre talks about Baby Musk's name but also about the fact that under California law, Spanish names with accents -- like Lucía and José -- will NOT be entered correctly in the child's birth certificate. Attempts to change the state's law to allow accents on names have been unsuccessful. Shameful given that such a large percentage of our state's residents have these very names, and that for thirty years after it became a state, Californa was a fully bilingual English-Spanish state with all laws published in both languages. So if you are an O'Toole, your name gets the apostrophe but if you are a Rendón, no accent on your name. But back to X Æ A-12. Elon Musk and Grimes announced their son's arrival in a tweet. Born on May 4th and may The Force be with him. The question in everyone's mind: Just how exactly do you say this name? Musk shared the pronunciation in Joe Rogan’s podcast, click here to have a listen. No question, it was rude of Rogan to laugh out loud when Musk said the name and Musk's expression of . . . yeah, I know . . . is priceless. Musk noted that the name was mostly Grimes' creation. And Grimes let the world know what the name meant to her on social media. Of course, we don't know if XÆA-12 really is the child’s name or if this is their idea of a media prank or part of Grimes' performance art. No doubt that this name will run afoul of California law which requires that names be written using only the 26 letters of the English Alphabet and does not allow numbers (12), symbols (Æ) diacritical marks (accents). pictograms. or ideograms. Grimes more recently announced via Instagram that the name had been changed slightly to XÆA-Xii. Although asked, she did not confirm that the change was due to the state rejecting the use of numbers. Since they kept the Æ which is a symbol (and not allowed), the new name is still unlikely to get the go-ahead. As mentioned in this video of my Stairwell Teatro, when the journalist, Louis Freedberg, and his wife Alina named their daughter Lucía, the name was rejected because of the accent mark over the í. The full story is in this Op-Ed piece published in the San Francisco Chronicle. Click here to read. Another very interesting read is the law review article by the University of California at Davis Law Professor Carlton Larson. This is the very first law review I loved reading. Rarely (if ever) has anyone said they loved reading a law review article. Non-lawyers will also find the article accessible, informative, and downright entertaining. I promise. Money-back guarantee. Click here to read Naming Baby: The Constitutional Dimensions of Parental Naming Rights. The article has some information about laws in other countries as well, and that information is most interesting and highlights how different things are in the United States. Another interesting read is this article from the BBC about countries that regulate baby names. Click here to get the full scoop.. AND finally, I’ll be on MarshStream this Thursday evening, June 11th from 7:30-8:30 pm (Pacific) speaking about using my solo work to fight racism and promote social justice. I hope you can join us. Click here for more information and to access the Zoom link. Thanks for reading my blog and watching my Stairwell Teatro Episodes. If you like and or learn from my blog or videos, please share with your friends.

The only image that seemed appropriate to post is this black box -- 100,000+ deaths from Covid-19, massive unemployment, the shocking videotaped killing of George Floyd by a police officer, right before our eyes. Millions of people marching in the street, not just in the United States, but throughout Europe, in solidarity with all of us who are committed to dismantling a system of white supremacy. Enough of state-sanctioned violence against black people, limiting our voting rights, the massive showing of police force at lawful protests. Enough from a lying cheating blaming pinche pendejo beyond incompetent Impeached President. Enabled by a feckless Republican Party, as he stokes more hatred with his tweets and the incoherent words he spews. Enough. Our nation must heed the warning: No Justice, No Peace. My emotions range from sorrow, rage, numbness, fear, to hopefulness, and resolve to keep the pressure. No Justice, No Peace. The past 10 tumultuous days have laid bare all the ways in which our country is so badly broken. The NY Times printed 1,000 names of people from around the country, a mere 1% of those who who have died of Covid-19, and the number is still rising. I was overcome with grief reading the few words that said so much about their lives: “quit his job to take care of his parents,” “squeezed in every moment he could with his only grandchild,” “died on the same day as her husband,” “organized food programs for children in the Philippines,” “famous in family circles for his birria stew,” “renegade nun,” “first black woman to graduate Harvard law school.” The vast majority of deaths were my contemporaries, sixties, and older. Although every death is tragic reading about younger people feels worse: Israel Sauz, “new father,” 22, Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Latasha Andrews, 33 New Jersey, “always the first to offer help to those in need.” Fred the Godson, 41, New York City, “rapper known for sharp wordplay.” Reading the list reminded me of visiting The Vietnam Veterans Memorial. First a few names and then more names, and more names, and then I am swallowed by a vortex of sorrow knowing that each name represents an inestimable loss to this soldier’s family. I looked up the names of boys from Alice, Texas (some high school classmates). I feel rage knowing that the burdens of wars fought during my lifetime are borne overwhelmingly by the poor and working-class: whites from rust-belt cities and Appalachia, brown and black people both urban and rural, who were drafted and had no college deferments or bone spurs. After the elimination of the draft, our military overpopulated by men and women with fewer opportunities than those available for the children of the middle-class and well-to-do. We have reason to be angry and out in the streets. This was the same feeling that came upon me when I visited the AIDS Memorial Quilt at Moscone Center in San Francisco decades ago. The thousands of cloth squares each represented a life that was lost when AIDS struck a community that we as a society devalued - gay men. And later as the AIDS epidemic ravaged poor black and brown folks, there was no urgency to address the problem as these too were disposable people. As we walked quietly past the hundreds of quilts, volunteers held Kleenex boxes, like offerings, we took the tissues with gratitude to wipe the tears streaming down our faces. So much loss, so much grief. And just when I thought our country had reached rock bottom with the Covid-19 pandemic -- the milestone 100,000 dead, inadequate supplies of PPE for our health care and other essential workers, meat processing workers (most of them immigrants) forced to keep working as Covid-19 infections ravaged their communities -- the Trump Administration washes its hands of the problem. When the explosive news of George Floyd’s murder hit the airwaves it was just too much. Too much. Basta. We read and hear about the murders of black men and women at the hands of the police and white vigilantes, week after month after year. Other POC also die at the hands of the police and white supremacists. Two months ago, Guillermo “Memo” Garcia died nine-months after he and 45 other Mexican -looking people were gunned down by a white supremacist at a Walmart in El Paso, 23 dead. All of this is also true and heartbreaking, and we mourn them as well. For now, let us keep the focus on BLACK LIVES, let us join them and tell them we too are willing to learn and grow and to do our part to dismantle racism in our own communities. Brothers and sisters, we stand with YOU. Black Lives Matter. Now . . . let me share some good things I’ve got going on that are part of the movement of confronting racism. Those of you familiar with my work, my play, blogs, Stairwell Teatro, know that promoting fairness and justice is at the heart of my work. Although my play is not on stage, I’m presenting my work via Zoom in a variety of venues. I was part of the opening session of Hispanics in Philanthropy’s Virtual Summit this week. Later this month, I’ll be presenting a workshop for high school students interested in becoming lawyers. at Centro Legal de la Raza in Oakland. They have a year-round Youth Law Academy Program and a summer intensive workshop to help prepare these students for success in their educational journey. I'll also be at Puente’s Summer Institute for counselors. The Puente Program works with educationally disadvantaged students from middle school through community college: their goal is to maximize these students’ chances of graduating from four-year colleges and universities. Read more about Puente by clicking here. It truly is an honor to be invited to share my work in these spaces with our youth. Next week, Thursday, June 11th, I’ll be spending an hour 7:30-8:30 (Pacific Time) with Stephanie Weisman, Artistic Director and Founder of The Marsh Theater. You can be sure I'll be talking about racism and white supremacy. No matter where you live, in the US, Europe, or Africa (lucky to have friends, near and far), you can be in the audience. Click here to join via Zoom, and if Zoom Room is filled you can follow on MarshStream's YouTube Channel. The thousands of people demonstrating in cities around the world, a rainbow coalition of folks from different backgrounds standing together. the majority of them young people, demanding the dismantling of systemic racial injustice, give me great hope. All of us must keep hope alive. In closing, I leave you with these two beautiful poems, the first A Working Class Prayer, written by C. Adan Cabrera, a friend, and former work colleague, It has been published in two different literary sites, and you can read poems, blogs, and stories at his website, click here. A Working Class Prayer by C. Adán Cabrera for my father, who wakes up in the dark, and who through storm or errant sickness must still ferry strangers to whomever may be waiting for them on the other side. for my mother, who must don vest and name-tag to serve hungry crowds that bite with uncovered maws: steel their uncured faults, enclose them within your walls; plant in their garden flowers of joy instead of ashen woe. for my grandmother, who crossed deserts with naked feet and who once challenged the moon to a shouting match. for my abuelo, who crouched in his dark hut and whose tired fingers turned leather into what gringos called souvenirs but which were to us simply gifts: permit gray fingers to remain remembered forever; let them unburdened find their way back to you. for my sister, mother of three and teacher of all things pure as well as practical, our alchemist manqué: a fistful of cash becomes food for a week, even if she must sometimes go hungry. for my brother, who’s lost faith along with his job and whose stony dread sleeps cold and permanent in the pit of his being: may they drink deeply of hope and nourish their every hunger. grant them too safe passage and etch into their hearts your wisdom. for my brown nephews, children of mine in all but name, who now shelter in place against a predator unseen: outside the young sun beckons, while their feverish father scrubs toilets and wipes sullied windows: give them a world (please) washed clean and protect them from invisibility: for to die one must first be unseen And finally . . . Langston Hughes. Thank you so much for reading my blog.

Imagine this dilemma. You are well-educated and eminently qualified for a job. Your resume is tailored to highlight the experiences that make you a strong candidate. But you wonder: will your name be an impediment. It well might be if your name is an identifiably “ethnic” or “black” name. The National Bureau of Economic Research and numerous other sources confirm that racial and national origin discrimination rears its ugly head in the process of evaluating resumes. See “Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination.” Click here to read article. Episode 8 of my Stairwell Teatro, Shadeequa or Dee? features an interview with Shadeequa Smith speaking about her personal experience with name discrimination. Shadeequa has a Master of Laws (LLM, an advanced law degree) in Dispute Resolution from Pepperdine University Law School. More about Shadeequa's background, including her work in restorative justice and bail reform here. Thanks, Shadeequa for sharing your name story with us. We met online in a webinar on Microaggressions sponsored by California ChangeLawyers, a public foundation committed to diversifying the legal profession to empower the next generation of lawyers, judges, and activists. If you are in a position to send some love their way, do so in the form of a financial contribution. That money will be put to good use and provides scholarships for law students and so much more. I have been impressed with the variety of valuable skill-building webinars they have hosted during these Covid-19 Shelter in Place times. Big shout-out to the staff and board of ChangeLawyers, click here to visit their website. My interest in names stems from my desire to understand how bias and prejudice show up in our everyday lives and to explore the tools, including laws, that can help us eliminate barriers that stand in the way of achieving our fullest potential. Understanding name discrimination is part and parcel of shedding light on discrimination on the basis of race, ethnic origin, religion, and gender identity. The ‘Emily and Greg’ research was done in 2003 and more recently these findings were confirmed in a study published by The Harvard Business School in 2016, Whitened Résumés: Race and Self-Presentation in the Labor Market, click here to link to study. Perhaps more disturbing is the following conclusion of the Harvard study. “Results show that when targeting an employer that presents itself as valuing diversity, minority job applicants engage in relatively little resume whitening and thus submit more racially transparent resumes. Yet our audit study of how employers respond to whitened and unwhitened résumés shows that organizational diversity statements are not actually associated with reduced discrimination against unwhitened résumés. Taken together, these findings suggest a paradox: minorities may be particularly likely to experience disadvantage when they apply to ostensibly pro-diversity employers. These findings illuminate the role of racial concealment and transparency in modern labor markets.” Yikes, that is indeed disturbing. This form of discrimination isn’t just a problem in the United States; research studies in France, Great Britain, and Australia reach the same conclusion. A study by the French government last year found "presumed discrimination" against minorities in the hiring practices of seven of the country's major companies, including Renault and Air France. The seven were "named and shamed" for tending “to favour candidates who bear names of French origin rather than those of North-African descent.” Interested in learning more, click here. In the United Kingdom, the finding was the same. Minority ethnic applicants and white applicants with non-English names have to send on average 60 percent more applications to even get a response from an employer than a white person of British origin. The Confederation of British Industry recommends the removal of candidates’ names from job applications so employers focus on the skills and experience of applicants. And the British civil service implemented name-blind hiring practices several years ago. For more info check out this article from Raconteur, an HR publication, and this from The Guardian. In Australia, the telecommunications giant (Optus) came under fire two years ago for posting a job ad on an employment site that noted a preference for ‘candidates who are Anglo Saxon’. The ad was swiftly removed after accusations of blatant racism, but many noted that the ad simply put into words the unspoken desire of many hiring managers to recruit people who look and sound just like them. Despite many studies pointing to the business case for diversity and Australia’s federal laws that prohibit discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity, “the fact remains that racist attitudes – whether unconscious or overt – influence many of the hiring decisions in companies. It manifests in different ways, from explicit racial preferences, such as in the Optus case, to overlooking applicants with non-Anglo-Saxon sounding names and coded messages in job ads, such as a requirement for ‘perfect English’. There’s often an assumption that people can only speak a high-level of English if they come packaged in an Anglo-Saxon body,” says Lisa Annese, CEO of Diversity Council Australia. The Victorian Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Robin Scott knows too well the racial preferences in Australia can influence recruitment decisions. Scott’s wife, Shaojie, has often used the Anglicised version of her Chinese name, Jade, while job hunting to avoid the potential for bias.” More info here. Thank you for reading my blog and watching my Stairwell Teatro Series. If you found this interesting and informative, share it with your friends and your networks. And if you have a name story you wish to share, email me at irmadherrera@gmail.com.

This past Monday was a red-letter day. I received a treasure trove of emails from folks who read my blog and watch my Stairwell Teatro Series. Few things are more gratifying than hearing from you. Maria in Tucson writes, “this weekend we learned one of our nieces is expecting a girl. So I went to one of my favorite websites (amightygirl.com) for gift ideas. I saw this book, ‘My Name is Maria Isabel.’ If only I’d had such books when I was growing up . . . oh well, I’m so pleased to know they now exist. The book stood out to me for the topic is timely to your activist art and wanted to share.” Mil gracias, Maria. So . . . I immediately visit the website and like what I see. A wide selection of books, music, films, toys for children of various ages. And it’s truly multicultural and international in scope. I’m also impressed that the section on parenting addresses such important topics as body image, child sexualization, gender research, adoption, children with disabilities, LGBTQ parenting, and many others. The one disappointment is that most purchases link to Amazon. Alas. Have a look at what amightygirl.com has to offer. I love supporting writers of diverse backgrounds and I searched for, but did not find, Wendy Diaz’ book, The Secret of My Hijab, at amightygirl.com. I met Wendy several years ago while working at New America Media. This children's book was illustrated by Wendy's son, Uthman Guadalupe, 13. It's a lovely book and makes a wonderful gift for families with young children. Wendy is co-founder of Hablamos Islam which provides educational materials and resources about the Islamic religion and culture in Spanish, and is also the Spanish Content Coordinator at Islamic Circle of North America. She has published 10 children’s books. I also highly recommend Wendy’s book De Puerto Rico to Islam With Love, a collection of poetry about identity and faith. Born in Puerto Rico to a Catholic family, her father was a career military man and Wendy's family lived in bases throughout the United Stages. At age 20 she converted to Islam. Check out her author's page (yes at Amazon) here. You can also read Wendy's journalism posts at Latino Muslim Reporter: La Voz Latina del Islam here. Until meeting Wendy, I knew zero Muslim Latinos. It is estimated that there are approximately 265,000 Latinos in the US who identify as Muslim. I got several other emails on Monday as described in Episode 7 of my Stairwell Teatro series. One attached a newspaper clipping from a Miss Manners column. The issue of family or friends’ unwillingness to make an effort to learn the names of important people in our lives is, sadly, a much too common theme. Julie’s email had the briefest of messages: “The issue is everywhere once you start to look for it. Thank you.” Thank YOU, Julie for sending along. Finally, I got two emails about the NYT’s Sunday story The Mrs. Files, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/arts/mrs-women-identity.html, an interesting piece about woman’s identity in the world being more than a one-dimensional story about who she marries. Maya Angelou’s quote can guide each and every one of us when it comes to saying people’s names. “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” Thanks so much for your emails and texts, and your comments on social media when I post stories or videos. You -- my global research partners -- are very much a part of each story. Gracias.

The name Xavier has multiple correct pronunciations. But unless you’ve heard Xavier say his name or someone who knows tells you how it is pronounced, you can’t be certain. It could be any of these three options. So if you are mistaken when you say it it's totally understandable. And there may be Xaviers out there who say their name yet another way. My friend Ana's spouse and son are named Xavier. They pronounce it Sa-vier or shortened it is Sah-vee, very pleasing and melodic. She told me that's how they pronounce it in El Salvador, her country of origin. I have also known several Ex-a-viers. Reminder: in Spanish, the letter "h" is silent as in -- hola (hello) which sounds exactly like ola, which means wave as in the waves of the ocean. More generically ola can mean surge or movement. Spanish keeps it interesting by giving the "h" sound to two letters "j" and "x." Examples, jalapeños, José, or Mexico (Meh-he-co). Do you get irritated when you hear names mispronounced? Some folks don't unless it's their own name, and some say even that doesn't bother them. Not me, it bugs me big time. I’m watching the local news when I hear this: "Today, California Attorney General EX-a-vier Becerra, sued the Trump Administration over its policy . . . blah, blah, blah." I tuned out within a flash of hearing Ex-a-vier. For me, it's like nails on chalkboard. Wha? How can she not know how to say the name of the state's Attorney General? Well, whatever, she doesn’t, so I set out to teach her. I Google her and immediately find her email address at the local network affiliate. I write her a polite note telling her that the AG pronounces his name HA-vier, providing that phonetic guide. I explain that I know him personally and this is how he says it. She writes back shortly after coming off the air with a genuinely warm response. She did not know she was mispronouncing it and no one had brought it to her attention. She thanks me and says moving forward, she'll get it right. Mission Accomplished. I appreciated her openness to receiving this. One of my favorite mantras popped into my head: "we don't know, what we don't know." But someone around her should know -- they are in the news business -- and this Xavier Becerra is often in the news. Before being named California's Attorney General, he served in Congress for 24 years and led the Hispanic Caucus for several years. Surely more seasoned newsroom veterans know his name. Maybe they never said it when discussing the lineup of that evening’s news stories, The incident reminds me of the importance of diversity in the newsroom. When there are few or no editors, producers, and reporters from the communities where these “ethnic” names originate, you can be sure they won’t know how we say them. And you can also be sure that the issues that affect our communities are likely also getting short shift. Although we comprise a huge swath of our state’s population, Latinos just aren’t in the newsroom in numbers one would expect. It’s a well-documented fact that newsroom employees are less diverse than U.S. workers overall. I loved these images from the Columbia Journalism Review article, The Disparity Times: 17% of US Newsroom Staff Is Not White (Fall 2018). “The structural forces that contribute to the problem are well known and largely reflect how race and privilege intersect. The main entry points into the profession—unpaid internships and journalism schools—tend to favor people who come from wealthy backgrounds. Many jobs are never posted; hires are made through existing networks, in which people tend to affiliate and empathize, with those like themselves. When people of color do manage to get hired, they find a lack of formal mentorship and they are infrequently promoted into management positions. When job cuts come along—in the past 10 years, the newspaper workforce has been sliced in half—minorities are often among the first to go.” Got some time on your hands? Want to read the article, click here. So much work needs to be done to give our kids the opportunities they deserve. The Covid-19 pandemic has only made more evident the enormous disparities in income, education, health, access to safety and safety nets, between the haves and the have nots. We gotta keep working to make these much-needed changes. When I get discouraged, something else quickly reminds me of the positive changes I’ve seen in the past decades, and the second vignette in Episode 6 of this Stairwell Teatro Series is about one such positive change. When Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Appellate Judge Tani Cantil-Sakauye to the post of Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, lawyers were scrambling to learn the correct pronunciation of her name, especially those who argue before the Cal Supreme Court. This picture of the Chief Justice brings me joy, and seeing a picture of the entire California Supreme Court keeps me smiling for days. Change is inevitable and sometimes those changes are huge. And those changes happen at the ballot box. Who gets appointed to these judgeships at the state level depends on Governors and at the federal level on the President and the US Senate. YOUR vote matters immensely, and never more than this November. When I arrived in San Francisco in 1980 to work at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the California Supreme Court was led by its first woman Chief Justice, Rose Bird, who was also the first woman appointed to our state Supreme Court, and the ONLY woman serving at that time. Justice Wiley Manuel, also on the court was the first African American on California’s Supreme Court. The remaining five justices back in 1980 were white men. (Btw, it was at MALDEF where I met Xavier Becerra when was a summer law clerk when I worked there). But back to the California Supreme Court. Up until two years ago, women were a majority of the justices and this was the case for several years. Wha? Yes for a period of time there were no white men on the California Supreme Court. When Justice Kathryn Werdegar retired, that seat was filled by Justice Joshua Groban. Who can forget US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's famous words: “When I'm sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court] and I say, 'When there are nine,' people are shocked. But there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that." I have great confidence that the life experiences of justices who hail from different backgrounds are likelier to yield better decisions whether they are considering cases involving fraud in financial institutions, race and gender discrimination, environmental regulation, access to health care, or criminal justice. What does the Supreme Court look like in your state? California's Chief Justice hails from farm working families who toiled the agricultural fields of California and the sugar cane and pineapple plantations of Hawaii. She is married to a Japanese-American whose career was spent as a police officer in Sacramento. Both she and her spouse were educated in the public schools and universities of our great state. This Chief Justice's educational background is quite a contrast to the fact that most folks selected for these high-level judicial positions were educated in Ivy League schools. It’s no surprise that Chief Justice Cantil-Sakayue's annual State of the Judiciary delivered in March 2020 reflected on the importance of using the courts as “Places for Social Justice.” Click here for more info on her remarks. Thank you for watching my Stairwell Teatro Series and reading my blog, if you enjoy them, please share with your friends and continue to send me your comments and ideas for future episodes. It's now been two months since the seriousness of Covid-19 really hit home. Even though some areas of the country are starting to open up, let us proceed with great caution. By staying the course we reduce the losses, every death and illness caused by Covid-19 brings heartache and extraordinary pain to the families and friends directly affected. So please let's avoid unnecessary trips outside of our homes and when we must leave home, wearing masks is essential and is most places required. Let's keep washing our hands often. Be kind and considerate to all our essential workers, and generous to those in need. The safety of our nation (and the whole world) depends on each of us doing our part to stop the spread of Covid-19.

Looking for a quick binge-watching adventure this weekend. Check out the Stairwell Teatro page on my website, where you can binge-watch my entire series in one sitting, five episodes. Click here. Since each episode is between three to five minutes, you'll be done in under a half-hour. AND . . . if you want to read the accompanying blogs (I post a blog along with each episode), that will add another 25 minutes. So guilt-free bingeing experience in less than one hour. Money-back guarantee that you will enjoy it. For those of you who have already seen some or all the episodes, gracias. I appreciate hearing your reactions to this new story-telling venture. I love ALL y’all's emails and look forward to your name stories. Coming soon, I'm working on these stories: Hurricane Irma, Name Discrimination in employment, Barbra Streisand’s request to Tim Cook that Siri pronounce her last name correctly, Nick Names, and many many more topics. Have some ideas for future Teatro Episode? I wanna hear about that, so write to me at irmadherrera@gmail.com or via my website. Wishing all a good weekend. Here's the first episode.

Six long years. That’s how long it took for the Associated Press and the New York Times to respect Muhummad Ali’s wishes and call him by the name he took when he became a Muslim. People change names for a variety of reasons: many women (and a few men) change their last names when they marry and later when they divorce. Some folks change first names that reflect their gender identity, and laws are changing to make this process easier, which is a good thing. And many entertainers take on new names, but this is usually done early on in their careers before achieving wide-spread recognition. Navigating a name change is far more difficult for someone who is already a public figure, and Muhammad Ali paved the way for those who followed. It wasn’t just about his name, it was about the religion and the fact that he was a proud black man who didn't back down. When Kareem Abdul-Jabbar changed his name, the press was less hostile, but the experience had some similarities to Ali's. In a thoughtful opinion piece, Abdul-Jabbar speaks about his conversion to Islam and I include it here as it touches on issues I explore in my blog and the Stairwell Teatro episodes. It's about identity, respect, and social justice. Click here to read. When Cassius Clay changed his name to Muhammad Ali, he was already quite famous. The 18-year old won the Gold Medal at the Summer Olympics in Rome in 1960. He was 22 when he dethroned the Heavyweight Boxing Champion, Sonny Liston, considered one of the finest boxers ever. Ali’s face had been on the cover of many major national magazines and he had appeared in hometown newspapers, big and small, all over the United States. Not only was he a great boxer, but Ali was also a handsome, charismatic, and a proud trash-talking showboat. He was a magnificent quote machine, who often spoke in rhyme. Among my favorites: "Float like a butterfly, Sting like a bee. His hands can't hit What his eyes can't see." "I've wrestled with alligators, I've tussled with a whale I done handcuffed lightning And throw thunder in jail. You know I'm bad. Just last week, I murdered a rock, Injured a stone. Hospitalized a brick. I'm so mean, I make medicine sick." ~Muhammad Ali Cassius Clay shocked the sports world when he announced he had joined the Nation of Islam, and changed this name. This was just days after winning his first Heavyweight Title. He told the press that Cassius Clay was a slave name. He didn’t pick it and he didn’t want it. Moving forward he was to be addressed as Muhammad Ali, a name that meant Beloved of God. The name was given to him by Elijah Muhammad. Clay was named after his father, who in turn had been named after Kentucky politician and abolitionist Cassius Marcellus Clay. That Clay, who was from a wealthy Kentucky family, heard William Lloyd Garrison give a speech at Yale and that led him to oppose slavery, which made him very unpopular in his home state. He was friends with Abraham Lincoln and served Lincoln’s Administration as the Representative to Russia and helped the United States acquire the state of Alaska from Russia. Muhammad Ali’s ancestors had ancestral ties to the plantation owned by the Cassius Marcellus Clay family. They had lived there in the 1800s. But I digress. The Heavyweight Champion's wishes were disregarded by the press and other boxing opponents as well who continued calling him Cassius Clay. In a famous Heavyweight Title Fight, Muhammad Ali punished and taunted Ernie Terrell calling out, “What’s My Name?” while landing brutal angry punches. The fight became known as the What’s My Name Fight. There was one notable exception among the press. Howard Cosell, a loquacious lawyer turned sportscaster respected Ali’s wishes and addressed him by his chosen name. The two hyper talkative men were fixtures on television, jousting and insulting each other, and became life long friends. Ali was famous not just as a boxer but also for refusing to serve in the US Military at the height of the Vietnam War. Although he reported to the Induction Center in Houston, Texas as commanded by law, he refused to be drafted because it violated his religious convictions. He also made clear that he had no quarrel against the Vietcong. “My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America,” he told the press. “And shoot them for what? They never called me n-----, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father . . . Shoot them for what? How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail.” His refusal to serve in the military came with a very heavy price tag. He was immediately stripped of his Heavyweight title and banned from boxing for three years. Two months later he was convicted of draft evasion, a felony, and sentenced to five years in prison and fined $10,000. He was allowed to remain free on bail while he appealed his case. Ali was viewed as a radical and polarizing force by many in this country. Ali preached black pride and never shied away from calling out racism and criticizing the United States for its many shortcomings. “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?" The views about Muhammad Ali changed over time in our country, probably in no small part because the Vietnam War became unpopular, and because the racism that Ali called out became more and more evident to all Americans as the civil rights movement brought greater attention to the inequities and injustices, Ali pointed out. He became one of the most celebrated and recognized people on the planet. He used his fame to raise awareness about issues that mattered to him, among them civil rights and Parkinson's disease. He was a beloved activist, humanitarian, and philanthropist. Muhammad Ali, The Greatest, died in 2016. Click below to watch Episode 6 – Float Like a Butterfly. If you enjoy this Stairwell Teatro Series, please share it with friends. To see a beautiful tribute to Muhammad Ali by Sports Illustrated, click here.

Introducing my new Shelter In Place Project, The Stairwell Teatro Series. We hear and read it everywhere. Quedate en casa, stay home, shelter in place. The Covid-19 Pandemic has most of the nation hunkered down, and that’s exactly where we need to stay for as long as necessary to protect the lives of our loved ones, and our entire planet. This pandemic is taking a huge toll, and it is falling more heavily among the African American and Latino communities. The racial disparities that define our lives and opportunities are right before our eyes, and we must stare right back at them, and do everything in our power to address these inequities. Our deepest gratitude to all the essential workers who are out there providing medical care, harvesting our food, stocking store shelves, and delivering mail and packages of all sorts. They are risking their lives for us. Show your appreciation in whatever ways you can -- tipping generously and above all extending kindness and courtesy to these dedicated workers. Super important that you stay home if you are not an essential worker. Por Favor. And if you must go out, wear your mask and gloves and keep your physical distance. I look forward to being back on stage, quien sabe cuando, whenever the theaters open up again. In the meantime, I will be sharing short video clips (under 5 minutes) from my very own performance venue: The Stairwell Theater at my home in Northern California. These will be stories and vignettes about names, but they are much more than that. These stories are about othering and belonging, and showing respect to each other. Click below and have a look.Let me know what you think. I’d love to hear your name stories and with your permission I might share them with my viewers. You can write to me at irmadherrera@gmail.com. Or you can subscribe to my blog on my website, irmaherrera.com.

Someone you have just met tells you, politely, that you've mispronounced their name. What do you do? The most welcome response is, “thanks for telling me, can you say it again so I can get it right.” Too often, many of us with names that are not considered "real" American names hear something quite different. “Wong? It should be pronounced Wang, look at the spelling it’s W-A-N-G.” Joe Wang well knows the spelling of his last name, and he also knows that his family pronounces it Wong. Take his cue and say it as he does. I think we can all agree that it’s just as easy to say Wong as it is to say Wang. So if Joe tells you it’s Wong, that’s how you say it. It can be confusing; I get that. Take the last name Levine. Some folks pronounce it Lah-veen, others say Lah-vine. Is one wrong and the other right? No, they are just different versions of the same name. You say tomato, I say tomatoh, let’s call the whole thing off. Ever seen Saoirse on someone’s name badge? I wouldn’t know where to start on that beautiful Irish name. “In the words of the very notable actress Saoirse Ronan, who spent her childhood in Dublin and Co. Carlow, her name is pronounced ‘Sur-sha’, like ‘inertia’.” But this article (click here to read) explains that there are multiple pronunciations of this name in Ireland. “In Galway, however, you will likely hear ‘Sair-sha’, while in Northern Ireland, ‘Seer-sha’ is much more common. In another corner of Ireland, ‘Sor-sha’ might be the norm. It really is a matter of dialect.” My friend Paven who is of South Asian ancestry, and as American as apple pie, has heard many attempts at his name: PAY-van, Pave-in, Pah-VON. “It’s like oven with a P in front, it’s pronounced Poven.” Not hard, just need to remember and practice. If you can say oven, you can say Paven. When we are learning to read, we are taught to break a word down into syllables and to sound them out. So it’s natural that native speakers of English will give a word the sounds associated with the letters they are seeing. Our frame of reference for written language is rooted in our native tongue and the sound system associated with that language. We all have experience pronouncing a word in more than one way. take R-E-A-D, for example. I'm going to read a book this evening. Oh yes, I read the Murmur of Bees, last week and loved it. OK, let me get out of the weeds here . . . Getting a name wrong when you first meet someone gives you a pass. You can’t know until someone tells you. You will not be judged as a “bad person” for having said it the "wrong" way. A simple, “OK, thanks for telling me, can you help me say it correctly,” is all that's needed. But once someone tells you how they pronounce their name, it's on you to do your best to say it right. Ask if they have any tips that might be helpful (like oven with a P in front). And it's OK to ask someone to repeat their name and to say it more slowly. Here, however, are a few things, that you best stay away from. And you might be surprised how often people say these. Don’t you have a nickname? Your name is too hard, I just can’t say it. Can I call you something else? Don’t you have an English name? You should change your name to something people can say. Why are you so sensitive about people getting your name right? If you enjoyed Episode 2 of my Stairwell Theater Series or this blog, please share it with a friend. I plan to post two videos weekly. And remember during the Covid-19 pandemic, stay home, quedense en casa, and wash your hands often. If you must go out for essential errands, wear a mask and gloves. Stay safe, stay healthy. Your family and our whole world depend on each of us doing our part.