There has been a lot of discussion about the role of race in economics publishing lately. It's a serious problem and I'm not sure we will find a solution. Let me tell you a story of how names told me all I needed to know about the racial bias in economics publishing. A thread.

With @drlisadcook @jmparman I wrote a paper that found the first evidence of a racial naming pattern among blacks. We used Census data and death certificate data and found (1) a set of distinctive names and (2) the same percentage of Blacks had Black names over time.

Was this important? We said yes. Everyone (and I mean everyone) assumed that Black names began with the Civil Rights Movement, and we showed they existed long before that. The names were different, but Black names had a more complicated history. This is a new historical fact.

The famous audit studies of resumes used Black names, and one question was whether Black names signaled race or race and class. These arguments hinge on Black names serving a cultural function, and as such they made implicit historical arguments about Black names. We tested this.

Was it interesting? We said yes. We had to solve a very difficult puzzle-- how do you find racially distinctive names when no one has said that such names exist? How do you do this when you don't have a list of names? We had to innovate methodologically to find those names.

At the time we were working on this paper, others were using white names to look at intergenerational mobility, assimilation, and other historical topics. These papers were published in Top 5 outlets and they are all very good, historical empirical papers which use white names.

We met with absolute hell in the publication process. We were told that Black names were not interesting, the fact we discovered was not "novel" (I need to stress we found a new fact), Black history was of "limited" interest, and/or this was already known (absolutely untrue)

It was not that we did something wrong or that our methodology was flawed, it was simply that finding these Black names was not important. Moreover: the history of Black people is not important to economics (probably especially so when written by Black people, but I digress...)

With all due respect to the papers that were published in Top 5 outlets, what we did was more difficult technically (they had names, we found names) and more important to a broader project, this one about the cultural history of Black people. Econ is just not interested in that.

Another item working in their favor is that names by themselves are mundane to white people. Their history has given them given names with a lineage they can trace to other countries, linguistic patterns they can exploit, etc. Acknowledging this means dealing with WHY that is.

Only one referee we had ever appreciated this. This is how race and racism work in econ publishing. There was never a moment where reviewers considered why this would be important to and for Black people, and our attempts to do so in the paper met with intense hostility.

During the process of getting the paper published, I presented the work at @osuaaascec to a group of Black elders. To this day it's the best presentation I've ever given because I didn't say very much. They talked about the names of their elders, and confirmed the findings.

I think of it this way: someone considered their given names important enough to wade through millions of records to find what those names were and what they could possibly mean in a world that told them these names were not even there. That is the essence of Black history.

I was only scheduled for an hour but we stayed and talked until we were asked to leave. They understood why this was important, and they appreciated that "a young person" was working to document their history. This was important to them. I had found the audience for the paper.

I often look back to that talk as I work on projects. I am not doing this work for my CV. If so, I would not write the papers I write. I want to write papers that matter to that audience at @osuaaascec and others like it. It is about telling Black stories I know are important.

We did eventually get the paper published and it has slowly made its way into the names literature in economics to some extent. We still encountered many of the same criticisms about importance, even in an economic history outlet! https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0014498314000059

The process of getting that paper published told me that the priorities I attach to my research on Black people are not shared by the profession. It is no longer my personal goal to publish in Top 5 outlets, not if I can't go back to @osuaaascec and talk about what I've done.

This paper helped me to make peace with economics publishing, and I am sanguine at this point. Maybe editors and referees will come around and think differently about race, but it's not likely. My work matters to people who matter to me, and that is far more important.