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grammar-gal
Community Member

US Born Native English Speaker w/"Ethnic" Name. Discrimination?

Hey, there. I'm a native English speaker born and raised in the USA, but I have a feeling my name is turning off potential clients. There have been plenty of studies documenting this kind of discrimination, and considering the stigma of outsourcing work from the USA to India, I worry my proposals are just being ignored. If a client were to read my cover letter or view my profile, my background would be clear. I'm just not certain they're bothering to do either of those things.

 

I am a former middle/high school English language and literature teacher who has taught everything from EAL to Shakespearean tragedy, but even at rock-bottom rates I can't seem to get responses from clients looking for native English speakers to proofread or edit their content.

 

 

 

If you're a freelance writer and/or editor who has figured out how to overcome this issue, please offer some advice! Thanks a bunch!

 

Edit: Thanks for all the responses! A lot of you suggested the problem was that my profile was set to private; in fact, Upwork automatically made my profile invisible because I hadn't been able to book any work! It was visible to anyone I'd sent a proposal to, though, so they could view my work history, test scores, and a link to my blog to check out my writing.

 

Fortunately, a couple of clients selected me for low paying gigs. Perhaps I'll catch the big fish soon. I'll definitely take John K.'s advice to start bidding at a more appropriate rate for my skills.

 

One other thing: I noticed that those of you who took the time to respond tend to have typical American names - more common than "Asha" in any case. It would have been great to hear from other Upwork members with experience overcoming this obstacle.

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yitwail
Community Member

Asha, I'm neither a freelance writer and/or editor, but at least I'm a US resident native English speaker who looks Asian. Are you perhaps new to Upwork? If so, don't assume you're being turned down pimarily due to prejudice -- it's difficult for new freelacers at Upwork in general. Your profile's private, so it can't be critiqued, but a few writing/editing samples in the portfolio, and a few above average test results may help, if your profile doesn't contain those. Lastly, I don't think you should bother offering rock-bottom prices, because you're highly qualified and the clients who look for rock-bottom prices generally don't care about quality, and in fact, many such clients are middlemen (farmers), who are subcontracting work for their own clients.

__________________________________________________
"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce

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19 REPLIES 19
devindraper
Community Member

You are not getting responses because your profile is private. If the client can't look at your qualification they will not hire you. Change your profile to public. If you did not set it to private contact help. They can change it back that are multiple reasons your profile can be set to private.

 

Actually, it wasn't private. My profile was automatically set to invisible because I hadn't booked any jobs. However, anyone I'd sent a proposal to could see it.

yitwail
Community Member

Asha, I'm neither a freelance writer and/or editor, but at least I'm a US resident native English speaker who looks Asian. Are you perhaps new to Upwork? If so, don't assume you're being turned down pimarily due to prejudice -- it's difficult for new freelacers at Upwork in general. Your profile's private, so it can't be critiqued, but a few writing/editing samples in the portfolio, and a few above average test results may help, if your profile doesn't contain those. Lastly, I don't think you should bother offering rock-bottom prices, because you're highly qualified and the clients who look for rock-bottom prices generally don't care about quality, and in fact, many such clients are middlemen (farmers), who are subcontracting work for their own clients.

__________________________________________________
"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce
tlsanders
Community Member

Asha, I agree with the other poster who said the problem may not be what you think it is. Many new Upworkers each day post about how they have been unable to land their first jobs. I don't know how long you've been here, but with nearly 30 years experience in my field, it took weeks for me to land my first Upwork contract. And, the writing and editing field is glutted with hundreds of thousands of freelancers, many working for pennies.

 

That said, if you are concerned that potential clients are assuming you are not a native speaker, you might consider opening your proposal with your credentials. When clients get proposals, the first two lines of what you've written is visible without opening the proposal. Make the best possible use of that space. Don't waste it with pleasant greetings. (In fact, in the situation you're describing, that practice could be worse than a waste of space, as freelancers from certain areas of the world are much more likely to include formal greetings in their proposals.)

 

Open with something like, "As a former English teacher with X years of experience in language and literature..."

datasciencewonk
Community Member

Also keep in mind there are over 380,000 freelancers listed in the writing category. 

 

Since your profile is set to private, none of the professional writers can see your profile to determine if there is another feature that might factor into attaining jobs in that category.

 

However, the fact is we have a deluge of people in our job classification. So, strategically standing out amongst the other writers is one of the primary challenges if you're in the general writing "bucket" (meaning you aren't targeting a niche writing market; e.g. copywriting, lesson plan writing, technical writing, etc.).

 

 

 

 

jjohnson236
Community Member

That's funny, I'm in the exact opposite position. I have one of the most generic "American" names in the world: James. So I worry that someone may think I'm not actually from the US and just chose a fake name like so many other fake UpWork accounts.

 

Besides everyone's [good] comments about changing your profile to public, it definitely helps to just make sure you're writing an extensive proposal so a client can scan it and see that "oh, this person isn't using broken English, let me take a look into it a bit more."

 

James makes a great point.

 

It takes a client only a few seconds to determine whether or not a freelancer copied-and-pasted a pre-written template cover letter, or wrote a custom cover letter specifically for their project.

 

And any native English-speaking client can tell within a few seconds of reading a customer cover letter if the freelancer has native-level writing skills that meet the client's expectations.

 

I have hired writers on Upwork. I look at portfolio items, cover letter, and overview text. The last thing I'm interested in is the freelancer's name.

melaniekhenson
Community Member


Blah! Editing this because re-reading it, it just seems so...long and pompous.

 

The TL : DR version would be: No. And yes. But not just for you - for everyone.

 

The explanation, if you're up for it, would be:

 

Yes, some people will, probably without even knowing it, pass you over for jobs due to perceived ethnicity just as some people will, again without realizing they're doing so, give you a job you may be less qualified for because of internalized prejudices about some ethnicities being "more tech-savvy," "harder-working," "smarter" or other reasons. 

 

If you and I, a person with a very white-bread name (hashtag irony since I'm a mutt), were to both apply for exactly the same projects assuming we listed exactly the same job skills and relative work history, we'd each get passed over for some, selected for others and although part of the reaosn will be our skills, a small part will always be something deeper and probably more inaccurate, because that's what human beings do. We seek patterns because that's how our brains function to interpret and therefore navigate our world.

 

In the worst circumstances this creates bigotry; in the lightest, silly pre-conceived but relatively harmless notions.

 

But yeah, clients do it, and so do I. And so do you. So does everyone. We just don't know we're doing it.

 

Since you have as many "markers," so to speak, in a thousand different ways, as anyone else, none of the above means you'll be receiving less work. Or more. I'm pretty sure given the staggering variety of clients (just like the staggering variety of freelancers), it more or less evens out in the end.

 

And no, I wouldn't assume non-U.S. born, but then again, I live near a city where there is a huge number of U.S.-born "very ethnic" (if you will) named individuals, and not just one ethnicity. I have to think many other ares of the U.S. and the globe are similar. The UK, particularly in certain cities and probably mostly in England to be specific, is a good example but there are...I don't know, thousands, I'm sure.

craiggabriel
Community Member

While I agree with those who point out that there are many, many factors relevant to whether a freelancer gets chosen or not, and that therefore one shouldn't jump to a conclusion that it's attributable to a name sounding American or suspiciously ethnic, I would think the name thing would indeed matter.

 

It would be interesting to run some kind of controlled experiment, where we created two freelancer profiles that were absolutely identical except that one had an utterly generic American sounding name like Tom Smith or John Baker, and the other was Mohammed so-and-so with an unpronounceable (to most Americans) 47-letter last name, and see who gets hired.

 

If Tom got picked, say, 60 times out of every 1,000 times he applied, how many times would Mohammed get picked? 15? 22? 35? I don't know, but I would guess (and admittedly it's only a guess) it would be a lot fewer than 60.

 

It would be intriguing to run similar experiments with identical profiles that only differ as to some other single factor, like gender, or having a location like New York City versus some small town in rural Alabama. Or photos too. How much does it help or hurt when a profile photo is of someone black, young, old, obese, wearing glasses, scowling, wearing a hijab, etc.?

 

(John K doesn't look at all Asian to me, by the way.)

 

I agree...likewise, it would be interesting to see the probably quite high percentages of John P. Smiths who get passed over for, say, more sterotypically tech, sterotypically hard-working ethnic/nation/global region names for web design and tech jobs.

 

As I said (though I'm no expert, this is just my opinion), yes, the name matters. Along with a thousand other things. It matters in both directions and it will rarely be "fair" in the literal definition...either way.

 

It might be equally interesting to see how many female v. male profiles get passed over for some more traditionally "male" (even if in the cultural subconscious) projects, for example.

 

Life's not fair.

 

Now get to work. 🙂 (Okay, so that statement was semi-autobiographical! Over and out as I really do have to get to a project rather than messing around on the forums! 🙂 )

 

Oh, and...yeah...John K's Asian??? Not doubting your word, John! But that's not where my mind would go, looking at your profile. I didn't actually see any specific ethnicity...you learn something new every day.

 

 


@Melanie H wrote:

 

 

Oh, and...yeah...John K's Asian??? Not doubting your word, John! But that's not where my mind would go, looking at your profile. I didn't actually see any specific ethnicity...you learn something new every day.

 

 


Actually I took John's point to be that people routinely mistake him to be Asian from his photo. But I guess we aren't among those who infer Asian from that photo.


@Craig G wrote:

@Melanie H wrote:

 

 

Oh, and...yeah...John K's Asian??? Not doubting your word, John! But that's not where my mind would go, looking at your profile. I didn't actually see any specific ethnicity...you learn something new every day.

 

 


Actually I took John's point to be that people routinely mistake him to be Asian from his photo. But I guess we aren't among those who infer Asian from that photo.


 Oh! I get it now, thank you.

Craig is mistaken about John's point.

 

Best to all,

Michael

husainaa
Community Member

Even if it does matter to some clients, I don't think it should matter to you Asha, because I don't think those types of clients matter in the first place. You have a beautiful name, cherish it.

renata101
Community Member

Hi Asha,

I understand your concerns about being able to successfully land work on the platform and your fears concerning what clients might potentially be using to quickly rule you out of their hiring agendas. Like you, I don't have a name that typically screams "native English speaker."  I find, though, that this may actually work as an advantage over time.

While I'm sure I've probably been passed over by at least a few potential clients who have made snap decisions about me based on stuff like this (or even decided that my picture reminds them of a neighbour,  a relative or an ex-girlfriend they can't stand), the clients I attract are people who are more likely to look a little deeper into my profile and my application. In my view, those are people who make better clients long term.  And in some cases, having an unusual name, or one that people from places outside North America recognize, can often make you more noticeable. Not to mention that people may actually hire you preferentially because of your name (for instance, due to a shared cultural background). One client was even really excited about the fact that I have the same first name as her best friend.    

evelyn2509
Community Member

I kind of had to go through something similar not because of my name as I am a Christian, it's because I look like my mum, who's an Indian.  I had to convince a couple of clients, that my dad's a white and I do really go to Oxford! 


@Evelyn H wrote:

I kind of had to go through something similar not because of my name as I am a Christian, it's because I look like my mum, who's an Indian.  I had to convince a couple of clients, that my dad's a white and I do really go to Oxford! 


 The terribly confusing location info on your profile certainly doesn't help. Either you live in the UK and can prove it or you live in India and can prove it....

I split my time between both places and I do have the proofs.  Smiley Happy 

I always have video calls with all my clients and I mention where I am during that time. There was just one bad experience, with one client from the US, who wouldn't pay me the 'right' amount as he assumed that I am not a Native English Speaker. Strangely, he realised that after 150+ articles I wrote him. 


@Evelyn H wrote:

I split my time between both places and I do have the proofs.  Smiley Happy 

I always have video calls with all my clients and I mention where I am during that time. There was just one bad experience, with one client from the US, who wouldn't pay me the 'right' amount as he assumed that I am not a Native English Speaker. Strangely, he realised that after 150+ articles I wrote him. 

 

That is strange, indeed. It was obvious to quite a few forum regulars after a single forum post.