This past weekend, CNN started quite a debate on social media after it shared the story of a White woman named "Lakeisha." The article explored the life of the woman, who lived in a small town in western Ohio and experienced a series of troubles due to her "ethnic-sounding" name. Blonde-haired and blue-eyed Lakeisha Francis is a bartender who did not know that her name was "stereotypically black." The latter is because she claims her parents simply wanted their daughter to have a beautiful name. As she grew older, trouble began when people she would meet found that her name did not match her physique. She alleges that her name has made her life difficult. Despite the article's initial intentions, social media did not take it well. That is especially with the article ending with Lakeisha saying she has "learned to live with being black for a minute."
“A name doesn't make a non-Black person 'Black for a minute,' that's a trash take,” wrote one of the Twitter users. "I don’t know what you were trying to accomplish with this when black folk faced with ethnic names faced more consequences than a white chick name Lakeisha," said another. Clearly, the article rubbed folks the wrong way.