A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.

 

Marijuana Pepsi's mother told her that her birth name would take her places.
She wasn't wrong.

After a life spent being mocked for having an unusual name, the 46-year-old seized on her experience to earn a Ph.D. in higher education leadership. Her dissertation focused on unusual names, naturally.

As of last week, Marijuana Pepsi is now Dr. Marijuana Pepsi Vandyck.

For her dissertation, titled Black Names in White Classrooms: Teacher Behaviors and Student Perceptions, Vandyck interviewed students and concluded that participants "with distinctly black names" were subject to disrespect, stereotypes and low academic and behavioral expectations. This resulted in strained relationships, changes in future career choices and self-esteem issues, spelling fewer educational and economic opportunities for students of color.

In school, Vandyck says her name elicited the strongest reactions from white teachers.

"A lot of other people were thinking [my mom] was smoking marijuana and drinking Pepsi," she tells NPR. "In the black community, we're used to having names that are more cultural."

She's asked her mom, who also gave birth to daughters Robin and Kimberly, many times about how she got her name. "She just shared that she felt a kinship with me and she felt like this name would take me around the world," Vandyck says.

 

Vandyck thinks her white teachers simply found her name unusual. Even though she preferred her full name, some teachers would call her Mary.

"I think they wanted to make me feel more comfortable," she says. "They could see what the other children were doing, and they were trying to smooth the way and make things easier for me."

But she says one of her research participants at Cardinal Stritch University in Milwaukee had another theory...read more