What are your thoughts on this "finding your identity" lesson that one of the lessons in a course in the program we use?

I’ve debated and debated how to ask this…even whether to ask it. But here goes.

One of the lessons we teach has the students look up the meaning of their last (and first) name. I always sent them to Ancestry.com.

It’s always been really neat for the students to realize, for the first time, that their last names aren’t just random words. It means, “knife” in Gaelic for example, and that tells them that some ancestor came from Old Ireland at some point. The last name would sometimes pin point specific villages in Europe where the name originated.

Well, in the position I’m in now my students don’t have access to the internet, so I’d go to the web site, plug in the names, print it out and give it to them. I recently got several African American students for the first time. The first black student who came to this lesson is very, VERY African. His name (not his real name but the spirit is the same) is “Rick McDonald.”* Without thinking about it I ran it off, read it….and I felt like a house had dropped on me. It is NOT the name of his ancestors. It doesn’t speak towards his “identity” in the way it was intended. My printer suddenly quit working and I couldn’t get the info to him. (I quit assigning that lesson altogether, after that, btw.)

It really weighed heavily on my that evening. I put myself in his shoes….

Some of you guys are much more to the point, shall we say…blunt?..... Yes you are! than I am so I want to hear your thoughts.