Your name matters in the US because if you sound (or look) like you're black, white people won't hire you, or listen to you, really, as much as your white peers. They'll see your work as worse than your peers' work when they are equivalent. You have to be the best of all your peers in order not to be the first to be laid off, because your pain and discomfort is less intelligible to your bosses than your coworkers' pain and discomfort.

As a Jamal, I've found it pretty effective to use young white men as a proxy to push projects in the direction that I think they should go in. White kids fresh out of college (at least of late, maybe past 5-10 years) seem to be less racist than their older peers, and really impressed that you're older and you know a lot of stuff.

Sadly, I think that this generation's freshly graduated white kids are less racist simply because they have had less direct experience of black people than their parents and grandparents, who moved as far from black people as they possibly could. A professionally intimidating black person (because I have 15 years experience and they have 5, not because I'm that good:)) as a living, breathing reality in front of them is a fascinating novelty that they have no idea how to react to. They may rap at you sometimes, though. Ugh.

This article gets a bit bogged down in the "name" aspect of the thing, though. Race is a cultural construction designed to rationalize outgroup discrimination, and consists of a bunch of markers that people use to determine which group you should be placed in, and therefore how you should be treated. A name doesn't have to be "Da'Quan," "Monique Washington" will work as well.