I have my own opinion on this, but I am very interested in learning what other intelligent people think.
An acquaintance of mine works as a clerk in the City Hall offices of a small town. There was an incident during which City Hall was evacuated briefly because of a bomb threat that came by telephone. My friend was the person who answered the phone and reported the threat.
No bomb was found, and everyone returned to the building the next day. With the permission of her supervisor, my friend gave a brief interview to a local newspaper reporter. During the interview my friend said of the caller “he sounded like an African-American.”
After there was a flurry of complaints about racism, my friend was given a one-week unpaid disciplinary suspension for having demonstrated “racial insensitivity.”
What do you think? Is it racist to believe that one may be able to guess the race of a telephone caller by his accent or other vocal characteristics?
If it matters, my friend is not white. She is a full-blood Cherokee.
Is it sometimes possible to identify possible racial profiles by accent? Of course. Would it be considered pertinent by the police? Yup. Was it stupid of the friend to say such a simplistic thing in a media interview? Of course. Should her employer have given better guidance before putting him/her in front of the mic? Yup.
And of course, being Cherokee doesn’t stop somebody being racist, so that has nothing to do with it whatsoever.
It wasn’t bright of her to bring it up for the press, but I don’t think she really said anything wrong. Certainly she needed to tell the police, but saying that to the press was unwise. I wouldn’t say that what she said was actively racist; it’s often pretty obvious if there’s a black person on the other end of the phone. But some people will have a field day with that sort of statement no matter the actual intent or meaning behind it.
And her background doesn’t matter at all as far as racism goes.
Without knowing exactly what she said or the specific context, I don’t know whether a suspension might be justified.
However, if she was suspended merely for mentioning the apparent race of the caller, she should appeal her suspension and cite numerous studies (most famously one by John Baugh of Stanford University that showed that people of all races–in the U.S.–could identify the race of a person over the phone with better than 80% accuracy simply by hearing the word “hello”).
Not racist at all, in my opinion. I’m sure I could be easily fooled by someone trying to sound other than what they are, but I hear a distinct difference in timbre and resonance between the average black male and white male. It’s not nearly as pronounced in women, btw.
This is not to say there aren’t many white men who might sound black, and vice versa. But anecedotally speaking, I can generally hear a difference if I listen for it.
Recognizing that a certain race has a characteristic which is identifiable isn’t racist.
Acting prejudicially or with preferential bias because of that knowledge or impression is.
Based on your OP and the quote from the article, I would say definitely not - I see nothing that indicates she had any racist attitudes toward the caller, and as has been mentioned, this information may be useful for catching him. It is sad that the media, and your friend’s supervisor, would overreact like that.
I work in a call center and we have a “bomb threat form” on our intranet, so that if any representative gets a bomb threat, they can fill it out and submit it. As I recall, one of the questions on the form asks what race the representative thinks the caller is. I’ll check tomorrow.
Oh for heavens sake. How sensitive can we possibly get? IMO, it was not a racist statement. Had she said, “It sounded like an AfricanAmerican and they’re all criminals, you know”, then it would have been racist. To identify the most likely race based on their voice patterns is not being racist. Can a white person make themselves sound black? Yes. Can a black person make themselves sound latino? Yes. It’s not racist. It’s a friggin’ verbal observation.
I made the comment once that there were neighborhoods that I would not go into after dark. A young black girl looked at me and said that was a racist statement. I responded by suggesting that even she would not be in this neighborhood after dark! No matter the skin color, the neighborhood was rough.
I agree with an earlier poster. We have bigger fish to fry.
It seems most of us agree that there is an accent commonly found in the speech of people raised in many African American communities. How would you identify/describe this accent without calling it an “African American accent” or saying that the speaker “sounded African American”?
The accent of a caller can be very useful, if not definitive, in identifying the perpetrator of the bomb threat. Was it not the witnesses duty to describe it as best she could? I think she did so in as non-racist a manner as anyone could expect.
That said, I don’t understand why this information was released to the press in any form whatsoever, whether by the witness, her employer, or the police. That indescretion on her part could be reason for a paid suspension, but this is the reason that should have been given, IMHO.
We have a form like that too. I am pretty sure it was developed by the FBI or ATF. It asks several questions about what the caller sounds like, if he has any accent, if he uses colloquialisms that could identify him, etc. If they are asking the questions they WANT people to think about while talking to a possible bomber or terrorist, then how can it be “wrong” to state the exact information the FBI wants to know?
If this happened to me, boy would I make a great big noisy fuss about the suspension.
Add me to the list of people saying that noting the accent wasn’t racist. I can’t imagine a similar punishment for saying something like “He sounded English.”
