There are black people that sound exactly like white people and are virtually indistinguishable over the phone, but these are rare cases. The vast majority of the time it’s very easy to tell. A good chunk of human cognitive power is devoted to language recognition and processing after all.
Also, IMO, even with black people that “talk white” there is a slight inherent (due to vocal physiology) tonal difference to black voices and white voices with white voices having a more “reedy” timbre overall. This is not to say there aren’t “reedy” sounding black people and and “rounder”, sonorous sounding white people (I’m one), but overall there is (to my ears) a slight inherent difference in timbre beyond just accent and phrasing .
Up here in Canada, we mostly don’t much care. That said, apart from accents it’s usually hard to tell. On the other hand, as missbunny says, there sometimes is a difference in the voice. I can’t recall ever hearing that Paul Robeson sound from anybody of a different race. It would be interesting if somebody replicated the experiment aldiboronti cites, but without using words, just some vowel sounds.
I think Faucet was referring to cultural affinity, not “current legal citizenship”. I doubt my great-grandmother would have objected to being described as Italian after she got her U.S. citizenship.
In my experience, it’s really easy to tell whether people are black from their voices. And a black person who speaks American English without an accent is likely to be African-American. Every so often you run into someone like Bryant Gumbel, or the black plastic surgeon on “Extreme Makeover” who sounds really white, but I think those are just the exceptions that prove the rule.
Couldn’t this be explained simply by what “types” of voices a person hears when he/she is developing language skills? I’d imagine a toddler that’s learning to talk would do so by simply parroting the folks around him – and if those foks speak with a “black” or “southern” or “British” accent, that’s what he’ll pick up, yes?
And I know there are speaking schools you can attend to change your voice. Apparently they’re really popular with media companies, who want their reporters to have region-neutral voices.
Some white dudes who are “ghetto” sound awfully “black” to me
I have to disagree with this statement because it totally misses the point of what im saying…it does not matter whether the person talks ghetto or not, it’s in the sound of the words not the words themselves…otherwise some very good insights. One more thing though, ever hear a black child speak? I can tell the children as well as the adults with what I’d say is a 95 per cent accuracy.
I’m with those who say they can. I think it’s a tonal thing, and for me it only works on those in the US. No matter what the educational level, or socio-economic standing, although the accuracy does fall off the higher it gets. The only ones I really can’t nail down with any accuracy are those with a thick Boston accent.
In my job I speak by phone to lots of well-educated folks, whom I often meet later at conferences. I’ve found that my assumptions about a speaker’s race usually turn out to be correct, and I’d attribute it to a trace of Southern cadence in many black people’s voices - regardless of where they’re currently living. The sort of accent I’m thinking of is exemplified in retired newscaster Charlayne Hunter-Gault, who grew up in Georgia. But I’ve heard weaker version so fit in black speakers living in many parts of the U.S.
Scholars have argued for a long time why it is that there appears to be a distinctive black accent in the U.S., while white people have regional accents. I suspect Gary T.'s explanation is largely correct.
I used to work for a legal services organization which was required, for statistical purposes, to keep track of the race of the people who were helped over the phone. I am white. When I started I was told that I shouldn’t bother to ask people their race, that I would “just know”. And I generally did.
I recall once, though, that I received a call from a woman who lived in a predominantly African-American community and whose first name (which I have since forgotten), seemed unusual for a white person. I explained that I had to ask what her race was as she had what broadcasters sometimes call a “neutral” (that is, frankly, a “white”-sounding voice). She was quite pleasant about it, and said that she was black but that people sometimes assumed she was white from her voice.
Although it’s rare, I’ve known white people who flat-out refuse to believe that someone who is obviously African-American is black if they have a “white-sounding” voice.
A small hijack: I am of Irish descent, and very fair skinned. Some years back I worked in an after school program from grade school children. I liked to give a little one-on-one attention to children as far as was practical, and so every week or two I would set aside some time to concentrate on assisting an African-American child who liked to make elaborate building projects out of blocks.
He was in Kindergarten. One day he turned to me and, out of the blue, said: “uh…you’re black, right?” I told him I wasn’t and asked him why he thought so. “Well, if you’re not black, why do you always talk to me?” he said. He went on to explain that he knew people who he had thought were white and had only recently learned were black, “so now I just guess that people are black”. It’s a strange world we live in.
It’s also been pointed out that it is cross-cultural. Just because you can’t hear any difference doesn’t mean that we can’t (I’m British and many black people of my acquaintance sound “black” to me). It works in languages other than English too.
It isn’t equally noticable among all individuals though.
I can tell when I’m talking to a black sounding person. Just like I can tell when I’m looking at an hispanic-looking person. I’m sure I mis-identify frequently, but I never mix the two up.
When I do ID a neutrally accented black voice, however, it is because of timbre and resonance–like James Earl Jones, only not quite as profound.
In certain situations, I’ve found myself changing the inflection of my voice just so that people can correctly identify me as a black person.
I know someone who thinks Michael Rappaport (white guy from Higher Learning and Boston Public) talks “black”. He has an urban accent, but to my ears it isn’t “black”. I can’t think of a white guy that has a black voice. Emimen sounds like an urban white guy.
Alex Kingston, the British actress who plays Dr. Corday on ER, has a certain timbre to her voice that makes my ears perk up. When her character first appeared on the show, my television reception wasn’t the best. From her voice, I pegged her as being black. Her character’s romantic chemistry with Dr. Benton didn’t help to change this assumption. Oddly enough, I know a couple of other people who went through the same confusion.
You mean my blind black friend who thought I was white just from the sound of my voice was racially prejudiced? And all these people having a reasoned and lively discussion on vocal timbre and intonation are prejudiced as well? Black people who believe can tell other black people by their voices…are actually predjudiced against black people?
Whoa. Calm down. Prejudice is
None of that is going on here.
By the way, what the hell is the highlighted link on the word “friend?”
A slight highjack but possibly helpful to the discussion. I am an American of Mexican descent who realizes that people can easily tell your ethnicity/race with reasonable accuracy (I know I can). So like many people, I have an “educated white guy” voice/accent ready to go at all times. Just to be on the safe side I use the accent for getting reservations at busy restaurants, getting quotes for services, and other times when I want that lil’ extra edge (don’t ask me why, it would be another thread altogether and not entirely scientific).
Of course, using the educated white guy voice/accent in certain parts of town, in certain situations, would not give me an edge, and could possibly be detrimental. My close friends are aware of my changing voice, and they think it is hilarious.
So, to sum up some of the the points made here, one cannot tell difinitively another persons race, by voice, or skin color. I don’t think that’s in question. In the US, the cultural differences are more pronounced than might be abroad, as far as “accents” go.
People learn accents, inflections, and various speech innacuracies through the people that they hear talking most during their formative years. Linguists stop me if I’m wrong.
Ebonics is a (usual) dead give-away. Michael Rappaport might be the popular exception, as well as many others. Timbre and inflection are probably more involved in the “80-95%” accuracy of people’s suppositions. This is obviuosly not an exact science.
Another factor in this discussion might be “have you ever identified a person as being black, and they were white”?
I’m sure that science will prove that no person can definitively identify a persons ethnic background, but they might be statistically accurate as a result of cultural trends.
If I’m just stating the obvious, ignore this, I just felt that everyone was saying the same thing, just in a different way.
