Sounding black hurts your income; so does sounding southern | Hacker News Reader

Sounding black hurts your income; so does sounding southern

freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com

12 pointsemmett17 comments

Accents are shaped by environment.

In my case, people often tell me that I have a very clear British accent; but when I ask them to pin down what sounds so particularly British, I often flounder about and eventually answer along the lines of "well, you speak very precisely and in a very educated manner" -- which says something about our (or at least, Canadians') stereotypes about the British!

In light of this, I wonder to what extent the judgements made about whether people "sounded black" or "sounded southern" were in fact merely that people were picking up voices which sounded uneducated -- and having subconscious racism translate that into a sense of blackness or southernness.

I think "British accent" can be a placeholder for "Big words in complete sentences." When I lived in Texas, people asked if I was British -- I'm from the Midwest.

What I love is in any movie not set in America, people speak in an English accent because it's foreign. Doesn't matter if it's France or Outer Space, it sounds English.

Or "pronouncing words properly". I'm originally from the Midwest too and have received similar responses. Although I've never been accused of having a British accent - just "an accent" that can't be pinned down.

Call centers handle that uneducated/prejudice problem since everyone reads the same script. The three big "accents" accents I've come across are southern, black, and Indian (other places with distinctive accents like Boston, Australia, etc don't have a lot of call centers). It's not hard to spot any of those 3, although anyone with those accents can learn to speak in "unaccented American".

"unaccented American"

I think you mean "with a generic region-free American accent".

Yeah, I rewrote that comment a bunch of times trying to get a phrase that wasn't too long or too offensive. But yes, that's exactly what I was trying to say.

The upside is that you can learn to recognize when you're doing this:

    Carla: You're from England, huh.
    Eric: How'd you guess?
    Carla: Because you sound smart even when you say stupid things.
    --Cheers

I agree that accents are shaped by environment, but as a black person, it's fairly easy to pick out when I'm talking to a black person even when I can't see them (i.e. by phone), just as I could detect a Spanish accent, Indian accent, etc.

That being said, a lot of black people I know change their accents depending on their environment -- work-related, vs. passing time with friends. They (we) are often cognizant of the fact that you need to speak crisp, clear English, as not to be thought stupid.

After browsing the paper... it seems his sample was 300 random kids 19-25 average age 22, the avg income in the study was 11$ an hour...and the difference in wage from sounding black to not sounding black was 8%... unless I am missing something this study sounds very meaningless due to the small sample size of the subgroups of the sample, and the pointlessness of comparing 22 year old wages.

8% of $11 meaning that you make $0.88 less an hour? Wow, earth shattering.

When you're only making $10.12 an hour, it probably is.

Assuming 40 hours a week, an extra $0.88 an hour works out at $152.53 a month.

For better or worse, I think sounding "anything that could be perceived as uneducated" hurts your income. This could include any type of accent (Boston, Southern, Indian), which leads to pronouncing words wrong (e.g Wata vs Water, Y'all vs You all).

My last name is "Higginbotham", I have a very slight Southern accent and say "y'all", and I look very Asian because I'm half Vietnamese. Most of the people I do work for I never see in person, but it's often amusing when I do meet them.

Higginbotham is an awesome name!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-dHl0c9S98

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