Social Network

Steven D. Levitt wrote a post back in July 2008 on his New York Times blog. The post was titled “How Much Does It Cost You in Wages if You “Sound Black?”” Apparently someone from the University of Chicago named Jeffrey Grogger did a study to compare the wages of people who “sound black” when they speak to those who don’t sound Black when they speak. One must conclude that the opposite of sounding black for the purposes of this study is “sounding white”. So a comparison of the salaries of Blacks who “sound black” and Blacks who “sound white”, returned results that suggested Blacks who sound white earn a higher income than Blacks who sound white.

Grogger reportedly taped people talking then had other people listen to the tapes and identify the speaker as Black or white in order to validate theory that there’s a distinct “black” sound and a distinct “white” sound. Most of us can agree that there’s a particular accent that’s classified in America as White and a particular accent that’s classified in America as Black. The problem with Grogger’s conclusion that Blacks who sound white make more money than Blacks who sound Black, is that it assumes if your voice can be identified as belonging to a Black person, you must then automatically use poor grammar and verbally express yourself in a manner that suggests you are poorly educated. Grogger’s conclusions seem to define sounding black as sounding uneducated; but there are countless highly educated Blacks in America earning high incomes who, if their voices were played and the listener was asked to identify whether they are Black or White, would be immediately identified as being Black. One excellent example would be Michelle Obama who holds degrees from both Princeton and Harvard. If a tape of her voice was played and the listener was asked to identify her as Black or White the listener would conclude she is Black. Michelle Obama does not sound “White”.

So should this study have been based on “sounding black” or should it have been based on sounding uneducated? And does sounding uneducated have anything to do with accent?