Cobb: What I Should Have Said

December 21, 2003

What I Should Have Said

I just took the longest telephone survey in my life. It's sorta the kind of thing I've waited a very long time to do, and yet not because of one thing. The race question.

This one was unbelievably long, something like 35 minutes and 18 seconds. Well exactly that, because I have a gadget phone that tells me these things. The subjects went from cable TV to Philip Morris to Biotechnology to men's fashions and metrosexuality. My guess is that Kraft Foods is about to be a major sponsor to a new men's equivalent of the Lifetime Network. It's about time. Oh yeah and the Hallmark Channel was in this one a lot.

So we get to the end of the interview where she asks about marital status, family income and race. I say 'Black', she says 'Black?, I can usually tell these things..' and I interrupt her with some bullshit about my international business experience and having to speak clearly for people who don't understand English.

But what I should have said is "Well it's a big country and that's why polls are important because you never know until you ask, do you?"

And quite frankly if I wasn't black and proud, I probably wouldn't have taken the survey anyway, considering that I generally get paid to do research at this little marketing company I know.

Posted by mbowen at December 21, 2003 02:24 PM

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Comments

> 'Black?, I can usually tell these things

This is an interesting topic that comes up from time to time: can you "usually" tell someone's race from just listening to them?

The "proper" response is "of course not" since accents are more regional than ethnic, and - like you said - many people change their accents over time for business or other purposes (I had to lose my white Southern twang for business reasons)

A variety of people have done "bits" on this. The *only* time I ever watched Howard Stern's TV show, there was a bit that had him, a black female assistant (I don't know her name) and one other person all blindfolded and they had various people come into the studio and talk, and they had to guess their race.

In the few minutes I watched the black assistant seemed to have correctly gotten the black speakers more than Howard. She pointed out little things I never noticed (I remember her talking about the pronounciation of the word "chariot"). In another example the word "aunt" seems to be more of an ethnic difference than regional (I say it like the insect, and it seems that most blacks properly put the "u" in there).

I am sure there are linguists in Universities that can talk intellegently on this, but I thought it was just an interesting topic.

Posted by: whatever at December 23, 2003 04:19 PM