I think there is a voice quality outside of word choice that is a pretty solid indicator too. Similar to accent I guess, but it seems a little different. Not that there aren't exceptions, but you can certainly tell some differences a lot of the time.
Right. This wasn't a matter or word choice or slang or "dropping g's" or whatever else. I'm not being critical. There's just generally a certain tone (tonality? timbre?) difference between white and black voices. The only exceptions to the rule I've come across are some black people who I wouldn't be able to distinguish from white people based upon their voice, but I've never come across a white person who I would confuse for a black person based upon their voice.
I was just caught off guard because of the snotty way the CSR responded to me "well how do you
know she was black?" It seemed as if she was accusing me of making a racist assumption, both due to her tone and the fact that her challenging me wasn't in keeping with her job responsibilities.
It would be interesting to know if there have been studies on this. But I bet all of us could listen to people over the phone and pick out the speakers who are definitely black (again, the "definitely white" would be trickier) with an extremely high degree of accuracy.
Or maybe not. I've always been sensitive to sound and music. I don't mean super hearing, but chords, tones, etc. Like the Star Spangled Banner during the Olympics annoyed me because they swapped in minor chords at spots, which made it sound sadder. I was like "why did they do that?" and my wife was like "what the hell are you talking about?"
