When Black Performers Use Their ‘White Voice’

This reminds me of Bette Davis donning the more respectable voice of her sister Blanche on the telephone in “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?: “I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that you shouldn’t fill any orders for her.”

I'm white. So many white commenters here give evidence to the fact that white people just don't get it. For 150 years after the Civil War (never mind the actual oppression), white America has felt free to disparage and laugh at blacks in film and on television... They is soooo funny dem nigras, wit dey eyes and smiles and funny talkins'. Racist? Yes, of course. But when the objects of our racism stand up and make fun of us white people—GASP! THEY'RE RACISTS!!! No, silly ignorant caucasians... That's called payback, in the form of satire. Without the fear of lynching, what;'s good for the goose is good for the gander. Grow a set, learn about yourselves from those your ancestors oppressed, and recognize your own complicity in the whole situation. All humans are funny, regardless of fake "race".

A couple people want to try on some "whataboutism" here in the comment section and claim that, if white people did this, "the world [would] explode". The movie Soul Man and Robert Downey Jr.'s character in Tropic Thunder come to mind... But more importantly, y'all need to understand this: donning the mannerisms and stereotypes of your oppressors to highlight and illustrate their oppression is not racism. Appropriating the mannerisms, stereotypes, and cultural artifacts of the oppressed minority, by the oppressing majority, is racism. You can't have your systemic oppression, differential negative treatment, economic disadvantages, active exclusion, and other manifestations of racism in this county and also have access to our culture, whether that is the culture of our ancestral homelands or the culture that has arisen in response to the conditions to which we are subjected to here. You can't go around shooting young black men when you're in your police uniform and turn on G Eazy in the car on the way home... You can't tear apart and lock up thousands of Hispanic families at the border and then go to Mexican restaurant...

I have spent a lot of time in England. My daughter attended primary school briefly there. She reported with some awe that the teachers required all the kids to speak the same kind of English with the same kind of accent or inflection during class as well as recess and lunch. When their parents came to pick them up after school, the kids all broke into the speech patterns they used at home--Caribbean, Chinese, Indian, Scots, East End, or Nigerian accents and dialects. I was oddly charmed by the fact that unless I saw the persons speaking, I did not know their race. It could be a Vietnamese or a South Asian or an Afro-Caribbean; everybody speaks British English in full sentences with good grammar. My British friends said, Of course, because children could not be left behind by not teaching them the proper language of their country. And I have found this to be the case elsewhere in Europe. Black people in Germany do not speak "Black German" either. It is only America where the educational system allows and encourages Black children to speak an alternative form of English, and Black people have been brainwashed to believe that teaching all children to read, speak and write standard English is a form of cultural genocide. I see the same thing in Alabama, Mississippi, to name a few states where most people of any race do not speak standard English either. And when my British friends visit, they are shocked to hear English spoken so poorly. This is not funny. It is tragic.

So....it's OK to be racist AGAINST WHITE people? that's the solution to the history of racism against black people? BTW: in the Franchesca Ramsey video, there is a very ugly anti-semitic bit, quickly rushed over. You almost have to slo-mo it to hear it clearly.

OK, that what is..."Rachel Dolezal"? Is that OK? is it a parody? it is a mental illness? why does she get a "pass"?

“Talking Back, Talking Black: Truths About America’s Lingua Franca” by John McWhorter tackles this subject, though it doesn’t focus exclusively on performers. I can’t say I agree with all of his conclusions but it was a very interesting read.

Black entertainers whited up in black vaudeville routines around 1900, including parodies of Jews with big noses, characterized with whiny vocal bits, and descriptions in the historical black press like "he cringes like the Jew," illustrated with a guy wearing a prosthetic nose, shoulders raised, and they used words like "oy" it was just part of show business like blackface (and other whiteface) they got laughs. Back in the 1820s actors did bumpkin, "Yankee" routines, complete with the sort of accent older folks will recognize from Pepperidge Farm commercials. There were Irish acts, "Dutch" (German) acts, etc. Putting on accents can be very useful. I'll work phone banks for Democrats in swing districts in the fall. Brushing up on my western Pennsylvania-Ohio voice so I don't sound like one of those evil coastal liberals we've heard so much about.

A year ago an AI-created video circulated of Barack Obama, using an interview he gave upon becoming editor of the Harvard Law Review in 1990 and one he gave on a TV show with Michelle by his side. The video made it appear he was speaking the same words from a third computer generated image of himself. I hardly recognized his much more "white" voice in the Harvard interview compared to the one he had come to use by his run for the White House when he had taken on a much more "black preacher" aspect to his speech making at least, an attribute that he would intensify from time to time depending on the situation. Oprah Winfrey often did the same thing-- as have many black celebrities that I have seen-- using a much more, to them I guess, black sounding manner of speech to highlight something or other they are saying which, I suppose, falls under the rubric of "keeping it real"? My mother grew up in a home with an American-born father who had been raised speaking both English and German who therefore not only had a detectable German accent but frequently sprinkled German phrases like "Ach mein Gott im Himmel" or "Ach du Lieber, Donnerwetter" into his English which my mother then also used frequently when I was growing up though she and all her siblings had been forbidden by my grandma from learning to actually speak German. I myself never took up the use of these German phrases. So though white my family assimilated linguistically (see treatment of German Americans during WWI).

Because I was born in the suburbs of Washington DC, I speak what is often called "standard English." I see no reason to be ashamed of this, but it's rather silly to refer to my accent as "proper English", or to say that I don't have an accent at all. The reason my accent is considered "proper English" is that this is the way people speak who historically have had the most economic and political power in this country. That's it. It is no more eloquent or precise than any other way of speaking English.

While I bet this movie is good for some laughs, what they are calling "white voice" seems to be proper business English. It wouldn't be a stretch to say I speak a primarily three different (used to be 4) types of English: Professional English; Church/Family English; and informal English. The first is used at work, work functions, and previously school. The second when I am talking to my parents, my kids, in-laws, and church going religiously conservative extended family. Basically informal but with out any vulgarity or cussing. The third is when I am with my wife and friends. And the forth one was wooing English. Which is a mix of professional and informal, with some literary affectations sprinkled in.

During the census I wrote my race was "human". As a biologist it seemed most correct. We received a phone call, my husband answered. The census representative told my husband, "you sound white." I am marking you as white. Wow imagine if he said something like "you sound black" Basically my husband sounds like a New Yorker, what is that? NYT? I really dislike these articles meant to hurt all humans. We are human get over it.

This article is especially ironic to me due to the fact that I had a telephone interview in the late nineties that went very well. The interviewer told me that I gave him the correct responses to the questions he had asked, and thought that I would be a good fit. I was invited to the company, and when I arrived, asked to see the person who had interviewed me. When he came out and I introduced myself, he looked at me with that you tricked kind of look. Needless to say I didn’t get the job, and instead was hired by a competitor company, and promptly proceeded to help put him out of business. Sure I’m black, but fairly well educated. Ebonics or street talk was never allowed at home, with everyone speaking with no accent. The best way to deal with those who will not deal with you due to your race is to make it extremely unprofitable.

He copied this idea from an indie movie. Look it up.

There are two trains of thought here. Speaking slang or with regional accent can be deemed inferior or lacking of sophistication. Talking "black" or ghetto akin to say british yob, chav speak is just being lazy. English is a complex language with words have several meanings. Enunciation is not speaking white.

Nice clip. Guy says (while doing white mode) "Ax me anything." So, black. Yeah, so very funny. Yes, the police should treat everyone the same, black or white. But you do get better treatment if you speak proper English, which is, yeah, sort of white, all though many white people ain't speak good neither. Are we going to talk about kids who do their homework acting white? Are we going to talk about other culturally related setbacks? Or are we just going to laugh at videos of black people talking white, and continue to watch the cops taze people for sitting around while black?

Where "awright?" means, please and thank you, dear.

When I was in grad school, I went abroad and was surrounded by non native English speakers. Normally, I would use all kinds of slang and neologisms amongst my friends, at school, at the store, but after only a short time it became apparent that slang and verbal short cuts were useless for broader, actual communication. After living abroad for some time, I quit using almost all that slang, and those idioms, even among my peers and friends, it disappeared. Maybe I just finally grew up after realizing my personal expressive affect was hindering communication. I thought my slang was a unique idiosyncratic and endearing trait, but ultimately it had to go. Does Barack Obama “sound white”, or does he just communicate effectively and clearly, in plain English?

One should be able then to turn this around and write a script about a White person who "passes" for Black (or gasp uses make-up like the Wayans bros. did in reverse - see "White Chicks") and use "Ebonics" to infiltrate the "Ghetto" - but you know this very paper would be up in arms about insensitive and harmful it is. The white guilt runs deep in this paper.

Is this racist? What if a white man were to speak in a "Black Voice", what would happen then? Would the world explode because everyone was offended?

Doesn't everyone have "that voice I use when I need to be professional"? In my case, it is my "not from New Jersey" voice. I pretend to be something I am not. Sometimes, in like Saks, I use a Brit accent because the sellers are less annoying then. At home, I say, "Jess gimme a cuppa kawfee, awright?"

In other words, someone takes a single old joke, builds an entire narrative around it, and exaggerates it to the point where it gets taken as an innovation. Classic show biz inspiration.

I'm truly laughing at this, as a Black American, I have faced this while working. I worked in a medical setting and needed to speak to one of the doctors, he and I conversed and he told me "Sarah, I had no idea that was you on the phone, you sound white!" We had a good laugh. I'm used to it though, but it's not called "using your white voice," it's called proper English.

This kind of stuff always makes me laugh. I would have to fight off kids at school that picked on me because I "sounded white". I grew up in a military household, was well read and just kind of a nerd. This IS my voice....it doesn't change. Still, I do enjoy meeting people...black or white that have spoken to me by phone and seeing the surprised look on their face when they finally meet chubby, black me!