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From: Peter Bromfield <peter@ren.er.usgs.gov>
Subject: Re: race and linguistics - the olympic tag
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STAN MULAIK wrote:
> 
> 71064.332@compuserve.com writes:
> 
> >Ricardo Joseh Lima:
> 
> >"Is it positive to identify race by accent?"
> 
> >hardly foolproof: I have Black friends, raised in the "white middle-class suburbs", who "sound
> >White"... and I have known "White" Jamaicans who, when speaking patois, would surely have been
> >classified as "Black" by a USer who couldn't see their faces.  "Race" >is an odd concept at
> 
> I remember a few years ago dropping into an office supply store in >downtown
> Decatur, Georgia (a suburb of Atlanta) and being waited upon by a girl >of
> seemingly Japanese descent.  Having been raised in Utah and used to >Japanese
> Americans who spoke flawless midwestern English, I was dumbfounded >when
> out of this girl's mouth came the most rednecky southern drawl I'd >ever heard
> from even most Georgians I'd encountered.  But on further reflection, >I
> realized it couldn't be otherwise.
> 
> My wife's colleague is black from New York and has a pure New York >accent.
> 
> So, you can't always tell race by accent. 

It's easier to go by the nose tones rather than accent, but still you
can be fooled. South-east Asians can sound very 'black' if they learn
English very well. There is an Asian-American news woman (I don't know
her name) who I took as 'black' after hearing her. 

-Peter

 But when police follow >clues, they
> go with what is most probable, until they get enough evidence to the
> contrary, which seems the case with this bombing during the Olympics.
> 
> --
> Stanley A. Mulaik
> School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332
> uucp:     ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!pscccsm
> Internet: pscccsm@prism.gatech.edu
