Peter Jennings evening news

http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/WorldNewsTonight/linguistic_profiling011206.html

I'm sure that we are all subject to negative "linguistic profiling" too, but it would be hard to prove! [However, that doesn't keep the word-lover in me stop from being delighted with the term "linguistic profiling" - what great words! Actually, I'm rather fond of the words "Spasmodic Dysphonia" too - I always tell people that it is the name of a rock band. :-) ]

Did you see the piece earlier tonight? I did, thanks to this BB notice. It was only about 5 minutes more or less. The lead-in was, "can people be discriminated against based on how they sound?" Duh. Well, I'm sure we can all answer that question for ourselves but the piece certainly had zero to do with vocal disorders.

The subject of the piece is a legal case here locally in the San Francisco Bay Area where James Johnson (plaintiff) is suing, re Fair Housing Laws, based on trying to rent an apartment and leaving voice mail messages which were never returned because Mr. Johnson "sounds" African-American. Which he is. He had a friend leave the same voice mail message on his behalf (hey...he wanted the apartment and the SF Bay Area economy is so tight that rentals are tough to find) and his friend's voice mail message WAS returned. I'd be annoyed if I was him also. Go get 'em, James!

A study was described which indicated that about 90% of listeners could identify an African-American voice and only about 50% of the same listeners could identify an Hispanic-American voice. Both of the speakers spoke excellent English so accent and broken-English was not the issue.

I found this piece fascinating (although somewhat obvious); and, even though it had nothing to do with SD, the message is quite clear to us also. We are severely judged by our voices. (Ho-hum...not much of an insight there). The people in the piece were victims of "linguistic profiling." We SD'ers are victims of "neurological (sounds horrible so must be retarded or drunk) profiling." Speaking from experience, the number of times over the years that people have thought I was drunk or stupid due to missing words or being breathless or semi-asthmatic is staggering. I assume we all deal with this. I just wish they would give me a Breatholyzer test so I could sue them for harrassment and discrimination and show up on Peter Jennings myself. Ha!!! I hope Johnson wins and takes whoever to the bank. His case could eventually help the vocally-disabled also!! I'll be following it here in SF.

Thanks for the link, Robin.