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Article: Some Housing Rental Agents Use Voice Mail To Discriminate: Study.(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- Jet
- Article date:
- April 9, 2001
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Johnson Publishing Co. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Voice mail has become a way for some housing rental agents to discriminate on the basis of race, class and gender, according to a new University of Pennsylvania study.
The research concluded that some rental agents discriminate by using linguistic cues to screen callers.
Rental agents did this by attaching different racial and class labels to certain styles of speech. Specifically, when a Black person speaks standard English with a Black pronunciation of certain words (Black-accented English), rental agents infer that the speaker is Black of middle-class origins; however, the combination of nonstandard grammar with Black accent (Black English vernacular) ...