The Unbearable Whiteness of Being a #PubRadioVoice

Close your eyes for a moment and imagine you're turning on the radio dial, or more likely, streaming your favorite public radio station. Whose voice is it that you hear delivering the news or telling that surprisingly engrossing personal narrative? Perhaps it sounds like this: The voice Clemson University assistant professor Chenjerai Kumanyika heard in his head was, in part, a white woman's. Kumanyika wrote about the experience in a recent Transom.org post: The voice I was hearing and gradually beginning to imitate was something in between the voice of Roman Mars and Sarah Koenig. Those two very different voices have many complex and wonderful qualities. They also sound like white people. My natural voice — the voice that I most use when I am most comfortable — doesn’t sound like that. Thinking about this, I suddenly became self-conscious about the way that I instinctively alter my voice and way of speaking in certain conversational contexts, and I realized that I didn’t want to do that for my first public radio style piece. Kumanyika's post was the inspiration for Thursday's #PubRadioVoice Tweetup, hosted by Gene Demby of NPR's very aptly named Code Switch blog. The chat took up the question of sounding white on public radio. Kumanyika was far from the only journalist facing this problem, as some of NPR's biggest names, many of whom are also journalists of color, described their own struggles: @GeeDee215 @catchatweetdown @nprAudie @Maxiewcpn @CelesteHeadlee someone told me I sound Jewish the other week. I was like OK?#pubradiovoice — Sam Sanders (@samsanders) January 29, 2015 My favorite, the backhanded compliment -- "You sound more American on the radio." #pubradiovoice — Asma Khalid (@asmamk) January 29, 2015 @GeeDee215 @catchatweetdown I had to bring it down, slow it down, take out pauses (oddly). Was frequently told to "sound calmer." — Celeste Headlee (@CelesteHeadlee) January 29, 2015 A woman in Detroit asked me why ppl on @NPR sound white when they're reporting & then say their names with an accent. #PubRadioVoice — Celeste Headlee (@CelesteHeadlee) January 29, 2015 That "otherness" is rewarded when it stays in its lane. But I have no interest in that. #pubradiovoice — Hrishikesh Hirway (@HrishiHirway) January 29, 2015 Does npr send the signal that only the black voices that "pass" are competent, smart or worth listening to? #pubradiovoice — Alicia Montgomery (@AMontgomery_998) January 30, 2015 People expect you to say Tchaikovsky right. Good luck saying Santa Ana the way it was meant to sound in Spanish on the air. #PubRadioVoice — Aura Bogado (@aurabogado) January 29, 2015 .@CelesteHeadlee we've all gotten terrible advice or told we can't do it. the key is to KEEP pushing. — audie cornish (@nprAudie) January 29, 2015 The struggle with an overwhelmingly white-sounding aesthetic has the potential to ice out entire demos: #pubradiovoice What concerned me also was so many who said they didn't hear their real voices and so turned away from public media. — Maria Hinojosa (@Maria_Hinojosa) January 29, 2015 I've heard some poc say they felt like the voices on-air were cold and haughty. They felt like they didn't hear themselves #pubradiovoices — Victoria M. Walker (@VikkieNotVicky) January 29, 2015 .@GeeDee215 if it sounds like I just walked into a room of rich, white people I tune out. They aren't telling stories for me. #PubRadioVoice — Sylvia (@thepipsqueaks) January 30, 2015 .@GeeDee215 @nprAudie @_WendyTodd YES YES YES. My mother still thinks it's "for white people." MY. MOTHER. #PubRadioVoice — Sam Sanders (@samsanders) January 30, 2015 Reporting on a Houston Mariachi class, a 12 year old girl told me "I thought we could only be on like Univision" #PubRadioVoice — Brenda P. Salinas (@brendapsalinas) January 30, 2015 But what exactly is meant by whiteness? Participants pointed out that regional accents, Southern, for example, could elicit similar prejudices to those that sound anything but from the East Coast and upper-middle class. NPR reporter Sam Sanders brought up the point that in talking about "whiteness" we may just be conflating that with what he described as soft talk. 2. Ok. SOFT TALK. Definition: working very hard to be inoffensive, calm, soothing, almost perpetually apologetic. It's awful. #PubRadioVoice — Sam Sanders (@samsanders) January 30, 2015 3. Is half of our beef with pub radio sounding too white just being mad at "soft talk"? #PubRadioVoice — Sam Sanders (@samsanders) January 30, 2015 The idea of race and voice -- whether spoken or written, whether we mean who is telling a story or what is the story being told -- has been a prominent one in DC media this week, also appearing in Jeet Heer's "historical reflection" on TNR's racial history. But what better way to make use of the magazine-we-can't-stop-writing-about than as a proxy for the conversation about diversity all of us in media should be having?

Fishbowl

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being a #PubRadioVoice

What it means when your inner public radio voice is white

Corinne Grinapol

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Corinne Grinapol