Lippi-Green -- Standard Language Myth -- English With an Accent Ch. 17

Case Study 2: Linguistic Profiling and Fair Housing

Racial Segregation in America

  • Douglas Massey's research indicates that US urban areas are still highly segregated, almost as much as South Africa during apartheid.
  • 41\% of Black Americans reside in hyper-segregated neighborhoods (all-Black, high-density near other all-Black neighborhoods).
  • An additional 18\% of African Americans live in highly segregated conditions.

Historical Context of Housing Discrimination

  • Post-World War II, housing shortages were worsened by open discrimination based on race and ethnicity by property owners, managers, mortgage institutions, and insurance companies.
  • In 1963, the California legislature passed the Rumford Fair Housing Act, which prohibited racial discrimination in housing.
  • The California Real Estate Commission sponsored Proposition 14, a referendum to revise the state constitution to allow property owners to discriminate as they pleased.
    • The proposed revision stated that no entity of the state shall deny the right of any person to decline to sell, lease, or rent property to anyone they choose.
  • In 1964, Proposition 14 passed with a 65\% majority, nullifying the Rumford Act and creating a constitutional right to discriminate against racial minorities.
  • The California Supreme Court ruled Proposition 14 a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and thus unconstitutional.
  • In May 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed this decision.

Tyranny of the Majority and Protection of Minority Rights

  • The courts acted with courage, defying the will of the voters, to protect minority rights.
  • The U.S. Bill of Rights protects individuals even against overwhelming public opinion.
  • Subsequent legislation, like the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (Fair Housing Act), extended protection to include a wider range of discriminatory behaviors and protected classes.

Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO)

  • FHEO administers and enforces federal laws and establishes policies ensuring equal access to housing for all Americans.
  • State organizations and non-profit civil-rights groups also work towards equal housing.

Prohibited Actions

  • Refusal to rent or sell housing.
  • Taking steps to make housing unavailable.
  • Setting different terms, conditions, or privileges for sale or rental.
  • Providing different housing services or facilities.
  • Falsely denying housing availability.
  • Persuading owners to sell or rent for profit (blockbusting).
  • Denying access to facilities or services related to housing.
  • Refusing to make a mortgage loan.
  • Refusing to provide loan information.
  • Imposing different loan terms.
  • Discriminating in property appraisal.
  • Refusing to purchase a loan.
  • Setting different terms for purchasing a loan.
  • Threatening, coercing, intimidating or interfering with fair housing rights.
  • Discriminatory advertising based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, or handicap is prohibited even in single-family and owner-occupied housing.

Reasons for Continued Housing Discrimination

  • Victim vulnerabilities (unawareness of rights).
  • Property owners seeking to increase profits regardless of legality.

Vulnerability of Latinos After Hurricane Katrina

  • Latinos were particularly vulnerable due to housing shortages and high tensions.
  • Employers (contractors) responsible for housing allocation exploited them.
  • Insufficient government oversight exacerbated the problem.
  • Example: Natalia, a Latina teacher, experienced discrimination that was masked by a friendly voice.

Housing Discrimination Audits

  • Government and non-profit agencies conduct audits when discrimination is suspected.
  • Testers (e.g., Anglo testers) are sent to apply for the same mortgage under similar conditions.
  • If sufficient evidence is gathered, legal charges may be filed.
  • Discrimination can be subtle, making it difficult for individuals to recognize and report.

Consequences of Residential Segregation

  • Residential segregation leads to disparities in access to quality education, employment, home-ownership, and wealth accumulation for communities of color.

Linguistic Profiling

  • One insidious way to screen out unwanted applicants/buyers is over the phone based on accent.
  • John Baugh's research focuses on the social stratification of English and discriminatory practices against those who don't command dominant linguistic norms.
  • Baugh, an African American linguist, experienced discrimination when seeking housing near Stanford University.
  • He was often turned away after being seen in person, despite being told the apartment was available when he called using formal English.

Language Subordination Model and Deception

  • The ideology that sounding like the dominant group will prevent discrimination is often deceptive.
  • Baugh's experience shows that speaking Standard American English (SAE) does not guarantee equal treatment if one's race is apparent.

Linguistic Variation and Discrimination

  • Identifying social allegiances based on language is normal, but discrimination based on race, ethnicity, national origin, or any other protected category is problematic.

Baugh's Ford Foundation Study

  • The study aimed to determine if a person's race/ethnicity could be identified based on their speaking voice without visual cues.
  • Researchers sought to identify specific phonological or phonetic features associated with race/ethnicity and their impact.

Experiments on Linguistic Profiling

  • Experiment 1: Baugh called landlords using AAVE, ChE, and SAE and tracked responses.
  • Experiment 2: Twenty native speakers recorded a sentence in various English varieties, and Stanford students identified race, ethnicity, and sex.
  • Experiment 3 & 4: These experiments measured fine phonetic and acoustic details, focusing on the word "hello" to minimize external factors and to analyze minimal speech needed for dialect identification (duration x = 414 msec).

Findings of Baugh's Experiments

  • The null hypothesis (no correlation between language and discrimination) was rejected.
  • Listeners could identify race, ethnicity, and sex 70\% of the time based on utterances less than a second long.
  • Conclusions:
    • Dialect-based discrimination occurs.
    • Ethnic group affiliation is recoverable from speech.
    • Very little speech is needed to discriminate between dialects.
    • Phonetic markers of dialects are recoverable from small amounts of speech.

Linguistic Profiling in San Francisco Bay Area

  • Baugh targeted five areas around the San Francisco Bay to determine if race/ethnicity distributions predicted linguistic profiling.
  • East Palo Alto had approximately equal numbers of Anglos, African Americans, and Chicanos/as.
  • Palo Alto had very small populations of Chicanos/as and African Americans.
  • Woodside was almost exclusively Anglo.
  • Oakland had the largest proportion of African Americans, while East Palo Alto had the largest populations of Chicanos/as.

Success Rates and Linguistic Varieties

  • Inquiries in ChE were successful as few as 20\% of the time.
  • The best response to ChE inquiries came from East Palo Alto (60\% success rate).
  • Even in Oakland and East Palo Alto, where Anglos are outnumbered, they had better success in booking appointments.

Housing Discrimination as a Human Failing

  • Housing discrimination is not limited to any one race or ethnicity.

Stereotypes and Intelligence

  • Study Participants across different race/ethnicity judged each other on level of intelliegence using a scale of 1-7, 1 = intelligent, 3.4 = average intelligence, 7 = not intelligent.

Housing Discrimination Toward Muslims

  • The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks led to a surge in discrimination toward Americans of Middle Eastern ancestry.
  • The U.S. Census Bureau considers the Middle East one of the Asian nations.
  • Discriminatory focus is primarily on religion.

Impact of War and Accent Perception

  • The concept of a Muslim accent is increasingly distinctive due to the decade-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Case Example: Pakistani Immigrant Family

  • A Pakistani immigrant family in San Francisco was improperly denied an emergency transfer after their apartment was burglarized and their religious and cultural items were desecrated.
  • Agency officials dismissed the incident as a simple burglary despite heightened anti-Muslim sentiment and a court order to protect tenants from hate-motivated crimes.

Summary

  • The National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) uses phone audits to investigate housing discrimination based on aural traits.
  • Linguistic profiling affects people of color and those who speak English as a second language across all aspects of the housing industry.
  • Anglos are more likely to have calls returned, hear a wider range of possibilities, and receive better rates on insurance and mortgages without prior reference or credit checks.
  • Investigation is lengthy, the legal system is slow, and fines are insignificant.
  • Awareness of rights and linguistic profiling is the primary defense.

Discussion Points

  • Examine the Equal Housing Authority advertisement on linguistic profiling.
  • Consider how Asian and Middle Eastern accents are profiled in telephone interactions, despite a lack of formal investigation.
  • Investigate the process for filing a complaint regarding linguistic profiling.
  • Why might a well-established individual be reluctant to pursue equal treatment under the law?
  • Analyze articles about linguistic profiling for ideological leaning.
  • Recall instances of linguistic profiling and judgments made based on a stranger's voice.

References

  • Purnell et al. (1999): Anonymity parallels legally approved practices of testers used by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Suggested Readings

  • Baugh, J. (2003) Linguistic Profiling.
  • Bullock, L. (2006) Testers Posing as Katrina Survivors Encounter “Linguistic Profiling."
  • Chin, W.Y. (2010) Linguistic Profiling in Education: How Accent Bias Denies Equal Educational Opportunities to Students of Color.
  • Kim, K. (2005) Voice Profiling: Watchdog Groups Are Working to Expose Discrimination Based on How a Person Sounds over the Phone.
  • Purnell, T., Idsardi, W. and Baugh, J. (1999) Perceptual and Phonetic Experiments on American English Dialect Identification.
  • Smalls, D.L. (2004) Linguistic Profiling and the Law.
  • Squires, G.D. (2006) Linguistic Profiling: A Continuing Tradition of Discrimination in the Home Insurance Industry?

Online Resources

  • Recordings of John Baugh's sentences in three varieties of English: http://www.stanford.edu/~jbaugh/baugh.fft.
  • NPR report on linguistic profiling: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11285, 13.
  • The Fair Housing Act: http://www.justice.gov/crt/housing/title8.php.
  • The National Fair Housing Advocate: http://fairhousing.com/index.cfm.