The Costs of Sounding "Black"

There is more evidence that, while overt racism is no longer a major issue, racial prejudices still exist. Sounding black has a negative impact on wages. Blacks who do not sound black earn the same amount as whites. Steven Levitt:

Fascinating new research by my University of Chicago colleague, Jeffrey Grogger, compares the wages of people who “sound black” when they talk to those who do not.

His main finding: blacks who “sound black” earn salaries that are 10 percent lower than blacks who do not “sound black,” even after controlling for measures of intelligence, experience in the work force, and other factors that influence how much people earn. (For what it is worth, whites who “sound black” earn 6 percent lower than other whites.)

I also found support here for my theory (not yet discussed here) that African-Americans and rural Southern whites have a lot more in common than either side would like to admit. The study found that sounding southern is almost as bad for your wages as sounding black.