Comment by kkielhofner
4 years ago
While there isn’t a formal definition of “sounding white” anecdotally I have plenty of friends of color that routinely joke about pulling out their “white voice” in certain settings (professional, addressing “authority”, etc). This YouTube series covers it quite a bit:
Myself I have a very vanilla non-regional American accent (think Walter Cronkite) and they often point out just how “white” I sound.
I also have family with more regional American accents (Upper Midwest, Southern) and as a child they’d often make fun of my “accent”. My response was always “turn on your TV, they sound like I do everywhere”:
https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/196999/why-do-newsca...
This can be seen in a somewhat-humorous old YouTube clip: