"Voice profiling" (#33; Topic A)

On the eve of Martin Luther King day, a national holiday, CNN beamed a segment on "voice profiling" this evening. In a test in St. Louis MO, it seemed that when an accented voice called a number concerning a rental vacancy advertised in the newspaper, the answer would most likely be: It is no longer available. If an unaccented voice then called that same number immediately thereafter, the caller would invariably be invited for an interview, suggesting that the rental vacancy was still available. The test was replicated by one of the city's agencies, with the same results. The CNN program then interviewed a civil-rights attorney, who said that, in 2004, "more than 2,000,000 people had the door slammed in their faces" concerning rental matters, and that more than 9,000 housing discrimination complaints were filed that year. I remember, when I first started to work after graduation, my experience in finding a rental unit around the University of Chicago -- in Chicago's southside -- was about the same. That was 1953; it is now 2006. So, while the administration takes upon itself the noble mission of improving human rights around the world, it seems that those in the United States have remained substantially unchanged over the half century.
Posted at 8:32 pm, Sunday, January 15, 2006