March 18, 2015
The Power of Sound Using Your Voice
In the reading from my Connections book English 1101,
Talking in Color: Collision of Culture by Tiffany Hendrickson (2013) an
informative essay, Tiffany Hendrickson speaks on how she was judged by the
sound of her voice, how the sound her voice isolated her from the white race,
and the steps that she took to overcome her obstacles of communication between
two cultures. Tiffany goes on to tell how she learns to appreciate the unique
sound of her voice, being white and sounding black. The author writes on how she used code
switching, changing the tone of her voice in order to fit into relate to the
race of people she was around at the time.
Tiffany Hendrickson
starts by telling how she was raised in the ghetto around the African American
culture. She states that she was raised by her deaf mother and she picked up
most of her linguistic sound from her community. As a child growing up, all of her friends were
African American. Tiffany speaks on how she would see the middle class white
kids across from her bus stop going to the Catholic High Schools and would
wonder why she wasn’t going to their school.
As she reflects back on her childhood, she expresses her pain and hurt
of being isolated from the “white world” because of her voice. She goes on to
tell how she would be ridiculed by whites and told often, “You sound like a
black girl!” After going to college and
majoring in communications, Tiffany Hendrickson wants to help whites and others
understand her speech and eliminate the ideology that her speech and others
with speech like her are inferior within today’s society.
Finally, Tiffany
Hendrickson highlights her inability to communicate with her parents due to her
father’s 4th grade education and her mother being deaf. She emphasizes that the relationship between the
color of your skin and sound of your voice will forever remain a mystery to
her. She acknowledges that people use
different voices or sounds dependent upon their setting. This is called Code-switching and for Tiffany
Hendrickson this is a way of life and she does it on purpose. She writes in her owns that she has lived in
a white world with a black voice and though the journey she faced was difficult
and harsh it is still cherished. She
ends by stating that not only does she value her journey in live with her black
voice, but she also values, most of all, the power of her voice.
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