This is too late in the thread for anyone to read, but just for the record,

Mathis, Johnny
Cole, Nat “King”
Warwick(e), Dionne
Houston, Thelma
Houston, Whitney
Ross, Diane
Carey, Mariah
Bassey, Shirley

all sound unmistakably, wonderfully black to my ear (Whitney Houston?? Diana Ross??), as they would to most ears. But this is where uniquely black VOICE QUALITY comes in (maybe Carey is the exception) vid. a NYTimes Magazine article from the 90s, not to repeat here.

If you wanted to make a case about black singers sounding white, list

Simon Estes
Shirley Verrett
Leontine Price
Jessye Norman
Barbara Hendricks
etc.

but then they’re not pop singers.

I attended a majority Black elementary school, Parole Elementary, headed by the late Walter Mills, an early pre-Brown client of Thurgood Marshall in his discrimination suit against Anne Arundel County. Anyway, when I was in the first grade, my mother warned me not to talk like, excuse me, a “Back Creek n_____r.” I did not know where or what Back Creek was at age 6.

She had grown up the fifth of six kids, father had died in a construction accident. Her elder sister, my aunt, scandalized my mother when my mother was working as a candy striper on Anne Arundel General’s “colored floor” by refusing to shake the extended hand of the Honorable Aris T Allen, physician, Republican, civic leader and member of America’s Black caste. Such was racism and caste in the 1960s: when a dollar-broke white woman would dare refuse the hand of a leading medical professional and civic leader 20 years her senior when she was white and he was black.

But my white aunts and uncles and mother were very near Black caste in some ways, living in nearly all-Black Eastport, pulling dinner out of Spa Creek with a fishing rod. Near enough to Black caste that they feared lest the young nephew and son begin to speak in the declasse familiar cadence, lexicon and idiom of his fellow classmates, 3/4 of whom were Black caste. Near enough to fear indeed, no matter how pale our Casper-like German-Irish skins were. Near enough that when an uncle’s church integrated, he left, in part out of sheer resentment but no doubt as well out of white trash caste pretentiousness.

So do I, but I still sound black.

Someone should point out that, to the contrary, there is BIG MONEY in sounding black–if you are a white singer.

Or, conversely, sounding white if you’re a black singer. See:
Mathis, Johnny
Cole, Nat “King”
Warwick(e), Dionne
Houston, Thelma
Houston, Whitney
Ross, Diane
Carey, Mariah (who’s mixed-race but was promoted as a white singer)
Bassey, Shirley

etc. etc.

Have you been to a mall lately?

Sounds like the young Mick Jagger to me.

Yeah, but if you’re just a pasty white punk from the suburbs? Not so much.

I am also a person who people can not tell that I am black when speaking to me on the phone…!! I am not sure what sounding “black” really means… I pronounce words clearly… I know phonics…*LOL*
{shaking my head}

Often, it seems there is a dialect that I commonly hear among black people who are from the lower socioeconomic classes – and I hear that dialect no matter WHAT region of the country I happen to be in. Perhaps THAT is what some people have come to associate with “sounding black”…. I honestly do not have a clue….

This is an interesting topic indeed!

Peace, blessings and DUNAMIS!
Lisa

You are welcome to drop by my blog anytime and share your thoughts! The door is always open for one more brilliant mind! (SMILES)