About three months ago my son; a 25-year-old, wrongfully convicted felon, took a position at Telvista, a Latin owned outsourcing call center. At first, he was excited. He harped about the facilities and quality of training he was receiving. But suddenly, that excitement soon morphed into discouragement and it’s because of his tone. Each day, either his white female Supervisor who has a fetish for black men or his black female Supervisor who can never be pleased, monitors his calls. And though each agree that he effectively does his job; day after day, they each continue to complain about his ‘tone’.
Each time we’d talk, I’d tell him that his superiors weren’t used to being around ‘real men’. I tried to excuse the situation to the fact that perhaps these women were accustomed to working with ‘feminine’ or white men. But it seems each day, though they consistently dangle ‘opportunities’ for leadership in his face; they simultaneously degrade and discourage him all for the sake of his ‘tone’.

So what is tone? Tone is defined as a ‘sound of distinct pitch, quality, and duration1.’ Therefore, their complaint is that his voice has no distinctive quality. Ordinarily, I shrugged that off and tell him to keep it moving; but that is one thing the ‘Sweet’ family has been known generations for and that’s the richness and quality of our voices. Therefore, I know that really can’t be the problem. So let me go back to the definition of tone so that I can see if their complaint is valid. Tone also means ‘to soften or change the color of.’ And could that in fact be the problem; that though they hired a black man, they want to subliminally soften or change the color of his voice?
I try to stay away from racial issues, simply, because the Bible states in Luke 21:10 that, ‘nation will rise against nation.’ The word nation in Greek is ‘ethnos’ which means ‘tribes or groups of people’. It’s where we get the word ‘ethnic’. Therefore, what the Lord is saying here is that ethnic group will be against ethnic group. And as such, He warned me to stay away from it. And for the most part, I have. But as I see the state of black men today, I now know that my silence is not what God meant by staying away. So I prayed and asked God to show me what the problem is and what I can do. In these next issues, I’ll share what I received in prayer and prayerfully, we can come together, and identify – THE REAL ISSUE behind racism so that we can speedily address it head on.
Pray this with me: Heavenly Father, please help me to see racism the way You see it. Reveal to me the real problem and what I can personally do to help You resolve it. In Jesus’ name.
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SOURCE: "Yahoo Web Search." Tone. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 May 2015.
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