In Stoever’s piece “The Sonic Color Line,” she addresses the idea of a “listening ear” and the “sonic color line.” The sonic color line can be explained as “the process of racializing sound” based on how people thing things should sound. With this idea comes the listening ear; it explains how society and culture teaches one how to listen. When we look at in the Narrative and the life of Fredrick Douglass’s, the slave songs can be interpreted using this idea of the sonic color line and the listening ear. The slave songs, “revealing at once the high joy and the deepest sadness,” were sang without any preparation or attention to timing for tune (Douglass 13). However, while fellow slaves could interpret the songs as songs of sadness, the white plantation owners did not. The sonic color line divides the society between blacks and white, causing meaning to shift on either side of the line. Douglass, a black slave, says, “I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject could do” (Douglass 13-14). He believes that these songs have more emotion and can portray more meaning to people than reading any book on slavery. While today, the sonic color line as progressed to allow many whites to hear the treachery of slavery in the songs, when they were singing, few whites could hear the true pain in the songs. Douglass explains how “every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains” and how “[he] ha[s] frequently found [him]self in tears while hearing them” (Douglass 14). The songs hold more meaning for Douglass and his fellow Africain Americans who can more fully understand the struggle, having a listening ear that has been attuned to the hardships and oppression from whites. However, even despite progress, whites have still not developed a listening ear that is fully capable of understanding the slave songs. Will the sonic color line ever disappear and allow whites to understand the hardships of slavery?
