Accent bias is an unchecked
sign of racism in the workplace
Quartz,
by
Anne Quito
Original Article
Posted By: NorthernDog,
6/11/2021 9:34:11 PM
Many non-native English speakers agonize over training their tongues to sound more American or British. But it may be easier—not to mention more considerate—for native English speakers to start welcoming a range of accents instead. (Snip) Hansen believes that the issue is a vestige of colonialism that remains largely unchecked in the workplace.Consider th e numbers. “Here’s what’s really interesting about the English speaking world. There are only 400 million of us were born into the English language. Compare this to the 2 billion voices who have had to learn this language in the classroom.” Hansen says, citing the research
Reply 1 - Posted by:
Foont 6/11/2021 9:43:14 PM (No. 813083)
Another worthless waste of time written by some race obsessed midwit who is sure she is the smartest person in any room she happens to wander into.
48 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
TLCary 6/11/2021 9:54:35 PM (No. 813092)
The bias against a Southern accent has been purposely created, fostered and implemented by the main stream media, (ever since Dixie changed from Blue to Red). Notice that the all caring and woke crowd doesn't care about "those people".
48 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
Judiob 6/11/2021 10:06:49 PM (No. 813095)
Well It would appear you have but one alternative.......go back where your ancestors were born....Oh, you don’t speak Swahili or Spanish, or Chinese, or Greek ....you should leave, become a linguist then maybe come back, ya Hear me , you all!
19 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
GoodDeal 6/11/2021 10:08:00 PM (No. 813096)
Stop this crap ok. If you have brown eyes then you are a racist. If you have black hair you are definitely a racist.
15 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
davew 6/11/2021 10:11:49 PM (No. 813097)
The phonemes we learn in the first two years of life from our family environment dictate how we hear and produce speech for the remainder of our life. This is because our brain reinforces the informative sound patterns we hear over the background noise that floods the environment. Children who grow up in multilingual families learn the full range of phonemes from each language and can speak without an accent in any of them. Adults brains are not as plastic and they can never fully adopt a new language's phonemes although some actors are able to do it with the help of dialect coaches, multiple retakes, and digital processing.
None of this has anything to do with racism or privilege. Its all developmental biology.
34 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
tsquare 6/11/2021 10:32:13 PM (No. 813106)
Everyone has an accent
22 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
baydreamer 6/11/2021 10:32:14 PM (No. 813107)
Whenever some guy who calls himself James or Ralph calls me on the phone, and with a heavy Indian accent, says he's from the Windows Department, Warranty Department, IRS, etc., etc., my accent bias really comes out and I have no patience with him. I don't think it has anything to do with racism, though.
31 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
rememberwhen 6/11/2021 10:39:03 PM (No. 813110)
I have no problem with a person having an accent, be it New England Yankee, Corn-pone Southern, French, or any other, as long as what they say is intelligible. It frosts me, too, when I call some American company for help with a problem and the person who answers has such a thick accent that I can't understand a word they are saying. It's not racism. It's common sense. And common courtesy for companies to have there customer service lines manned by people who speak understandable English.
28 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
Jennie C. 6/11/2021 10:40:03 PM (No. 813111)
I have zero problem with people with accents. I have asked a few to repeat if I couldn't understand them. Not one has ever reacted negatively, they just repeated.
I did have a good Indian (Asian Indian) friend who, after I had chatted with him for a couple of weeks, I took a customer service call, which turned out (stereotypically) to be with an Indian-speaking guy. I was delighted that I understood him, and joked with my friend that it was because I'd been talking with him, and was used to it. We both found that to be very funny.
10 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
earlybird 6/11/2021 10:51:23 PM (No. 813117)
Quito is a design critic for the likes of Quartz, Architectural Dgest.
2 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
snakeoil 6/11/2021 10:53:39 PM (No. 813118)
One of my favorite Andy Griffith lines is why don't any of the aliens in science fiction movies have a Southern accent. I'd love to sound like James Mason. But it's not going to happen.
10 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
PChristopher 6/11/2021 11:24:04 PM (No. 813128)
I don't have anything against a person speaking accented English but, speaking as someone who works in a technical profession, If I can't understand you on the telephone, there's a problem.
15 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
Maggie2u 6/11/2021 11:25:45 PM (No. 813130)
I live in Seattle. A few years ago, we visited our daughter and her family who had moved to Texas. I called one of my kids back home and told him everyone down here has an accent. He told me THEY don't have accents, I DO...
6 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
Historybuff 6/11/2021 11:26:34 PM (No. 813131)
Like Henry Kissinger?
6 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
MickTurn 6/11/2021 11:42:46 PM (No. 813144)
I can say go ABCDEF' yourself in as many accents as you don't want to hear!
2 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
wilarrbie 6/11/2021 11:54:30 PM (No. 813147)
Just your average hopelessly Midwestern Older White lady, but a writer at heart. I love accents as much as slang, insinuendos (yep, sic), local colloquiums, all things 'wordy'. Behind the counter at the fish mart dept., I am inwardly tickled when my Indian customers come by to ask for their choice in weight of pounds - pronouced by the abbreviation for pounds as lb. "I would like two el bee of tilapia, please."
10 people like this.
Really ? What I have a problem with is if I live in Russia, Germany, China or most anywhere else in the world, I am expected to learn the language.
Here, we are expected to accommodate foreign language speakers. Some people have been here over 20 years and can't speak a word of English. If the Chinese can learn English, why can't anyone from south of our border ? I dislike spanish speaking people who will talk about you and think you don't understand a word. Who is the worst store for this ? Walgreens.
11 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
pensom2 6/12/2021 12:41:56 AM (No. 813168)
Okay, I'll admit to being a male chauvinist in some things. In seven years in college, I found girls with Southern accents, particularly those from Savannah and South Carolina, to be delightful. I could listen to them for hours. New York and New Jersey accents bother me much more than foreign accents. I admit I respect New York and New Jersey speakers who are able to speak as rapidly as some of them do. I can hardly think--let alone speak--that quickly.
8 people like this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
Trigger2 6/12/2021 1:23:39 AM (No. 813191)
Ever go to a foreign doctor in the USA? You can't understand a single thing they say. Same when you place an order on the telephone. You have to keep saying "What?"
9 people like this.
Reply 20 - Posted by:
Rather Read 6/12/2021 4:33:57 AM (No. 813233)
Oh come on!! Most people don't mind an accent as long as they can understand the person speaking. I've had students from almost every country you can think of and their accents ranged from non-existent (Norway) to charming (Japan). I've never had a bit of trouble understanding them. However, I did get a few odd looks from people in Cleveland when I talked. I'm from southern Kentucky.
5 people like this.
Reply 21 - Posted by:
5 handicap 6/12/2021 6:03:36 AM (No. 813270)
Whether is speaking clearly or making a living, It's always America's fault when others cannot accomplish their goals.
7 people like this.
I want understandable answers not a million sing-song accents. Not racism, reality. Just an answer. Please no foreign call centers.
4 people like this.
Reply 23 - Posted by:
Periwinkel 6/12/2021 7:36:54 AM (No. 813324)
I don't care if someone has an accent...I just want to understand them. Especially those people in the overseas call centers.
6 people like this.
Reply 24 - Posted by:
ROLFNader 6/12/2021 8:01:06 AM (No. 813355)
There is a reason why Dr. John McWhorter's book , "Losing The Race" was a bestseller.
0 people like this.
Reply 25 - Posted by:
Ashley Brenton 6/12/2021 8:42:06 AM (No. 813407)
Why did 2 billion people "have" to learn English in a classroom?
Who forced them, and why?
Or was ot an elective? Nobody forced me to learn Hindi, nor would I ever elect to do so.
4 people like this.
Reply 26 - Posted by:
udanja99 6/12/2021 9:19:56 AM (No. 813447)
#6 is exactly correct. All over the world. I once knew a man from Yorkshire in England and I couldn’t understand a word he said, even though I could understand people from every other part of the country. I lived in Belgium for a couple of years back in the early 80’s and was fluent in French. Hubby and I met a man who was from Marseilles and we couldn’t understand him either. Finally, I have spent a couple of months in New Zealand and I had no problem understanding most of the Kiwis, but there were a few whose accents made it almost impossible to understand.
None of it has anything to do with racism, except maybe Ebonics.
3 people like this.
Reply 27 - Posted by:
BarryNo 6/12/2021 9:32:36 AM (No. 813459)
Accent bias occurs when someone with less than an adequate mastery of American English tries to buy something, ask directions or otherwise communicate with someone who has lost business opportunities, or recieved injuries due to similar individuals.
0 people like this.
Reply 28 - Posted by:
TexaTucky 6/12/2021 9:36:42 AM (No. 813462)
"if you can't understand what I'm trying to sell you, it must be your fault" is a sub-optimal communication strategy in any human interaction.
3 people like this.
Reply 29 - Posted by:
bigfatslob 6/12/2021 9:42:13 AM (No. 813465)
I have no problem with accents I will not adhere to a person writing a dumb article like this one. I despise words now meaning something else like 'jiving' to be cool It's not 'cool'.
We have passed guttural sounds and grunts while eating animal meat in a cave language was born out of necessity. I refuse to revert back to grunts and sounds with hand motions to communicate. Ebonics failed I wonder why.
Someone needs to tell Kamala Harris we don't speak 'cackle' or perform over the top hand gestures to communicate.
1 person likes this.
Reply 30 - Posted by:
Strike3 6/12/2021 11:27:35 AM (No. 813567)
Here's what is really interesting about that accent. Recently, I called the JP Morgan/Chase help desk to get my account unlocked after their idiot computer decided to automatically lock it when it decided there was "suspicious activity" on my part. (It was a simple transfer of funds from another bank). The first three people I talked to had black ghetto accents, said the problem was fixed and it wasn't. The fourth lady had a spanish accent and fixed it in about ten seconds. Maybe it's racism but it's a sure indicator of incompetence and frustration when you call a help desk for help and get zero help from diversity hires, just like you expected.
2 people like this.
Reply 31 - Posted by:
WI Cynic 6/12/2021 11:54:24 AM (No. 813596)
The author sticks to English accents. That's a little narrow-focused.
I had two coworkers, one from Puerto Rico, one Tex-Mex. They were each fluent in their own Spanish, but were mutually unintelligible in that language. They stuck to English.
3 people like this.
Everybody's a victim.....
0 people like this.
Reply 33 - Posted by:
JHHolliday 6/12/2021 2:00:06 PM (No. 813718)
English is now the world's business language. There's a very good reason that it's the mandatory language of air traffic control. Without it, an airline pilot would have to speak the native language of every foreign airport he flew into. The British Empire spanned the globe at one time bringing English to all over the globe (including the US). That's the main reason the English Language is so ubiquitous and it has nothing to do with 'accent bias'.
0 people like this.
Reply 34 - Posted by:
Bohallx 6/12/2021 10:15:17 PM (No. 814079)
My ancestors from Brittany, Aragon, and Galicia (big part of Asturias) came here long before the English, and they generally understood each other quite well, albeit in French and Catalan.
Then the English came and messed everybody up.
So what is this guy suggesting? Is he trying to blame it on the Bretons, Aragonese and Galicians?
Stupid newbie!
0 people like this.
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It's difficult to understand people who mispronounce English and/or place words in the wrong order. Period.