Tag: week of 7/27

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When most people think about discrimination, the first thing that will likely come to mind would be discrimination of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. However, there is one type of discrimination that is often overlooked. This is something that some people face every single day and have no way of hiding from. The prejudice that I am referring to is accent discrimination. We encounter individuals with different accents all the time living in the United States. Some of the various accents we hear are from native speakers of different regions in the U.S. Other times, the accent may be from individuals who have immigrated here from another country. It is not always the intent of the native lister to discriminate against someone with a foreign accent. Reason being that sometimes this prejudice will rear its head in the form of unconscious bias. Therefore, it is paramount that we learn to identify our own unconscious biases so that we can improve upon them and create a more inclusive society. This blog will seek to explore some of the ways that accent bias is harmful to our society and why we should take action against it.

Before we can explore the reasons behind why accent bias exists, how harmful it can be, and what ways we can mitigate this problem, we must first familiarize ourselves with the concept of unconscious bias. “Unconscious bias or Implicit stereotype is the unconscious attribution of particular qualities by an individual to a member of some social outgroup” (Wikepedia, 2020). If we parse this definition of unconscious bias, we can understand that this type of behavior involves assuming certain characteristics of others without realization based entirely upon judgment. It is significant that the core of the problem comprises of people taking action without seeing the full picture. Our lack of situational awareness and our ignorance of the consequences of our actions is truly alarming to me. If we are going to be able to change behavior that is deeply engrained in us, we must first become aware of the effects that our words and actions have on other people. One way that we can do this is by listening to the stories of people affected by unconscious bias such as Mirela Setkik. Mirela is a Bosnian refugee and founder of a successful marketing agency in St Petersburg, Florida. Mirela conducted a TED Talk at the University of South Florida to create awareness about unconscious accent bias in our society. In her TED Talk, Mirela speaks on how she has felt about the way she was treated based on her accent. Mirela states “I have felt judged, questioned, and put under a microscope. Many times, I could tell that people were confused as they didn’t know where to place me. They were suspicious. And it still happens, its probably happening right now” (Setkic, 2019). Mirela continues on by stating “Actually I think I am asked about my accent on a weekly basis by complete strangers who often think it would be fun to play a game of I bet I can guess where your accent is from” (Setkic, 2019). Her story is the epitome of how inaccurate our assumptions can be about other people. I would go further to say that our assumptions about others are most often incorrect. Through having background knowledge of the tragedy that Mirela escaped in former Yugoslavia, it is a shame that she must live her life feeling unwelcome and discriminated against in the country she fled to for safety.

Another example of someone who has faced this type of discrimination and had the courage to speak out against it is an associate director at Columbia University named Hernan Diaz. Hernan was born in Argentina, grew up in Sweden, spent a few years in London in his twenties, and spent most of his life in the United States. Hernan has therefore developed a very unique “mixed accent” throughout his life. In a PBS special based on accent bias. Hernan speaks about his perplexing feelings after seeing flyers on campus advertising programs of accent reduction and accent elimination. In a concerned manner, Hernan begs the questions “Does my accent need correcting? I don’t think so. To sound like who, exactly? A native speaker? What would that even mean?” (Diaz, 2018). This quote from Hernan is quite gripping as it contains multiple facets. Hernan makes a great point when asking the question what it means to sound like a native speaker. In the United States we have many different regional accents that all differ and contain their own slang. There are also other countries such as Great Britain, Canada, Australia, South Africa and many others that are native speakers of English even though they don’t sound exactly the same. Also, even if English is ones second language, is there something inherently wrong with having slightly different pronunciation and intonations in your speech? I certainly do not think there is myself.

Now that we have heard from multiple individuals about their experience facing accent discrimination, I would like to explore some of the research that is being done into this field. This research is important as it can help us understand why the problem of unconscious bias exists and offer some possible avenues for solving the issue. One individual who has made great contributions to research in accent discrimination is Rahul Chakraborty, a professor at Texas State university. Rahul wrote a great article called “A Short note on Accent-bias, Social Identity and Ethnocentrism” which is full of necessary nomenclature and explanations of social behavior that can lead to accent bias. An important topic to be familiar with when thinking about why unconscious bias exists is Social identity theory (SIT). SIT essentially boils down to the fact that people have a strong tendency to form groups amongst themselves based on common characteristics. Perhaps this gives us the sense of familiarity and belongingness that we crave in our lives. Nevertheless, through forming our “ingroups” (those we share traits with) we subsequently create outgroups (those we differ from) of which we have a stronger probability to compete with and view in a negative manner. The varying degree to which we feel attached to our ingroups is dependent on the varying levels of ethnocentrism amongst people. Ethnocentrism is essentially the belief that our ingroups are the center of everything. In other words, we cannot help but to compare outgroup characteristics to the more familiar ingroup characteristics that we use as reference. Though ethnocentrism is not always a bad thing, take for example patriotism or team spirit, too much of it is shown to create overly high identification with ingroups and subsequent derogation of outgroups. As Rahul states in his article “social identity is the primary construct of ethnocentrism”. Stated another way, our propensity to socially categorize ourselves forms basis of which ethnocentrism can thrive. With this in mind, the different accents that people possess is a very common way that they will organize their social groups in. When confronted by individuals that possess remarkably high levels of ethnocentrism, prejudice may arise in various forms as affirmed by Rahul in the following statement.

“Frequently, speakers with nonnative accent are considered less intelligent, less loyal, less competent and of lower status and face both prejudice and stereotypes” (Chakraborty, 2017)

Implicit stereotype. (2020, August 02). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_stereotype

Setkic, M. (n.d.). Retrieved July 19, 2020, from https://www.ted.com/talks/mirela_setkic_where_is_your_accent_from_the_subtle_aggression_of_accent_guessing

(2018, July 03). Retrieved July 19, 2020, from https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/we-stigmatize-accents-but-language-belongs-to-everyone

Chakraborty, R. (2017). A Short note on Accent–bias, Social Identity and Ethnocentrism. Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 8(4), 57. doi:10.7575/aiac.alls.v.8n.4p.57