Leave people with accents and dialects alone…

No one cares that you learned proper grammar and shiiii.

The English language has more than 170 000 words, 135 000 in French and an impressive 12 million in arabic. Those language have been here for very long and have had many variations and dialects of the same source evolve. Could you imagine if wrote this in “hear ye hear ye” English… It seems however that many people have forgotten that language isn’t stagnant, and in my opinion shouldn’t be.

In Canada, the number of permanent immigrants has grown over the years and caused many (racists) to express their frustrations in the most irrational ways possible. The fear of other cultures taking theirs over and replacing them is nothing new. Racial intolerance has been so heavily researched that it has become more annoying than frustrating to hear the same talking points and dog whistles.Aside from the white-Canadian-born citizens, those who identify as anything else should be more open to the idea, no? Somehow I keep seeing “minorities” perpetrate the same racist and intolerant ideas as those who would spit on them in the very same way. You are not a super-minority because your English or French sounds like theirs; because you shit on a group they also dislike; or even because you came here legally.


As an exercise, for those who also speak French, please watch this video and take quick look at the comments. Please find the most overly-bothered humans in that section of rainbows and love in the image below:

The most baffling part about this relentless need to correct others on their accent is most interesting when we acknowledge that it’s all based on perspective and most importantly, the status quo. Countries from the west and systemic racism are founded on the principle that whatever falls outside of the mold (White, Christian, Male and Hetero) is to be othered. In other words, whoever isn’t what we subconsciously accept as “truly Canadian” isn’t the default, normal or to be taken seriously. In that sense, Canadian, French and US racism is the same. At what point will immigrants or their offspring be Canadian enough?

The concept of using words like person of colour, minority or afro-american as opposed to american demonstrate othering perfectly. I do not have the answer as to how we should categorize each other, but as long as we accept them as just and rightful terms, the othering will never stop.


In other countries, the attempt at learning the language is usually more important than the fluency. After all, language proficiency is different for everyone. There are many reasons why some have more difficulty learning than others. Even if it wasn’t the case and we looked at the bigger picture, the ability to converse with someone who originally spoke another language is valuable enough in itself. The goal is to understand each other not to become the other.

In addition, I have had enough of the “well they are racist to us, so we’ll do the same” mentality amongst minority groups. It stops the actual conversation from moving. That conversation is usually, “this act of racism is wrong”. The only sane and useful reply to an act of racism is intolerance to racism, and not, [as some seem to want it to be] spreading more racist sentiments around.

Furthermore, I do not tolerate racist humour anymore. To me, they are dog-whistles. I never truly liked it. If you are someone who does (and you are a minority!), I want you to truly analyze ; do the people who spread them believe it even to the smallest extent? Even though I grew up in a strongly political and socially aware household, I was influenced into believing that those jokes brought value to conversations. Over time, they become less and less funny, tired and void of substance. I started to see that racist humour and even sexist humour is a way to test how much farther the disrespect and offence can go.

You don’t need to give people a warning and embarrass them for using testing humour but rather, take a mental note. See that the ignorance often starts there. Once I removed such comments from my socials and those I hung out with, I was finally freed. Free from having to laugh at the same unoriginal jokes, weird microagressions and ignorant comments.

To truly understand where I am coming from an have an additional lease into racist humour I would recommend this video:

I have gotten to the point where I sincerely believe that most of the humour surrounding accents (especially when it comes from the source language) is pillars by a sense of superiority. Some examples that show this dynamic; French people mocking Quebec accents, Quebeckers mocking the Acadians, Any English speaking group mocking Indian/Pakistani English, etc.

Copying accents in itself isn’t wrong but the intent can be and feel very different depending on who is doing it and who is being copied. If we completely erased and forgot about racism and its historical impact in media and social consciousness, yes, criticising accents would be completely harmless. However, we do not live in a vacuum.

To wrap it up, the constant need to exclude immigrants through their linguistic abilities is pointless and foolish. We should focus on fixing the issues that affect us all and shine a light on how ridiculous racist rhetoric is. No matter how progressive, how many minority identities you belong to and how much you know about social issues, these systems run so deep within our collective cultures that we may be agents to harmful ideas without knowing it.

You don’t need to beat yourself over it, just clock it and course correct.
I appreciate it.

 
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