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Comment by bt1a | Hacker News Reader

> We’re socially conditioned to believe that certain accents – Black accents, Southern accents, strong accents from non-native-English speakers – are indicators of low intelligence. This is bullshit; don’t fall for the trap.

Uh, what? Delete this

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I'm happy you've never experienced this.

I have. I am as white as fallen snow and had a very thick Southern accent. "What y'all gonna need to do is git yerself..." That kind of thing.

I trained myself out of it almost immediately after hearing someone, when they thought I couldn't hear, call me a "backwater hick" and dismiss an entire meeting's worth of ideas and discussion I had led...and others agree with that person. That wasn't the only time, but it finally clicked.

I'm fortunate that I could work on that and tamp down my accent; other characteristics are more innate and cannot--nor should be required to be--"hidden from view." Even now, I will trip and slip in a "yuup" or "fixin' to" in a drawl and see the double-take on people's faces.

Yep. Ask any open-minded, liberal person from the coasts to do an impression of a stupid person, and 9 times out of 10 they're going to put on a bad southern accent. It's a bias, unconscious or otherwise.

Well they won't do a wealthy southern-peach accent, they'll probably do more of rural "trailer trash" imitation. I see it as classism more than racism, but it's there.

That’s so unfortunate. Southern accents are so cool.

Now I know yer fixin to stamp out your past and I know we’ve met but we ain’t shook, but I hope you might could embrace it again some day. :)

> That’s so unfortunate. Southern accents are so cool.

Love southern accent. It's so cool.

Look at how other cultures solved this issue. Arabic has a dialect known today as Standard Arabic. It's what official documents, books, news, documentaries, etc. are written or spoken in. Arabic speakers in general are able to understand, but in case their dialects are significantly different, they can always switch to Standard Arabic to get the point across.

Also, some people do pick up the local dialect in the country they're living or working in and attempt to speak it, it's not seen as somehow an inferior move or putting oneself down, on the contrary, it's showing a form of flattery.

I was trained out of my grandmother’s accent in elementary school, because my teachers knew that biases against it would hinder me later in life. It’s a shame. If I can claim to have any wit, she’s the influence that deserves most of the credit.

this is a pretty textbook example of unconscious bias and it's very real.

Their accusation that "we" are conditioned by it is also real and an unjustified projection coming from the author's own unexamined biases.

How would you like it phrased? Obviously if you're totally unbiased (doubtful), then that advice is not for you and you can skip it.

Which implies that I'm being untruthful or lacking introspection of my own guilt, by objecting to this phrasing. By accusing we/us of experiencing a specific unconcious bias, the author has set up a trap. I want it phrased honestly without assumption about the reader.

Perhaps you should consider why you seem to be taking this so personally.

You're right, my unconscious bias made me object to offensive rhetoric. I should be better.

That's interesting. As a non-native English speaker, I was surprised to read it as well. Do American natives really think that non-native accents indicate low intelligence?

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