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Comment by throwawayboise | Hacker News Reader

Yes, but this illustrates that it's possible to make changes in how you present yourself to overcome potential class biases. This levels the playing field a lot. And why shouldn't people seeking higher status jobs or education be expected to present and conduct themselves accordingly?

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When my wife was working in the tutoring center during grad school, they were told that telling a minority student to write in "proper english" is racist. So there's clearly a double standard where you're advised that telling a black student to stop using slang and write in "proper english" is racist, but it's fine to tell a white southern student that if they had talked with an accent and used a southern vocabulary, that it's acceptable to assume they're stupid.

And now that "anti-racist" advice leaves this student with less of a chance later on when college is over.

"And why shouldn't people seeking higher status jobs or education be expected to present and conduct themselves accordingly?"

Because accent has nothing to doing with "conducting oneself accordingly". Why is the onus on the victim of discrimination to align with your bogus, outdated way of thinking?

> Why is the onus on the victim of discrimination to align with your bogus, outdated way of thinking?

Everyone seems to understand what standard American spoken English sound like. If not, we would not have a concept of accents at all.

Perhaps one day all accents will be treated equally, but it won’t be this century. You can rage against the machine, but it will only hurt yourself.

The world doesn’t change at the pace people seem to want it to.

This is pretty much the idea behind Received Pronounciation in BE.

"Don't speak like you, speak like me"

"Don't speak like you, or like me some years ago, speak how I learned to speak in order to signal that I'm both perceptive and capable, but also not so rich that I can wisely choose not to signal those traits".

Most people are downright hackable and consistently bugged to that effect regardless of strata. Low key mannerism mimicry (not obvious enough to make it look like you are mocking them) consistently gets you received better along with "proper faking" of desired emotions. For some dumb reason they think "proving they can change their apparent true selves on a whim" means they are more trustworthy instead of less.

> This levels the playing field a lot.

If one person has to change an accent to play at the same level as another who did not have to change at all - I wouldn't call it "leveling the playing field".

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