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Comment by AHOHA | Hacker News Reader

How about other types of discrimination? I’ve witnessed several other types that happen all the time, no one discuss or even finding it normal, on top of this is the accent discrimination, having a “non normal” one will get you excluded from “big clients” meetings, not allowed to or encouraged to have a company wide seminars etc., other type is cultural discrimination, regardless of the race, sometime just not having the same “local culture” is enough to be subject to that, other type of discrimination is political one, either being left or right, when a company is actively pushing for either side, or clients who won’t work with you because they don’t like your political views or some of it.

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> on top of this is the accent discrimination

This is already illegal in any decent country. It's certainly illegal in at least the US, Canada, UK, and Germany. Assuming the person can actually communicate well enough for the job, discriminating on the basis of their accent or how they talk amounts to discrimination on the basis of racial, ethnic, or national origin.

It's often one of the textbook examples of what not to do.

> sometime just not having the same “local culture” is enough to be subject to that [...] other type of discrimination is political one

People can, and do, choose their politics. And a person's political opinions can say a great deal about their character. If someone believes some particularly evil or regressive thing, I don't want to employ them or work with them. Yes, it's discriminatory. But not all discrimination is necessarily wrong.

With a lot more caveats (since "poor cultural fit" is often code for "not the right race") the same thing can even apply to culture. I'd like to think I'm pretty open-minded, but if you employed someone from a completely different culture, with no previous experience in the culture of their new workplace, and no willingness to try to learn and adopt to local norms, it's just going to be an ongoing mess of confusion and misunderstanding for everyone involved.

> It's certainly illegal in at least the US, Canada

Are you sure about that? In the US, I’ve read anecdotal reports about people with Southern accents facing discrimination.

In Canada, the Maritime provinces have a distinct accent and there has been a culture of joking about “newfies”[0] (perhaps that has subsided recently).

Are there laws that apply to these situations? Laws can also exist on paper but almost never see enforcement.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newfie

> The Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms prohibits anyone to treat you differently because of your language or accent

https://www.cdpdj.qc.ca/en/your-obligations/prohibited-groun...

Any human rights tribunal in Canada would agree. The law in every province is the same. It goes the same way in a lot of places beyond Canada. A person cannot fully control their accent, and the way they speak is closely tied to their ethnicity, background, nationality, disability, etc., and stigma and prejudice about accent is not permissible. If the employee can communicate effectively, then discrimination on the basis of them sounding slightly weird, is illegal.

Whether the law corresponds with reality is a different question. Such discrimination is widespread in practice and hard to enforce.

What about it? Same as any other whataboutism derailment:

Yes, that is also bad, but right now we’re discussing X. Solving X doesn’t mean your issue isn’t important, it just means we’re not discussing it right now. Now please stop trying to change the topic.

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