Category: business

Linguistic racism is a global phenomenon

Sarat Pratapchandran2 Comments

No one owns the English language anymore.

In my BA English literature class in India, I was first introduced to the Cockney accent, the dialect of working-class Londoners. The Queen’s English came to us later.

I got my first taste of linguistic racism working in a newspaper in the Persian Gulf. Linguistic racism occurs when people are discriminated on the basis of their accent and the dominant culture feels superior in the use of a particular language and in this case, it was English.

The Persian Gulf, fully reliant on expat labor, had become an inevitable breeding ground for discrimination against non-native English speakers.

Newspapers advertised for Native English language speakers alone for all the top jobs. It was common to see a British editor at the top in a newspaper with a global mix of underlings, mostly non-Native English speakers from Asia.

One high-ranking English editor who I worked for had a Cockney accent. Being a native, he had only one task daily- write a 750-page editorial on the Arab-Israeli conflict, a perennial conversation point in the region. He mastered it by cutting and pasting sentences every third day!

Meanwhile, the non-Native English speakers brought out the 32-page English newspaper every morning.

Today, there are 400 million native English speakers and around 2 billion non-Native English speakers. Teaching English is now a multibillion dollar industry and no one owns the English language anymore.

“English is constantly evolving, because of the diverse ways different nations and groups use it. Yet instead of embracing this linguistic diversity, we still rank particular types of English higher than others – which means that both native and non-native speakers who differ from what’s considered ‘standard’ can find themselves judged, marginalized and even penalized for the way their English sounds,” according to an article by Christine Ro in BBC Worklife titled “The pervasive problem of ‘linguistic racism’.”

Linguistic racism showed its ugly head when the global economy shifted to a work from home mode. Those with thick accents found it hard to express their ideas to those who spoke ‘standard’ English.

Linguistic racism has created workplace conflicts due to the unnecessary superiority of the Native English speaker. Employees often felt that Native speakers showed superiority and sometimes insulted them.

I believe the term “Native English speaker” must be removed forever. For centuries, we have discriminated against non-Native speakers and shut their voices down. Many great ideas have been lost in the process because we never had the patience to tap into the additional expertise they had, even though their accent was different than ours.

In a language with no masters, a removal of unconscious bias, some empathy and the ability to listen to people from other cultures will only do your business good, now and in the long run.

Soledad and the power of storytelling

Sarat PratapchandranLeave a comment

American television personality, Soledad O”Brien offers us consolation in a world of us versus them. Our infinite power to tell stories will help us learn more about each other.

Soledad grew up as a biracial kid in a mostly White town in New York . Here, she understood why race was not a social construct. Race is real in America.  We are very much connected to ethnic origins, privilege, poverty, social standing and accomplishments.

Her parents were immigrants.  Her dad was Australian and her mom came from Cuba and it was tough for them to get get married and raise a family in the America of the 50s and the 60s.

In television, Soledad learned why producers had pre-conceived notions of stories even before they were aired. Stories of poor people almost always led with negative connotations of where they came from, unemployment in their communities, drugs and violence. Very rarely did producers take notice of the individual human being, their successes, their accomplishments. The personality of the poor gets sadly forgotten in American television, especially if you are black or latino. Soledad was delivering the Elizabeth D. Rockwell lecture at the University of Houston recently.

Today’s television relies on talking heads, who get an annual payment and claim to be so-called experts on specific subjects. Armchair journalists never got real stories from the field and I learned that in journalism school.

In-depth, incisive, deliberate reporting  is costly. Real reporting requires hard work, patience and the courage to ask hard questions. We have to be vulnerable and learn and understand the context of the subjects we are interviewing.

Sadly, our evening news revolves around shootings, the cat that got lost in the alley or an angry parent who found that the school bus was late.

I will leave you with a profound quote from Soledad: “I’ve learned that fear limits you and your vision. It serves as blinders to what may be just a few steps down the road for you. The journey is valuable, but believing in your talents, your abilities, and your self-worth can empower you to walk down an even brighter path. Transforming fear into freedom-how great is that?”