Linguistic racism

First on our list of different types of discrimination is linguistic discrimination, or ethnic-accent bullying. This happens when a person is treated differently based on his or her accent. For example, a foreign student may often be “‘heard,’ ‘seen,’ or ‘imagined’ speaking ‘bad’ or ‘low proficient’ English irrespective of their actual high-level in English”.

Joy Nath, a sophomore at Oklahoma University from India, shares his experience: “People will be like, ‘Oh my God, your English is so good’, and I’m like, ‘Did you expect it to be bad?,” Nath told OU Daily.

Students can play a role in combatting linguistic racism by acknowledging that international students come from different backgrounds and thus, have different accents; actively stand up for those who are singled out because of their accents, use the power of social media to raise awareness and call bullies out, and to be aware that any action, however small, helps. 

What can professors do? Get to know their students’ different language backgrounds, assess them on what they’re actually being taught, provide those students with the chance to write in their own voice, work harder to understand multilingual students, encourage this behaviour to other students and raise awareness on campus when needed. 

Read the full article from Study International