{"id":7016,"date":"2013-10-02T13:22:17","date_gmt":"2013-10-02T17:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beginnersheart\/?p=7016"},"modified":"2013-10-02T13:22:17","modified_gmt":"2013-10-02T17:22:17","slug":"accents-stereotypes-and-get-over-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2013\/10\/accents-stereotypes-and-get-over-it.html","title":{"rendered":"accents, stereotypes, and get over it"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"y'all\"<\/a>At my niece’s wedding this past weekend, we all lapsed into Okie-speak: y’all, huh?, yep, <\/em>et al. We were all family, and no one was judging us.<\/p>\n

Which isn’t the case lots of times. Saying just y’all<\/em> in a meeting will — I guarantee you — garner more\u00a0 raised eyebrows than a profanity. For some folks, apparently, y’all <\/em>is like wearing a sign on your back that says “I’m stupid!” Or so I gather from my own experience, which friends assure me is NOT isolated.<\/p>\n

I shared this in the weekly writing workshop I lead, and each of us had our own anecdote (and more than one!) about being dismissed as ‘dumb Okies.’ Since there are several multiply degreed writers in any of my workshops, I find this telling.<\/p>\n

A few years ago, I had a brilliant student from down around Durant, OK (Okies know to pronounce it DOO-rant). K spoke w\/ the ubiquitous southwestern Okie accent — we all know it (and yep — WE can tease each other about it; WE aren’t outsiders). You know, like Boomhauer <\/a>on King of the Hill<\/em><\/em>?<\/p>\n

K’s papers were exemplars of elegant logic — well-researched & well-written. When I told him how much I appreciated his keen mind, he hemmed & hawed, flustered. And then shared: Most folks thank Ah’m an idjit cuz of muh aksent.<\/em><\/p>\n

I was furious. Not at K, obviously, but at a culture — a world — that teaches a young man to internalise bad appraisals of his worth because of where\u00a0 he learns to speak?? GET OVER IT!<\/p>\n

Instead of fuming, I told K what I offer to all of us: I may speak with an accent, but I don’t think with one<\/em>. NOT that it would matter to me if we did!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At my niece’s wedding this past weekend, we all lapsed into Okie-speak: y’all, huh?, yep, et al. We were all family, and no one was judging us. Which isn’t the case lots of times. Saying just y’all in a meeting will — I guarantee you — garner more\u00a0 raised eyebrows than a profanity. For some…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":398,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[641,88],"tags":[11,1181,1187,262,561,1209],"class_list":["post-7016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stereotypes","category-tolerance","tag-beginners-heart","tag-britton-gildersleeve","tag-buddhism","tag-buddhist-blogs","tag-stereotyping","tag-tolerance"],"yoast_head":"\naccents, stereotypes, and get over it - Beginner's Heart<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"At my niece's wedding this past weekend, we all lapsed into Okie-speak: y'all, huh?, yep, et al. We were all family, and no one was judging us. 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