The Language that Betrays
We all shudder at the thought of the people of Judiasm having to
walk around with yellow stars pinned to their lapels and numbers involuntarily
tattooed on their arms. We don’t like to think about the time when black people
had to drink from separate water fountains than white people. We don’t even
like to acknowledge that purebred dogs are chosen over shelter animals because it
gives evidence to a shallow inclination to place value on aesthetic rather than
morality. And, unfortunately, this blatant discrimination hasn’t been limited
throughout the years to mutts and Malamute’s, it is still alive today in the
U.S.
In the short story “Accents”, Andrew Lam addresses the reality no one likes to face: immigrants have a harder time finding jobs, receiving
help, and being treated as equals. We seem to give the most sympathy to
teenagers. They’re just coming into their own in the world, they’re full of
angst and confusion and those raging hormones that make them do silly things.
It seems to uproot someone at this delicate stage in their life and thrust them
into a new world is almost cruel. But who really has a harder time adjusting?
The teenager will, at the least, work diligently to fit in, to assimilate. It is the adults that may have a harder time. Sure, teenagers have to
put up with cruelty from other kids their age and their lives are in the most
dramatic throes they may experience. What about the adults that not only
have a responsibility to themselves to stay afloat in a foreign land, but have the children’s well-being to shoulder, too? It is this double responsibility that makes finding a job exponentially important.
Lam paints us a humble and tragic picture of this very struggle.
He introduces us to his newly arrived uncle, Uncle Tho. Uncle Tho retained a
thick hearty Chinese accent, but even as a young boy Lam knew it would not
serve him well; he “knew that it was far harder to bend one’s tongue to
accommodate the American ear than to assimilate” (113). Unfortunately, Uncle
Tho could not overcome his accent and the community in which he lived never did
either. He was, "not rejected for lacking qualifications of intelligence. It was
his unruly tongue that gave his foreignness away, pronouncing him interminably
alien and, unfortunately, unemployable” (113). Without ever finding a satisfying job,
Uncle Tho eventually smoked and drank himself to death.
Centered around this tragedy, Lam uses “Accents” to explore varying degrees of discrimination,
to touch on dire consequences, and to give us a peak into a struggle we may
have never known of before.
Below: Watch a commercial for an "Accent Eliminating" course in which students are told by reducing their "foreign" accent they will: Get a better job, recieve the promotion they deserve, talk to customers, clients, and coworkers with ease, and improve their income, and social relationships.
