I found my true bigotry
I am bigoted about how people speak. Your accent, sentence structure, vocabulary even how fast you speak will trigger my prejudice and I am talking about “English.” If you are speaking some other language well, that too.
I don’t know where or how I learned this but I do have some clues. I grew up in rural central Maine but was from away. My family moved out of the city and into this back country when I was in second grade. Into a community where very few children were not born local of local parents. The locals even found their traditional Maine culture humorous.
Side note my Grandfather’s name was Bert (he was local to that area, my Dad moved away and came back). At least one of Grandpa’s great grandsons is named Bert thanks to my Sister.
As a young adult my brother used to tell jokes in a fake broken English Quebecois lumberjack accent.
Sometimes when our high school soccer team traveled to other towns to play our bus driver was a man with an Appalachian accent, another person from away.
Even my subtilty different Bostonian accent made it clear I was from away, not native.
When I was growing up two things set you apart, your religion and your accent. Well, hair and eye color too. Different story about why so many redheads.
I moved to Florida the month after I turned 18 years old. I learned that anti-black bigotry had an accent. Can you say Cracker.
Back to Maine and high school. We had a Black football coach, he spoke my language he was from farther south, like southern Maine, New Hampshire or the Boston area, he and his family (the only black people in our multi-town school district) were more like me than the Appalachian bus driver.
Kind of funny, my home town is on the Appalachian Trail. I need to write a story about “Hillbillies” and not just the southern Appalachian ones but include the Northern “Woodchuck” variety. My surname means hill people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowles_(surname)
I think the final kicker was when I was working at Kennedy Space Center and I went to Logistics to check out supplies for a test. I asked for the parts for the job. The Cracker behind the counter decided to give this Yankee a hard time over his accent. He made me repeat myself at least three times (sometimes I am a slow learner). You may not get it yet. The key is the word parts. What I said probably sounded like pats to him.
Before I lost my accent I would have said, lets go to Ba Haabaa to get some lobsta chowda.
Another side note. Do you know how delicious and decadent is a good lobster chowder. Key is to not cook the lobster in the chowder but add steamed lobster to the already cooked chowder right before serving so the lobster does not get tough. If you want to be totally decadent use only claw meat, for presentation maybe even just put a whole steamed lobster claw on top of bowls of seafood chowder full of bacon, fish, clams, scallops and even shrimp but I really think that is over the top. I have never made or eaten this presented that way but I have made and eaten steamed lobster and seafood chowder in the same seating but it was more of a picnic/clambake/4th of July celebration setting. Roasted corn on the cob is a good addition. Starter would be fried clams with dipping sauce, followed by Waldorf Salad, side would be roasted corn on the cob and desert would be Boston Cream pie. Beverages would be favorite beer (maybe IPA) with the clams depends on the dipping sauce, Sauvignon Blanc or Chardonnay with the salad, I struggle with the wine with the main as it is so complex maybe just sparkling water but coffee with Baileys or Keoke coffee with the pie.
I have long struggled to not miss the fact that there can be intelligence behind a southern drawl. For years I have worked on programs and in facilities that were run by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville Alabama.
I must not underestimate people like Lindsey Graham or Richard Shelby.
I must also not underestimate other people who don’t speak like me.
Texmex, Cajun, Quebecois, Ghetto Black, Florida Cracker, Miami Cuban, Asian what ever. While I struggle to not be bigoted by people’s accents I know that how you speak is much more an indication of culture than it is a measure of intelligence and morality.
TEK
