Accent On Bigotry

I have noticed lately–in advertising and news broadcasting–an increase in the use of folks with British (or Australian) accents. I think in this country, we sometimes assume a person with a British accent is intelligent and a person with, say a Brooklyn accent, is not.

The situation in the average work place is often similar. Consider this: Two employees seeking the same promotion or a plumb assignment:

• Person a) From Britain, sounds as if he’s worked for the Queen, but has an average education.
  Person b) has graduated with honors from Harvard Business School–but, to you, he sounds like a hot-dog vendor from Coney Island.

Guess who gets the job: British guy…why?…because he simply sounds more polished, and therefore intelligent.

In our ever-coagulating cultural work-place, we’ve got to be more sensitive about diversity and we’ve got to consider people for advancement, based on their skills and accomplishments and not whether they say “Tomahto” vs. “Tamaidda”.

P.S. This is most definitely not a knock against any of my British colleagues or hot dog vendors.