Maybe I’ve had too much wine but this brought tears my eyes. Exactly, I wish I could shout this at my coworkers who get annoyed when people with accents come in. Speaking as someone who was raised around mainly conservative Republican White people. I fell in step with some heavy brainwashing from Fox in my early teens. I really can say I didn’t know any better. Anyway, I use to hold this same nasty White supremacist attitude toward people who didn’t speak English perfectly. I’m ashamed of my former actions and thought processes. I now am a completely different person. I actually researched and studied for 5–6 years everything I could about sociology and white supremacy. I obviously view race, ethnicity and culture much differently than I use to. I now try to mention to my coworkers who sometimes complain about accents. “You know if you hear an accent and you automatically get annoyed and assume the interaction is going to go a certain way then it most likely will.” I always tell them that I’ve found that , “If I start each interaction with enthusiasm for us to understand each other then I’ve found the interactions almost always end up positively.” I have another sociological factor that I need to mention as to why the interactions don’t always go smoothly. I’m biracial black/white but I am always misidentified as Latina. So sometimes there is friction because they were hoping I could communicate with them in Spanish. I am learning Latin in my free time for reading proficiency because I really like Ancient Rome and it has helped me so much with cutting through accents. I hope to become fully proficient in two years. Then I can tackle Spanish and French. Why is it that in America we have this aversion to embracing different cultures? The more you embrace culture the sharper and more colorful your mind becomes. People who reject culture reject the expansion of their brain. Not the kind of people you want elected for any office that is for sure. I hope you don’t mind but the next time the accent thing comes up at my work I’m going to use your quote. Its just so beautiful and explains things from such a noble human perspective. Thank you so much for writing that.