A linguistics and education professor from Michigan State University claims that telling somebody that you can't understand him is an example of "linguistic racism."
More specifically, it's "racist" to ask a person to repeat what he said because you "don't understand [his] thick accent" (does anyone actually say that ... especially the "thick" part?).Another example is someone "openly say[ing] only English is to be spoken in the workplace" despite the presence of multilingual employees.
So says Professor
Peter De Costa, who in an interview with
MSU Today defines "linguistic racism" as "acts of racism [...] perpetuated against individuals on the basis of their language use."
De Costa places some of the blame for current linguistic racism on the outgoing presidential administration due to its "jingoistic sentiments that target speakers who do not use the dominant language." Those who don't (or can't) speak English, the prof says, are "perceived as being unpatriotic and unwilling to embrace American values."
There's also the president's "false labeling" of COVID-19 as the "Wuhan Virus" which "fueled xenophobic resentment" against Chinese and Chinese-Americans. Such gave the virus an "ethnolinguistic quality," De Costa says, which subjected that demographic to "blatant dehumanization" and "unnecessary ostracization."
Comment: There have been a number of explosions at industrial plants all over the world in recent years, and, whilst some can be explained by negligence or accidental causes, it would appear that some are related to the shifting conditions on our planet, and others are likely due to sabotage: