This seems like pretty small potatoes, racism-wise. It may technically fit the definition of racism, but I wouldn’t feel too bad about it. Maybe next time you try going to one of the other clerks, see how that works out for you. It probably won’t matter to anyone either way.
Or you could try challenging yourself to learn to understand tricky accents. Enjoy the learning experience. Maybe I’m weird but I do like languages, and accents are sort of related. Figuring out the patterns of sound. OK. I’m weird. I accept it.
I do work with a couple of native chinese speaking people, and we quite often have to stop and try again before we understand each other. But it’s getting better all the time.
Where I live, on the border of Texas and Mexico, I run into this issue a lot. People try to choose the clerk/salesman/cashier that best ‘speaks their language’ or is from their culture. Though its not just a matter of skin color, since some native Mexican people are quite “white”, and many American born Hispanics don’t really speak fluent Spanish. People from here have a way of telling whether a person is likely to be culturally compatable or not. Clothes, gestures, and other factors play into it.
I am “Hispanic” but I find myself avoiding the salespeople who are there to cater to the customers from Mexico. I try to get the ‘American’ oriented sales people. I am not talking about little corner shops or grocery stores but any major shopping, like for appliances, cars, tools, and so on. I am just more used to using English - even though I speak Spanish. A lot of people here who don’t speak any Spanish complain that they can’t get service at stores in English these days. I used to think they were full of it, but these days I am sure they are not exaggerating.
So its a little more complicated at times than “racism”, maybe we can say you are somewhat xenophobic - and I say that in a non-judgemental way because I am too.
Well, I’m a bit impressed that Meeko is even worried about it. I’d say there’s hope for him yet!
I guess I do the same thing a bit myself. This area has a large population of both Chinese and East Indian people. Most of them can get by in English but they tend to have fairly strong accents. I have a bit of trouble understanding them in person, although for some reason it’s easier on the phone.
I haven’t had much trouble understanding and being understood at stores around here. I think most of the owners make sure the employees can speak reasonable English before they hire them. Where I do run into trouble is at church. We have a fairly large number of Chinese people that attend, because of our free ESL classes I think. I tend to hold back a bit until I’ve listened to a person talk to someone else and I know I’ll be able to understand them. I don’t know if you’d call that racist or just sort of shy.
A lot of people in my neighbourhood have the “They should go back where the came from” opinion but I figure unless you’re First Nations, we’re all immigrants anyway!