I’m charitably assuming that he’s complaining about call centers based in India staffed by people with Indian accents, and not people of Indian ethnicity.
It’s still an awfully offensive comment, though.
I have worked with people with German accents, French accents, Polish accents, Romanian accents, Portuguese accents, etc. No one complains about their accents. But Indian accents are fair game. It’s racism.
Yeah, that was definitely a cop’s idea of Being Clever.
There are more trustworthy charities out there.
Just sayin’.
No one in America interacts regularly with call centers staffed with people with heavy Russian accents. I suspect many would complain if they did.
I’m good at hearing accented English (and really bad at copying accents – i suspect the two are related) and i used to often have lunch with a friend who grew up in Russia. He’d go to the sandwich shop and ask for the chicken sandwich, from a list of 8 sandwiches, and the clerks couldn’t figure out what he wanted. I routinely “translated” for him. He told me his daughter often did the same. She immigrated as a young teen, and had a much less pronounced accent.
Ignoring the accent, his English was terrific. He enjoyed reading American science fiction, and grew up doing so. He had an enormous vocabulary and his grammar was fine. His written English was nearly indistinguishable from a native American-English speaker. It was just the accent. And just the accent was crippling in a lot of interactions.
But most Americans are never forced to interact with someone who speaks English with a Russia accent. Whereas a lot of us are forced to interact with people (often underpaid and poorly trained people) who speak English with an Indian accent. And a lot of Americans struggle with that.
I agree that Americans have a falsely negative impression of call centers based on India. While some are terrible, I’ve been fortunate enough to get excellent user support from some. It varies a lot by company. But i think it’s a little more complicated than simple racism.
That being said, that post might have been simple racism.
“I don’t like talking to Indians” vs. “I have difficulty understanding Indian accents” come across as quite different statements to me. If I felt the latter, I would not phrase it as the former with no caveats unless I’m being brusque and don’t give a shit if I offend (and, honestly, am kind of hoping to offend some and call them out for being over-sensitive.)
No shit. The statement was incredibly offensive.
The Indian people I hear getting shit about their accents aren’t in Bangalore or Hyderabad. They are right there on the same floor with a bunch of people from Central and Eastern Europe, whose English is in general a good deal worse and accents just as thick as their colleagues from South Asia.
But the color of their skin protects them from abuse, I suppose.
No, it’s not.
Okay. Not my experience. I’ve actually done a lot of “English to English translation”, and never for an Indian. In my (limited) experience, Indians who live in America rapidly sound American enough to be easy to understand by other Americans, and I’ve never heard anyone complain about it. But maybe that’s because I’d scorn someone who did. If you are hearing those complaints, yeah, that’s racism you’re hearing.
Unlike ALL of you I have actually been in a call center staffed by Indians. Mumbai, March of 2005.
For the Indian people I have much affection. But I hate having to speak to one with a terrible accent I cannot understand on the phone.
And companies in this country are only using them instead of employing Americans because it is cheaper. It is those companies you should be pitting.
Beyond that, carry on.
And you’ve been very clear about that.
And yet if I made reference to an American with an ununderstandable southern twang it would be acceptable.
The hatred exhibited on these boards is disgusting.
On that, we can agree.
Our unwillingness to accept your belief that we are subhuman is so INTOLERANT!
How dare you not tolerate another’s intolerance.
I must be the real bigot.
If you’d said, “i hate talking to southerners” you’d get flack, too. That’s an obnoxious statement, whoever you are directing it to.
But yeah, it’s worse to direct it at Indians, who get more shit than southerners.
We have a problem with real bigotry, and you have a problem with imaginary bigotry.
I’ve actually had to point out to my proudly progressive coworkers that just because someone has a southern accent, it doesn’t mean they are stupid.