The Social Weapon of Mass

Destruction
“All men are created equal; it is only men themselves who place themselves above
equality.”

Every human is equal and everyone has their equal rights to live in peace and
harmony. There isn’t any ethnicity or culture or race that is superior or inferior in
comparison to others. Races and ethnicities are created on social grounds and not
moral values. We are all humans, we all have the same physical features and the
same body appearence and have the same basic needs to survive. The three things
that distinguish every human being from each other are their behaviour, skin color
and accent. It’s the basic three things that barriers are created in the human race.
It’s our own decisions and barriers or perception that keeps a barrier between some
kind of people from different ethnicities or background. These barriers may build
as a result of past incidents or parental influence or some other socio-political
reasons. Discrimination is based on the individual’s perception or beliefs as no one
can force someones decisions if they hate a certain group or person.Another reason
there would be discrimination is also for the fact that the person might not be
minded or hard to understand since he is from a different background that’s why
people tend to avoid the person. The most notable form of discrimination is accent
discrimination. Accent discrimination happens everywhere in every field whether
it is a job interview or an admission or any office environment where the employ is
from a different county and has the country accent is given less priorty than the one
who was born or lived in that country almost their life. Day to day example is the
calls coming from a call center. Whenever someone with a familiar accent calls to
tell us any new offers, we tend to listen patiently while we make fun, pass rude
comments or sometimes just hang up if someone has a foreign accent. This being
an important issue in the contemporary era. Canada is a country that welcomes
everyone from anywhere in the world like people with different accents and there
have been many cases where a highly qualified person with a foreign accent has
been sacked from his job and has been replaced with a person that is less qualified
but with a more familiar and clearer English accent. Accent discrimination should
not exist in anywhere in the world because it creates biasness, inequality and
negatorial beliefs against other races and communities
Accent discrimination has been on a rise especially in Canada due to the rise in the
of immigration. Many foreigners have been constantly facing discrimination and
have been deprived from what they deserve. The author has written article to alet
the people who are facing or may face discrimination based on accents everyday in
Canada because they have noticeable foreign accents. Many stereotypes have been
made regarding different pronunciations which lead to inferiority complex in many
ethnicities. Munro wants these people to fight against these........... and wants them
to get what they deserve. There’s isn’t only one way but many type of harassments
or a certain way of discrimination based on accents. There are many ways of
discrimination that can be done such as an accent can be one of the many way of
hiring a new employee or discrimination can also be done based on stereotypes or
harassment based on second language user. The first type of discrimination is
where accent is an aspect of language proficiency considered in hiring decisions.
We seek help of an expert to judge whether the employee is proficient enough in
English or not. Proficiency tests such as TOEFL or IELTS can also help us
determine whether the person is proficient or not. An example of an employment
was based on discrimination a teacher was given a notice that students could
understand his accent even though he was a capable teacher. But there was no
evidence that could prove he couldn’t speak proper English and hence the case was
dismissed and the teacher was given $2000 as compensation. Here we could see
that discrimination was done but due to lack of evidence there couldn’t be a
decision taken. The second way of discriminating a person is based on stereotypes.
A man from Iran migrated from his country and came to Canada. He saw an
advertisement and applied for a job of traffic controller. The time for calling the
company was after 6 p.m. and when the person called shortly after 6, he was told
that all the spots were filled and he wouldn’t get the job because called too late.
The main reason of denial was because he had a strong Persian accent and thus
could easily be recognized as a foreigner. An hour later, his neighbour his
neighbour called for the same job and the respondent said that there were still
vacancies if the [person wanted to apply. The tribunal ruled the case in favour of
the person and awarded him with $2000 for facing humiliation. The third type of
discrimination can be referring to direct discrimination as it done on the basis of
the style we speak. Balbir Ahlawat was a guard who was mimicked and mocked
upon his intonation of English and thus paid a compensation of $2000 for the
discrimination faced.

ESL teachers play an important role in helping the students to improve their
accents, bring confidence within them to face the world that mocks them on the
basis of their accent. ESL teachers play a guiding role as they teach the students
how to improve the accents by teaching different rules and ways to pronounce the
word so that students can speak English as clear as possible. They should critically
evaluate and every style and should give suggestions on ways to speak more
clearly and properly so that everyone can understand in the society. They can go
out in communities and can speak about the misinformed attitudes and language
conveyed through different means of communication. They should also give
students an insight on the human rights process in Canada which is the body that
takes on discrimination faced by the people. Human rights commission is the
Canadian legislation body that provides justice to people who face discrimination.
The protected grounds that come under the human rights commission are sex, race,
religion, color, ethnic origin and other grounds. The procedure is very simple as
any person who faces discrimination can send a formal letter to the commission
and then they well send a legal notice to the discriminatory body or authority.
There are many ways that a case can be solved usually by paying an amount or
settling it personally without going to the court. The main solution to every
employment or teaching problem is by taking an interview before hiring someone
as we can clearly judge whether the person is efficient enough to work or can
understand and carry out the needful instructions. It is doing injustice by hiring
someone to work and then after sometime firing him out stating that he can’t carry
proper instructions. If someone is searching for a rental flat, he shouldn’t be denied
just on the basis on his accent because accent doesn’t have any relation with the
rental flat. If the person is not willing to fulfil all the terms and conditions and is
not willing to pay the desired amount, then he can be justly denied otherwise
accent shouldn’t cause a hindrance in this matter. Money is not always the best
solution for facing discrimination as we saw in the cases above. A person’s respect
is priceless and as we saw in Gajecki’s and Balbir’s case, they were just given
compensation for the humiliation faced. By giving money to the victim is
humiliating him more as the person doing discrimination may not realize the
mistake and might taunt or mock others again since money can solve anything.
There should be a proper punishment like denial of rights for a limited time or
suspension so that no one ever discriminates again not just on the basis of accent
but also through other ways.

Accent is something a person can’t hide no matter how fluently he speaks the
language. If we look at some of the most powerful leaders in this contemporary
era, they all can’t speak proper English and thus have an accent such as president
of the U.S.A. Mr. Barack Obama who has bit of Kenyan touch to his accent since
his background is from Kenya. Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al Saud owns the most
profitable company on earth with a turnover of more than $200 billion dollars per
year and yet he can’t speak proper English. According to my perspective, races
and ethnicities are the main causes of this social weapon of mass destruction which
is termed as discrimination. If discrimination didn’t exist in the first place then
there wouldn’t be any social attacks that would lead to hatred. The world would
live in live in peace and harmony. It is discrimination that gives rise to inequality
and thus makes people think they are superior to others. It is hard to eradicate
discrimination but it all takes a little step and then eventually we would live in a
world where there is no biasness. Everyone has the same body structure, everyone
speaks the same language and everyone is the same from inside. In a nutshell,
discrimination shouldn’t exist or be done in any possible case since it gives rise to
inequality and in possible cases deprives an equally or more capable person from
his job and thus creates tension and hatred among people. All one can dream is that
this social weapon of mass destruction will soon destruct and will let the human
race walk with their heads up.