‘Accent means emphasis; emphasis means attention; attention is praise, but attention is also scrutiny.”

I stared into her squinched up face and scrambled for an answer as I waited for the question I knew was to come. “Why do you say it like that?” Luckily, before my 7-year-old self could stammer out a response, the little girl facing me spoke: “It’s pronounced a-DEEEEE-das, Adidas.” All I squeaked out was, “Oh.”

Although I was born in California, the vocabulary I learned at home was far different from the other children at school. The word “three” was “sree” and “says” was “sAYs” (not sez). As a child, runny noses were inevitable, yet in kindergarten, I stumbled for the word “snot.” Nobody understood I needed a tissue. Nobody was willing to help. I felt the hot tears coming, and the boogers dripping down my face only added to the shame.

As the daughter of Chinese immigrants, I inherited their accent. Consequently, I also inherited their insecurity surrounding the English language. I constantly corrected them and constantly was corrected by my peers. But, I had the advantage of growing up in the United States, and soon I surpassed my parents’ English, completely burying any trace of a Chinese accent. Despite living in the United States for 25 years, my parents still carry theirs, never able to fully adopt the nasally pronunciation. Even today “saran wrap” is “sarown wrap” and “pomegranate” is “pomegram.”

With the surge of the Black Lives Matter movement, the topic of racism in general has exploded. A few months ago, if someone asked me had I ever been discriminated against, I’d have answered, “No.” But, as I explored my own connection to the BLM movement, I’ve come to realize much of racism is covert. Sometimes it’s not even words or actions, just a sudden realization 10 years later that you hate your culture without an explicit reason why.

Racism has seeped into the small things, even namely the accents we admire. I grew up watching movies with the male love interest sporting a Spanish accent. I grew up sporadically breaking out into British accents with my friends and marching around on our tiptoes with our noses and pinkies in the air because we wanted to be “fancy.” As I ventured into my pre-teen years, guys in Australia were rumored to be “hot,” and their accents made them all the more attractive. And finally, when I entered high school, my grade swooned at the international students. Well, the European ones anyway. It was cute when the Italian or French boys broke out into their native tongue or when one of them needed help figuring out a word. I found myself participating and silently wishing I was European.

So why was kindergarten me overwhelmed with shame when I needed help with a word? Why were the Asian students criticized when they broke out into their own native tongue? Why do my parents’ eyes still shift in panic when their comments are met with an impatient, “What?”

As I thought about my own experience, I took a step back and saw the situation from a wider perspective. How come African American people are deemed dangerous when they speak ebonics? How come Mexican immigrants or Indian immigrants are made fun of for their own accent?

The more I look at it, the more a pattern seems to emerge. And it’s not a pretty one.

(Victoria Chen lives in Concord.)