19 There were no charges of racism filed against Clowney, perhaps
because she was also African American. Racism and animosity
between African Americans and African nationals is a larger topic, one
that is relevant to this and other cases.
20 I conducted two phone interviews with Ms. Mandhare in 1994. Those
interviews are the source of much of the detail provided here.
21 Ms. Mandhare tells a very different story. In interview, she alleged that
her first year at the K-2 school was also the principal’s first year, and
that he openly admitted that he had promised her job as librarian to
someone else. She reports that he asked her to request a transfer, which
she did not wish to do. After this episode, he told her in a one-to-one
meeting that she had a “very heavy accent.”
22 For a more recent but very similar case, see Poskocil v. Roanoke
County. Poskocil, a native of Columbia who speaks Spanish as her first
language, had repeatedly applied for a teaching position and was
repeatedly rejected on the basis of her accent, to which the students
objected. Poskocil was applying to teach Spanish.
23 In another study, Kavas and Kavas (2008) found much less animosity
toward teachers with accents at Southeastern University. However,
their data originated in a self-administered solicitation of student
opinions. This provides us with an idea of what students believe they
believe, or what they know they are supposed to believe, but it reveals
nothing about the actual nature of the relationship between foreign-
accented faculty and the student.
24 Hill (2008) examines the predisposition to make excuses for and
rationalize evidence of racism when the person in question is a white
male in a position of power.
Suggested further reading
Legal scholarship
Del Valle, S. (2003) Language Rights and the Law in the United States: Finding Our Voices.
Buffalo, NY: Multilingual Matters.
Smith, G. (2005) “I Want to Speak Like a Native Speaker”: The Case for Lowering the Plaintiff’s
Burden of Proof in Title VII Accent Discrimination Cases. Ohio State Law Journal. 66: 231–
267.
Sturm, S. (2001) Second Generation Employment Discrimination: A Structural Approach.
Columbia Law Review. 101: 458–568.