Mum divides the internet with post calling out her kids’ ‘racist’ accents

PART OF experiencing childhood is about learning lessons. Fostering those valuable tools to get you through life as best as you can.

It’s also about being silly, laughing at things like toilet humour, and experiencing an innocence that has a use-by date. With age comes responsibility and less excuses for our behaviour.

Canadian mum, Janice Quirt has written a piece for CBC’s parenting site about her kids doing fake accents and it has the internet divided.

The yoga teacher and freelance writer has a blended family of seven.

She described an evening where a fake accent emerged at her dinner table, “as a string of unintelligible syllables spoken with a heavy, fake Asian accent, eliciting giggles from around the table”.

Upon questioning her 13-year-old stepdaughter, Quirt was told that it was something many other kids did at school without even thinking.

“I tried to explain how imitating another country’s language and accent wasn’t the coolest thing to do,” wrote Quirt, but her evident concern and further probing didn’t seem to have any effect on the kids.

Quirt went on to say how when her own nine-year-old son did the same thing a few weeks later, she took a more direct approach to the situation and discussed the same things as she had already addressed with her stepdaughter.

“He got it, because appreciation of different cultures and avoiding even the slightest racial slur is something I’ve drilled into my kids from the very beginning,” wrote Quirt, who recalled times when she learnt lessons about racial slurs and how she has defaults “to the side of extreme caution” when it comes to these things.

“I’m not even sure how I feel about actors adopting different accents for roles in movies,” she wrote. “There are so many other ways we can communicate, such a variety of things to talk about and an abundance of ways to tickle our funny bones. I simply don’t think we should ever stoop to imitating another culture for laughs, just because it is different than how we speak or sound or look.”

Quirt rounds off her story by saying that the accents have stopped around her home, although she’s not sure whether it’s because she made a big deal out of it or if they truly understand her point.

The internet was divided

There were two very contrasting opinions online. On one hand, there’s the camp that called Quirt out for her extreme opinion: “Does anyone have any other reaction to these types of article other than shaking their head in disagreement?” commented one reader.

Another added, “Would have loved to have watched Braveheart, Fargo, or any number of other movies with the actors speaking in their normal accents. *facepalm*”

And this person had a really interesting point: “Getting real tired of people that cannot tell the difference between the intention and the tool used to convey that intention. Using this woman’s reasoning, we should ban hockey sticks because, occasionally, they’re used to do violence.”

Some were able to see Quirt’s side, like this woman who also has a point worth considering: “People making fun of foreign accents makes me uncomfortable as well. I can see there’s a lot of grey on the topic ... when is it OK, when is it not, etc. But I clicked on this article because I’ve squirmed watching someone encourage their children to ‘do an accent’ that I doubt they would have done if people of that background had been present.”

Someone else suggested Quirt turn the tables around on her kids: “You should tell the kids that Canadians have accents too. And how would they feel if they were mimicked?”

Perhaps it does come down to place and time. If we wouldn’t do it out in public in front of strangers, then perhaps we should use the opportunity to have a conversation with our kids, like Quirt did. But is a little secret giggle among family really such a bad thing?