Does having a foreign name cause discrimination? A few years ago, a friend of mine, Stephanie Tong, was told by someone in administration at SFU, that she was accidentally rejected to the admissions office because of her name. The person explained that they receive a lot of applicants into the Elementary Program who do not have the language skills required to be a model for children to learn from.
Today’s Metro News ran a front page story about how many companies do not call people in for interviews because of their foreign names. It claimed “job hunters with English names have a 40% greater chance of landing a job interview compared to people with Chinese, Indian, or Pakistani names.” The study was conducted by UBC.
Overall, it is difficult to say if this is done intentionally or not. I was wondering if anyone has a similar story.
By the way, my friend sucessfully graduated from UBC’s elementary program. She is now married and no longer a Tong.
Tags: accent, Add new tag, Chinese, discrimination, Indian, Metro, Pakistani, UBC
linguistic imperialism… Read More is still out there. “English is in the world and the world is in English”. It’s a sign that the world as a whole is still socially regressing. If you think long and hard, the spread of English can only contribute to global inequalities, such as you mentioned, but hopefully we as English teachers can engage our students to use English (spoken with an understandable accent) to oppose these dominant discourses.