OCT 31, 2024 | OPINION | By Lilly Asano
Three years ago, I stood in line for the bathroom at a local burger joint in Fort Collins. The Colorado Room was our first stop in the Centennial State and with rumbling stomachs, my family and I were elated to be in Colorado after a cross-country road trip from North Carolina. Exhausted, I bumped into an older man and fumbled to apologize.
“You don’t sound like you’re from here,” he replied.
He shared a kind smile and asked where I was from, hearing a slight Southern drawl in my voice. I quickly told him North Carolina and ended the conversation, embarrassed to be an outsider in the state I wanted to call home. I was a rising junior in high school at the time and had my sights set on going to Colorado for college.
I grew up in Davidson, N.C., a small college town outside Charlotte’s booming financial scene. Davidson draws people from all over the country to its picturesque campus, and like similar liberal arts colleges, it is a pocket of progressive, high-income college graduates and their children.
With Midwestern and New England roots, neither of my parents expected to raise their kids in the South. My sister and I were scolded for using “y’all” as kids and encouraged to use what my mom deemed proper grammar. My parents viewed Davidson and Charlotte as quick stops before returning North, but as North Carolina became our permanent home, Southern phrases fell into our regular vocabulary.
As we got older, my parents broke their own rules, also adopting Southern phrases. Like most Charlotte natives, our accents weren’t the expected Southern drawl, consisting of strange phrases and softened words, lacking the Deep South twang.
However, I carry my own biases against Southern accents. Even with close friends, my mind slips to the Deep South, MAGA signs across the county line and a tainted past. I’ve held myself above those with thick accents, telling myself I wasn’t a southern belle or hillbilly: I hate sweet tea, I registered as a Democrat when I turned 18, can drive in the snow and have never shot a deer.
When I moved to Colorado last August, my interaction at the burger restaurant two years before haunted me and chipped at the confidence I’d applied to Colorado College with. I was terrified I wouldn’t fit in or belong: I was too preppy, too southern, not smart enough.
In Colorado, I learned people used “y’all” ironically and that “bless your heart” carried a positive, endearing connotation. I tried to find the vowels I’d lost in the mountains, the last letter to gerunds. I wanted to sound like my peers, plagued with imposter syndrome, trying to sound more intelligent. And most of all, I didn’t want to sound Southern.
My high school AP Psychology teacher has lived in the Charlotte area her whole life. She has a back porch, sweet tea and a warm summer night accent. In class, she’d point out words she refused to say and how she occasionally despised how she talked. When her husband underwent chemotherapy three years ago, she hid her accent to talk to doctors. She wanted them to take her seriously.
She was also the first person to reveal how powerful accents are. Southern accents can draw two nasty conclusions: you’re uneducated and/or racist, homophobic and misogynistic, and my former psychology teacher confided her voice carries her message. Despite her roots, she stands against expected political beliefs, firm that her accent doesn’t dictate her opinions.
For so long, I’ve wanted to escape my voice and accent. I’ve hidden from it; I’ve tried to change it. But maybe it can help facilitate personal growth, a compelling tool I haven’t learned to use.
Maybe I can stop assuring people I’m smarter than I sound; I can just prove it instead.