Hey all. Recently I’ve been thinking about something. I’m sure we’ve all seen people imitate accents in an obviously offensive way, in which the accent is from a culture they have no relatability to or when it’s pure mockery. That feels obviously offensive to me.

But then there are situations in which people imitate accents that are a part of their family/culture/heritage. For example: my husband will sometimes impersonate his dad, including his dad’s accent. I’ve seen the comedian Hasan Minhaj impersonate his parent’s accents.

On tv shows sometimes actors will fake accents from places that they could believably be from.

A while back I was watching the show Kim’s Convenience, and there was an episode where some of the main characters on the show came to the conclusion that it wasn’t offensive for a white Canadian to impersonate an Australian accent, and it wasn’t offensive for a Canadian of Korean descent to impersonate a Chinese accent, but it would be offensive if it was the other way around.

So they basically claimed that it’s not offense to “do” an accent as long as people stick with their perceived race when it comes to accents (white people can do other white accents, Asian people can do other Asian accents, etc.)

So I’m not trying to claim what’s offensive or not, I’m just curious- where is the line for you? When does impersonating an accent become offensive in your opinion?