Published: August 11, 2025
Dog Whispers: The Microaggression Behind “Your English Is Good”
“Wow! You are brilliant!” she said, looking at me as if I had two heads.
I was puzzled and asked why. She replied, “You came to the US in August, and you’re already speaking English well. Your English is good.”
It was February 2015 at the ASU Gammage during an NFL Super Bowl event in Phoenix,
Arizona. We had only just exchanged greetings, and after hearing my Liberian accent, she asked, “Where are you from?” When did you come to the U.S.? When I told her I was from Liberia and that I had arrived the previous August, she seemed astonished by how well I spoke. I gently corrected her: “We speak English in my country, ma’am. Surely, you can’t think I learned to speak English this well in just seven months.” She admitted she didn’t know there were countries in Africa where English was spoken.
This would not be my last encounter.
Earlier that same semester, one of my professors wondered why I never participated in class discussions, even though I wrote good papers. He encouraged me to speak up. The truth is, for most of my life, I learned to be seen, not heard. In Liberia, speaking in certain spaces could draw mockery like “you think we’re in West Point, Huh?”, and as someone from West Point—a marginalized community— I often felt I did not belong in the larger Liberian society. I hid in books, reading and writing. My writing voice was strong, but my speaking voice carried the weight of self-consciousness. In the United States, it carries my Liberian accent stood out in spaces shaped by homogeneous American accents. Another visiting lecturer—after several private conversations with me—told me, “You articulate better than most American students. You have brilliant ideas and an international perspective.” He urged me to contribute more, and it was the first time I began to consider that my Liberian accent and my background were not deficiencies but assets.
The woman at ASU Gammage was not being condescending. She was genuinely uninformed, as many Americans are about the world. But over the years, the pattern has become impossible to ignore. Variations of “Your English is so good” follow me in spaces including workplaces, events, at church, and even in casual conversations. Depending on the context, tone, and who is speaking, I hear it as a mix of ignorance, condescension, or outright racism. Sometimes it is an innocent gap in knowledge. Other times, it feels like a demand to perform; to “prove” I deserve to be taken seriously because of my Liberian accent and the country I come from.
And it is not just ordinary people. We saw the clip of a world leader, to be precise – the President of the United States, expressing surprise at the English fluency of another world leader, the
President of Liberia. When a leader of another nation is treated to such a spectacle because of his English fluency in this way, what does that say about the lenses through which the West views the rest of the world?
So, when someone says, “Your English is good,” I hear more than the words. I hear the dog whistle of bias: that English, and by extension, intelligence and sophistication, belong to white Westerners. That I am perpetually foreign, perpetually unexpected.
This essay explores how this seemingly harmless phrase functions as a microaggression—one that reinforces racial hierarchies, betrays a narrow view of the world, and places the burden of explanation on those of us who do not fit the default image of who an English speaker should be.
II. Defining Microaggressions and Linguistic Racism
My exchange with that white lady that evening at ASU Gammage may have been from a place of lack of information about other places on her part. But I would come to realize later that encounters like that metastasized into a decade-long experience of microaggression. Psychologist Dr. Derald Wing Sue, who popularized the term, describes microaggressions as “brief and commonplace verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative slights and insults toward people of marginalized groups.” Unlike overt racism, microaggressions are subtle and often disguised as politeness, curiosity, or even compliments. Yet their impact is cumulative and deeply felt. The phrase “Your English is good” or “You speak good English” fits squarely into this definition because of the unspoken assumptions behind it:
That people who look or sound “different” do not belong to the English-speaking world. ● That English fluency is a marker of intelligence and “civilization,” owned by white Westerners.
That anyone from the “Global South” must be a linguistic outsider, always learning, never fully “of” the language.
This form of bias is also part of a broader phenomenon scholars call linguistic racism— prejudice based on accent, grammar, or language proficiency. Linguistic racism elevates certain ways of speaking (often white, Western, middle-class English) as the “standard,” while devaluing others. It is a quiet but powerful mechanism for gatekeeping: who gets to be seen as educated, competent, or worthy of respect.
I have lived this definition. It is not just a theory for me; it is an everyday experience. A comment about my English is rarely just about how I form my sentences. It becomes a mirror reflecting the invisible expectations people project onto me because of my Liberian accent, my skin, and the country I come from. After a decade of hearing it, I can tell when it is rooted in ignorance, when it is meant as a backhanded compliment, and when it carries the weight of condescension. And yet, each time, it leaves a mark.
This bias extends beyond casual conversation into professional spaces, where competence is often measured by how closely one sounds to a Western accent. At one of my former workplaces, my team lead flatly ignored me, refused to train me, and confided in others that she would sabotage me because she was unhappy that an “African” had been hired above people she already knew. Her justification? That I “couldn’t speak English.” For months, she avoided speaking to me, leaving me to figure out processes on my own. When she was finally forced to observe one of my sessions and give feedback, her only comment was that my “accent was too thick”—this, even though the client I worked with had clearly understood me and expressed appreciation to me. Later, I learned from a colleague close to our Team Lead that she told others she couldn’t push the argument that I didn’t speak “good English” because, in her words, “she comes off strong in her emails. Her English is good.”
In other words, she couldn’t reconcile the way I sounded with the clarity and professionalism of my writing. This dissonance exposed the truth: the issue was never my competence, but her bias against my Liberian accent and my presence. Eventually, after a series of complaints and an investigation, she was fired for discrimination, not just against me, but as part of a broader pattern.
Linguistic racism is not new. It is rooted in colonial histories, where language was used as a tool of domination. In many African countries, English was not just a language but a system of control—a mark of assimilation. Generations later, long after independence, the colonial logic remains: the assumption that “good English” is something borrowed, not inherited, for those of us outside the West.
When someone says, “Your English is good,” or “You speak good English, When did you come to the US?” among other such utterances, therefore, they are rarely just talking about language. Whether they know it or not, they are expressing surprise that a person who doesn’t fit their image of an “insider” can speak in a way they recognize as competent. That surprise is not neutral. It carries a message: you are an exception to what I expect from people like you.
These everyday experiences—from a casual conversation at an event to months of silent hostility in a workplace—reveal that “Your English is good” is rarely just about language. It is about who is presumed competent, who is presumed to belong, and who must constantly prove themselves.
This sets the stage for a closer look at the phrase itself and why it is so often racialized.
III. “Your English Is Good” as a Racialized Statement
On the surface, “Your English is good” sounds like a compliment. But when you strip away the politeness, what remains is an expression of surprise that someone like me could speak this language well. It is not always a statement of admiration; it is an announcement of an expectation I have defied.
This phrase is racialized in three main ways:
It exposes the default image of who an English speaker is.
The very structure of the statement—you speak good English—implies that English belongs to someone else. It assumes that the person being addressed is an outsider borrowing someone
else’s language. For white Westerners, English is an inheritance; for me, it is a skill that must be constantly proven, even when I have spoken it all my life.
It reduces my identity to how I sound.
When people comment on my English, they are not complimenting my education or effort. They are making a judgment based on my Liberian accent. In that moment, everything else I am—my experience, my intelligence, my professional history—vanishes, overshadowed by how different
I sound.
3. It reinforces colonial ideas about intelligence and civility.
English was imposed on many African nations as part of colonization. Centuries later, the same colonial assumption still lingers that speaking “good English” is a mark of civilization, and that those of us from colonized parts of the world are always learning, never mastering. That assumption was alive the day I had to explain to an American stranger that Liberia has been English-speaking for over a century.
In my own experience, I have noticed a pattern. When people say, “Your English is good,” it often follows three questions, almost like a script:
I hear an accent. Where are you from?
When did you come here?
Wow, your English is so good!
What sounds like small talk is, for me, an interrogation. It marks me as a perpetual foreigner, no matter how long I have lived here. And it is rarely one conversation; it is a constant drip, a slow accumulation of moments that shape how I am seen in classrooms, events, workplaces, and even in a space of worship.
The demand to perform brilliantly
Another weight hidden inside this phrase is the demand to perform brilliance on command. It is not enough to speak English; I must speak it in a way that constantly proves I deserve to be in the room. I have lost count of the times people, upon hearing my Liberian accent, expect me to “show” how smart I am before they will take me seriously. This happens in workplaces, and even in the church I went to for six years. I have been asked to “explain again but slower,” to write something down to “see if I really know,” and, in professional settings, to do double the work of others to validate that I belong. It is a burden of proof that white Westerners rarely face: the need to counteract stereotypes with flawless performance.
And even when I meet their standards, as I did when my emails, presentations, or reports showed clarity and depth, the bias doesn’t disappear; it simply shifts. They say, “Well, you write well,” as if to admit that my English is good, but to insist that the sound of my voice still disqualifies me. I still hear this today, even in my current work. After asking me how long I’ve been in the United States, some quickly attribute my ability to speak well to “your long stay here” and say, “Well, at least if nothing else, you can be grateful that coming to America helped you to learn and speak good English.” They cannot imagine that my competence preceded my arrival. This endless audition to be believed to be respected is as exhausting as it is dehumanizing. This repeated demand to explain, prove, and perform does not happen in a vacuum. It is rooted in a much older story—a story about power, language, and who is allowed to be seen as fully human. To understand why a simple phrase like “Your English is good” or “you speak good English” carries so much weight, we must look back at the history that shaped these assumptions.
Colonial Legacies and the Politics of Language
The history of English is not just the history of a language. It is the history of colonialism. Across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and other parts of the world, European empires used language as one of their sharpest tools of conquest. English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish were imposed as the languages of law, commerce, education, and power. Native languages were pushed to the margins, labeled “tribal” or “less civilized.” Over generations, this established a hierarchy where speaking the colonizer’s language well became a marker of worthiness.
Liberia, the country I come from, has its own complex relationship with English. Founded in 1847 by a diverse group of people, English became the common language. Though there is what we refer to as Liberian English, which could be considered Liberia’s Lingua Franca, second to a Liberian’s mother tongue, Liberians have spoken English in schools, in governance, and in the media. It is the language in which I learned to read and write. And yet, when I arrive in the
United States, I am often treated as though English is a new discovery for me.
This is the colonial legacy at work:
It treats English as a property owned by white Westerners.
It presumes that anyone outside of the West has only recently “borrowed” it.
It enforces a single standard of how English should sound—one that favors the West and stigmatizes every non-Western accent that doesn’t conform.
Even now, decades and centuries after colonial rule, these assumptions linger in subtle ways. When people express shock at my fluency, they are unconsciously participating in this colonial framework. The same logic that once claimed English as a civilizing tool now resurfaces in casual conversations, workplace evaluations, and public interactions.
It is no surprise, then, that the phrase “Your English is good” or “you speak good English” feels so much larger than the words themselves. It carries the weight of centuries: of erasure, of assimilation, and of being told that to be taken seriously, I must sound like someone else. These colonial assumptions did not disappear with independence or civil rights; they simply changed form. They now live in the everyday judgments of schools that mistake a non-Western accent for a lack of intelligence, in workplaces where supervisors weigh competence against how “Western” someone sounds, and even in the words of someone who is supposed to be a global leader. When such ideas circulate at the highest levels of power, is it any wonder that they seep into daily life?
V. Emotional and Psychological Impacts
Microaggressions are not only about words, but they are also about the cumulative weight those words place on the shoulders of those who receive them. Over time, the repeated experience of being told “Your English is good” has a psychological cost.
For me, it began as a slow erosion of confidence. In classrooms, I hesitated to speak because I feared being undervalued for my Liberian accent. In workplaces, I prepared twice as hard, overexplained, and edited myself in advance, knowing that I would be scrutinized not just for what I said, but for how I sounded when I said it. Even in casual settings, there is a constant awareness that every sentence might be an audition.
There is also a deep emotional fatigue. Every time someone expresses surprise at my fluency, I am reminded that I am not seen as fully belonging. That no matter my education, my experience, or the fact that I have spoken English all my life, I am still viewed as an outsider first and a person second. These moments, taken individually, might seem small to someone who has never experienced them. But strung together over the years, they become a steady background noise of exclusion.
Worst of all is the internal conflict. There is a part of me that wants to explain, to educate, to give people the benefit of doubt. And there is another part of me that feels the sting of being reduced to a stereotype again and again.
I carried this fatigue with me into my early professional years in the United States. I have already shared how one Team Lead treated me poorly because of my Liberian accent. Those first months were so stressful that I almost quit a job I desperately needed. Every day, I went home drained from having to fight on two fronts—trying to learn the ropes of a new position while silently battling the feeling of being unwanted and undermined. After she was fired for discrimination, I was able to stay with that organization for four years before moving on to a higher-paying role. But scars linger, a reminder of how hard it is to focus on growth when your very right to exist in a space feels questioned.
VI. Resistance, Reclamation, and Re-education
And yet, these experiences have not broken me. Instead, they have taught me to resist quietly but firmly, to reclaim the value of my own voice, and to invite others into a different kind of learning. Resistance begins with refusing to shrink. I have learned to speak, even when my voice shakes, because silence only reinforces the bias that my Liberian accent means I have nothing worth saying. Each time I share my thoughts in a meeting, on a panel, or in a classroom, I choose to disrupt the expectation that only one way of speaking can hold authority. Hence, I refused to westernize my way of speaking English.
Loving the sound of my own voice is part of my resistance. I don’t apologize for my Liberian accent. It carries Liberia in it—the cadence of West Point, the echoes of my community, the resilience of everything I have survived. Speaking English in my Liberian accent is a map to remind people of where I learned to speak good English.
Finally, re-education is an act of generosity. There are people who, out of sheer ignorance, do not know that countries like Liberia speak English. I now use those moments as opportunities to explain, without apology, that fluency in English is not a gift America gave me. It is a skill shaped long before I ever set foot on these shores. At the same time, I hold people accountable when ignorance crosses the line into condescension. Not every comment deserves patience. Some require naming the harm for what it is.
In choosing resistance, reclamation, and re-education, I am not only advocating for myself—I am also creating space for others who sound like me, for the next immigrant or Black or Brown colleague who should never have to fight to be heard.
VII. Conclusion
When I hear the words “Your English is good” or “you speak good English”, I hear more than a compliment. I hear history.
I hear the weight of colonialism.
I hear the soft but persistent hum of exclusion—the assumption that English is a language I stumbled upon rather than one I was born surrounded by.
But I also hear my own refusal to be made small.
Today, I no longer carry those words the way I once did. Where they initially invoke intrigue, later, annoyance, then exhaustion from reeducating westerners who choose not to learn about the global community, to other reactions, they now remind me to speak with more clarity, more conviction. My voice is my own, and it tells the story of survival, of a little girl from West Point who learned early to hide in books and who now refuses to hide at all. My Liberian accent, once treated as a liability, is a part of that story—a sound that carries across oceans.
To those who hear “an accent” and are tempted to express surprise, I say this: listen more deeply. Ask yourself what assumptions you carry when you say, “Your English is good,” or “you speak good English”. Is it truly a compliment? Or is it an expectation betrayed, dressed in politeness?
In her 1993 Nobel Prize Lecture, American Novelist and Editor Toni Morrison said about language [It is common among the infantile heads of state and power merchants whose evacuated language leaves them with no access to what is left of their human instincts, for they speak only to those who obey, or to force obedience.
The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex midwifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; it does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek – it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language – all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.]
From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1991-1995, Editor Sture Allén, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1997 Toni Morrison – Nobel Lecture – NobelPrize.org
And to those of us who live with these daily microaggressions, I say: our voices matter. Every time we speak, every time we take up space, we widen the image of what an English speaker looks and sounds like. We become living proof that English—and knowledge, and intelligence— do not belong to any one race, class, or region of the world anymore.
I have learned that the most radical thing I can do is to speak in my own voice, in all its fullness, and teach my son to do the same—even when the world is still learning how to listen. Words can build walls or open doors. I hope we choose the kind of language that makes room for all of us to belong.
So, I ask: the next time you are tempted to marvel at someone’s English, what would it look like to marvel instead at their humanity?
The next time someone hears me and is surprised, I hope they will leave that surprise behind and listen to what I am saying.” So, when you hear my Liberian accent and think, “Your English is good,” pause. Ask instead: what story lives in this voice, and what can I learn if I really listen?
Because in the end, my words matter far more than the way I sound.
Discussion about this post