When it comes to today’s society, it’s apparent that plenty of minorities face a struggle regarding having a foreign accent, and that inhibits them from some of the opportunities that “normal” people may have available to them. It gets even tougher when these minorities are surrounded by people who tend to fail to understand that sort of struggle. It goes to the extent that these minorities observe various hateful comments, are widely misunderstood, and bullied throughout, because they don’t seem to fit in. As a result, the people who belong to these minority groups become insecure, they themselves start believing that their foreign, misinterpreted, and/or misunderstood accent makes them different, it makes them believe that they’re not “normal”. In reality, the concept of being “normal” is nothing more than a lousy social construct. But this is what people from minorities fail to look at, they fall into this trap that tells them to disconnect themselves from society because they’re not part of it. This struggle can be highlighted through people’s firsthand experiences in a situation where they were made to be felt like they don’t fit in. 

            Saleem, an animator who did many of his own voiceovers, starts of his Ted Talk by posing a scenario to the audience that he says he dreams about a lot. A scenario in which he says he walks into a room full of people, and when someone comes over to introduce themselves, he goes quiet. As he stays silent and doesn’t respond, the other person says to him “have you forgotten your name?”. Upon that Saleem plays an audio recording of many voices repeatedly saying the phrase “have you forgotten your name?”. Saleem goes on to introduce himself, saying he’s a visual artist who creates works that are humorous yet can also be sad. He brings to the attention of the audience that he loves making voiceovers and proceeds to show some examples of the characters he has voiced. One of these characters, as Saleem says, was Space Invader, in a video he made regarding the history of video games. Saleem highlights how excited he was after he posted the video and how he kept refreshing to see the comments that kept flowing in. Saleem showcases a few positive comments and indicates his confidence level after reading them by a bar he displays on the slides. After every positive comment he reads, his confidence level goes up. Following those positive comments, Saleem showcased the negative comments he received regarding his voice specifically. Each time his confidence level kept getting lower. One comment he received emphasized how the viewer couldn’t understand the voiceover because of the Indian accent. Saleem goes onto make it clear that his accent wasn’t Indian, but Pakistani, but he acknowledged the fact that he clearly knew about his accent. Because of those comments, Saleem said he lacked motivation to keep editing the videos that he made as that was all he could think about. Then Saleem flashbacks to his childhood and how his stutter affected him. He once again returns to the scenario of a group setting in which when he wouldn’t introduce himself, people would say “have you forgotten your name?”.  Saleem said he felt that he wasn’t normal because of his voice and so he would stay quiet. He highlights that he chose video and voice editing because he could go back and handpick the parts in which he felt he stuttered or sounded unclear and just rerecord them. He said it was a way for him to sound normal to himself. But the comments under his videos made him think twice about that. Saleem then goes on to bring up a theory regarding how people of ancient cultures didn’t recognize colors as they couldn’t perceive them because they hadn’t made them yet. He says that this helped him put his own experience into context. He did this by realizing how the people commenting didn’t know how self-conscious he was about his voice. Saleem goes onto bring into perspective how minorities face discrimination as it’s normal for them to be less successful and more likely to make mistakes in comparison to someone who is white. He brings statistics into play by showing how many children’s books have a person of color as the main character in the years 2013 and 2014. Saleem ends off by saying how normality is just a construction of what people are exposed to and how he feels that he can channel his feeling of normal through his own work and his accent. 

Foreign accents cause misunderstanding and confusion among people, but that doesn’t mean that one is any more normal that someone else. Safwat Saleem shares his speech through his personal experiences. Saleem suggests that being “normal” is just based on perception and that an accent won’t prevent you from channeling that. Saleem provides personal experiences to back up the claim he makes. For those there are two key experiences. One he highlights at the beginning with a scenario where he fails to fit into a group setting because he was too insecure to introduce himself. As a result, he gets mocked by others, people say “have you forgotten your name?”. An accent can be the reason someone refuses to speak as often as someone who doesn’t have an accent. That could be because they’re not sure if they’d be able to communicate what they want to say properly, or it could be because they’re just embarrassed by their accent. Either way, when people from minority groups begin to isolate themselves first, that ends up making them feel like they don’t fit in. It’s basically a direct cause and effect situation. The other situation Saleem shares is his experience in which he finds negative comments under the YouTube video he did a voiceover in for the history of videogames. Negative comments highlight how he’s not understandable due to his accent. This showcases that regardless of how hard someone may attempt to fit in, other people’s perceptions prevent them from ever achieving a state in which everyone around them sees them as “normal”. Saleem states that he had the realization that normal was just a social construct of what people see. The intended audience here is minorities who face the issue of an accent. This is certainly a very relatable issue for many people around the world in foreign countries. Just as Saleem, I too come from Pakistan and though I may not have an accent as I was born and raised in the United States my whole life, many people tend to confuse my parents’ accents for an Indian accent, and sometimes even highlight how hard it is for them to understand it. I know how hard the struggle can be for others not familiar to the issue to understand because I’ve had to be a translator a few too many times growing up for my parents.

There is no doubt that many minorities around the world struggle with the issue of an accent which the people around them are unfamiliar to. This leads them to feel isolated, as if they do not fit in. Safwat Saleem seems to deliver a message to those who share a struggle similar to his, indicated by how he highlights his path to overcoming his own insecurity regarding his accent and his stutter. Saleem brings into light his own personal experiences and stories as he grew up to connect with his audience. It’s key for those who belong to these minority groups to remember that they shouldn’t be disconnecting themselves from their surrounding as that’s what will lead them to fall into a false reality in which they see themselves as the foreigner, the outsider. You can never truly be “normal” to everyone around you because one person’s view of normal may not be similar to another’s. Everyone is unique and someone’s accent is just one of many ways of channeling that special part within them.