I've seen this a million times teaching students. They raise a shitstorm for two weeks because they can't understand their TA's accent. Then they learn and can understand them just fine.
The truth is it's part laziness and part racism.
That being said, there is reinforcing incentive to be a bad communicator when the people around you don't make the effort because of your accent.
This is not a fair summary. I have several friends (especially online, who I communicate with via asynchronous email/chat) who are technically competent and lovely people.... but who I would not ever want to have as an in-person lecturer/teacher, because their accents are extremely difficult for me to follow. In spoken communication one or both of us have to constantly repeat ourselves, idioms differ between us and sometimes intended meaning is severely misunderstood, and overall communication is slow and difficult on both sides. In some cases my friend speaks English as a second or third language and feels awkward/uncomfortable speaking English face to face at normal conversational speed.
In a classroom setting, there is usually some technically difficult material to be learning, and often a course is structured so that the first concepts taught are essential building blocks on which the rest of the course relies. Trying to simultaneously decipher a thick accent and learn demanding technical material will put a student behind their peers who are taught by someone easy to comprehend, and might make the course dramatically more difficult.
It is neither “racism” nor “laziness” to want a teacher who is a fluent speaker of a form of speech you can easily understand. Just simple pragmatism.
> I've seen this a million times teaching students.
If most of your students are complaining about your accent, is it really a fair to conclude that they are all just lazy racists? Maybe you could work harder on developing an accent comprehensible to natives in the place where you are teaching.
I would lengthen that list to part inexperience, part laziness, part racism, and part a real problem.
College students are one of the stereotypically worst groups for this. They often have only really experienced one accent and racial group - their own. And suddenly they are being taught by people from another country with strong accents. So inexperienced and lazy are likely, while racist is not rare.
By contrast in tech, you have to work with people who have a variety of accents of different kinds and strengths. And frequently this happens over the phone with outsourced teams. The variety is astounding. For example I'm dealing with countries from Paraguay to Vietnam in my co-workers, and regularly deal with have outsourced contractors from India to Poland. I don't have trouble with any of their accents.
When experienced tech people like me give up on trying to understand you, it is unlikely to be inexperience, doubtful to be laziness, and probably isn't racism. Which means that you likely have a real problem.
I am conflicted about the use of racism in this context. Accent varies by ethnicity and ethnicity is a proxy for race, so they are disadvantaged by their race. But if a student had a ta of the same race but no accent it would be fine. Or if the ta was white but had a bad accent the complaining would continue but it wouldn't be considered racism.
Don't be confused - it's not racist. It's "accentist" perhaps. I'm "white" and there've been plenty of "white" folks who I can't understand due to their accent. In some cases, I would not be able to work with them. It was nothing to do with 'race', everything to do with their ability to communicate in a way I could understand. If there are two people of equal technical ability, and one I (and the team) can understand without hesitation, and one who has trouble communicating, because of an accent, and they're both white, and we choose the one without the accent... are we racist? No.
Fortunately, EEOC considers national origin equally important to protect, and 'accentist' is likely adjacent enough that your lawyers will not support you going there.
Someone from deep rural alabama vs someone from illinois - they're both from the same country. both 'white', both have same qualifications. one has a deep accent that is hard to understand, one doesn't. Please define how making a decision based on accent would be 'racist' (by any EEOC definition).
Cursory research suggests that you would likely be liable for excluding an "ethnic group" if you refused to hire people with southern accent; "southerner" is an actual example I found in USG hiring guides.
again, if you have 2 candidates that have equal background, skills, etc, you have to make a choice if you can only hire one. it seems that any decision you make could be challenged on some point.
The 'alabama' accent might just be an accent they have, and they're not from alabama. But they still have an accent that is difficult for people to work with. If you have another candidate of equal experience and credentials, but who is easier to understand... do you hire the person who is harder to understand precisely because you might get sued otherwise?
> Accent varies by ethnicity and ethnicity is a proxy for race
Accent varies by location, not ethnicity. My Scottish ancestry does not in any way help my understand a thick Glaswegian accent but if we took a kid from China and bought them up in Glasgow they'd have the same accent as everyone else.
The truth is it's part laziness and part racism.
That being said, there is reinforcing incentive to be a bad communicator when the people around you don't make the effort because of your accent.