Having The Wrong Accent

THERE IS A MAN who lives across the street from me, who came to the Estados Unidos from Guatemala, some years ago. He is forty seven years old, and entered the country legally, having gained permission from the appropriate authorities to do so. In Guatemala he worked in a bank, but decided he might prefer to work farther north. He underwent the process by which a person from a foreign land becomes a naturalized American citizen, and became naturalized american citizen. He learned to speak English, albeit with a lilting Hispanic accent, learned how to answer questions such as "name one accomplishment of George Washington other than attempting to lose the French and Indian War of 1756-1763 by serving ineptly in the British military as a commanding officer of the Virginia militia", and, name one, any one, of the rights enumerated in the bill of Rights. (He chose the second amendment's guarantee of the right to bear one's arms, thinking, wisely, that the test results might be evaluated by an American conservative.) He speak Inglish velly, velly good. He married an American girl, had a couple of kids, bought a house, and worked hard, in his own business, doing repair and remodeling work in the homes of affluent white American born Americans. Jose, my neighbor from Guatemala, is built rather like a linebacker in the NFL, slightly over six feet, broad of shoulder, narrow of hip, with a ruggedly handsome face, and at some point someone suggested to him that he might do well to pursue a career as a police officer. He decided that it would be a great honor to serve as a police officer in his new, beloved country. To that end he was accepted into, entered, and attended a police academy every day, arising a four in the morning to do so, appearing at the academy at five in the morning, and returning home at five in the evening, after a ten to twelve hour police academy day. He did this for eleven weeks, in a twelve week process. In the meantime, he was assigned a regulation police cruiser, handsomely painted and adorned with sirens, flashing lights, and the rest of it, and given a nice blue uniform, and a weapon. He worked as a patrol man on weekends, while actually still in training at the police academy. He looked dashing in his patrol car and police uniform, I can assure everyone. At the academy he had fun, learning a great deal about the law, and proper police procedure and techniques, practicing on the firing range with handguns and semi automatic weapons and even a shot gun, running a mile and a half in less than fourteen minutes, and so forth. Then, as graduation approached and the academy regimen was about to end, he was given the standard speaking test. It is necessary that all police officers be able to speak English clearly, in order to avoid a situation in which a defendant's lawyer in court claims innocence for his client on the basis that the law breaker did not understand the officer's instructions. He failed the test, owing to his Hispanic accent. He was assured that nothing could be done, and was never told why nobody had bothered to tell him from the start that his accent would present a problem. Now, he has returned to his former work as a home repair carpenter type, where he will actually make more money then he would have catching criminals. No one with a brain and two ears could possibly fail to understand what he says, but, one cannot be too careful in the police profession, it seem. The craziness of this story is exacerbated by the fact that every word of it is true. I suspect that someone in the Trump administration found out that Jose voted for Hillary Clinton, and was able to classify him as an "invading caravan and a potential Hispanic criminal with slightly darker skin than an American caucasian". Fortunately for my anger management problem, I will never know.