In her opening statement to the House Intelligence Committee, Fiona Hill, former National Security Council official, explained that she is “an American by choice, having become a citizen in 2002.” She came to the United States in 1988 to do graduate work at Harvard:
Years later, I can say with confidence that this country has offered for me opportunities I never would have had in England. I grew up poor with a very distinctive working-class accent. In England in the 1980s and 1990s, this would have impeded my professional advancement.I find these comments, made by someone who never expected to be a public figure, moving.
This background has never set me back in America.
[Granted, there are distinctive accents that can and do impede possibilities (employment and housing, for instance) in the United States — for people native-born and non-native-born. But the contrast here is between what would have been available to Hill in England and the United States.]
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This struck me too. As I pointed out on FB this morning: Dr. Hill, daughter of a northern English coal miner, commented this morning that given her very un-posh accent she would not have been afforded the same chances for advancement in England that she received in the US where she did a Ph.D. in History at Harvard. Thankfully, to American ears, anyone who pronounces partisan as "par-tee-san" sounds toff-y enough for us.
I found the two witnesses today to be quite credible. Having sat in several meetings that were not quite diplomat level but pretty high with international guests, they are a very different type of meeting and one is quite aware of who is saying what.
Kirsten
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