It is really embarrassing to read the xenophobic posts on DU, [View all]

[Ms. Toad]

ridiculing Melania Trump's accent.

I spent last night working with a dozen international students who are striving to obtain an advanced degree at my university. Two of them are fluent and have very little accent; I sometimes struggle to understand what the others are saying because of their accents, or the sentence structure that mimics the sentence structure of their first language. But my struggle is nothing compared to their struggle to master concepts that are challenging for US students to master, in a language in which they do not yet think fluently, and to live in a country where they are disconnected from anyone and anything familiar.

Then I come here this afternoon and see Melania ridiculed with comments like, "hoosband," "can't understand a word she's saying," and "in what language." Not the first time it's happened, but the ridicule of someone who sounds like my students who are doing something I wouldn't attempt in a million years is particularly striking today.

Yes, she is an odious human being. But it has nothing with her country of origin, or how fluently or accent-freely she speaks English.