Would you find this comment offensive? Irish

[erpali]

Started a new job. At the team meeting I was asked to introduce myself and tell the team about my story on how I got here.

I grew up in the far west of Ireland. We spoke Irish Gaelic at home and I went to a Gaelic school. Moved to the UK for university, which was the first time I'd actually studied through the medium of English.

I mentioned that I grew up in a bilingual household in Ireland.

My boss comments in front of the team that "I'm sure your language skills will be very useful to us when dealing with our clients in Latin America". Clearly an attempt at a joke, and others in the meeting guffawed.

Obviously it's not going to be useful to be bilingual in Irish if clients speak Spanish. But I've got to admit that it gave off the typical looking down your nose sort of attitude that I have heard about. It's like he was saying my culture was pointless.

He was rude but did you focus on your language in your intro? It is not clear from your OP.

Introducing yourself at a team meeting might typically consist of which company you came from, your area of specialism, where you fit into the team or what you hope to bring to the role. He might have thought it a bit odd if you majored on a language that is not relevant to the role. Nonetheless the comment was rude.

What a prick. Document it. Also write down who was there if you can remember. If this kind of behaviour is culturally accepted at this place you probably won’t want to hang around. Keep documentation in case you feel the need to go the constructive dismissal route or take it to HR.

Stupid and rude but not necessarily racist- especially if he is of Indian heritage and under say 40 years old, unlikely to be so tuned in to English anti-Irish prejudice. You could have smiled and said
No, of course not, but it's well known that people who are bilingual have (whatever the proven cognitive advantage is)

Excusing people because of their race is the racism of low expectations

I wonder why …..

It also makes no sense. Someone who is British Asian is very likely to be bilingual or trilingual themselves. To my shock, when I was teaching in a u iversitu deoartment that had a lot of second and third generation kids of Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi descent, if I asked who was multilingual, they would shake their heads. They had been socialised to think ‘languages’ were European languages, no Urdu/Punjabi/Hindi.

Yes, he likely does have another language, probably equally useless in S America!
It's not having low expectations to think that someone of non-British heritage may not be totally au fait with the long history of British/Irish conflict and its repercussions. It's a relatively small story from a global perspective.

Welcome to England

@erpali

Funny you should say that, I’m an educated professional Irish female who lived in London for a good few years, I remember getting racist comments from a British born Indian aswell, Sometimes people who have been bullied / encountered racism turn into those exact same people themselves as they know how to hurt, he was an extremely arrogant person even though I had a much better job than him and also a better education

How many languages can he speak ?

Oh well. Perhaps he is over compensating. Or , as we used to say , hunker sliding.

But does he need to understand the history of Anglo-Irish relations to grasp that belittling someone for mentioning that they’re a native speaker of a non-global language is unpleasant behaviour?

I have a Basque hairdresser, and it didn’t occur to me to sneer about the complete uselessness of the Basque language for dealing with a predominantly anglophone clientele when we first met.

not at all, its clearly unpleasant and rude, but not necessarily racist
maybe @BlueGrey1 has met the same guy

or, just a thought, the other common factor is they are both men being rude to women