Not everybody understands this. There are plenty of people in the US who think Southerners are stupid just because of their accent, or who look poorly upon speakers of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) simply because of the perceived difference in class, regardless of actual education or intellectual capability. It's terribly unfortunate, but pop culture often leans into the stereotypes, reinforcing the perception of a class distinction.
Additionally, I think your decision to still avoid non-native speakers is somewhat disappointing. How are they (non-native speakers) supposed to get better if nobody will interact with them? A native accent comes from a combination of things (fluency, confidence, and exposure to the accent itself). Choosing not to interact with them prevents them from being exposed, and it also lessens their confidence. It's super obvious when a native speaker is just trying to get away from a situation like that, and I can only imagine how disheartening it would be to be the non-native speaker in such a situation.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/nature/how-a-worm-gave-the...
Personally, I think it's more related to negative opinions about the South following the Civil War, which is why even upper-class southern accents face the same stigma.
Old English is ~500AD, Beowulf, and a completely different language to anything ever spoken in the United States.
Unfortunately, I don't know the name of the book, which was very well documented, but I read a history of the Deep South at one time. It is unfortunate I can't remember the name because it documented something that flies in the face of what most people apparently believe about the Federal minimum wage law. This book asserted that it was an anti-racist policy intended to end the practice in the Deep South of paying Blacks half of what Whites made. Many Blacks were fired after it was passed because Southerners often were simply unwilling to pay Blacks "a White man's wage."
World War 2 was instrumental in making the Federal minimum wage law stick. Before that, it was proving to be a failed and unenforceable policy.
Up to half the population in the South is Black (it no doubt varies, but it is about half in the city I grew up in) and under slavery they were forbidden from learning to read and write. It was one of the ways they were controlled. So when you suddenly have something like half your population made up of freed slaves, most of whom are illiterate and who carry a lot of baggage about being forbidden from learning, yes, the area as a whole is going to lag behind the rest of the nation educationally. It will take a long time to start remedying such a deficit.
Many hot places have a reputation for being lackadaisical. In Mexico, they have a tradition of taking siestas -- naps -- during the hottest part of the day. In the Middle East, they have the expression "Only mad dogs and Englishman" to refer to who would be going about their business out of doors during the hottest part of the day.
The Deep South in the US is not only hot, it is also humid. I grew up in Georgia and I have lived in Southern California and Texas, among other places. When it is humid, you can't just drink more and sweat it out. It won't evaporate. It's like a sauna.
So the only thing that makes sense is to sit your ass down on the front porch in the shade in a rocking chair and make chit chat until it isn't so hot that doing stuff threatens to cause fainting. As a wild ass guess, this is the origin of the slow Southern drawl -- getting through the heat of the day without heat stroke, pre-AC, by slowing down and sitting a spell, during which time you didn't want to do anything too energetically, not even talk.
And then it is completely and totally normal for people to make associations that run both ways, where the Southern drawl becomes a signifier for poverty, lack of education, etc since those things were common there, though it really had nothing to do with inherent stupidity of the locals.
I'm sometimes difficult to understand. I know this and I'm working on it. I do switch to English if the other person understands it (It is very common, even if they have trouble speaking). I can carry on basic conversations, though sometimes I get lost with new vocabulary or am simply not fast enough to join in. I can work basic jobs with patient folks. I slowly reading adult novels. But when people avoid me for not speaking well enough, I can't tell if it is because I'm having a bad day with the language or if the person is an asshole.
Nearly everyone I speak to in English has an accent. I've one friend here that is a native English speaker, but even then our accents are different - him being British and me American. However, I also know that if you expose yourself to accents more often, they become easier to understand. This is where the lazyness comes in, I'm sure, but heck. I'd personally rather not be the asshole.
This is the problem of the "default accent" anywhere being referred to as "no accent", and therefore anything deviating is considered "having an accent". This makes "accent" a negative trait, scaling from 0-bad to heavy-bad. But if the vernacular were such that we said "American accent" instead of "no accent", then noone's accent is bad, just not used to.
This isn't directed at parent in particular, but just voicing a pet peeve:
It's extremely offensive to imply someone's command of a language is bad just because you aren't familiar with their accent. Most of my non-American peers who were raised on English have a better command of the language than my American ones, yet they are mocked for their accents as if they don't know the language, when in reality it's the Americans lack of familiarity with the language (as its used globally) preventing them from comprehending the language.
So yes, put in more work, the world is shrinking and English is the global language. What you're saying is spoken from a position of privilege because the culture allows you to mock others' accents rather than the other way around.
Remember, every time you hear English with an accent other than British, American or Australian, it usually means the speaker knows at least one entire other language as well, probably one that you would sound like an idiot if you tried to speak it. Don't be rude or dismissive of their intelligence.
>It’s certainly true that a marked accent can get in the way of making yourself understood. E.S.L. learners and others are well advised to work on their pronunciation. As a teacher, I do try to lead my students toward some version of that flawed ideal, the native accent. ... My point is not that we need to forget the aim of easily comprehensible communication — obviously, that remains the goal. But we do need to set aside the illusion that there is a single true and authentic way to speak.
So who gets to decide what is standard and what isn't and why?
So: doctors, lawyers, politicians, rich people, random TV personalities, CEOs, generals...