Sometimes you might hear a linguist like me say "everyone has an accent" and I think what you probably believe we mean is something like "everyone but me/you/people like X has an accent". That's not it *at all*.
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Speech is made of accent in the same way that, say, a table might be made of wood. The wood isn't an incidental feature of the table. It *is* the table. Take away the wood and you have no table.
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An accent is an accent all the way down to the essence of the person talking. Take away the accent and there isn't anything left. Speech, all speech, from every voice, including your voice, is made of accent. It is not just a surface veneer.
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So maybe every table you've ever used is made of pine. You think of pine tables as normal and oak tables as weird. That's fine, but it's also an accident of your experience and where you happened to grow up. In places where oak is abundant, maybe pine is the weird table wood.
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But a pine table, even in a place where all of the tables are made of pine so it seems like the only logical choice, is still made of wood. An accent that passes as "standard" is still made of accent all the way through.
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A "standard" accent is the equivalent of the wealthy and powerful people in a society unconsciously agreeing that all tables should be made of, idk, ebony. The tables they inherited are ebony, it's hard to get, it's expensive, they like it, so it's "the best".
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Now suddenly your pine table is shabby and uncultured. You might eat off it and do your homework on it when it's just your family and friends around, but you aren't going to brag about it. You might even come to believe ebony really is somehow better or more logical.
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Nothing changed about your pine table. It's still strong and sturdy and beautiful and can handle all of the functions required of a table. You have memories with this table. It's what you think of when you think of home (and tables). But people might judge you for it.
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Well, your language is obviously more personal than some piece of furniture. Your language is who you are. It's where you come from. It's your family. And the standard is just this powerful fiction that can be used to keep the "wrong sort of people" down.
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So that's what I mean when we say everyone has an accent. I mean everyone has an accent. I mean you can choose to ignore it or you can choose to embrace it, but when you open your mouth to speak, you sound like you.
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Any claim that you "hate" a particular accent or that a particular accent sounds "uneducated" or "stupid" is really about hating the people who talk that way, hating their culture, hating who they are.
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If you wouldn't feel comfortable making openly racist, homophobic, poor-bashing, or misogynistic statements? Then you need to check yourself before commenting on, e.g., black English, gay speech, "bad grammar", or vocal fry. Because these comments ain't about language.
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