Close-Minded Captioning

When I was watching The Food Network recently, I happened upon a cooking competition featuring a chef from Syria. While I do not remember his name, I do remember that, although he had only a slight Syrian accent and was perfectly understandable in English, all of his speech was captioned as though he was speaking a foreign language. This happens a lot when people have heavy accents, and it is useful for those of us who do not understand what they are saying; however, this captioning is an example of racialization. By treating people who are speaking an English that is only marginally different than what is accepted by mainstream (read: white) audiences, television executives are marking people with accents as "other" and therefore unAmerican.