[GlobalFrog]

Actually, all French speakers for a very long time have mocked other accents, especially from France, therefore they have a kind of specialty of mocking themselves. Parisian have always mocked regional accents, every region was mocking other regional accents, and even accents from two cities 50 km apart are mocked from both sides. Other accents are just mocked the same as french people make fun of other french people regional accents. I would say that the accent mocking in France is less about racism than about the structure of french society, which is extremely centralized historically, and regions have always been very defensive about their specificities, like the local dialects, languages and the accent is part of that. Some regional languages were even forbidden in some places not so long ago. Racism in France being looked by the accent prism is a foreign worlview with a very low relevance level. It avoids the real and problematic issues of racism that exists. But indeed there is a link: racism flourishes when you do not see or hear people different from yourself. This can happen everywhere and mocking other accents is just using one parameter to insulate your own social group from the rest of the world and diminish/blame/mock the others. If you live in a country where regional accents are not a thing, you will find another parameter and anyone can say through the prism of this local parameter that racism is worse in this country compared to another. My point here is that racism can be everywhere, and has first to be fought on its causes, because symptoms can be very different from places to places and fighting them might help, but not solve.