In This Post I Share...
How I began code-switching and why
The impact code-switching had on my individuality
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As an Afro-Hispanic American working in America, I’ve felt the need to tone down my persona in order to maneuver some professional spaces only to further my career. It’s not that I wanted to, but I felt that in order for my career to advance, I had to blend in and get on by smoothly. For most of the time I participated in fellowships, organizations, and/or professional career opportunities, I was the minority in the crowd, and in many cases, I would be the only minority present in rooms or meetings where white people are the majority. Sociology coined this act of personality change as code-switching which is the act of a person shifting their cultural traits, language, and mannerism to suit different circumstances with the purpose of making good impressions on others.
I first learned the concept of code-switching in my Sociology 100 class at the University of Rhode Island. The first time I tried code-switching was when I worked for Nordstrom in Providence Place Mall. Working at Nordstrom just for a few weeks, I noticed that customers of colors would often be left alone wandering the sales floor staring at products and waiting for sales agents to approach them. Many of the customers often had to approach me, the shoe-shiner at the time, for assistance. Although the sales agents worked on commission, they still selected whom they approached for sales.
I continued to observe this behavior happening time and again. One day a client who was a person of color was shopping around in the men's department for nice dress shoes. He picked up a pair of Allen Edmond wingtip dress shoes priced at $300 and one of the sales agents who were white individual said out loud but in a tone meant to keep for himself, “ I don’t know why you’re looking at them, you can’t afford them anyway” It was at that moment when I confirmed that some sales agents were stereotyping the customers.
Later in the day, I brought up what I’ve witnessed to another sales agent who was a person of color and he explained that it happens because the white customers typically tend to spend more. He then let me know that the code switches to get sales.
After that conversation, I decided to try using this approach with my shoe-shine customers. Most of my clients were white folks and through daily conversation with them, I learned that most white folks barely used slang to speak which was the opposite to how I spoke with my circle of friends. I downloaded the dictionary app on my phone and created an account to increase my vocabulary and use less slang. Every day the dictionary app suggested a word of the day and I’d challenge myself to use it at least once throughout the day. I kept this practice for months and one day a sales agent told me I sounded like a confused dictionary whenever I spoke to him! After I told him of my practice, we both laughed.
I began reading up on golf because many of my customers enjoyed golfing- I, on the other hand, had no personal interest in the sport myself. As part of code -switching, I became good at toning down parts of my character traits such as my straightforwardness that can be confused as aggressiveness. I wanted to sound kinder and become less controversial which in themselves can be great goals, but my intentions were not genuine at the start; therefore, by code-switching, I began to chip away at and develop my true character because then I started to even downplay or completely avoid conversations regarding the unfairness minorities experience here in America. Conversations that were extremely important to me and my personal experience.
Code-switching was something I became good at and I started to use it in conjunction with other concepts in the search of growth opportunities. For instance, at URI I also learned about the concept of tokenism-- a theory that essentially suggests that some folks hide their guilty prejudices behind the justification of “ I have a minority friend or my relative has a relationship with a POC, etc.” I already knew from personal experience this concept was true because I had a friend from Texas who told me that he disliked Mexicans, called them lazy and all sorts of racial slur yet he denied his racist tendencies because I was his “good” friend.
By combining code-switching to fit in and understanding tokenism to find opportunity in places I knew I'd have to be the token, I found myself in environments I just didn’t feel like I fit in. For example, I joined a national committee where I was the only person of color and the youngest member. One day, I joined this committee for dinner welcoming out of state guests. About 30 minutes into the dinner and one of the committee members begin to speak and, as part of the speech, celebrates their diversity and points directly at me to suggest that I am the proof. As he pointed, all the starred at me and I could help but feel like a prejudiced scapegoat. I never wanted to slap my face so hard.
Lesson
Denying yourself who you are is not strategic for the sake of advancement is not strategic, it’s stressful and damaging. The lesson I’ve learned by code-switching is to just stay who you are. Part of why I’m writing this series is also to help restore myself. By code-switching and using tokenism to advance me, I realized that I placed myself in groups and environments where the person they valued was who I felt I had to pretend to be. Although code-switching did enhance my communication skills due to my vocabulary increasing efforts and opened doors to some opportunities, I still argue that the risk of using this tactic is not worth the reward. Remaining authentic also saves you time. Take my experience as an example, I’m nearing 30 years of age, but feel I feel reborn and relearning who I truly am. Ironically, I am even re-learning about how I feel the most comfortable communicating. If you just stay true to yourself, by my age, you’ll be spending more time discovering new interests and joys of life, instead of inquiring about your past to figure who you were all along.
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