The Cost of Code Switching
Loneliness was my reason for code-switching and the reason I stopped.
If you look into my internet search history, you’ll see questions regarding the different ways to speak English. The different accents, slang, and other idiosyncratic patterns, all of which separate one speaker from another.
The language, with its diverse social dialects, is the only one that I have spoken with fluency throughout my entire life.
Being as authentic as possible not only highlights the differences between you and another but it connects you in a way that other forms of communication do not. Younger me would say it “wasn’t that deep”, that the way we speak is just a representation of where we come from, as if changing the way you speak from the place that you came from to another is an inevitable feat.
Where I come from is Gary, Indiana, formerly called The Magic City, then grabbed the title of The Murder Capital, now known as a ghost town. Our city is reigning champion as the number one has-been city, the “once was” of Indiana. When I left the city, I spoke one English. Within my first year of college, I began to speak English I and English for those who understand me, because in the eyes of those who don’t, there are two kinds.
In my list of university choices, I chose a PWI. I felt like The Fresh Prince, going from growing up in a predominantly black neighborhood, attending predominantly black schools, to a predominantly white university. I was unprepared for just how socially stunted the shift would make me.
I thought to be accepted, I needed to be palatable. My test scores weren’t convincing enough, my way of speaking was the most important factor to prove I belonged there. Changing it to match my peers was my way to a village, on the road of fitting in. I began to curate my personality and what it once was became lost, wading away into the abyss. Talking became exhausting, simply speaking had taken away all the breath in my lungs.
I struggled to put into simple words to properly explain how this felt; the best comparison I could come up with is similar to how it must feel being bilingual and having to translate everything in your head before speaking. I think of code switching in that way; it was harder for me to get my point across when having to clean up my vernacular.
In English 103, a general requirement course, we were assigned a multimodal project titled “What Needs Changing?”
For this assignment, we were tasked to choose a segment, angle, or event within American culture we believe needs changing. I referred back to my city, the overpowering amount of liquor stores and fast-food chains versus the number of grocery stores.
The longer I spoke, the angrier I became at the system’s disregard of our health crisis, the more my accent slipped through. Embarrassed by my emotion, I slowed down my speech toward the end and made my voice softer so as not to make another mistake and speak in the opposite of what is considered proper English. I directed most of my attention to the onboard presentation, hoping my artwork would speak for the words I couldn’t say. Here is a language I have spoken my entire life, and I had to relearn how to speak it.
“All black people code switch,” my roommate once told me. This was said with an underlying tone of ‘you’re not special’.
“But this is new for me. I’m struggling.”
What I was doing felt more damning than code-switching. It wasn’t quite as challenging as alternating between two languages, but it was more than simply toning down my accent. I began to change my interests as well, my entire personality was being stripped away with everything that individualized me. My idea of classics and theirs clashed as conversations in classrooms carried on. They didn’t need to learn what was considered a classic in the black community, it was understood that only their idea of classics fit the definition. The concept of code-switching, for me, felt synonymous with selling my soul.
I began to wonder why code-switching around people who spoke differently than me in nonprofessional settings was my default. Humans create languages and from them, accents are born and with it comes slang, but who decides that some are more acceptable than others? (rhetorical question; the answer will always be white supremacy)
I didn’t make friends, genuine friends--the kind that invite you out for lunch, buy your favorite snacks when they walk past them in the grocery store, and listen to your daily rants about the lack of proper R&B presentation at the Grammys--until my sophomore year. I met them all at once, naturally forming us into a group. We were a small group but our closeness turned us into a spiritual hive. Right away I noticed how different we all were from each other, the different walks of life we ventured from and not just coming from different regions of Indiana but the way we communicated.
Our interests were different, but we shared them with one another, excited to learn what makes the other special. They introduced me to the music they grew up listening to and I showed them the songs that defined my childhood. We were all taking a piece of our identity and sharing it with one another, each of us experiencing a different life from each other’s eyes.
Mostly I appreciated how different we each sounded. Their accents were a representation of all that shaped them, and it was made whole with the way they shared their hearts. They proudly represented the cities that birthed them with their mannerisms, unknowingly shaming me into confidence to do the same.
I couldn’t force myself to be accepted, I only needed time and patience to accept myself.
I realized this fully on the first sunny day after a full week’s time of grey clouds and rainstorms. I walked down our modernized campus, finished with the day’s teachings. With the streets full of eager students excited to join each other in enjoying the newly Spring weather, I saw a boy I went to high school with. I did a double take when I saw him.
Despite us only sharing one or two conversations with the presence of mutual friends, seeing him gave me the same feeling as running into a distant cousin or a teacher outside of school hours. When he approached his friends I turned and watched him, noticing how different he seemed. Despite him being in an all-white fraternity, that wasn’t as important as his voice. His accent was gone, and it felt like the boy I thought I once knew was as well.
To a trained ear, you would notice how unnatural it was, like he was doing an impression of someone else. He never saw me and I’m sure if he did, he would pretend I didn’t exist, but I thought of him long after. I wondered if he was faking like I had been or is this was finally being himself after growing up in an environment that didn’t allow him to.
I thought of myself in that moment as well. I wondered if I hadn’t met my friends, hadn’t once again relished in the comfort of being in close proximity to people who looked like me, who would I be? Would I allow imposter syndrome and loneliness to fully alter who I was? Was it worth separating my body from my mind to prove I was deserving of acceptance from those who would never?
Where would I have been if I realized early on that there were people who already had an idea of who I was before I spoke. What places would I have been taken to if I understood that no amount of studying linguistics would change the mind of someone who doesn’t want to shift their perception of you. After that day I gave up. I am blessed to have a voice that matches the sound of the women who raised me, the friends I shared secrets with, and the sisters whose screams I matched. With every new person I meet that may wince at my diction, I don’t correct it because the price to pay for authenticity isn’t comparable to the connections you may lose without it.