Whose bias do you tweak?
What is code switching and why you should do it less.
Most marginalised people feel like they can not exist as they are (under the gaze of privileged people) without it affecting their physical, psychological or financial safety. To minimise any negative impact on our safety, we constantly monitor and adapt our behaviour to "suit" the situation. This behaviour is called code-switching.
Code-switching comes at a massive cost to marginalised people. It causes us to spend time worrying about cultural compatibility instead of things that matter to us. More importantly, it prevents us from providing information that updates cultural norms.
“The cost of code-switching is immense as it causes minorities to spend time worrying about cultural compatibility, rather than dwelling on things that do matter,” she said. For people of color, this can often be frustrating, and it can have a negative effect on their mental health and wellbeing”. - Chandra Arthur, TEDx
Almost every privileged person I have spoken to is unaware of code-switching, how it affects marginalised people around them, and what they can do to address the underlying issues that compel minorities to carry this burden.
By the end of this article, I will have shared a few personal examples of these issues, I will have shared a few activities that privileged people can do to tweak their biases. I also hope to have shown why marginalised people should reduce the amount they code-switch.
Disclaimer: In this article I’m particularly using the lenses of race and class even though code-switching generalises beyond these two points of view.
When they see us
Privileged people carry learned biases (from media or role models) that often cause them to discriminate (sometimes unknowingly) against marginalised people. These moments remind marginalised people that they are negatively judged, guilty before innocent in the face of discrimination by people of privilege.
I would like point out that code-switching is a form of oppression. It works very well in countries that have a thinly veiled illusion of equality e.g. UK. It’s harder to call people and institutions oppressors, when they are oppressing in very subtle ways that are hard for people to see.
In the following real life examples you will see how this plays out and why it is so damaging.
“You sound a bit… rough around the edges”
It is common for marginalised people to lose access to opportunities because they are not the "right fit". From as early as my first year of university, the way I sound has jeopardised my access to opportunities. I had a phone interview for an internship with a well-known investment bank. After acing the questions, I asked the interviewer for feedback. The interviewer told me that my answers were great, but I "sound a bit rough around the edges".
The interviewer then told me she changed her voice to sound more "professional" and recommended that I do the same. The interviewer shared this advice intending to help, but I found it odd. Their advice warned me that my voice would cause people to regard me as inferior and potentially stifle my career advancement. The unsubtle version of what she said was the following; ‘you can not be yourself here, because the people here are classist and racist and as a result you should change because of their biases’. Ridiculous. Maybe your colleagues should learn to not be classist and racist. How about that?
Disclaimer: At this point in the article I stop being pedantic about every single sentence because it was taking me ages to get this article out.
“Why are you following me around?!”
For comfort, I normally wear a tracksuit or cargos and a hoodie. Some privileged people are surprised when I tell them that I will likely be followed by a security guard, if I walk around a store in a relatively nice area.
Just my mere existence in a place is enough to cause suspicion. I am immediately regarded as a potential criminal. Anything positive I’ve done in life does not matter, my skin colour, the way I speak and the way I dress already paint me in a light under their gaze. People see me not as individual but as a group or type of person.
This situation happens because the security guard harbours incorrect assumptions about who I am. These incorrect assumptions may threaten both my physical and psychological safety. As a young black male I’m painfully aware of this.
Sometimes I want to be like Chief Keef and just flash cash so people snap out of their biases and feel safer just so that I can have some peace.
Lessons
Privileged people need to tweak their biases
Review your assumptions and beliefs about minorities
As a person in a position of privilege, you have a moral obligation to critically assess the assumptions and beliefs you have about others. The presence of any unconscious or unfairly negative bias will inevitably negatively impact the lives of marginalised people.
In order to have a more accurate picture of reality you need to update your beliefs. It is difficult to review these biases and beliefs because they usually are unconscious. You don’t know you have them. You can correct this by actively going out of your way to seek differing views, opinions and ways of seeing things. Don’t be like the blind men and the elephant.
You need external help to do this. Therapy, unconscious bias training, whatever it is, you should make the effort to do it.
Marginalised people should code switch less
“What matters is not to know the world but to change it.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
Institutions are more receptive to change
If this was the 1970s then fine. Do not wear your durag to work. Do not wear a hoodie to work. Do not wear coloured nail polish. Change your voice to fit in. Do not speak patois with your friends. Do not report your colleague that has said something racially insensitive.
Fortunately, for us its 2022. In the majority of situations it’s going to be safe for you to be yourself to some extent. I often see people forget this when it comes to the professional setting. A lot of employers such as PensionBee have inclusion baked into the DNA of their companies. But, that’s half of the solution. The other half is to help these institutions uncover their blind spots by going into work truly as yourself.
Wear your durag to work and if anybody has an issue ask them ‘why’. I understand I may be coming from a place of privilege as I write this but any sensible employer would be silly for preventing an individual from wearing a durag or calling it unprofessional.
It will give others permission to be themselves
Once one person starts to be authentically themselves it becomes contagious. Any individual that takes the risk to be themselves makes it easier for everyone else that comes after them.
The idea that you should force yourself to fit in and work to the top is antiquated. After decades of grinding you will be lonely, you will have brainwashed yourself into being like the oppressors, everyone else that’s below you is more likely to follow this path. Continuing the oppressive regime.
Be the change you want to see in the world.
To make change someone needs to provide the counterfactual
Back in the day, Vietnam had a food crisis which resulted in many malnourished children.
However, there were a few kids in a couple of communities that were healthy. The government was perplexed so they went to speak to the communities and parents of the healthy children.
They found that there was a widespread idea that shrimp (which is abundantly available in Vietnam) was bad for kids and you shouldn’t feed it to them.
The parents of the healthy kids were feeding their kids shrimp in private but in public were going along with this cultural norm that shrimp is bad.
To fix their problem the Vietnamese government worked with the parents of healthy kids to tell other parents that shrimp is good and totally safe.
Crisis averted.
In order to make a positive change it takes someone who is willing to provide the evidence that shows that the commonly held belief is incorrect.
This idea is called positive deviance. See the YT video below for more info.
You being your true self is an act of positive deviance against whatever antiquated cultural norms that exist that are no longer serving us.
I have another example of this.
I went to Harrods once dressed in “roadman attire”, because of this I was followed around the store by a security guard who held the incorrect assumption that I am more likely to cause issues due to the way I am dressed or the colour of my skin.
However, by dressing in “roadman attire” and not causing any issues, being polite, I have presented information that invalidates the assumptions and beliefs of the security guard. In the future that may cause him to think twice about who he follows around the store based on some arbitrary physical attributes. This is positive deviance.
The problem is that people do one act of positive deviance and start to conform to make themselves feel slightly more comfortable.
Let’s say, I no longer want to be treated like a potential criminal as I walk through a store.
If I go to Harrods dressed in “culturally acceptable” attire. I still do not think I'm a criminal, but now security guards also don't think I'm a criminal (potentially). But I may now start to feel like wearing suits more often to avoid the negative evaluation
If I start to wear suits more often, who is going to walk around the store in “roadman attire” not being a criminal to disconfirm the security guards assumptions?
If nobody presents the opposing view, how will the status quo be shifted?
I say that to say, conforming will feel more comfortable for you but it is only helping perpetuate whatever stereotypes and beliefs exist in the system. Acts of positive deviance allows us to provide information to the system that breaks down the unhelpful cultural norms and stereotypes.
Their bias should not be your problem (even though they will make it your problem)
Black and Third-World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbian and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions. There is a constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future. (Audre Lorde 1995)
— Nora Berenstain, Epistemic Exploitation
You should not have to constantly monitor and adjust your behaviour because of their unfounded biases. To some extent we can’t avoid this. What we shouldn’t do is let this become a crushing weight that gets us to behave in ways that are destructive to ourselves and our people.
For example, at my university there were not that many black people. For a surprising amount of people at my uni I was the first black person they were meeting.
This lead to the feeling that I am representing my race at this ‘elite’ institution. That’s a lot of pressure for one person to hold. So I shrugged it off.
Holding on to the idea that you are a representative of your race in ‘elite’ spaces can lead to two unhealthy extremes. You become Carlton or you become a roadman, let’s call them Digga Degree. When in reality you are somewhere between those two.
The Carltons are afraid of letting their race down. They believe that the white people will ‘look down’ on their race because their actions as an individual. Specifically when the actions are not what is ‘culturally white’. They do everything in their power to be ‘culturally white’ and not ‘culturally black’.
The Digga Degrees of the world are afraid of not looking cool, cool being the prevailing stereotype for young black men. They play up to the stereotypes that exist in culture so that they get more attention from the privileged ladies and cool points from the privileged males. They’ll start using more slang than they would normally, listen to more drill/grime cool music than normal.
The end result is polarisation. Things are presented as either one or the other. A binary choice even though there’s a spectrum of behaviour. There is not two ways to be black. There are many ways.
The point here is that because both Carlton and Digga Degree are so concerned with external validation from the privileged group, they end up confirming and playing up to their stereotypes and biases. This undermines themselves and to some extent their race. They are not showing that it is possible to be anything outside of the stereotypes.
You do not want to start to unintentionally lose/hate yourself, your culture etc
It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others... One ever feels his twoness, - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
- W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
By code switching you are confirming that you, as your are, is not enough for the given situation. For example, you believe that speaking the way you do will cause you to lose your job, have fewer friends, not be accepted. So you will change the way you speak so that you do not suffer any of those perceived consequences.
If left unchecked you will end up aspiring to whiteness (privilege, in my context) because it feels like it is the “safest” way to be. As a result, you will feel that being you (black, in my context) is not enough
In any environment, you should be able to exist as you are, without feeling like it will effect your physical, psychological or financial safety.
I feel a sense of responsibility to making the above statement true. As someone who has amassed some amount of privilege I think I should be taking the risks that others may not be able to afford to.
We should all work together to make this positive change in the world by simply** being ourselves and having open and honest conversations with each other.
Thanks for reading!
If you’ve made it this far I would love to hear your thoughts on code switching.
Do you do code switch? To what extent? Have you had experiences similar to the ones I wrote about? Am I being over dramatic?
** Being yourself can actually be pretty hard to do
It requires you to be open and honest with yourself. You have to critically look at your own beliefs and preferences and work out if they are truly yours or if you’ve just learned to like it from someone else.