Flipping the Switch
Note: This post will be the first of a multi-part series called Well-Spoken, Naturally; a series where I’ll be examining my relationship with language, it’s meaning to my life and my feelings about it all.
Language is a sensitive subject. It is sensitive to the native who doesn’t want to see their culture lost in an ever-changing world and it is sensitive to the person who is trying to integrate in a new country. It is sensitive for me because I’m a black, U.S. American woman and code switching is so necessary, that it’s virtually an art form.
Many might look at my last statement with curiosity and confusion. How could being black, U.S. American or a woman have any effect on learning (or not learning) a language? For this post, the answer is baggage; and we have A LOT of it. I speak from my own intersections because it’s the life I know, but I don’t deny that there are plenty of other intersections that bring their own baggage into language learning situations.
YOU’RE SO (____), FOR A BLACK GIRL.
Personally, language has always distinguished me. Distinguished me from being “like them”; the less desirable, less intelligent, less cultured, less respected portion of the black community. My entire life has been filled with short-sighted compliments such as, “you’re so well spoken/articulate/intelligent, for a black girl”. Somehow I was black, but not black-black, the way some non-black people describe those of us who are black and well-spoken, as if our black skin is just an unfortunate circumstance we were born into. As if to say that if only I weren’t black, I could have been viewed as an equal.
And I was content to let these comments go because I didn’t understand what about them made me uncomfortable. Somewhere down the line, I came to see this as an actual compliment which is SO foul. Why was it okay to be good at anything for a black girl? And who is setting these standards?
In the U.S., because I understood the importance of my communication skills at a very early age, it has been ingrained in me that these mistakes just aren’t really ok. Black Americans are taught from a young age that if we want to be considered respectable, hireable, intelligent; we don’t speak to people who don’t look like us the way we speak at home or with friends (generally speaking, though there’s the occasional Iggy Azealia or Eminem in the group that could almost get away with saying the N-word, but um, the answer is still a resounding NO). Doing so, automatically opens us up to prejudice, discrimination and racism even more than we are already exposed to it. Black people have been code switching since forever, and it’s just one more white-centric idea that we have to contend with on a daily basis.
THE ART OF CODE SWITCHING.
In the States, the way you speak can mean the difference between walking away from a situation with a police officer harassed, but alive, versus the alternative which could be getting illegally searched, arrested or in the worst, yet-sadly-common cases, your family may have to identify your lifeless body and if you think I’m exaggerating, familiarize yourself with the story of Sandra Bland and numerous other unarmed black people who were victims of inherent bias and perceived a threat by non-black police officers based on the way we speak. If the same words were spoken by a white woman rather than Bland, it’s pretty safe to assume that she would be alive today. She probably wouldn’t have been arrested because she wouldn’t have been perceived as threatening; only as a woman who knows her rights and asserts them. This is only one of the endless list of reasons why our parents teach us how to speak to people who aren’t black, differently; to keep us alive.
This doesn’t end with interactions with police. It continues every time I hear someone say something to the effect of ‘if black (American) people want to be treated equally by white (American) people, they should start by speaking proper English like we speak in (white) America. There are so many issues with this that I don’t even know where to begin. 1st, is such a white-centric statement that I don’t even know what to do with it; furthermore, I know with certainty that many of the British would disagree with American English being considered “proper” English, in fact, they don’t even call what Americans speak ‘English’, they call it American. 2nd, black Americans are U.S. Americans and English is our first language; comparing us to other native English speakers is implicitly stating that either or both of those facts is false. 3rd, the problem with racism is not how the oppressed act.
Consider: if I go to job interview, the interviewer may not want to hire a black person but since discrimination laws exist (ha!), they can focus on my language use and decide instead that I seem uneducated or unprofessional and just happen to be black.
So I’m sorry that it is difficult for me let go of my issues with language, but I’m not really sorry. This is what my life has been like for 30 years, I can’t un-learn it all in 365 days. But I’m trying. I’m trying to learn a second language to break stereotypes, to make myself more cultured and well-rounded, improve my marketability in the workforce and to open up my world.
For these reasons and more, I have difficulty opening myself up to learning a new language. Learning a new language means that I will be at risk; risk of sounding like I don’t know what I’m talking about, uneducated, with poor pronunciation, all impressions I’ve worked hard not to give. And yet the underlying issue is that this is a type of racism that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to move past. The thoughts and feelings I have about language have everything to do with racism. African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is not the cause of racism, it’s a rationalization for it. But the very idea that we have to conform to another standard to receive fair and equal treatment is racist in itself.
