What’s the password?
We enter these secret codes daily.
Why? It’s all about protection, us wrapping our precious information and assets with padded, warm layers of security. We use codes to prevent or annihilate pesky threats like the strongest insecticide. We use them like fences—cueing strangers to keep out and respect our privacy. Overall, secret codes and passwords are designed to enhance our safety. For many people who have been racially and ethnically minoritized, we use them to sink—immerse ourselves into bottomless, rich cultural pools with those who speak our language, identify with our experiences, and simply ‘get it’.
When it comes to dealing with ruthless oppressive forces and race-based traumatic stress symptoms, it’s not uncommon for some people to use codes to cover themselves. It’s not unheard of for someone to enter the code ‘1-2-3-4’ when they’re surrounded by what’s familiar—specific neighborhoods, for example—and abruptly change the password to ‘4-9-0-5’ when they cross the threshold and into foreign territory.
What prompts people to switch the code?
When in Rome, some people do as the Romans do. When in predominately white spaces, many people who have been deemed racially and ethnically inferior become contortionists who bend, mold, and reshape in an attempt to align with white social norms and communication standards—all for social acceptance and survival, which are never guaranteed. That’s what oppression looks like. For some, their friends, partners, therapists, and colleagues have switched the code at work, home, and school while they were completely oblivious— never compelled to think once about the fact that people do this every day. That’s what privilege looks like.
What is this phenomenon? What’s its name?
It goes by code-switching, and it wasn’t born yesterday. Code-switching refers to the conscious or unconscious linguistic, appearance-related, and behavioral transformation that individuals from racially and ethnically marginalized communities undergo within certain social contexts—such as predominately white spaces—in order to assimilate.
Access granted. Here’s a glimpse of some aspects that individuals alter via code-switching:
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Language |
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Vocal Tone |
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Dialect/Vernacular (e.g. SAE vs. AAVE) |
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Facial Expression |
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Body Language |
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Eye Contact |
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Appearance (e.g. straight vs. natural hair) |
Many of these aspects are forms of metacommunication, human nonverbal cues that tend to speak louder than words—such as tone, eye contact, and facial expression; these features connect to the ventral vagal complex (VVC) or nerve that runs throughout body parts and organs from the head to the diaphragm—such as the face, larynx, and heart. Ventral vagal activation helps humans co-regulate, connect, feel calm, as well as discern safety. In the minds of all humans, whatever appears to be different cues danger, and, unfortunately, this is one reason why people who come from underrepresented cultural backgrounds and have different vocal intonation, for example, code-switch; we do it to duck and dodge police brutality, microaggressions, racial profiling, and stereotyping. Ultimately, code-switching also serves to help people in predominately white spaces feel comfortable when they experience a fear of somehow being harmed by the harmless.
One could argue that code-switching is a racial trauma rendition of fawning, a behavior that relates to the fawn stress response. When humans encounter real and imagined threats in their environments, some people fight back, run away, freeze, or even fold—by collapsing, preparing for death. Others, however, tend to fawn or basically become people-pleasers who aim to appease, gain approval or acceptance, and remain in the clear at all times. Fawning often looks like code-switching, perpetually saying yes, or consistently agreeing with others in order to avoid conflict.
Overall, code-switching and fawning can be exhausting, and it’s a shame to feel like you have to lose yourself in order to gain social, emotional, and physical safety. If you find yourself dealing with race-based traumatic stress and changing your code daily or even multiple times throughout the day, consider working with a licensed therapist who ‘gets it’ and has a passion for helping you help yourself cope in a society that criminalizes your mere existence.
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