Black and biracial Americans wouldn’t need to code-switch if we lived in a post-racial societyPosted in Articles, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2018-08-17 17:15Z by Steven |
Black and biracial Americans wouldn’t need to code-switch if we lived in a post-racial society
The Conversation
2018-08-17
Chandra D. L. Waring, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Race and Ethnic Studies
University of Wisconsin, Whitewater
 For black and biracial Americans, the pressures to adapt to a dominant white culture – and surrender their unique sense of self – can be suffocating. Gumenyuk Dmitriy/Shutterstock.com |
Boots Riley’s new film “Sorry to Bother You” does anything but apologize.
In telling the story of Cassius, a young black man who becomes an extraordinarily successful telemarketer after he starts using his “white voice,” it showcases the magnitude of racial and class oppression.
Colloquially, Cassius’ use of a “white voice” is known as code-switching, and the film highlights something that most African-Americans could probably tell you: The ability to code-switch is often a prerequisite to becoming a successful black person in America.
As a race scholar and sociologist, I’ve studied biracial Americans who engage in code-switching. I found that the ability to deftly code-switch has some real advantages. But it also has its fair share of pitfalls.
More broadly, it has led me to wonder what the persistence of code-switching tells us about race, opportunities and making connections in America today…
Read the entire article here.