Code Switching Essay

Do you change the way you speak, depending on who you’re talking to? Do you Code Switch?

             No, but I’ve had plenty of confrontation over the subject of code switching in my life anyways. I’ve noticed my dad does, for example when he’s at work, or when he’s with his friends. But even then, he talks differently with people he has recently become friends with, then when he’s with people he grew up with. It’s like a different side of him when he’s with people he’s always known them. It’s always natural, but it seems more fluid or…just normal, when he talks with them. Like with people he grew up with it’ll be more of a “yo, whats good” while with friends he recently acquired, it’s more of a “Hey man, what’s up?”

 

            Me , myself, I don’t do it as often or as severely as he does.  I’ve had people ask me why I talk “white”, or why I talk that way. When peopleusually ask me this, it’s generally not in a kind or happy tone, and it usually leads up to, the ever so wonderful. “So you think your better than me or what?” My favorite question…ever. I’ve lost friends over the subject of my speech. It’s like people think I’m just being rude, like I’m talking this way because I put myself above them or something.

 

           I live in Germantown, on the rougher side and I didn’t really have any friends that lived near me until I came to Sla. I’ve just never….felt like I fit in with the kids around there. I did used to have one friend around there, and I really liked her...but her friends didn’t like me. They’d question why I was with her, and why she even liked me…

 “What you mean why? I hang out wit who ever I want..”

“ Well you can’t jus leave us for…her.”

“Im not leavin yall, I’m just talkin to her calm down..”

“Why?? She think she better than all of us anyway”

 

           At this point I wanted to speak up….but I’ve never been very confident, or one to speak up when I’m nervous or shy….but I wanted to tell them I wasn’t being ignorant. That I wasn’t trying to disrespect them by talking the way I do…That it was just the way I talk, and that isn’t something I could change, even if I wanted to. She didn’t stop hanging out with me though, not until she moved one day. She was having a sleep over at her new house, and I really wanted to go, I begged my mom and dad. They’d met her, she’d gone places with us, but they said no…because they had never actually met her parents…After that we stopped talking…and I lost the one friend I had, who had lived near me.

 

          I went to summer camp at a church, behind my house, one year. The kids there were loud...and all seemed to know each other, and when I don’t 

know  anyone I stay to myself. We had an introduction circle, and the only person who spoke in the same “accent” as me was the camp counselor, and she was white. I felt awkward and out of place, not just because I was shy, also because these weren’t the people I generally found myself with. Some people didn’t talk to me because of the way I talked. So I never really had that many friends there, even the ones I did have, wouldn’t talk to me now if they saw me on the street. Some forgot my name, others just don’t care that much.

 

          I went to a private school most of my life, and as you progressed into higher grades, you could find less and less diversity in the student population. In about 7^th grade I was officially the only person who wasn’t white. There was a Mexican boy named Raul, who lived in Germantown too, and he always told me how I didn’t belong there…because I’m not black. He wasn’t the first to say that, and he surely wasn’t the last. When he said it, Ireally felt offended that he would take me away from my race like that. Simply because of the way I speak. I guess I got used to being told I’m not black though. I have friends who tell me it now, and I most likely will in the future, that’s not really something I can help though. They don’t mean it in a mean way. They just say it, like they’ll call me an “Oreo”, “White girl”, “ you’re a white girl, you just have black skin.”. These aren’t usually said to be mean, it’s just the way they see me I guess.