Articles
Based on our research and the work of others, we argue that code-switching is one of the key dilemmas that black employees face around race at work. While it is frequently seen as crucial for professional advancement, code-switching often comes at a great psychological cost. If leaders are truly seeking to promote inclusion and address social inequality, they must begin by understanding why a segment of their workforce believes that they cannot truly be themselves in the office.
“The main insight: We caution this notion of encouraging everyone to be authentic,” said Brooke Buckman, assistant professor of global leadership and management at FIU Busines who co-authored “Being Your True Self At Work”, published in the July 2019 issue of the Academy of Management Annals. “In a lot of instances being your true self isn’t always treated equally in the business world.”
I chose option 3 (with a bit of option 2) when I was in my 20s. It was how I survived. Mostly because I’ve never been a blender; can’t blend in to save my life. Even when I’ve tried, I’ve failed. And as a once hardcore ENFP, I just stood out. For good and for bad. And I was going to stand out in my lily white newsroom…
The Seattle-based organization Black Women in STEM 2.0 hosted a discussion called “Code Switching or Soul Switching” at Amazon earlier this year. The six women panelists discussed what the role of code-switching has been in their careers — and how the practice gives away one’s soul.
And so, code-switching in professional environments, particularly white-dominated workplaces, is a common experience for black people. University student Makella believes she has done it in the past in an attempt to be seen as 'just another employee'. "Work environments tend not to be safe spaces to truly be yourself, especially for people of colour. [There is a] very narrow pendulum of either being seen as 'too much' or being completely unacknowledged so code-switching temporarily helps to balance these experiences."
Michelle Obama’s childhood story shows how she was first made aware of the expectations put upon people of color to behave certain ways in certain situations. And as her husband ran for president decades later, this knowledge would carry over into how she viewed his campaign.
“It becomes problematic when you’re in an environment, where you feel like the only way you can survive is by code-switching. If you show any sign of individuality, that’s going to be frowned upon, penalized or even exclusion if you don’t do it. You feel like you’re being forced to change your personality or you’re not allowed to wear your hair in a certain hairstyle,” Thompson said. “When they’re marginalized in the workplace, sometimes you are punished and penalized in a really subtle way.”
But because dominant culture is white, whiteness has been baked into institutions as natural, normal and legitimate. So there’s much more incentive for people of color to code-swich – to adapt to the dominant culture to improve their prospects. White people rarely, if ever, feel this same pressure in their daily lives.
“I was talking to some student leaders and one of the questions that they asked was, basically, how can I effectively code switch at my internship?” Sanders told ESSENCE. “And I’m like, ‘You all are sitting at one of the most premier universities in the country, and a Black university at that, and you have the audacity to sit in here and ask me, how can you code switch? I don’t have an answer for you.’ What you’re basically asking me is how can I be more palatable for my coworkers that don’t look like me.”