Confusing Color Codes.

As I was growing up in Los Angeles, I was exposed to racialized intersectionalities, commonly through interactions, interpersonal relations, and heavy media consumption. As a young, easily impressionable kid, I would mimic slang that I was used to regularly hearing from my friend Gerardo, and as a result, I was quickly reprimanded for my misuse of speech. Since then, in developing some amount of social awareness, I’ve become increasingly privy to how I and others have become dialectical imposters when conversing and utilizing phrases, slang, and other vernacular that one would commonly attribute to another cultural group. At first, it seems innocent; words such as “crash out,” “finna,” “hella,” “fam,” and “periodt” are all phrases developed and associated with Black communities. Yet, everyone somehow has integrated that into their vocabulary. Why is that?. This is what many commonly refer to as “code-switching,” which is nothing new to our social world, and I’d be remiss if I didn't write a typical narrative detailing its consequences and placement within society. However, that isn’t the main point of my writing; instead, I’d like to focus on the verbal blackface that’s been normalized and commodified within the 21st century, specifically about the verbal manipulation of African American Vernacular English (AAVE for short), as well as how this microlevel attitude has become a legitimized descendant of colonial domination. To unfold my argument, I’d like to dive into three relevant submissions that aim to elevate my issues with the entire concept of code-switching in its entirety.
The concept of code-switching was coined by linguist Einar Haugen in the 1950s, and it refers to “when people temporarily alter or adjust their behaviors to optimize the comfort of others and, perhaps, to achieve a desired outcome” (Richard Smith 2022). This concept is commonly associated with Black Americans and alterations to their voice, personality, and look, all to succeed and find equal opportunity within white-dominated spaces. I highly recommend watching the 2018 movie Sorry to Bother You for a comedic yet critical analysis of a modern iteration of this concept. Code-switching manifests in mindsets shaped by their interactions with the environments and the cultures present, and the effect of whether it’s harmful or not is eliminated through the reinforcement and consistency of hearing these words—habitus can be used to break down this concept. Habitus focuses on the mental structures based on what we learn, experience, and act within the social world, both as an individual and as a collective (Ritzer & Stepnisky, 2017). In this instance, our habitus has directed us to believe that culture is a symbolic and subjective creation of society that transmits through diffusion and patternisms, thus meaning that all subsequent creations are meant for everyone. This is especially true when noting how much of what influences white culture Code-switching comes from the mass media we consume: music and television; however, we will touch upon it later. These structures appear most when Black communities (as well as other minority groups) operate in non-Black social spheres that overwhelm and alienate them; these can be white-majority schools, institutions, and online spaces. My issue with code-switching is that it doesn’t take after other micro-level nonviolent revolution actions like Black Americans sporting afros or picket picketlining. Instead, it feeds into this claim that the only way to combat the pervasive growth of colonial egalitarianism is by convincing minority groups to alter themselves to act and speak “properly” when participating within white hegemonic spaces. In bending the knee and changing ourselves, we perpetuate this idea that in every aspect aside from pigmentation, we are not distinct but easily replicable; the normalization of the other starts to dwindle and, thus, creates what we refer to as cultural appropriation. This creates further issues of Black lingo not being recognized as genuine English vocabulary and instead existing as something to contort for social gain.
I’d like to briefly digress and explore the counterpart to prototypical code-switching. Originally, white culture in the early 2000s claimed code-switching through the consumption of mass culture, such as media, movies, and sophisticated advertising, with platforms such as TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram acting as the main transmitters of this rapidly spreading phenomenon. Think of that one white friend you might have. They’ll spit out ebonics and other words that have been stolen and stripped of their meaning, all to become another social media trend. Arguably, the most popular current example of this comes with the recent uproar with the term “crash out,” which has been made widely accessible partly thanks to social media and word of mouth. Originating in Louisiana, this expression refers to a reckless person who seeks out trouble (MSN 2024), whereas now, it’s become an expression that everyone uses when they’re overwhelmed by stressful situations. Black culture has always been swindled and appropriated by non-Black communities; it’s only now done so more efficiently with the ease of access and anonymity of social media. The disconnect of online interactions allows phrases to come and go without any repercussions, thus eliminating any acknowledgement of where and who these terms come from. Contemporaneous conversations, both online and off, categorize this misappropriation as a “blaccent,” and it’s often used to add exaggeration or place high emphasis on the words being used, which not only perpetuates the destructive stereotype that Black individuals are inherently more energetic, loud, and exaggerated, “...but it also absolves the user of putting effort into creating a unique or compelling persona.” (McAndrew 2022). In essence, this gives power through the desire to gain social capital by way of superficially “celebrating” Black culture and sporting it for the gain of non-Black groups because that’s what leads to social appraisal, but more importantly, cherry-picking Black characteristics without actually being Black reigns in endless monetary value, which only continues to turn our culture into costumes.
Despite the majority of these perpetrators stemming from White American culture, the conflict surrounding “culture versus costume” is often showcased through South Korean music. As someone who does frequently listen to K-pop songs, I won’t even lie; it’s difficult watching how embellished this genre can be with stereotypes of Black culture. Modern K-pop emerged by extracting aspects from 90s hip-hop and rap, which purely commercialized the aesthetic of Western Black culture. Globally renowned groups like MAMAMOO, BlackPink, Kiss of Life, and NCT, or idols such as Zico and Lalisa Manoban, have all received intense scrutiny for their appropriation of hairstyles (dreads, braids, and cornrows), their “mouthing” of slurs, sporting stereotypical Black gangster clothes and visual mannerisms, mimicking verbage from other Black artists, and many controversies appear even as I write this now. Black artists who talk with AAVE are seen as “ghetto” or “ratchet” and are stuck within a sphere of derogatory perceptions, whereas these idols and other pop stars use these aspects to grow their brands by picking and choosing when and how to be Black when it suits them. Furthermore, between 2019 and 2023, the K-pop industry increased their revenue roughly by tripling nearly 4 trillion Korean won ($3 billion in the U.S.), while operating profits reached 600 billion won ($450 million in the U.S.), according to the government’s Korea Creative Content Agency (Stanley 2024). Because Black language has strong power to ascribe grammar, community, and politics, it can be shaped to fit anyone's narrative. Black culture has been stripped away of its color and its community for marketability because everyone wants to be Black without the oppression and the negativity; they merely want the ostentation of what it means to them. Everybody wants to be Black, but nobody wants to actually be a Black person.
In my introduction, I referenced “verbal blackface as being the result of code-switching, and I’d like to use that as a preface for my conclusion to explain my complications with this phenomenon, as well as the struggle to propose any meaningfully impactful solutions. Code-switching is an entire subculture of communication that, truth be told, can’t be stopped at this stage. The modern perception of a Black person in terms of their mannerisms, expressions, and intelligence is no different than the caricaturizations once shared and mimicked during the Jim Crow Era. I find close levels of comparisons regarding the socialized dehumanization between actors in the 1960s painting their faces and talking in a goofy, tongue-tied manner and when a white person changes their inflections and waves their hand around making an assortment of signs. I will, however, acknowledge two issues that come out of my previous sentiment. First, much of what comes into forming a blaccent is done so by innocent exposure to harmless social consumption and not conscious malice, in many but not all cases. Second, my recurring pairing of a lesser articulated vocabulary to Black culture is a subconscious reinforcement of the skewed ontology we’ve faced since, say, the French colonies. This would be the shared set of basic assumptions that prevent social growth, again, much of which is normalized through popular media. With the evolution of the internet of communication, the original conception of code-switching and its connection to “fighting” against normalized racial inequality in spaces like institutions, corporate life, and social spheres has now transformed into an uncontrollable mess of vernacular consumption and repetition. For me, I’ve grown less startled by its overwhelming popularity and more into the lack of genuine fathomability by those who get called out for engaging in code-switching that simply isn’t appropriate. In light of my stirring around with the faults of code-switching, I’ve begun to question if this is an unavoidable path of cultural hybridization. If so, what solutions can we look toward?. Since this issue is entirely disconnected from any legal interjections due to it being a nonfunction, any consequences to be found are irrelevant to our systems. Furthermore, there would be no way to take traditional action without resorting to some form of fascism. To start, we’d need to focus on educating the youth, as well as your friends and family, about what local tongue they might repeat without understanding its context. I encourage those who feel trapped in, quite literally, an echo chamber to avoid spaces dominated by people who have that control to use the aforementioned vernacular to call them out or avoid them if you don’t feel comfortable doing so. We need to reflect on the structures and influences that continue to give access to these words and challenge those around us to do the same, regardless of whether they heard them from a friend or in a song.

Works Cited

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Hutton, Susan. 2022. “The Burden of Code-Switching: U-M LSA Department of Psychology.” LSA. Retrieved April 11, 2025 (https://lsa.umich.edu/psych/news-events/all-news/faculty-news/the-burden-of-code-switching.html#:~:text=In%20the%201950s%2C%20linguist%20Einar,sociologists%20examined%20why%20they%20did).

McCluney, Courtney L., Kathrina Robotham, Serenity Lee, Richard Smith, and Myles Durkee. 2019. “The Costs of Code-Switching.” Harvard Business Review. Retrieved April 11, 2025 (https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-costs-of-codeswitching).

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