Breaking The Code: Don’t Take It Personally?

Recent debates around the cultural practice of code-switching, or using professional voice, are ongoing. It’s important to note that those of us who code-switch do so to avoid microaggressions. Here is a personal story of how microaggressions and microinvalidations start and the impact they can have.

I will never forget her, this girl from my class. Not because she was tall or blonde with blue eyes. Not because she was popular. Not because she was a star athlete. But because of a small, offhanded comment she made three weeks into the first year of high school that has stayed with me all the years since.

There we sat in the hallway after school by the lockers with seven other girls reading, navigating our precalculus assignments and attempting to understand homeroom and uniform requirements when out of the blue I hear: “Cass, when you talk, I don’t hear a Black person.”

I was speechless. I looked around, searching for someone to challenge or invalidate her claim. I was, and am indeed, Black. But no additional comment of support ever came. One minute we are the same, or at least that is how I perceived it. We were all first-year students in an all-girls-Catholic high school, together trying to navigate class schedules, homework, after-school activities and social lives. In an instant that all changed. With one phrase, my classmate solidified me as an outsider. Othered in a way unique to my skin. More than establishing difference, this racial microaggression laid the groundwork for what scholar Derald Wing Sue describes as an invalidating societal climate that leads to race and gender-based hostility.

In retrospect, this is how racism shows up for a 14-year-old, middle-class, Catholic-educated high-school student. It is a small, interpersonal experience. It shows up in classrooms, dance studios and cheer camp. It is in the kitchen of your best friend’s home when her mom is confused by the unique texture of your hair. Or in the week after spring break when less-melanated girls compare tans curated on the beaches of Florida to your naturally brown skin. “Look, Cass, I’m darker than you!”

Later racism shows up in the college professor who assumes you are on a basketball scholarship. The boy who will not date you because you are “intimidating.” The employer who precisely manages every correspondence with clients, ensuring you are not “aggressive” in communication. As time progresses, racism stays subtly unpredictable. It becomes small things. Tiny screams of assumption based on racial bias and perceived inferiority. Aggressive, microscopic, racialized and ever-present.

These experiences do not solely apply to race and racism. Microaggressions occur across varying identities and cultural markers: gender, economic standing, ability and sexual orientation all have their unique set of microaggressive behaviors. As a member of a targeted group, finding unique ways to cope becomes essential. Experienced over a lifetime, microaggressions not only increase stress, depression and lower emotional well-being in the individual, but they also impede learning and problem-solving, assailing the mental health of recipients. The most common means of coping: covering (also known as code-switching).

In the realm of language, code-switching is not merely about flipping between different tongues; it is often a subtle dance of cultural adaptation. For many, code-switching is a necessary shift from their original cultural expression to better align with the dominant societal norms. It is a quest for belonging, manifested through changes in intonation, body language, attire and even hairstyle. This linguistic juggling act can happen within the span of a single sentence, clause or even word. It reflects the speaker’s adeptness in navigating diverse cultural landscapes, serving as a survival strategy where individuals downplay parts of their identity while emphasizing traits deemed more acceptable.

A recent study by Deloitte stated that 61 percent of employees “cover” along one axis. That is, they hide or attempt to minimize their identities, appearance, cultural affiliations or group associations. The experience of covering is not unique to targeted groups. Of the over 3,100 respondents of mixed ages, genders, races/ethnicities and orientations surveyed, 45 percent of straight white men reported covering. This is an important statistic as, traditionally, studies of inclusion have focused on targeted—not dominant—groups.

This is why building inclusive cultures is key to employee retention and developing sustainable employee experiences. But how can this be done in the fast-paced world we live in? Here are some tips to encourage the minimization of microaggressions:

1. When someone shares their experience, believe them the first time.

Because microaggressions are often subtle, they are also easy to dismiss, specifically when their acknowledgement comes as a counternarrative to what we believe to be true of our corporate culture and the individuals within it. Yet, as advocates and allies, when someone in a targeted group vocalizes an experience of microaggression, it is our responsibility to believe them and their lived experiences.

2. Teach accountability.

Accountability for behaviors and consequences for outcomes happens as a central part of corporate cultural development. Interestingly, it does not occur within challenges or crises. It occurs in daily interactions between teams, colleagues, people leaders and individual contributors. As inclusive leaders, we set the example of how to be accountable, teaching those we lead by sharing when we make mistakes, providing constructive feedback and setting clear goals. Doing so allows space for continuation of accountability within interpersonal and cultural conflicts. It becomes a stretch of a muscle we have already strengthened.

3. Establish systemic mechanisms of reporting that lead to change.

According to The Channel Company’s 2024 study on the State of Equity & Inclusion in IT Channels, a primary goal of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programs is to establish compliance. And compliance leads to documentation. Yet, documentation without a means of change leads to a negative perception of corporate culture. It is critical in order for changes to take place that systems of reporting be made clear to leaders. Establish a flow of conversations and necessary documentation that supports the culture, the people and the company that positively impacts desired changes.

4. Understand microaggressions are deep-rooted and culturally based.

Microaggressions often occur interpersonally but they do not only have an individualized impact. They are based on our collective cultural understanding of who has the right to comfort and who does not. They are about who belongs and who does not. It is in statements such as, “Wow, you speak English so well!" to someone with a non-Western accent or asking a woman leader if they can handle a task. It is choosing to see difference and using that difference to maintain exclusion. Finally, it is the cumulative effect of microaggressions that causes the most harm. While one incident might seem minor, repeated exposure creates a hostile environment, taking a toll on the recipient's well-being and eroding psychological safety.

5. Encourage healthy authenticity.

If you are reading this and having feelings of guilt—thinking of the times that you displayed microaggressive behavior—good. It is an authentic feeling that can be a motivator for change. The next step is to use that authenticity to healthily move forward, unpacking your personal and organizational biases to find your opportunities for growth. Recognizing microaggressions in real time allows us to build authentic connections, taking out our own bias, adding to our cultural competency and corporate sense of belonging.

In retrospect, I would like to believe that my schoolmate meant her comment as a compliment. As if to say I was one of the good ones. Not like the negative stereotypes of Black people she saw on television or in movies. She certainly did not mean it as an insult. How and why, then, did I feel insulted? How can one phrase be so innocuous to the person saying it and so harmful to the one hearing it? It was because it was the first time I felt the need to cover who I was, to reduce my cultural markers of Blackness. Indeed, the harmless and precarious comments of those with whom we share a community can have a lasting, detrimental impact. But so can building inclusive cultures where covering is not normative, and our differences are celebrated.

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