He’s a runner he’s a track star. He’s a code switcher extraordinaire
A picture of Mario Lopez in NBC’s The Golden Girls episode titled, Dorothy’s Prized Pupil S2:E21. The episode where Mario was deported.
Okay, so maybe not exaaactly, because code switchers don’t run away when things get tough. They adapt. And that’s the damn point.
Earlier today, the homie Mario Lopez (@mariolopez) was called out from society. Like society does now a days, shit was whack … uh, I mean it was grossly inaccurate.
Let me take my stab at this Señor Lopez.
Lopez uncovered the successful secret of Latinos and multicultural people in the U.S. Calling attention to yet another way we have ya’ll fooled.
Not intentionally of course. It’s just who we are. You see, we’ve not only learned to adopt American societal norms, we’ve learned how to adapt and when to use them. So much so that we have a term for it now.
Somewhere around Gen X, shit began to change. From humble and grateful manual laborers, caregivers, and domestic champions to white collar professions, Latinos were forced to learn how to maneuver and perform with duality.
Especially in a nation built on oppressing, disenfranchising, colonizing, and gentrifying the hell out of cultures.
We literally just out here tryna function. From the ashes of imposter syndrome, assimilating in order to adhere to the American way, we’ve created code switching, in language and in behavior.
A way for us to still stay true to our roots while we functioned professionally amidst a prim and proper people who too, are often proper on the surface, but for them, for the sake of maintaining superiority.
Just like Mario said, “you know I’m talking, I’m saying fool and holms and a lot of like slang and just kinda being yourself and I can’t be like that on Access Hollywood or on my radio show. I’m tryna cash these checks. I can’t be soundin all hood like that. I gotta keep it a little more polished and buttoned up.”
It might be hard not to let microagressive thoughts cause confusion for progression, here. That’s the first mistake after all, pigeonholing the BIPOC. When we’ve already struggled for decades for being our authentic selves.
For example, during my career in education, I quickly learned how to talk to different groups of people. Like Mario mentioned, the more “polished and buttoned-up side of me”, the proper lady version of Eliza Doolittle from My Fair Lady, could converse with the professionals of the field and high achieving parents.
While the less refined “cockney” version of me, felt comfortable allowing my culture to shine through with a dash of humor and the same amount of knowledge delivered with mi gente (my people), the minorities, and those with less education.
I learned how to go from a ‘civilized’ “the rain in Spain, falls mainly, on the plane” to the ‘crude’ … “bro, lowkey it do be raining like hell in Spain. Should we even fly tho?”
In essence, code switching can be like the mullet of hairstyles. Business in the front, party in the back. Of which the Mexican American, Mario, is practically an icon for already.
To not only survive but thrive, we were forced in a way, to shape shift like the folklore of our culture and camouflage ourselves to our environments as evolution naturally does.
Level up, Doñas. You can have both. It’s a fine art to learn how to code switch. Like when to go from “per my previous email” to “like I said”, or “did I stutter”, or “I said what I said dammit”.
Don’t be afraid to jump on that bike and ride the learning curve out. Mario Lopez, Gen X, and many others have already paved the way!