To me, code-switching is changing something about how you show up in the world to fit into certain spaces.

I did not talk like them.

I did not dress like them.

and I had to interact with them.

Ever walk into a room and feel your voice, your posture, something about you shift?

We all do this.

Just not for the same reasons.

We call it code-switching.

A way of changing how we’re read.

In Louisiana that shift has a history.

A ritual hidden in plain sight.

What?

Oh, excuse me.

Hello.

Hey Tavi.

You coming over today?

Oh, yes.

Oh, yes.

We're gonna go to the second line.

All right.

I will see you later.

My bad.

Y'all.

Y'all know how it could be.

Today, I want to consider what we change.

Why we change it?

And what it ask of us.

I am Tarriona “Tank” Ball, and this is Ritual.

Oftentimes... Code-switching looks like me changing my hair, how I how I speak.

It happens in professional settings.

Spaces where I want to be taken serious and taken for the things I know and the things that I can bring versus how I might look or how I might sound.

I attended an all girls, predominately white high school.

So, I've had to code-switch quite a bit in my life.

Growing up in church as a little girl, I remember when it was my turn to read the church announcements.

Back up straight.

Pretty big dress.

Speak loud.

Make sure you greet all the officers and members of the church.

Baby, I was on fire, but it definitely was a code-switch.

I definitely did not talk that way to my grandparents or my sisters and my brothers.

I am a New Orleans Black woman, and so we have a very specific dialect.

Speaking to certain people that definitely changes.

Grew up speaking with people who spoke French, who spoke English.

Who spoke mixtures of French and English.

Here in Louisiana, code-switching has been going on longer than most of us realize.

To delve into that more deeply, I'm going to see my friend Clif St.

Laurent.

Clif studies language and he knows what it means to move between worlds.

What is the history of code-switching in Louisiana?

So code-switching in Louisiana.

Really interesting because Louisiana is actually a multilingual state.

We have a history of many languages being spoken here and the ones that have survived.

Latin based languages Louisiana Creole, also known as, Kouri-Vini, Louisiana French, Louisiana Spanish, and then a multitude of indigenous languages have survived.

So when we talk about code-switching, a lot of people don't even realize the Kouri-Vini and French based legacy that we come from.

Linguistically speaking.

And some people from certain areas, you know, You'll find them code-switching into languages they don't even know that they're really speaking.

For example, you get your Lafayette people that say, “Hey, shæ how you doing?” My sister be saying that.

Yeah, shæ!

Well, this is a word that exists in Louisiana French and Louisiana Creole.

Some people just think it's slang.

Yeah!

Another one.

Mé Ga Çelá.

You know, that means, “Well look at that”.

And a lot of people don't realize they're actually code-switching.

Wow, so you mean to tell me that all this time I've been speaking, like, a little bit of little French?

Like when I say, bokou.

Oh they got bokou... Bokou!

I was about to say bokou.

This comes from Kouri-Vini and Louisiana French, yeah.

So do you think that code-switching has something to do with why some of this language was lost?

Why the language was lost or why it's on the decline has much more to do with Americanization.

Assimilating into the dominant culture.

So New Orleans people actually were the first to lose these languages in the state.

Language revitalization, that's kind of making sure that the language stays and maybe even comes back up.

So we're doing that work in New Orleans, but there’s still people in like the (337) area codes.

Lafourche Parish, all the way down that still speak Louisiana Creole.

They still speak Louisiana French, and some people still speak Louisiana Spanish.

Do you feel a code-switching in the body?

Although it can be intentional, sometimes we're unaware that it's happening.

You know, like right now.

Me and you, we've been talking, we've been enjoying the space.

And we've been relating to each other in a way that's comfortable for us.

But now we're aware that there's lights and cameras around us.

We're aware that there's an audience taking in what we have to give.

So we're, we're instinctively doing it right now.

Right.

Right.

And I've only just become aware of it.

Because normally my hands will be right here.

And you were like, you know, we’re leaning in.

We're talking, but like what the cameras on right now, right.

This is an example, a textbook example of code-switching.

So out of all these languages that you speak, which one feels like your truest self?

All of them, because they all play a very special and significant role in how I relate to the world around me.

You know, I have friends that sometimes when I speak with them in Louisiana Creole, if we switch to the English sometimes, like, man your voice don't sound right like that.

Let's go back to Creole.

The true one to me is all of them in their appropriate time and place.

I love that!

Depends on who you're speaking and how it relates to you and the comfort.

I understand that.

Yeah!

What really matters is how you feel when you're relating to somebody.

And if you feel good, you're operating within your true self, I'd say.

I love that.

Clif made me think about audience as more than who's listening.

It's who holds the power in the room, and that has a long history.

So I talked to Maurice Carlos Ruffin, a novelist and writing professor at Louisiana State University.

Maurice, Maurice, Maurice.

You have a lot of thoughts.

And some of those thoughts don’t make everybody happy or comfortable, which are my favorite kind of thoughts.

But tell me what you think about when you hear the word code-switching.

Oh my goodness.

I think first of Homer Plessy.

Now this brother, he passed for white back in the 1800s.

And he used his ability to challenge segregation in the old days.

He and his whole squad got together, got on the train to oppose the separation of Blacks and whites.

It's similar to Rosa Parks, actually.

Part of a long lineage of people getting together as a team in making a plan to challenge white supremacy.

Was Plessy before Rosa?

Quite a bit before.

And you can almost imagine the people who did Rosa looking at him and going, bet.

We can do the same thing here.

Not bet.

Love that.

So if code-switching, I'm sure that Plessy went through a lot of very interesting like things against him.

Because though he probably had the privilege of looking this way so he could pass, but I'm sure it probably was very exhausting.

Absolutely.

You know I think being a New Orleans person, he recognized that he had the ability to help his people.

But at the same time, this is a city where tourists come through constantly.

And so you can try and please people to make your money.

But there's a cost to that.

There's always a cost to that.

What's the cost?

I think the cost is existential.

And I think that the only way you can repay that is to be in community with people that you care for.

Wow.

Then Maurice brought up Huey P. Long.

One of Louisiana's most famous politicians.

Roosevelt on the one hand, and Hoover on the other, the twin bed mates of disaster.

I would become a candidate for president.

Huey was a strange guy.

A white gentleman in the 1920s and 30s.

And he has this interesting platform where for the time he seems progressive.

He is basically saying that everybody deserves the same rights.

Especially in front of us.

He would come talk to the Black people in the community.

And so as a result, he was very, very popular.

And he was somebody who switched depending on the audience.

Oh that's deep.

I didn't know that the white folk be code-switching too.

I mean look we've seen many such cases.

Listening to Maurice, I kept thinking about how a switch can look effortless from the outside.

Even when it's being shaped by pressure.

In Louisiana, that pressure has a history.

To understand the systems behind that pressure.

I'm going to talk with anthropologist Sophie Bjork.

Hey, Sophie.

Hey Tank.

It is so good to sit here with you.

I know that you had such a long history of studying racism in America and politics.

I am, so thank you so much.

I am so interested in picking your brain about some stuff, especially when it comes down to code-switching in America.

How does code-switching speak to power?

Culture is really flexible.

Like we change based on the context that we're in.

And so we're all code-switching all the time.

You code-switch too?

Everybody does.

When we talk to our friends.

We're getting ready to go to work.

To go meet someone for the first time.

We're going to often present ourselves in different ways.

We might change the way that we talk or the language that we use.

Even if it's not switching from one language to another, we might use more you know formal or informal language.

How do we think about code-switching as not just as a habit, but part of a larger system?

It's a strategy many people use to try to survive in a broader society that they might not feel will embrace them, that they might experience significant prejudice in.

So it can be a survival strategy.

But doing that can also cause various kinds of internal harms.

When it causes stress, when people feel like they're not being authentic.

If people can also find ways to be in spaces where they can feel authentic, and can have find meaning so that it's not just something that people do by default, but they can recognize it's a strategy to ameliorate or challenge some of the prejudices that they might experience.

Then that can, I think, cause less negative impacts on the individual.

Listening to Sophie, it became clear that the switch isn't just personal.

It's learned in rooms that reward some voices and punish others.

So even when it feels private, it's often happening inside something much larger.

I'm really not quiet.

Just not in a comfortable and familiar environment to express myself fully when I'm surrounded by people who just don't have similar backgrounds to me.

It's really important to develop your own voice, I think it's also important for people to not hide what it is they're about.

There's a difference between a shift you make to survive.

And one you begin to claim for yourself.

Sometimes we switch to get through the room.

Sometimes we switch to build toward a future self.

Maybe that's the real ritual.

Learning what parts of us were chosen for us, and which parts we're finally ready to claim.

That's what I hope for all of us.