Code-switching is an essential survival tactic for Black and brown people when navigating a world not made for us. It’s where, in attempts to assimilate into whiteness, you change certain aspects of yourself, from what you say, to how you say it and beyond.
On my first day of secondary school, my classmates fell into hysterics over how I pronounced “this, that, then” as “dis, dat, den” and other aspects of my London-Jamaican idiolect. One unhelpful girl took it upon herself to enunciate
