A look at code switching as a means of gaining access and a process of performativity with actress, playwright and activist, Ameera Conrad.
What is code switching? Is it a performance of slipping in and out of different characters? Or a means of gaining acceptance and access? In the words of Ameera Conrad, code-switching is ¨a vocal, multiple personality disorder.¨ Ameera Conrad, a.k.a Mimi and A-Rab, is an actress and playwright, who is most well-known for her involvement in The Fall: All Rhodes Lead to Decolonisation.
¨I like to think of myself as a bad-ass, brown theatre-maker, who challenges the status-quo. Like that's what I like to think of myself as, but I'm probably more like a Muslim Mulan [...]. I feel like I´m gonna bring honour to us all at some point.¨
Prof. Renee Blake, of the Linguistics as well as Social and Cultural Analysis departments at the University of New York, describes code-switching as the process of ¨going back and forth between one language and another; or one dialect and another.¨ Blake goes on to explain that code-switching is not only verbal, but is also physical through body language. Taryn Finley, Editor of HuffPost Black Voices, speaks about code-switching as a process inherent in the struggles of black people:
¨Our Blackness isn´t accepted in a lot of spaces that are critical for our survival and our success. A lot of times we have to dilute and we have to put on a mask.[...] Our blackness inherently says trouble in a lot of white spaces, in a lot of public spaces¨
Ameera, who has lived in both Cape Town and Johannesburg, is familiar to the process of code-switching as part of her lived experience as a woman of colour and an actress. After relocating back to Cape Town from Johannesburg with her family, Ameera, the eldest daughter of three children, attended Wynberg Girls´ High School. She then went on to study Drama at the University of Cape Town (more specifically in directing and writing). It was this combination of coming out of a girls school and finding her truest voice at university, that set her on the path of activism, eventually leading her to be involved in the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall movements.
Ameera is most famed for her involvement in the subsequent theatre production, The Fall, a theatre piece about social transformation and the decolonisation of institutions, which has since been performed internationally from Ireland to Australia. She pegs The Fall´s success to the fact that it:
¨speaks to a global experience of what it means to be a person of colour [...] [or] if you´re not the norm, then The Fall will speak to your identity, because it's really about [...] passing the mic [to the voiceless].¨
¨For people of colour you have to adapt or die,¨ Conrad says, but due to the increase in conversation around the topic of assimilating to whiteness, the process of assimilation is being rejected more and more. Ameera found her truest voice when she realised that assimilating to the dominant white narrative was a pointless process.
¨I would rather the place that I truly fit in be my own body, than try to be someone else to fit in somewhere else.¨
Tre'Vell Anderson from the LA Times believes that the process of code-switching is inherent to people of colour. ¨As black folks in particular, right, we´ve been raised in a society where we have to exist in multiple spaces at once.¨When many of these spaces are conditioned to hate the ´other´ and their difference, this makes it difficult for people of colour to survive, succeed and exist, unless they change themselves in order to assimilate.
Director and creator of Dear White People, Justin Simeon, aims to do just that with his work, and believes that code-switching is something:
¨We all do [...], ´cause it's a survival tactic. [...] There is an inauthentic part of it, and I think the burden that black people have, [...] is that we have to do it all the time.[...] Because it feels like your life is in danger if you´re who you are at the wrong time.¨
The opinions of the above individuals, who are both in the field of film and media, echo Ameera´s view of code switching as a performance. As an actor one code-switchers all the time in order to play different characters, yet this process is not only limited to the stage or on set, but is also done by everyday people in daily life as well.
After Ameera´s involvement in the events of 2015 and 2016, her view of herself was irrevocably changed for the better:
¨I felt very lucky to be part of Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall, because then I got an opportunity to actually figure out who I was outside of this construct of who I was and this unattainable goal that I had set myself based on society's expectations. [...] So finishing university in that way, accepting that my code switching or my identity fluidity, wasn't like this like demon thing where I was like lying to people, because for a while it felt like that [...] but at the same time I had to survive the world¨
Growing up in Johannesburg left Ameera with what she describes as a ¨Jozi girl¨ accent, which othered her when moving back to Cape Town´s coloured communities and her own family environment in Lansdowne. How one speaks gains one access to certain spaces or, on the flip side, denies one access as well. Code-switching as a process, requires a certain level of performativity by people of colour, for reasons of survival and success in varying spaces, yet begs the question as to why people of colour need to assimilate in order to gain access in the first place.
Ameera´s success linked to The Fall has granted her the chance to travel and engage audiences with the production´s conversation around social transformation, on a national and international level. Through these travels, Ameera has had to navigate a variety of spaces. Throughout her life, code switching has been almost second nature, as she has found herself adopting certain masks and ways of speaking based on the situation and which ¨way of moving in the space is gonna get you what you want at the end of the day.¨
Like Conrad, Broadway actor Jelani Alladin, an immigrant from Guyana with both Guyanese and African American blood, uses his code-switching for his own gain, by using it to increase his relatability with his audience. Contrary to the idea that code-switching is a process resulting in the shedding of one's identity, Alladin believes that ¨it’s less about the need to meld into a certain demographic and more about understanding where everyone is coming from and connecting with that.¨
Ameera´s code switching has, however resulted in a backfiring of sorts, with regards to the challenge she faced of fitting into her community, where she was denied access and acceptance, due to the difference in her way of speaking. ¨Djy hou jou wit¨ (you are trying to be white) was an accusation often thrown at Ameera by family or community members. The tension between her own re-acceptance and her community's re-acceptance of her, left her feeling a disconnect between herself and her family environment.
¨Humans are social creatures, we wanna feel accepted, we wanna feel loved. [...] I made the conscious decision to change my accent, because [...]otherwise you're gonna be the ra-ra, sy-hou-haar-wit girl your whole life and your family´s gonna hate you and you´re not gonna be accepted into the Coloured community.¨
Mainstream media have recently started dealing with these conversations, around coding as a performance to enter certain spaces, as well. This can be seen in 2018 films like BlacKkKlansman and Sorry to Bother You. BlacKkKlansman, a film by famed director and actor Spike Lee, deals with/ is inspired by the true story of Ron Stallworth. Stallworth, an African American officer, along with his Jewish co-officer, infiltrated the Colorado Klu Klux Klan in 1972, through Stallworth´s ability to mimic a ´white accent´. Another filmic example of speaking with a white accent for a certain gain, is Sorry to Bother You, which deals with an African American man who works at a call centre and gains success (including a promotion) after he changes his accent and puts on a ´white voice´. This begs the question of why ´white is right´ and the other is lesser than.
The above examples deal with the issue of one´s dialect or accent being a defining factor for one's level of success and acceptance, based on the associations those around us make about us, based on how we speak. This is better known as linguistic profiling, a term coined by John Baugh, Ph.D.
Olivia Kang, a Harvard University psychologist says that:
¨If you speak with a standard accent, you're judged as being more intelligent, more competent, more credible, more hireable. Now, having a regional accent, or a non-standard accent, now you're not getting those advantages. You're seen as less credible, or less hireable.¨
Ameera´s conscious decision to change her accent, was based around this very need to gain acceptance, as well as to reconnect with who she felt was her truest self. Despite coding being used for her gain, she still grapples with the issues of the dominant white narrative and assimilating to whiteness, as defining much of the way people of colour view themselves. Whilst she's not dealing with issues of identity politics in her daily life as a woman of colour and through her work in The Fall, Ameera is on the course to change the world around her for the better.
¨Even if I don´t reap the rewards personally, I´m hoping that somewhere along the line, a little black and brown girl might. [...] That´s my shtick. [...] I look at the world and I go: ´is this the world that I wish I had been brought up in? No´. So I´ve gotta change it, so that my children can go: ´Is this the world I wish I was brought up in? Yes´.¨
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