Code-Switching and Masking: Why These Words Aren't Accessories

Send us Fan MailThis week, Jonelle and Karen unpack what happens when white women borrow survival language that was never built for us. After reading The Hate U Give for Banned Book Club, the conversation digs into what code-switching actually means (a survival strategy rooted in enslavement, not a cute HR term for adjusting your vibe), what masking actually means (a clinical term from the autistic community tied to depression, burnout, and suicidality), and why casually using OCD, depression, triggered, or gaslighting as adjectives quietly harms the people those words were built to protect. Jonelle walks through the documented mental health tax of code-switching, Karen names the words she has thrown around without thinking, and together they land on a simple shift: use precise, accurate language for what is actually happening to you, and leave the survival words to the people they were coined to name.CALLS TO ACTIONCatch yourself this week. The next time you reach for the word masking, code-switching, OCD, triggered, or depressed to describe your own experience, pause and ask what is actually happening to me, and say that instead.Go read or re-read The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. Pay attention to how Starr code-switches between Garden Heights and Williamson, and notice how it fractures her sense of self. That book is the anchor for this entire conversation.Follow and amplify one Black writer on code-switching and one autistic self-advocate on masking this week. Their voices should be the loudest in this conversation, not ours.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] the show