Bruuhhhhhhhh. On a call, a colleague says, “ya’ll” and quickly apologizes, saying, “I spent some time in Texas. Ya’ll!!!!” In a casual conversation, I say “truck,” and my co-worker interrupts and repeats, “truuuuuuck”. I know there was no ill intent. It’s all in good fun; she’s laughing, but still, I felt the shame and embarrassment of being laughed at and heard that lil voice whisper— “Imposter.”
I was born in North Carolina to a black family beneath the poverty line. I spent most of my life learning to blend, trying to stop people from hearing that I was too black, too southern, or too poor. Along with my straight A’s in school, I won the award for “you are well-spoken,” “you talk like a white girl,” and “I wouldn’t know where you were from.”
In undergrad, I sipped the Kool-Aid. As professors ripped apart my presentations and papers, I learned the language of academic speaking and writing, so we could all be “understood.” In retrospect, it is crazy because I understood them despite speaking and writing differently. It almost felt like a lack of effort on the part of the academy. Not like black southern accents are a creole or pidgin language.
As a teacher, I never forced my students to code-switch. Call me a bad teacher, but I wanted to encourage them to think without the added anxiety of speaking correctly, creating barriers where there need not be. I would mark up their papers correcting grammar, but I would never take points off for it. And I’ll be damned if I told them to articulate in presentations. I wanted to build their confidence. Hell, me writing this way is an act of resistance and has built my confidence in writing and allowed me to lean into my identity. I try and think about it as “yes/and” yes I am southern, black, and a professional. Because regardless, it doesn’t change my degrees or proficiency. Although, writing and speaking this way may change opinions of me. My medical student sister (yea, we all came up) once read my blog and told me people might get the wrong idea about me. But here I am.
When I was teaching, and in my master’s program, I was a professional through and through, a master in the dark arts of ivory tower English. But now in the consulting space, I can go a whole day without talking to someone in my bubble of research, writing and editing technical papers, designing templates, and training curricula. So on that first work call, I open my mouth, and out of practice, my default language slips through my teeth as my brain tries desperately to fire up the translation. It’s getting harder and harder to slip back into it, and instead of silk sheets, it feels like getting under a wet blanket filled with sand. Dragging my vowels, double negatives, rhetorical affirmers, dropping constants, ya’ll and ain’t, “it ain’t gon kill ya’ll, know what I mean.”
Classroom to Corporate 