Carl, thank you so much for this piece! I found it really helpful. I felt your exhaustion with all the code switching.

Growing up white, my mother continually rode us about our pronunciation of words, our accent (the white Philadelphia accent was “bad” and frankly, still sounds ugly to me), our posture, our table manners (no elbows on the dinner table) our everything, was a pain — but it gave me an attention to nuance that serves me well in the struggle to become an ally to Black people.

I remember hearing a Black teacher at my high school pronouncing the name of a nearby street one way for another Black person, and another way for a white person. The fact that this made an impression on me is probably due to my mother, and I’m grateful for that now.