Code-switching & Masking: Social Safety Strategies to Protect Against White Supremacy

Part 1/? by Madeleine Brunk and Moné Miller

In the past few decades, the terms “code-switching” and “masking” have become common shorthand to reference the strategies used by Black and neurodivergent communities, respectively, to avoid stigma, discrimination, and violence. These strategies are distinguished from typical processes of social cohesion by their implicit purpose: to hide or compensate for one’s identity as a member of a marginalized group. Code-switching and masking are often thought of as discrete processes. There can be no true separation of code-switching and masking, however, when millions of people are subject simultaneously to both racism and discrimination based on neurocognitive profile. We argue that code-switching and masking are more alike than they are different: although masking is a response to ableism and code-switching to racism, they are ultimately both skillful self-protective strategies against white supremacist violence.

Intersectionality

As defined by Women of Color Advancing Peace and Security, “White Supremacy is a social and systemic manifestation of the belief that white people hold a level of superiority over other races, thus granting them the right to exert dominion over people of other racial groups, by use of both social and systemic structures” (Love, 2022). Societies built around White Supremacy often incorporate other supremacist philosophies; ableism, the systemic oppression of disabled people, has been a tool of White Supremacy since at least the rise of scientific racism and the eugenics movement in the late 1800s.

Most people hold a combination of both privileged and marginalized identities that affect them in different ways as they interact with individuals and systems. Kimberlé Crenshaw observed how this phenomenon affects Black women, who experience both racism and misogyny. She created the theory of intersectionality to capture how multiple kinds of marginalization can combine to create unique problems for Black women (Crenshaw, 1989). This theory has been expanded to include other axes of oppression; the Wheel of Power and Privilege below gives us a clear illustration of how quickly identity becomes complex (Canadian Council for Refugees, adapted by Rachel Cottam).

Wheel of Power and Privilege, originated by the Canadian Council for Refugees, adapted by Rachel Cottam.

The identities at the center of the wheel hold the most power, the identities in the middle of the wheel some power, and the identities at the outer edges hold the least amount of power. White supremacist societies are built to reflect and reinforce the traits and behaviors of white, abled, neurotypical, heterosexual men—the people in the inner circle. The closer a person appears to meet this standard, the more they will benefit from the enforcement of social norms; as a result, people speak the language and mimic behavior, speech, and appearance of the dominant culture. It is no secret that divergence from social norms is punished, and that those norms are applied and enforced unevenly: when it is not just what you do, but also who you are that is considered a norm violation, you become subject to much closer policing and greater rejection, harassment, and violence.

Social Norm Enforcement

As a person ages, non-normative behaviors are increasingly interpreted as suspicious, erratic, or dangerous—this trend begins much earlier for Black children and other children of color compared to white children, who are often afforded the presumption of innocence well into adulthood (Hampton, 2025). Police violence is a good example of how marginalized groups are singled out for violent norm enforcement: Black people are two to three times as likely as white people to be fatally shot by police (Bunn, 2022), and anywhere between 1 in 5 and 1 in 2 people killed by police showed signs of mental illness (National Alliance on Mental Illness, 2022; Khan, Miller, Barber, & Azrael, 2024; Treatment Advocacy Center, 2015).

In 2019, a Black 23 year old named Elijah McClain was walking home from a convenience store. Someone in a nearby house called the police to report that he was “flailing his arms” and “looking sketchy”; when the police arrived, they slammed him to the ground, applied a chokehold, and injected him with an excessive dose of ketamine (“Killing of Elijah McClain, 2026). Some of his last recorded words were “I can’t breathe,” “I’m just different,” and “Forgive me… I will do anything. Sacrifice my identity, I’ll do it” (“Killing of Elijah McClain, 2026). Friends interviewed after his death stated that what was interpreted by the 911 caller as “arms flailing” was likely Elijah dancing as he walked home.

Neither the caller nor the police who arrived on the scene knew anything about Elijah or his neurocognitive profile. But the racism inherent in the circumstances of Elijah’s murder was still laundered through the language of mental health/illness in two ways. First, by the caller who labeled Elijah’s behavior as “strange” to justify calling the police on a young Black man. Then, second, by the police, who diagnosed Elijah post-mortem with excited delirium: a pseudoscientific “mental health condition” characterized by aggression and excessive strength, invoked primarily in cases of police brutality against Black men (Jouvenal, 2015). Excited delirium is a diagnosis not supported by any American medical association, the World Health Organization, or the International Classification of Diseases. Both of the labels that Elijah was given (“strange” and “experiencing excited delirium”) function by providing plausible deniability: invoking mental illness implies that lethal force was applied because of a true danger, not because of racist stereotyping.

Elijah’s murder is one of many examples of the violence that code-switching and masking are meant to protect against. While it is true that most people feel pressure to adhere to social norms, the behavior modifications made by people who are marginalized by those social norms are an expression of self-defense rather than “difficult behavior” or mental illness. This does not mean, of course, that self-defense strategies like code-switching and masking are without cost; both are linked to burnout, identity struggles, and feelings of alienation among other negative outcomes (Johnson et al, 2021; National Autistic Society). Black and neurodivergent communities continue to code-switch and mask despite these costs because the consequences of not ceding to white and neurotypical norms are far worse: the ability to do this well, even if you don’t want to, can have a great impact on one’s overall quality of life.

What Are Code-switching and Masking?

Both of these concepts have been around for centuries with different names and levels of popular awareness. It’s only more recently that code-switching and masking have been acknowledged as legitimate and intelligent community-held strategies to resist white supremacist violence. The greater recognition of these strategies is due in large part to the efforts of academics of color and neurodivergent academics to consolidate community knowledge. Often siloed, code-switching and masking are intertwined in complex ways; investigation of these strategies can bridge marginalized communities further.

Code-switching

The term code-switching started in linguistics to describe the process of shifting from one linguistic code (a language or dialect) to another, depending on the social context or conversational setting (Morrison, 2026). This has evolved over the years to include adjusting one’s speech, appearance, behavior, and expression in ways that will optimize the comfort of others in exchange for fair treatment, quality service, and employment opportunities (McCluney et al., 2019). Code-switching doesn’t guarantee safety necessarily, but it does improve your odds of safety. By expressing yourself in the dominant language, culture, and behavior, you can “pass” more easily.

For some Black people, code-switching went as far as “passing” for white in order to receive equitable treatment politically, socially, financially, and, in theory, more safety—although the ramifications for getting caught “passing” were detrimental. One example is in the movie Sinners (Coogler, 2025); the character Mary is a white-passing woman whose maternal grandfather was Black. She is in both worlds, married to a white man and passing for white while also having relationships in the Black community due to the one-drop rule of the time, her mother’s mixed race heritage, and her own relationship to Black people in the film. However, she is challenged by people throughout the movie about her background and some people question her whiteness and Blackness. This becomes a joke within itself in the film. The actress who plays Mary, Hailee Steinfeld, was questioned as well about her race and ethnicity. She is Black, Filipina, and white herself, but people questioned her right to play a mixed race character on screen. The striking similarities between the character and the actress are not lost on the viewer.

As seen in the Wheel of Power and Privilege, those with white skin and various shades either pass or can potentially pass for white and gain the most privileges as a result. It’s not so straightforward, however, as code-switching is necessary to convince a closeness to whiteness. Without a convincing code-switch, the privileges and opportunities could be lost. For example, the consequences of not successfully code-switching could impact an ability to obtain a job, networking opportunities, school, and career advancement (McCluney et al., 2019). Code- switching is professionalism which has its proximity to whiteness. Failing to code-switch could greatly impact someone’s life, especially for those with darker skin tones. The difference between gaining or losing an opportunity depends on how well you can code-switch. There’s the added complication of AAVE (African American Vernacular English) entering the mainstream. While some see AAVE or other examples of code-switching as signs of lower intelligence, it actually takes great skill to be able to navigate different social situations with such ease and fluidity while doing it unconsciously. Code-switching takes an incredible amount of effort to pull off with the hope that it will pay off in safety and security, yet it is not always a guarantee.

Masking

The term “masking” has been used by neurodivergent people since the mid 1990s, when online Autistic social groups began using the term to refer to strategies they used to appear “normal” and thus avoid social stigma. In the thirty years since, “masking” has become inextricably linked to neurodivergence. The term, however, did not originate here: it was first used by Franz Fanon to describe Black Americans’ strategies to avoid white supremacist violence, which signals the connection between anti-Black racism and anti-neurodivergent sentiment (Fanon, 1952/2008).

Autistic author Sonny Jane Wise defines masking as “the act or process of suppressing or hiding your traits, natural behaviors and responses while adopting alternative traits and behaviors in order to fit in, survive, cope, and meet expectations” (Wise, 2023). The practice of masking is a response to neuronormativity: the societal belief that there is one right kind of brain, and thus one right way to think, feel, move, communicate, and otherwise function (Walker, 2021). People who fall outside this narrow window of acceptable functioning become subject to interpersonal discrimination and systemic oppression.

Neurodivergent children are more likely than their neurotypical peers to experience adverse childhood experiences, even when controlling for ethnicity, gender, age, and socio-economic status (Wilson, Butler, Quigg, et al. 2024). This can come in the form of harsh parenting by caregivers or systemic mistreatment. In school settings, disabled children are disproportionately affected by policies of seclusion and restraint, and, like students of color, are more likely than their abled peers to be suspended, expelled, and arrested (Atkins & Walden, 2020; ACLU, 2008). In adulthood, displaying normative behavior is a factor in acquiring employment, housing, and interpersonal relationships (Blood, Williams, & Shaw, 2026; van Beukering et al., 2022). Furthermore, so is a history of normative behavior—or at least normative enough that you do not have a criminal record or a history of psychiatric incarceration. It is likewise imperative to maintain the appearance of normalcy; neurodivergent people who are able to secure housing, employment, and other basic needs, must keep masking in order to retain them.

It is easy to see how neurodivergent people learn that masking is necessary: if you are not perceived as “other,” you receive better treatment. Masking can protect neurodivergent people from social rejection, abuse, discrimination, and involuntary hospitalization. It can even be life and death, as in interactions with the police. Not all neurodivergent people are able to mask, however, and for those who can, it is rarely easy or sustainable in the long term.

Conclusion/Authors’ Note

The following series is intended to compare and contrast the strategies of masking and code-switching as protective strategies used by neurodivergent and Black people, respectively, to avoid discrimination and persecution. We will explore in depth these strategies and specific use cases, as well as our own experiences of code-switching and masking. Our goal for this series was to create a resource for mental health practitioners and their clients to understand code-switching, masking, and their intersection. We both hope that an understanding of these concepts will increase people’s understanding of themselves and of the people they serve, and that this will lead to better health outcomes for racialized and neurodivergent individuals and communities as a result.

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Further Reading

Intersections Between Racism and Ableism: https://disabilityphilanthropy.org/resource/intersections-between-racism-and-ableism/