The gentrification of language.
Published: February 2026
Race is not a biological truth. It is a social invention: a way societies have historically organized people into hierarchies based on physical traits like skin colour. From the beginning, this system was designed to give value to whiteness and strip it from everyone else. The result? A world where race still shapes who is believed, who is hired, who is listened to, and who is allowed to exist comfortably in public and professional spaces.
Black History Month asks us not only to remember Black excellence and resistance, but also to look closely at the quieter, everyday systems that still regulate Black life. One of those systems is language. Another is appearance. And right in between sits a practice many Black people know intimately: code-switching.
Code Switching and Microagressions.
Code-switching is often described as the ability to change how you speak, dress, or behave depending on the environment. In reality, it is a survival strategy. It means learning how to perform “professionalism” in ways that align with white cultural norms in order to avoid being perceived as aggressive, incompetent, or out of place. It is not about self-expression, it is about self-protection.
Today, racism rarely announces itself openly. Instead, it shows up as microaggressions: subtle remarks, raised eyebrows, tone policing, and assumptions that quietly reinforce who belongs and who does not. Discrimination in the workplace is still very real, even if it hides behind polite language. Résumés are discarded because a name sounds “foreign.” Job candidates are favored because they “sound right” on the phone. Black workers are hired, but kept at lower levels of authority. And when these patterns are pointed out, they are often dismissed or psychologically reframed through racial gaslighting, which then makes Black people question whether what they experienced was racism at all.
For Black women especially, professionalism has long been defined in opposition to their natural bodies. Straight hair is read as neat. Natural hair is read as political. Corporate culture suggests that respectability requires smoothing, softening, and shrinking oneself. Even something as personal as a hairstyle can change how seriously one is taken in a room.
Language functions the same way.
Even when Black people are born and raised in Western countries, their speech is often treated as suspicious or out of place. There is an unspoken expectation of what Black voices are supposed to sound like, and when those expectations are not met, confusion follows. Some are told they “sound white.” Others are told they “don’t speak properly.” Both responses reveal the same belief: that intelligence and authority belong to whiteness.
This is where African American Vernacular English (AAVE) enters the picture.
The Gentrification of Language.
AAVE is a rich linguistic system with its own grammar, structure, and history. It was shaped by centuries of survival, creativity, and community. Yet for generations, it has been dismissed as broken or incorrect English. Black speakers have been told to abandon it in classrooms, job interviews, and corporate spaces in order to be taken seriously.
At the same time, something strange has happened online.
On social media, especially on platforms like TikTok and Twitter, AAVE has been widely adopted by non-Black users. Words and expressions rooted in Black culture circulate as “slang,” “internet language,” or “trendy phrases.” When Black people use them, they are judged. When non-Black people use them, they are seen as funny, cool, or expressive. The same language is stigmatized in one mouth and celebrated in another.
This is what cultural gentrification looks like.
Just as physical neighborhoods can be stripped of their original communities and repackaged as fashionable, Black language is often detached from Black people and rebranded as digital culture. The labour of creating meaning is erased. The social penalties remain. Black speakers are still expected to switch to standardized English in professional spaces, while their linguistic innovations are consumed casually online.
Everybody wants to be black, until it is time to be black.
Black History Month reminds us that these struggles did not appear overnight. They are connected to centuries of control over Black bodies, voices, and images. Even Black figures like Madam C.J. Walker, America’s first female self-made millionaire, were responding to a world that made Black women feel they had to change themselves in order to be safe and successful. Indeed, the entrepreneur built her wealth through haircare and skin brightening products that helped Black women feel beautiful in a world that shamed them for existing.
Seen this way, code-switching is not just personal behavior. It is political. It reveals whose culture is treated as default and whose must be translated.
The gentrification of AAVE exposes a painful contradiction: Black expression is valuable, but Black people are still treated as disposable. Their creativity circulates freely, but their humanity remains conditional.
If race is socially constructed, then so is professionalism. So is respectability and “proper” language.
And what has been constructed can also be dismantled.
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