No one talks to their mother the same way they talk to their friends in the lunchroom or on the basketball court. Code-switching or code-meshing, on the other hand, requires an actual code.

George Paasewe, a Milwaukee area professor and author, shares the benefits of code-switching, specifically as it relates to people of color.

Code switching prevents people from feeling like they can be themselves, but culture coding is a heightened form of situational awareness that taps into the multidimensional nature of our true selves.