The weekend before spring break, I attended Rutgers University’s annual leadership conference: The Mark Conference! It was a great experience and I learned a lot from it; the speakers were so inspiring and gave me new insights and ideas on how to approach life. However, the speaker who stood out the most to me was Professor Ruha Benjamin (in the departments of Sociology and African American Studies) from Princeton University. Her presentation centered around the topic of how we misdiagnose problems in our society.
One of the most compelling ideas she shared with the audience was about inequality, and she used the metaphor of ‘code switching’. Code switching occurs when a person alternates between two or more languages within the context of a single conversation (according to Wikipedia). However, Professor Benjamin used code switching as a symbol of “the game of life”.
Her key sentence for this point was that “Not all social codes are the same or created equal.” She was referring to the fact that women use very different social codes when in conversations with men; their body language becomes docile and they’re more apologetic. They are less assertive and thus appear less powerful. Her concise depiction of what it meant to be a woman and the ‘code’ we use appealed to me because it’s so applicable to all of us; we must strive to change that so that women are treated as men’s equals!
The attached photo is one I took with Professor Benjamin after her talk! :) I really enjoyed her talk; it was a positive, eye-opening experience for me!
