Hi my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

Why did you feel like you need to put a mask on? I know from a personal experience I wore a mask to feel like I needed to fit in and feel safe for many years.

I growing up playing sports and school and you know as a young adult I felt like I

needed to protect myself with a mask but why did you wear masks for many reasons one you

know I'm from North Carolina right from the south. I grew up

learning how to code switch and conform watching my mama right so we go to the bank and

if she talking to you know the white lady to work at the bank but her voice is different

I'm like oh wait is this how we talk?

Oh okay if my mama came to school and talked to teachers and you know all my teachers were white. I mean my town was only

black and white there was no in between I didn't see like Hispanics or any of that stuff

until I grew up and became an adult. So I learned very early oh this is how we have to

talk to people who are not black.

I didn't know that that was code switching back then, but it was like, oh, to be treated a certain way,

to be respected, to be seen. That's what we have to do and then growing up and

working in corporate America being told like on in a call center people here my

boy say oh are you black I don't want to speak to somebody black. No way. Oh absolutely, honey. And so I would learn to mask it even more to to push it down even more and then get into entertainment hearing, oh, you sound country, you

have to learn to cover that. So it became like, I'm doing it for, you know, just my normal school and work. I'm doing it for

corporate America and now I'm doing it for entertainment. And then it came to like, oh,

you come to LA, I used to, you know know have my hair was already natural but they were like for your skin

complexion straighter hair okay certain size sound neutral used to be the word I would always be given no accent Sound neutral.

It used to be the word I would always be given.

No accent.

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