Module 6 | Race, Ethnicity and Culture
Welcome to the sixth module of 51272: Cultures (spring 2021), a design studies course at Carnegie Mellon University School of Design.
This course is about analyzing and discussing various aspects of human difference and relating them to the material/designed world. You can find the course description here.
Module 06: Race, Ethnicity and Culture
Why Race, Ethnicity and Culture?
Design creates affordances and disaffordances where a seemingly simple feature may enable or hinder an individual from having ownership over their lives. This module heightens the awareness of how design meets different ethnic and racial groups differently due to an intermix of structural iniquities, human-made infrastructure, and social narratives embedded into our collective psyches. By bringing attention to such differences, this module aims to highlight how a variance of dis/affordances are granted and poses the question to the class of how design should take this into account across the broad genre of practice.
Class 07
The instructor situated the module stating at the outset that tracing the origin of race is a heavily debated topic. In light of this, they chose to outline forms of influence that shaped the formation of race and the understanding of ethnicity.
This sectioned the lecture into five key parts: coloniality, pluriverse, race & ethnicity, race & design, and design that decolonizes.
Coloniality
Coloniality is not the same as colonialism. Coloniality implies that the affects of colonialism continues and never stopped. This also underscores that european hegemony still holds power and influence over much of the world. By definition, the term refers to “the continuity of colonial forms of domination after the end of colonial administrations.”
“Coloniality is not reducible to the presence or absence of a colonial administration or to the political/economic structures of power” — Ramón Grosfoguel
To deeply understand the intersecting powers that inform the formation of race and how they shape everyday experiences, the instructor introduced the colonial matrix of power. This diagram illustrates the basis of how Western notions of race, gender, sexuality, spirituality, knowledge/epistemology, language, art, age, etc are advanced. According to Grosfoguel, the colonial matrix of power is an organizing principle involving exploitation and domination exercised in multiple dimensions of social life.
In a similar vein, orientalism, a term coined by Edward Said, highlights the exoticizing and reducing the other to cliches and stereotypes.
Orientalism is “the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient — dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.” — Edward Said
Pluriverse
“A world where many worlds fit.”
— Zapatista Army of National Liberation
The pluriverse is a non-hegemonic where hegemony is the “political, economic, or military predominance or control of one state over others.” It is a place where multiple ways of being in the world can co-exist — an aspiration and theory grounded in something to pursue.
In line with the concept of multiple worlds, the diaspora reflects the current manifestation of cultures overlapping and intersecting with one another. By definition, it is a scattered population whose origin lies in a separate geographic locale.
Through such migration and cross pollination, four key terms come to rise to illustrate how differences meet, blend, and/or co-exist.
Assimilation: Loss of identity
Acculturation: Distinct cultural markers
Integration: Different cultures coexist equally; adopting new culture but also maintaining their own
Syncretism: Two or more distinct cultures blend together to create a new custom, idea, practice, or philosophy
Painting a specific example; we delved into the theory of racial triangulation developed by Dr. Claire Jean Kim.
This theory articulates the political positioning of Asian Americans in the traditional racial binary of black and white. Dr. Kim states that Asian Americans remain dehumanized as a figure that is neither here nor there. According to the theory of racial triangulation, the approach to Asian Americans within the US landscape is to channel a particular ideology — one that either uplifts whiteness or anti-blackness. This is done through civic ostracism (Asian Americans as perpetual foreigners seen through the absence of political landscapes and decision making processes; ergo, no agency) or relative valorization (positive portrayal of Asian Americans based on a dominant parties political benefit).
In relation to the theory of racial triangulation is the term model minority, a term coined by sociologist William Petersen in 1966. He stated that the Japanese Americans “rose from the ashes” of being in internment camps — due to war hysteria in the US after Pearl Harbor, where several Japanese Americans were interned without due process — and were able to achieve economic prosperity. Therefore, he argues, racism does not exist while making Japanese Americans, and later Asian Americans, model minorities. This is the first framing that explicitly compared Asian Americans with Black Americans for the purposes of refuting the existence of racism.
Race & Ethnicity
The meaning of race changed over time. For europeans, it began as lineage. In the 19th century, race became synonymous with type. In the 20th century, it became a point of contention where there were divides between eugenics and those that wanted to dismantle scientific racism.
Therefore, presently, the term race is defined as a social categorization creating a social reality, therefore, a social construct.
“‘That race is everything, is simply a fact, the most remarkable, the most comprehensive, which philosophy has ever announced. Race is everything: literature, science, art — in a word, civilisation depends on it” — Robert Knox
Katia Gibel Mevorach: American, Professor of Anthropology and American Studies at Grinnell College. She thinks race is a metonym. A name given to a group after a different name had been applied to another member of the same group (in this case humans). A word that names an object from a single characteristic of it or of a closely related object. A way of defining otherness.
Race: why?
For the subjugation of people, theft of resources, occupation of land, in order to benefit the imperial power in the ‘core’ country. So the periphery was robbed to benefit the core. Many countries gained independence in the mid 20th century (1940s-70s), but that does not mean colonialism “ended.”
African → Slave trade became an incentive to categorize humans to justify subordination of African slaves.
East Asians → considered white till the 17th century, because of reluctance to accept trade and religion in European terms
Race: how?
Based on skin and physical differences. A form of othering, defining the other as racially inferior by attributing more desirable features to the white race. Arranging other races from the most to the least desirable set of attributes:
Amerindians were savages (different ideological, cultural and political traditions)
Carl Linneaus in 1735 came up with Homo Sapiens Continental Varieties: europaeus, asiaticus, americanus, and afer, each associated with a different humour: sanguine, melancholic, choleric, and phlegmatic, respectively. Homo sapiens europaeus was described as active, acute, and adventurous, whereas Homo sapiens afer was said to be crafty, lazy, and careless.
Ethnicity
Ethnicity theory says that race is a social category and is but one of several factors in determining ethnicity. Some other criteria include: “religion, language, ‘customs,’ nationality, and political identification”. This theory was put forth by sociologist Robert E. Park in the 1920s. It is based on the notion of “culture”.
Race & Design
Race as a social categorization has material effects through institutionalized practices of preference and discrimination. Other forms of racial bias through design is by invisibilizing or making white race as the default.
Design that Decolonizes
We concluded the class with ways design decolonizes to ground ourselves in examples that display another approach to design.
The Brainstorming House, La Casa de le Lluvia [de ideas], is conceived as a cultural and environmental community center in a context of informality and scarce investment from municipal authorities. Since its conception, the process has been promoted by several community leaders and collectives, from seven neighborhoods around the Fucha River in the eastern hills of Bogotá. They are constantly promoting manifold small-scaled projects aimed at improving the neighborhood: from sanitation to reforestation, waste cleanup and land removal — the kind of socio-spatial improvements that should be provided/supported by the municipality.
Rebuild Foundation is a platform for art, cultural development, and neighborhood transformation. Our projects support artists and strengthen communities by providing free arts programming, creating new cultural amenities, and developing affordable housing, studio, and live-work space.
Class 08
The second session for this module included Provocations in which instructors determine eight Provocateurs (in the class) to lead class discussions on the most recent class lecture. In this case, the Provocateurs prepared questions that provoked deeper thought in disability status in relation to design as a profession, field, and study. Each Provocateur were assigned to facilitate discussions with 3–4 other classmates.
Here are some of our insights:
- Artifacts hold cultural arguments: how can designers take into account the context in which designs live in and their connotations?
- Solutions designed from the outside: what implications do outside or external influences have on design processes and designed things?
- Changes to our current practices: in consideration of decolonization, what can designers do with their existing practices to use it as a channel to decolonize and/or prompt decolonization of others?
- Curves vs Straight: the Zulu people hold a circular culture where curves and rounded edges are seen as innovative; with this in mind, how do designers evaluate standardizations and understanding change?
- Effect of narratives: how do designers take into account the depth and breadth of stories — their influences, shapes, and textures?
We concluded the discussion with discussing what change and decolonization might look like in our immediate circles and practices. The pragmatism allowed us to ground ourselves in elements of design that were feasible while making sense of the imaginary.
