How I decided to take a course and why we should have more of this kind

We talk about racism and find design solutions

I took a class ‘Designing Towards an Anti-racist Stanford’ in Fall 2021. As I’m a postdoc, I did not need credits. I was about to become busier than before as my research at Stanford progresses. However, I decided to join this class and I want to see more classes like this in the future.

At the end of summer, I saw an announcement of this course from one of the twenty emails I receive every day. I usually skim through all emails not to miss anything important, and the course description remained in my mind for several hours afterward.

I was born and raised in Korea and moved to the US about 8 years ago for my graduate study. I heard about discrimination and biases related to races and ethnicity in the US through pop culture, but I was ignorant. For a while, I was worried if I said something inappropriate and would hurt or annoy or frustrate somebody. And I felt everyone else knows how to talk and behave ‘appropriately’. So, my main strategy was not being offensive. Well, with this strategy, I might be able to manage not to actively offend somebody, but I could not become a better ally or make a change. However, I wanted to be more proactive in learning and changing the culture and be a better person. This course seemed to help me.

The course structure was interesting. The teaching team and students talked to each other and share stories and thoughts. Just by listening to their conversation, I learned how I can approach racism and inequity and how I can be a better colleague/friend. I thought that we need to talk more about racism and discrimination, and I hope my team’s product (‘toolkit for community agreements’) will help initiate discussions in groups. We designed the product to be community-created agreements, like crowdsourcing, because we believe talking about the issues and listening to marginalized individuals’ experiences and expectations are critical steps towards creating a more inclusive and diverse community.

I know (sadly) that we have a ubiquitous culture in academia: everything not related to research is just a distraction and racism and discrimination are often disguised as ‘meritocracy.’ I believe courses designed to talk about racism and discrimination and to find solutions will let our academic community see the issues, acknowledge them, and be better.