My manifesto towards changing the conversation around race, equity and bias in design.
In response to an invitation from the AIA Committee on Architecture for Education (AIA-CAE) to talk about changing the conversation in design, as we think about race, bias and equity, I created a 9 point, 5 minute ‘manifesto’ based on how I approach my work.
1. Start everything with positionality!
I am an Afro-Trinidadian design educator, based in New Orleans, and this experience follows me into my work. My current design practice is focused on critical design education that brings students to an awareness of social justice matters, inspired by the work of Paulo Freire among others.
2. Help students see color, oppression, injustice and bias!
We talk about positionality at the start of the semester so that students can see race & ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, ability status, among other areas. This helps them recognize the diversity or lack of diversity in our group, and helps us remember how this impacts the work that we do.
3. Forget Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
This seems to assume that someone like me has to be given permission to be included into another person’s world. I’m not asking for permission, I’m doing what I know how to do. Create design education, research and practice that are anti-racist, AND also plural, pluriversal and anti-hegemonic. Challenge the idea that design and design education are for one group of people and not the other, or that one group leads while another follows, or that designers can’t look like people like me. Consciously decenter whiteness, maleness, straightness, able bodied-ness etc.
4. Center the experiences and expertise of people of color
I teach in a non-diverse space, yet all of my community partners, expert panelists, visiting critics are people of color, and in particular women of color, from New Orleans. Everybody wins when women of color, including black trans women, are heard.
5. Shift the power.
Intentionally flip the power in projects. In my classes, students interview designers of color about their work, they interview and learn from community partners who are people of color. They’ve presented their work to residents from New Orleans. We’ve included community organizers, engineers, professors, and an even Executive Director, who were all local black women. I want my students to see people of color as experts who they are learning from rather than as a communities that are being studied.
6. Design around joy and expertise of POC and not just their suffering
Black and LatinX stories aren’t only about suffering. We can also create design projects around hopes, imagination, festivals, futures, happiness, building community and don’t have to focus on suffering and sadness.
7. Introduce critical analysis of problems through discussions.
I teach something called ‘design thinking’, and also see the potential for white supremacy and white saviorism in this work. So, I’ve been re-designing my own curriculum through a critical lens, in an attempt to help students critically examine their process.
8. Introduce critical theory and language.
I created the Designer’s Critical Alphabet cards as a response to the idea of a bunch of ‘tech-bros’ in Palo Alto determining our futures. The cards included terms that I, at the time, felt every designer, and every ‘tech-bro’ should know.
9. Hire more BIPOC faculty and staff.
I did my PhD at NCState, and I have no idea what the culture was behind the scenes at the College of Design, but I saw black faculty and staff there from day one. This created an environment that was welcoming to me as student of color, and I’m sure this was beneficial to white students as well. Be intentional about the experiences of your BIPOC faculty, staff, students and partners. Ensure that they can show up as themselves in design research, education and practice. They will help keep you on track so you don’t get called out publicly later on.
These are some of my ideas on this topic, I’m not always successful, it’s always evolving, and I’m always learning.
And finally, I need to pause to shout out the tremendous black design educators who checked-in with me, or I’ve checked out from afar, over the last few weeks such as Chris Rudd, Omari Souza, Christina Harrington, Milan Drake, Cheryl Holmes Miller, Michele Washington, Saki Mafundikwa, Woodrow Winchester III, Antionette Carroll and Akaya Winwood. So if you hear something that sounds like them, it might not be by chance, we may have had a conversation, or I’ve listened to them or we’ve shared ideas… Thank you.
