An Ally for Life
To our Black community, we will not have all the answers but we have the space for you. We see you, we stand with you, we will continue to fight for you and with you.
Hexagon was born out of the necessity to combat the gender gap in UX, but we would be remiss to think systemic racism is not an intersectional issue.
To our Black community, we will not have all the answers but we have the space for you. We see you, we stand with you, and we will continue to fight for you and with you.
To the rest of our community, we must continue to educate ourselves, use our voice, and our privilege. We cannot stay silent. We must do the work. Donate. Sign petitions. Read. Listen. Vote. Show up.
To the Hexagon community,
It has been over two weeks since the murder of George Floyd which sparked the nationwide protests for Black Lives Matter and against police brutality. As time passes, our work and our fight do not stop — we must look within ourselves and ask how we can step up, speak up, and be allies for the Black community. We cannot and will not be silent.
At Hexagon, we will continue to learn about and fight for racial equality and justice within our community and beyond.
We are taking this seriously and are committed to figuring out how Hexagon can be a better ally to the Black community.
Hexagon will be committing to the following:
- Diversifying our team by including more Black leadership within the Steering Committee and across the global team of Chapter Leads
- Revisiting our Mentorship Program and Education Grant to ensure these programs are accessible and supportive to Black community members
- Revisiting event planning — taking a closer look at speaker line-ups, event themes, all the way down to the brands and restaurants that we purchase from for our events
- Spotlight features in our Medium publication to be more inclusive of our Black community voices
- Start a dialogue across our community on how to improve the UX industry by working towards increasing the number of Black folx
- Furthering the conversation in our global Slack group
We will continue to work on improving ourselves as allies so that we can truly support our Black community members. We are deeply grateful for the community we’ve built together and look forward to learning together.
What does it mean to be an ally?
Allyship is an active and consistent practice of using power and privilege to achieve equity and inclusion while holding ourselves accountable to marginalized people’s needs. (source)
From guidetoallyship.com, to be an ally is to:
- Take on the struggle as your own.
- Stand up, even when you feel scared.
- Transfer the benefits of your privilege to those who lack it.
- Acknowledge that while you, too, feel pain, the conversation is not about you.
An ally is someone who uses their privilege to advocate for a marginalized group. They transfer the benefits of their privilege to those who lack it. Let us stand firmly as allies of the Black community — allies not just for a moment nor only in times of crisis, but lifelong allies.
Resources on becoming an ally
- 20+ Allyship actions for Asians to show up
- Antiracist allyship starter pack
- Allyship (vs. Accomplice): The What, Why and How
- More crowd sourced resources here
We urge you to take action and explore the ways you can be actively involved, we have listed a few ways here which are by no means an exhaustive list. Simply it is a place to start.
Do The Work & Continue Learning
- Donate to various organizations fighting for justice every single day
- Sign petitions
- Justice in June
- Anti-racism design resources
- Care over cops
- Anti-racist reading list for designers
- Array101 by Ava DuVernay
Amplify Black voices
We deeply understand the power of community and we’ve witnessed beautiful opportunities come out of strong, supportive communities. Here are a few incredible communities:
- ethel’s club
- Black Who Design
- Black Women in Product Design
- Bay Area Black Designers
- Where Are The Black Designers event
- If you are a Black woman or Black nonbinary person, join our private #for-black-folx channel led by Olivia Moore in our Slack
We encourage you to take the conscious effort to follow more Black leaders on social media. Share articles, posts, calls to actions on your social media, written by Black activists and leaders.
Show up, keep doing the work, and speak out.
We must adopt these practices in our everyday lives and continue to show up. We all play a part in the fight against individual and systemic racism — no matter who you are, you have a role to play. Whether or not your actions are seen, what you do, what you say, and how you say it matters. Each of us have work to do in becoming stronger allies to our Black community, colleagues, and neighbors.
This fight is a marathon, not a sprint and it starts with you, right here, right now. Let us not be silent and let us unite for lasting change.
As always, we’d love to hear from you.
Written by Julia Meriel and Fiona Yeung
Hexagon UX is a global community built to empower women and non-binary folks to bring their whole selves to work — building confidence, balancing the ratio in the UX industry, and effecting change on a greater scale while fostering personal and professional growth. Join us on Slack, where we will be continuing the conversation.
