Racist by design
When art and design are used as tools for a racist society, we should all be designers.
Racism has very little to do with liking or disliking someone based on the colour of their skin or their ethnic background. This is quite an easy approach to it, which is why so many (white) people can comfortably argue that they are not racist. They always have a friend or colleague who is black, therefore they cannot be racist. However, racism has little to do with individual preferences, and much more with structural systems of power and oppression. Not being able to see these systems is part of the problem, because ignorance of the problem is the main reason it doesn’t get solved. You don’t need to be a racist to be racist.
The status quo defines what is normal and what is a deviation. Not being white is seen as a deviation. That’s why people of colour, and particularly black people, are systematically excluded in society. It is the system that propagates exclusion by the way it is designed. Individual actions can be discriminating and hurtful, but racism is what happens when discrimination and power meet. Individuals may be racist or not, but it is the system that determines whether someone is included or alienated in our society. Challenging this system is way more difficult than standing up to someone who just dislikes you.
Racism as a system of structural exclusion is also traumatising. As a product designer I have been reflecting how design and art have contributed to racism and exclusion. I’ve summarised some of my life-long frustrations in this article; for some of them I just now come to realise why I found them so disturbing in the first place. Some of these examples are now being challenged in the market, and companies are picking up on them and starting doing something about it. This is a good first step, but many more are required if the system is going to be changed.
“I don’t know what most white people in this country feel, but I can only conclude what they feel from the state of their institutions.” — James Baldwin
What is the “flesh” colour anyway?
Primary school is probably the first place where black kids find out that there is something “wrong” with them. Imagine a child who wants to make a drawing of herself. However, there is no colour to represent the biggest organ she has, and the most recognisable characteristic of herself: her skin. The “flesh” colour crayon was there because some colour-blind white designers decided not to think about those who didn’t look like them. This simple object, a peach-coloured crayon, reminded black children that their race is not welcomed, and it doesn’t belong. I don’t think the “flesh” colour crayon was there for the white kids to colour themselves, as much as it was there for the black kids to learn that their skin is not flesh.
Crayons are not the only colour that remind you how abnormal black people are. Band-aids are there not to heal a superficial wound, but to create a deeper one. It creates anxiety to think that your blackness is going to be more evident to the world when it’s contrasted with the real “flesh” colour.
Just like crayons and band aids, the fashion world has always acknowledged white as the only skin colour. In high-fashion the “nude look” has, until recently, been designed with white women in mind. This exclusion of blackness comes from the assumption that people of colour are not their customers, or cannot afford their products, then why bother? In 2017 when Rihanna launched her makeup line Fenty Beauty, customers of colour embraced her products and bought them in mass. It was only then that fashion looked at the “black market” as customers to take into account.
These products also create a feeling of confusion in black people. Personally, using these products made me fall into the delusion that they were also made for me. That actually my skin colour was also “flesh”. When I was 16 I started to wear makeup. Like other teenagers I wanted to look prettier and correct the things I didn’t like about myself, like my acne. I didn’t know anything about makeup, and my mother didn’t wear any either. So I went to the drugstore and bought what my other girlfriends at school were buying. It wasn’t until weeks of going around looking like a mime player that someone was honest and cruel enough to laugh at my face. Of course, I looked weird and ridiculous. I guess nobody else said anything because they felt sorry for me, and didn’t want to acknowledge to themselves that I did not look like them, that I was in fact black.
After that I stopped using that makeup. It wasn’t until years later that I learned that beauty products for black women did exist. They were only more expensive and usually locked up at the stores.
Racist storytellers telling racist stories
What you see shapes what you believe. However, the people who decide the tv shows we see, write the books we read, cover the news we follow, and produce the movies that we watch are (on average) 90% white. As James Baldwin mentioned, we cannot know how white people as individuals feel, “but I can only conclude what they feel from the state of their institutions”. If we look at the way they have portrayed black people throughout history, we can conclude that we are not seen as equals, but as either mascots or aberrations.
This explains why Disney has been propagating stereotypes about people of colour to their audiences, who are mainly children. Disney has been indoctrinating, willingly or unwillingly, new generations into racism. Teaching white kids about how black people are an aberration, and to black kids to get used to not belonging.
Storytellers have also taught us that black people cannot be at the centre of the story. We are the sidekick or “Magical Negro” at best, or the loser villain at worst. Everything in between, such as criminals, bums, or clown characters, shows how (white) people in power perceive us. As the African-American film director Spike Lee puts it: “It’s about how film and television have been used to denigrate certain groups of people. It’s about the power of images and how they hurt.”
That is why representation is so important. When you have people from different backgrounds in positions of power, they are going to tell different stories, which are also important to be told. It is up to black artists to rewrite the black story from a black perspective. But for that, black people need to gain power in the industries where these images are produced.
Technology was racist then, is racist now, and will be racist in the future
I used to have a friend who had a Polaroid camera when I was a kid. Her parents let us play with it on special occasions, like her birthday or Christmas. It always made me anxious to take pictures with that camera. No matter how bright the day was, my teeth were the only thing you could see of me in the picture. I looked like the stereotypical joke. And, as all jokes, it is only funny until it happens to you.
Polaroid had more than 500 patents on its name. Research was part of their brand and product. In all of their years and research, did nobody think of developing a camera that could also photograph black people? After filing for bankruptcy, the Polaroid brand was relaunched a few years ago. It was marketed as a hipster and nostalgic product. But the product still worked the same. It didn’t have any major technical improvements. It still cannot photograph black skins, and I still get anxious when the pictures are taken. I still look like a joke.
New technologies are not exempt from these design failures. New products, just like the old ones, are designed by and for the same white, middle-class, able-bodied men. There’s been a lot of media attention around face-recognition technology, and how it fails to recognise faces of even the most renowned black people in the world. When Obama’s face was put into AI depixelisation software the result was a white man. This is not because of a bug in the technology or because it is new. It is because the designers and builders of these technologies work with people who look and think like them. The AI is trained on a data set that is skewed towards male whiteness. This is how white-default thinking is also shaping our future. Even today black people are seen as edge cases, outliers, and deviations. If this technology is going to be rolled out to the whole world, the whole world should be taken into account.
The world is not designed for those who are seen as deviations. It is not designed for people with disabilities, or for women, or for people of colour. Society as a system is designed and ruled by those who are in positions of power, and those people are mainly white abled-body men. This does not mean that it cannot be redesigned though. In fact it has to be redesigned. It is up to product designers, storytellers, and technology developers to design a society that reflect the people who are part of it. In which case we should all be designers.
I will be taking a creative break for a couple of weeks. Don’t sweat it. I will bring new and fresh content after the break.
