Welcome to Industrial Design
One thing that I’ve noticed throughout my academic career is that textbooks oftentimes mark slavery as the beginning of Black people’s History when in reality, our roots trace back ever further than that. As a Nigerian-American, I was always confused as to why my history was being omitted, so I really appreciate the article aptly titled “Black People Invented Everything.” This article very much served as a guide meant to supplement the insufficient Black history lessons that many of us have received in school, and even more than that, it was an uplifting how-to for Black folks such as myself, giving major tips on how to patent our ideas and bring them to fruition.
What I love about this article is that it delves beyond the Black inventors that are most commonly mentioned (i.e. George Washington Carver). The authors truly went out of their way to fill the article to the brim with Black creators, from Lewis Latimer to Alice Parker. Through the lens of tradition, this article emphasized the importance of understanding that Black people very much did invent everything, which is a lesson that I think everyone could benefit from learning.
While I found the other article, “Understanding Industrial Design,” to be quite informative, I was pretty disappointed in its lack of diversity. As I had predicted, many of the inventors mentioned were white men, and the article mainly delved into Western inventions, further bolstering the (incorrect) idea that many of today’s inventions are thanks to the West. This article somewhat served as a detailed history lesson on design that pushes further than Thomas Edison and Ben Franklin. I enjoyed reading through the detailed timeline, but while it definitely provided me with a great amount of information, it still managed to feel terribly incomplete. By omitting the inventions of people of color, and specifically those of Black folks, this article reinforces the notion that this country, and other Western nations, were founded on the brainpower of white people and the brute force of POC.
This article was fueled using the value of self-direction, but I would have loved to see the authors stray away from solely mentioning inventions and their technological impact. I think a lot could have been gained from considering the cultural impacts of these designs, especially given that Black folks might have actually been behind a lot of them.
Reflecting on both of these very different chapters, my one wish for future historians is to remember the inventions of women. Madam CJ Walker, Patricia E. Bath — I could go on and on with a list of women who have contributed to the inventions that we know and love. I hope that the next generation’s textbooks will remember our contributions and give us the recognition that we deserve.
