“How exactly is a design “racist”?

A couple of months ago, I wrote an article called A Hundred Racist Designs, detailing just a few of the millions of ways racism shapes design and how design shapes racism. The speculum? The tipping system, intellectual property laws? Racism intersected with many more examples than I initially realized.

Before, I thought it was enough, to sum up the point with a simple answer:

“Just because a design isn’t intentionally made by a racist doesn’t mean it hasn’t adopted racist politics.”

As you might expect, though, I got some real pushback from the Internet…

Everyone loves to talk about systemic racism. Why not use systems thinking to better understand how to address it?

Sometimes, it feels like history is repeating itself.

In our world where the unprecedented is the norm, there are still a few things that remain consistent:

• Every day, we wake up.
• (Some of us) brush our teeth, have breakfast, and check the news for the next unprecedented catastrophe.
• We drive (or walk twenty feet) to your place of work.
• You eat some food, talk to some colleagues, and then leave. …

On building a system where everyone has a voice.

Who deserves to be a part of our society?

Our Time is Now by Stacey Abrams is a scrupulously detailed text on today’s unique opportunity in American society. By unpacking the value of identity politics, emoting the crushing experience of her 2018 Georgia election, and interweaving stories of lost opportunity, she makes the case for rebuilding the voting system into one that represents the umbrella of American experience.

Have you heard of a kgotla?

Depending on the context, it’s a public meeting, traditional law court, a community council of Botswana villages, or all of these at once. I hadn’t heard of one until I visited the country for my research. In 2016, at Botswana’s second International Development Design Summit, I witnessed how the kgotla in the village of D’Kar introduced foreign designers like me to the local community members, to receive the community’s blessing for our four-week summit.

It was clear that the kgotla was significant to the culture, institutions, and daily lives of Batswana. A traditional Setswana…

To reach our dreams, it sometimes feels necessary to break the sound barrier accomplishing tasks. Soon enough, however, we’ll be ones left shattered.

What have you lost, on accident or purpose, because of the pandemic?

Flash Gordon has been my nickname my entire life. I got the name from a Morehouse brother who saw me zoom from one task to another with reckless abandon. I learned this important lesson the first time I wrote a scholarship letter to colleges and had to make a personal case for my value. …

Design centers a massive promise: that the field can shape the world. How does it fall short?

What made you fall in love with design?

Personally, the field made me feel like I could do anything. Our tools, mindsets, spaces, and creations have stewarded possibility for generations. I remember learning about how the methods of human-centered design — tactical empathy, brainstorming, prototyping, and many more — were tools available to any human that wanted to make something new in the world.

Over time, I learned more about the constraints caused by the actual culture of design. What actually happens in…

We need new ways to think about transforming the world. Fortunately, the path was trailblazed half a century ago.

Does going to school make you feel empowered?

Think back to the last time you were in a classroom.

We’re not talking about when you walked across the stage, or the few times in your life you used your education at your job. I’m talking about those morose times in a lecture hall, learning about whatever topic you’ll forget at the end of the semester.

Let’s go back. Actively sitting in the seat, listening to a professor, taking quizzes and tests…

To build an antiracist future, we have to take a hard look at today’s creations.

This moment feels different.

It seems overnight, the world is overcome with injecting anti-racism into every endeavor. Some colleagues, for the first time, are coping with the weight of the oppressive system. Others, fortunately, have collected countless resources posed to help design a more equitable future.

Unfortunately, racism proves to be larger, more abstract, and more elusive than the objects traditional designers are used to constructing. To some extent, it’s not their fault: racism’s been designed into our society for hundreds of years. …