So, where are the black designers?
A lesson on cultural diversity
Recently I came across an Instagram repost of a friend of mine asking this exact question.
At first, I full-heartedly agreed. But sheltering in my place in West Oakland in the midst of the pandemic gave me time to think and remember. I recalled teaching a highschool class in Manhattan in 2002 facilitated by a program called Junior Achievement. My experience made me wonder, isn’t the correct question to ask: “Why does black design talent not make it?”
Was it possible that I kept some of the projects from the class that took place 19 years ago? I went into my storage and started digging for a night and then some. Meanwhile, helicopters were circling overhead all night incited by the anti-racism protests in downtown Oakland and fireworks were randomly going off in the park across the street in support. Oakland felt collectively anxious and California was burning. Me digging through one box after another and finally, there it was. A few pages bundled together. I had not thrown them out.
The story I am sharing is a mix of artifacts and vignettes of my exposure to black and brown creativeness as a source that influenced my perspective up to this day. That amalgamation is what drove my interpretation of why there are not enough black designers. Besides all of that, the core of this story is the experience of a phenomenally clueless white dude from Germany teaching a predominately black senior class at the Highschool of the Arts on the West Side of Manhattan in 2002.
Metal Detector Reading Aid
I remember that the highschool was around 11th avenue and perhaps 49th street, but I wasn’t successful in locating it on the map. Did it get shut down during the Bloomberg years? What I do remember however was that I had to go through a metal detector and students were looking at me, or at least it felt like it, like I was a fish out of water. And each floor was staffed with a police officer.
I would help out teaching Mr. Guttman’s class, who was the Vice Principal of the school. He enthusiastically embraced me in his office and told me I should share a lot of my professional work life, which was a tender two years old, so the students would get inspired and motivated. Then the VP impressed on me that the graduating class was great. All good kids. I nodded but little could I imagine what those two hours per week would teach me.
Off to the classroom where the VP introduces me to the class: “This is Jo-highness Semen. He will…” The class collectively burst out laughing, it actually felt like a storm of laughter. And the VP, not able to continue, laughed as well, realizing how he had pronounced my name. “That’s just fantastic.” I thought “nothing better than a smooth entrance.”
When the original excitement had settled down Mr. Guttman gave a reading assignment. The 30+ students were mostly immersed when some paused and looked up. A latecomer was standing in the doorframe, his hair braided back, medium-sized and stocky.
”Mr. Jarrell, thank you for the honors. Please join.” Mr. Guttman said. “Mr. Jarrell” took a moment and then started slowly walking down the aisle towards a free chair in the back. I observed that some guys held their fists out below the tables to the side. While passing the latecomer gave a relaxed tap with his fist on theirs. It seemed like he was recognized as having some type of gravitas.
The class continued reading, Mr. Guttman came close and pointed to him, concentrating on the text: “This is as far as success goes with him. He won’t graduate. He can’t read.” I looked at the student closer. He appeared very focused, seriously trying to decipher the words. Not a lot was left from the mildly intimidating gravitas he just exuded. A boy trying to read.
Now that I actually teach interaction designers in the Bay Area, truly nothing opens my heart more than seeing this very expression on a student’s face. Being present to the task and sincerely, genuinely, trying but not resolving it. Exposing themselves to failure and nonetheless wanting to know. Curiosity leads the way and avoidance is not an option.
So I struggled to understand: Why won’t he graduate? What will he do if he can’t read?
Cultural Translations
During the first class I taught alone the class appeared to be itching to know what Mr. Semen was about. “Where is Germany?” “Are you a Nazi?” “You play soccer?”. When they heard I played streetball they asked: “Do you know Dirk?” As in Dirk Nowitzki, who is German, played successfully for the Dallas Mavericks. And finally: “Are you gay? You know what I am say’n, do you dig men?” “No, why do you think that?” “Yo pants are skinny”. Someone else, “Maybe this is how they dress there?”.
It happened quite frequently, this conversation amongst themselves, no need for me to respond. Like a collective brain of sorts. Figuring things out together. That and a continuous translation for me. Mostly by three girls, similarly dressed, taking the middle of the front row seats. How they developed their skills to do so, I don’t know.
Translation happened in two ways. Either the front communicating to the back of the class what I said in at times questionable English “What he’s say’n … “. Or the front row explaining to me lingo I’ve never heard before. In a way not just a dialect, but unique words with unique intonations paired frequently with body language. “Not feel’n it means they don’t wanna do it.” These were my cultural translators.
Provided a Break
During the next class while collecting the homework, one of the frontrow girls approached me from the side and announced, “I didn’t do no homework.” Her statement alone wouldn’t have been surprising if she hadn’t also been standing way too close while giving a unique emphasis to the decollete of her crop top which was pronounced even further by the swaying of her shoulders. I was stunned. The class fell silent. An eager audience waiting for my comeback. I took a nervous step back, grabbling for an appropriate response, I said something like, “I don’t care, you should care. Do it for yourself.” Not really what an educator should say but my best shot at trying to appear cool. The girl retreated and the audience cried out in laughter, more like howling, and slapped the tables in glee. I still don’t know why? Perhaps just tension and release. Scene over.
After class a handsome guy a head taller than me stopped close up in front of me. I was thinking: “What now?”. In general everything was way closer, or felt way closer than I am used to in my cultural circles.. He held his fist towards me, just a few relaxed inches off of his body. Because I had observed how the boys greeted each other, I tapped mine on top of his and then he tapped his on top of mine.. No words exchanged, no facial expression, just that and he walked out. Nothing said and so much said. This was approval by someone who everyone else seemed to give a damn about.
No doubt in my mind now, that the class knew very well I was in way over my head. They chose to be kind. Why? I can only speculate.
Culturally Tone Deaf
Thinking back, I still feel the lively energy, engagement, curiosity, and honesty. Honesty about what they thought paired frequently with how they felt. Spoken and unspoken emotions expressed alongside sentences through body language or at times without any words at all. This is in stark contrast compared to how we, the smart elite as George Packer coins our group in his article and book The Four Americas, communicate. The smart elite are predominantly white and we are aligned on what is culturally appropriate in our circles. It appears we tend to keep our emotions under wraps and if stated, then we state them as a matter of fact. Like an analysis was accomplished: “I thought about our interaction earlier and it is important for me to share with you that your earlier comment made me feel uncomfortable.” The delivery is probably a tad bit on the awkward side. More importantly, however, this intellectual postponement of emotions robs us of the ability to empathize in the moment. Feeling the other rather than just understanding the logic of why.
Talking about tuning in and being in sync, and I wanted to edit this out of the story because it makes me appear super ignorant, but here it is. During my attempt to explain supply and demand and the way the concept applies to all areas of life, I chose drug dealing as an example. While I thought it was something they were probably exposed to I had to learn that perhaps exactly for that very reason it was absolutely not appreciated typecasting. The response was a resounding grunt. At first I didn’t get it and it took a second annoyed collective expression before I aborted the topic, without a word being said.
I learned that when you are trying to partake in a subculture, and assume you know something relevant like myself being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, these preconceived notions will get you to screw up. More than once. All that is left to do, detour, apologize, make repairs. And hope you won’t get expelled for being tone deaf. Instant feedback is a service to each other and not delayed, or worse a passive-aggressive response after the fact.
Design into the Green
After this longish prequel, let me get to the heart of the story. Teaching economics I had to convey the concept of changing demand, supply driving the price. Companies producing. Us consuming. Demand goes up, price goes up while supply remains at level. If the cost to produce is lower than the price the delta is your company’s profit.
That profit turns to a loss if demand drops and the revenue is down and not high enough to cover the fixed and variable costs. Exactly that scenario I made up for an aging beverage company. To save the company from the brink, each student received a share in the company. In return they were supposed to invent new beverages that would attract new customers and turn the company back into the green.
The class was split into two groups, the left side and the right side. The task was to envision new beverage concepts. One group chose to create a new electrolyte beverage. The other half decided on fancy water.
Remember, that this was 19 years ago when the only electrolyte drinks were still Gatorade and the fairly newish Vitamin Water, which later sold to Coke for $4bn. Bottled water had yet to explode onto the scene until it came under fire for creating excessive plastic waste.
As each half had multiple groups, they generated multiple designs, with differing attributes, names and value propositions. I still can’t believe this actually happened. Thinking now about my clients dragging their mental feet to envision, draw or write any of this. This was ready made design thinking without having to explain what design thinking is. I would explain design thinking at its core as collaborative, creative problem solving. Rather than just analyzing the problem, getting to work in generating possible solutions. Solutions that are permitted to be far fetched at times but may very well guide novel concepts to inspire prototyping.
The winners for the left half were Mooderade with the eye-shaped bottle. Not sure if I already mentioned it, but if you put a drop of it on your skin it would change color depending on how stressed you are.
The right half of the class conceived Himalayan Water:
Not certain who the wordsmiths of the description were but definitely not me. I am absolutely positive that I would have to look up exertion. Also, how about the alliteration of Clear, Crystal, Create a tingling sensation. Nice! Looking at all of it, after having created hundreds of concepts and value propositions during the last 10 years working in design, this is not bad at all.
And yes, they actually created a wrapper for the bottle, apologies for the image quality but most students took the original back, and what I did find in my storage were the overhead projector sheets, yes, you read that correctly. What I don’t know is how they managed to pull off this design with forest in the back and font and everything else? They were collectively without a doubt ahead of their teachers’ design abilities.
Oh, and by the way, in case you want more information about the crystals in your water bottle that give you a tingling sensation just call 1–800-HIMALAYA — almost nailed the letter count. Which I remember they admitted but they just couldn’t help it.
Equipped with these assets, students went to survey friends and family to understand what they liked, if they would buy the drink, and how much they would pay.
With the results of their friends’ and family’s feedback, the teams settled on final design, value prop. and brand name. We also derived new demand curves based on purchase intent and acceptable price point. We projected expenses and revenue and voila, we saved the company and every student’s share value of the company increased to be worth 1 million dollars. Time to celebrate! No doubt in anyone’s mind that the beverages would fly off the shelves. And perhaps they actually would have, but I’m not sure if PepsiCo, Coca Cola, etc. were able to hire any of these geniuses.
What happened to the tender black design talent?
Back to now, as this was 20 years ago, one can safely assume a fair number of talented black students would have had plenty of time to turn into proper designers. Their talent to sprout into skilled illustrators, copywriters, graphic designers, product designers, game designers, business designers. Wouldn’t you agree?
And remind yourself this was just what one class created. Projecting this across the country there should have been thousands of talents every year. Underprivileged because of the context they were born into however young, creative, spirited and motivated. So what has gone wrong to the point that we are asking: Where are the black designers?
Postulating three blocking hypothesis:
1. Design Talent Unseen: First step would have been for talent to be recognized. That and to create awareness for black students that there are various design degrees that can be pursued. There are scholarships, as one high performing girl shared: “gott’n my college from Seinfeld. I love the Jew now” but I am not certain that someone in their social circles was able to recognize and give the needed pointers and positive reinforcement to become a designer. I think our subconscious presumption may be that these kids should be grateful to make it out of their shabby neighborhood, learn some STEM, go to community college, and get a decent job. Our upper class kids are obviously granted more self-realization right from the get go. “Honey, you can be whatever you want.” We let you make a step up but not to the point where our daughters and sons will have to compete for one of those coveted design jobs. If correct, these dynamics remind me of the US caste system that Isabela Wilkerson’s describes in her book Caste, the origins of our discontent. An enlightening book for whoever wants to get a more in depth understanding of the foundations of our prevailing societal conflicts.
2. No Access to Design Education: In the college where I teach tuition rose from $24.6k in 2004/05 to $51k in 2020/21 for the academic year. Even when adjusted for inflation we’re looking at roughly a 100% increase. That stands in contrast to a 3% increase of the median household income of all racial groups from $60k to $62k [>source Census Bureau] What makes things worse for black households is that the median H.H. income stands at $43k, which is 30% lower than the national median. Let’s imagine a scenario where a modest black design talent, who has yet to blossom, won’t receive the needed scholarship. In contrast, there are certainly a number of less gifted kids, national or even internationally, who get admitted because they will pay in full. If the college is for profit, not a lot can be done. However, if the higher learning institution is a nonprofit and for equality the mandate is simple: Your educational services need to be equally accessible to all design talent independent from their economic means of a social strata. Mitch Daniels at Purdue accomplished a tuition freeze for 7 years straight. So fighting stratospheric increases of tuition can be done.
3. Hiring for Culture Fit is Discriminatory: We, the smart design elite, hire for culture and we very proudly tell anyone who cares to listen. I may be wrong here, but doesn’t that carry the risk of discrimination? My sense is that the lower-class subculture hardly feels comfortable to us, we would rather hire any minority that acts just like us but looks different. So we hire for racial diversity but not cultural diversity. Remember the verbal and cultural translations I depended on in my class. I can very well imagine the discomfort would go both ways. We ask minorities from different subcultures to try to understand our ways and then expect them to change theirs to fit into our work and design culture. What would it look like if we were to hire for cultural diversity? Essentially being ready to at least come halfway. Perhaps blending our institutional cultures. Easier said than done as this takes courage to screw up and the vulnerability that comes with it. Confidence to take on the challenges nonetheless out of empathy and curiosity to understand what is different in communication, values and perspective on the world. At least this is how I think about describing what it takes.
Investment in Cultural Diversity
It appears we stay where we are and wonder aloud where they are. It stems, perhaps from staying inside our comfort zone. Rather than reaching down we tend to remain in the abstract, the intellectual musings. It is the forte of the smart elite, more than any other group in the US, to intellectualize.
Even though ”actions speak louder than words” our reflex seems to be to fill the airwaves with how strongly we support BLM and root for Social Justice. Then we start sterilizing language that we deem racist and correct everyone who missteps. Leaving us tiptoeing around issues that need to be named clearly rather than met with hyper sensitivity born from considerate carefulness. We launch initiatives like decolonizing design and hire the must-have diversity officer. Do we have the experiences that qualify us to draw the conclusions that the action we take will have the desired outcomes?
The point is, resources are always limited and yet, they are our privilege to share. So how do we invest those resources thoughtfully towards the highest educational impact?
Please account for that this is my biased opinion based on personal observations.
Prototyping Solutions
As for solutions, lucky us, as human-centered designers, we are familiar with the process of immersing ourselves with curiosity into other cultures. And possess the joy in creating novel solutions to the hardest problems. Leaving me with the understanding that we are equipped with tools to approach the presented challenges in an applied way.
So, how might we start prototyping, experimenting and iterating more? Perhaps design schools can send educators to high-schools of underprivileged students to introduce design and create competitive portfolios? Perhaps companies can create design internship programs with less organizational red tape? And who has the capability to become a cultural translator? Remember the front-row girls in my class? They were my cultural translators. With their help barriers to understanding each other were bridged.
However, when we share our knowledge and resources freely, with a class lower than ours, we will find inspiration by experiencing different realities in the country that we all live in. Gaining the diversity in design that we need to solve the aforementioned challenges collaboratively. Hopefully creating an environment where all parties feel comfortable in their respective skins.
Enjoying the Difference
Thank you for reading this article and perhaps it can provide a tiny spark for change. For my part, I miss the eager creative minds of black students I unknowingly encountered 20 years ago. I want to be surprised by novel ideas cut from a different cloth. Have fun at work, laugh hard, argue lots and feel passionate energy with a group of racially and culturally diverse folks. And when the work is done, take a step back and look together at what has been collaboratively designed. Utterly convinced it will “fly off the shelves” like my class was 20 years ago.
Closing with a last vignette from the classroom way back then. When it came to sketching the bottle for Mooderade, the very front row girl — exactly the one who had daunted me — pointed to a black boy, let’s call him Vernon, who was sitting to my left fairly close by. “He draws. He’ll make ours.” The group seemed pretty confident with assigning him to the task. Vernon looked up to me, his face expressing just a bit of discomfort, finding himself for a moment at the center of attention. Nonetheless, he didn’t express opposition. Quietly following his calling, he sketched the winning bottle. A sketch accompanied by his writing:
Different flavors come with different eye gestures.
Primal rage, insanity, joy, laughter, dark, quiet, shy, love, sad.
