DIVERSITY: Why True Diversity, Not Tokenism, Is A Beautiful Thing
After the recent events and many powerful conversations, I felt compelled to write another piece on race, diversity and inclusion in the design world. After Kate Watson-Smyth (@mad_about_the_house) kindly linked to my previous blog post about lack of diversity in design and other creative industries, the conversations with other designers, bloggers and writers have continued, from everyone agreeing that it is a real problem, to discussions on how we can start to take positive action.
There have been some great initiatives starting up, amongst others, Kate Watson-Smyth and Rukmini Patel have started the Design for Diversity pledge, @laurajaneclark_ has started @sirensister, a growing network of incredible and diverse female architects, interior designers & stylists, makers and photographers. @builtbyusuk is a social enterprise on a mission to create a more inclusive built environment. And many more of us are exploring ways we can help to make this change happen.
Design for Diversity pledge by Rukmini Patel and Kate Watson-Smyth and Sirensister started by Laura Jane Clark has created.
But this is a tricky one. We have waiting a LONG time for this discussion to open up, to be able to finally talk and write openly and honestly about this feels like freedom, a weight off our shoulders. I am so thankful for that.
As much as we want diversity to happen, we also don’t want it to be purely tokenism and quotas. It’s got to have real meaning. What we want is fairness, to be invited to the interview on a good CV, to interviewed without bias, and to be offered the position if we are the best candidate for it. We have a wealth of creativity and talent to offer. Diversity should not just be about quotas and adding a few brown and black faces for the sake of your social media and company photos. Properly implementing diversity can add value on so many levels, to so many different industries.
I’m more excited about the future of design and I’ve been in a really, really long time. For those that have been following for a while, you probably know that I love modern design, I’ve always wondered, and tried to figure out why I love modern over traditional so much. If you’re a designer or a creative, you’ll know what I mean, we are always looking inwards, trying to figure out our style and niche.
Looking Back So We Can Look Forward
A couple of years ago, I was invited to a friend’s big birthday party, we were all asked to dress up for a Peaky Blinders theme. So I started researching, and Googled, as you do, ‘1920s costumes’, and of course the usual flapper styles came up. And I can honestly say that this is when the penny dropped.
As I scrolled through images of these pretty white women in sequinned dresses and feathers in their hair, I thought to myself where are all the black people? Why are there barely any images on Google of a black woman, or someone who looks like me, in a flapper style dress with a feather in her hair? As has been demonstrated over and over again, our history has been erased or deeply buried. I suddenly felt really uncomfortable, the notion of me dressing up as a mixed race flapper just seemed ridiculous. Now I’m not saying that I hate vintage, Victoriana or Art Deco, these and many other eras provide tonnes of design, architectural and other inspiration, in fact I had a vintage style wedding and hen party, so this was a powerful realisation for me. It also made me so much more aware of the lack of diversity all around me, and particularly in my industry.
Doing this frivolous research for a party outfit is honestly when I realised that the reason I like modern more, is because the past has really not been good to people of my colour. For me, looking back, is looking back to a time of Apartheid, a time when my family and my people were racially not good enough. Looking back conjures up sad memories like this one for example; standing in line with my mother at the first ever multi-racial elections in South Africa, because of her brownness she had been banned from voting up until this point, it was 1994, she was 40, I was 15. (Great New York Times article and photos here) My parents had spent half their adult lives with no democracy – no say in the country they were born in, lived in, had children in, worked in, and paid taxes to.
So although I feel the need to look back and learn from history, I don’t like to look back, it’s very sad and traumatic for me there. I want to look forward, hopefully to a future that is better for people of colour, but here we are, 2020, and black men are still being murdered in the streets by the very people who are meant to protect them.
True Diversity Is Not Just Adding Faces Of Colour
I’m really worried that all the talk of diversity and including people of colour, will mean purely that - just adding a few faces of colour. But it needs to mean so much more. The foundations need a lot of work. It seems that it has finally been made clear that racism is not just people being blatantly rude to people of colour and using unacceptable words, it is an issue of power of one race over another, it is systemic and runs through the veins of many, many countries all around the world.
Bernice King said “Even the statement, let’s invite more black people to the table, implies ownership of the table”. I’m not at all saying that people wanting to show their business or brands as being diverse is not a good thing, it is. It is a start.
Employing diversely, donating, protesting, engaging in conversation – this behaviour shows us that you are trying to find your way to the right side of history. It shows us that you want to be included in the movement towards positive progress. But diversity and inclusion cannot work if all that is happening, is including black and brown people into racist institutions. We need to address the structural racism itself, the institution as a whole needs to be transformed, the foundation of the building needs to change, to be made better and stronger, to support all of us.
Look deeply and honestly into your company or business, think about whether you have the sensitivity to imagine what it may be like for a person of colour to work there. Will they be heard? Will they be included? Does the MD or that guy in accounts constantly make inappropriate comments without being challenged? Is your management team or HR department trained to deal properly with complaints of subtle (or direct) racism? And if you don’t know the answers to these questions, ask for help, ask a person of colour if they may be willing to offer their advice and opinions to make your business a comfortable and fair place for everyone to work.
Ask me, email me, I will be happy to help you. The lightness of my skin tone may deceive the extremely deep understanding of racism that I hold ,thanks to the country I was born in.
“But you’re not even that dark skinned, why are you so bothered?” has been asked of me too many times. Believe me, I’m bothered.
We all have learning, and unlearning, to do.
Why Diversity Is A Beautiful Thing
If we get this right, diversity can be a glorious thing. It will mean adding a rich tapestry of cultures, backgrounds and history to the wider design world. Doing this well, I believe, will truly make businesses better, adding people from different backgrounds whether that be people of colour ,or people from different countries and cultures, it means that everybody brings to the table something special, everybody adds something unique, and when all of these things are combined, a powerful creative mix is born.
I think of it like cooking – who wants to eat the same boring meal every day? Adding a diverse mix of people is like adding a diverse mix of ingredients and recipes. You’re adding different heritage, lived experiences, colour, light and shade – and that can only mean the most amazing, delicious outcome.
Coming from Cape Town, even though it’s a small city, there is so much talent, much of which has arisen from poverty and people needing to be creative to put food on the table. Just walking along the markets and seeing what people do to earn their daily bread is absolutely amazing – people literally make art out of trash. From artwork made out of soft drink cans to intricate basket weaving, beadwork, pottery, art to music, dancing and drumming, the talent is beyond belief, and that is just one small part of the world, imagine the possibilities if we start to unlearn our prejudices and open up our minds to the value the rest of the world can bring.
Just some of the amazing crafts I took photos of on my last trip to Cape Town. The silver part on the yellow necklace is made out of ring pulls from used cans!
Just one lived life has so many experiences, we should celebrate this. This should not descend into tokenism. We should be adamant about that. This is an opportunity, a way we can all take the design world onto the next level.
In all the extra reading I’ve been doing over the past few weeks, I read something really interesting, I can’t remember exactly where, but it went along the lines of; for so many years, white designers were ‘borrowing’ trends and ideas for the catwalk and interiors, like African, Tribal, Boho, Native American, Oriental, the list goes on and on, but with not one native designer in sight. I hadn’t thought about it in that way before, but imagine the creativity of having those actual people on your team, and the richness and authenticity they could bring to those designs. And isn’t that what creativity and design is all about, a total mishmash of gorgeousness from all over the world from all sorts of minds, to inspire every single one of us?
Tash x