Edited 7/25/22, 7/2/23, 7/27/23, 1/11/24, 5/9/24
Introduction
My name is Lake, and I studied Architectural Studies in college. I have a lifelong interest in topics related to design. For context, I am a White non-binary person, so I have experienced some systemic hardships alongside a multitude of privileges. I am providing some of my reflections and questions here, for anyone interested in design to read and consider, and especially so that others with privilege will think about how we can be more aware of racism related to design. This blog post is open for commenting. Please feel free to leave your comments, critiques, and additions.
Why I Am Concerned About The Architecture Field
The field of architecture and design, especially the clients it serves, is rife with the privilege of White men over 50, of the landed labor aristocracy, the privileged 1% and everything that White culture embodies.
There are also problems with harassment and discrimination in architecture firms and college programs. These are the programs that allow people the skills and credibility to become architects and designers. Those who successfully go on to work as registered architects will design buildings like schools, hospitals, workplaces, apartment complexes, mansions, and maybe even jails and prisons. It is rare that American homes are designed by architects, especially when it comes to customization, and the details of interior architecture. I will get into this topic more later in the blog post.
Awareness is an important first step in fighting for social change. Then we can work in community to dismantle the harmful structures that surround us. One organization doing innovative work in the design field is Creative Reaction Lab in St. Louis. Here is a statement from their website:
“Foundational Belief: As are all systems within our society, systems of oppression, inequality, and inequity are by design; therefore, they can and must be redesigned.” -Creative Reaction Lab, St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Please check out all of their initiatives and consider financially supporting their work.
What Is Wellness?
Conversations around “designing for wellness” are a recent outgrowth from the status quo of the architecture field. What is wellness? In the way White culture defines it it seems to be very close to the notion of self-care. I have learned that wellness is not greenwashing, voluntourism, White veganism, or expensive yoga retreats. These retreats, mission trips, and certification courses are often led and gatekept by White people who promote ‘holistic health and wellness’ while ignoring cultural appropriation and sources of personal and generational wealth.
To me, wellness is aspirational concept with some limited contentment to be found in the moment. I don’t think we can be healthy under the current system of White Supremacist Capitalism. However, there is inspiring and important work being done to change these systems.
Black business owners, organizers, and leaders, are and always have been redesigning and responding to the status quo. As mentioned previously, Creative Reaction Lab, located in St. Louis, Missouri, is an important organization doing this work. They are the creators of Equity-Centered Community Design. You can find a virtual version of the guide here, or you can purchase a paper copy.
“Creative Reaction Lab’s mission is to educate, train, and challenge Black and Latinx youth to become leaders designing healthy and racially equitable communities. We’re challenging the belief that only adults with titles (e.g., mayors, CEOs, etc.) have the power and right to challenge racial and health inequities. However, we are conscious that it’s not just the work of the people that have been historically underinvested to dismantle oppressive systems. Therefore, we are rallying an intergenerational movement of Redesigners for Justice.” -Creative Reaction Lab
“Good” Design
The work of dismantling oppressive and harmful systems (White Supremacy, Colonization, Patriarchy, Capitalism and more) can and should occur in every career field and every workplace. Currently, fields like real estate and interior design are a long way behind others in starting to have conversations about racism and other forms of inequity. A recent panel on racism within architecture, done by architecture magazine Architectural Record, only included White architects. Yes, you read that correctly—only White architects in a discussion about race. Design and architecture have always been connected to racism, anti-racism, ableism, gendering, the patriarchy, and inequitable health outcomes. While we would all love to live in a beautifully designed home crafted to our unique tastes, accessibility to this kind of design agency varies.
Architecture, interior design, and human health have always been connected to oppression, ableism and White Supremacy. Disability rights activists have articulated their ideas about design, and it becomes quickly apparent that good design is not a universally applicable principle.
The WELL certification is a certification marketed towards career professionals who work in Green Building. The WELL accreditation is not accessible to everyone, between the exam cost and the cost of study materials. It is only available to those with a disposable income—to those who are middle and upper class. And so the gatekeeping continues.
Social Expectations And Confrontation In White Homes
The words comfort and safety are brought up a lot, especially by White people; this can also include biracial and White-passing people, which Layla Saad discusses in her book, Me and White Supremacy (Saad). Privileged (usually White) people use the phrases “I feel uncomfortable” or “I feel unsafe” to avoid difficult conversations about race and privilege and to call the cops on Black Americans, particularly Black Trans Women and Femmes, putting their lives at risk.
I have noticed that in White culture, particularly middle-class and upper-class White culture, one is expected to avoid controversy and refrain from open criticism. It is seen as immature, rude, juvenile, and inappropriate, no matter the subject matter at hand. It doesn't matter if the criticism is warranted. Particularly for those of us who are young, not financially "stable" or "successful" in Capitalist terms, a woman or a queer person, we are often not heard when we raise concerns. Why is success defined so narrowly? Why is productivity defined so narrowly? Nurturing, parenting, comforting, cooking, teaching, raising families, and many other skills are needed to bring about societal change.
Power Dynamics In White Homes
Do you talk about “power dynamics” frequently in your friendships and relationships, or does this feel like a term that is divisive? According to Bell Hooks, who wrote Feminism Is For Everybody: Passionate Politics, these dynamics are pervasive and all around us - they affect everything from our brief social interactions on the bus to conversations with our closest friends. Whether we choose to pay attention to how they operate is up to us. Bell Hooks was a Black woman, intersectional feminist, scholar and cultural critic from whom I have begun to learn about power dynamics. I will be writing about this topic more later. I would like to see more White folks getting comfortable with talking about privilege and power. I will include myself in this call to action.
As a student at Mount Holyoke College, I had the opportunity to watch a play called Living Out. Living Out is a play by Lisa Loomer, a Mount Holyoke graduate herself. The term “Living Out” refers to a house manager, housekeeper, nanny or other caretaker who is does not “live in,” as in with the family they work for. Rather, this refers to an individual who commutes into the client’s home for work daily. This play shows how power and privilege operates in White middle and upper class homes, specifically in Los Angeles, California. The play’s main characters are White, upper-class women in Los Angeles, and the childcare workers/nannies and housekeepers/home managers, are usually immigrants, usually Latina/x. These women are hired by rich White women to care for their children and clean their houses. These caregivers have families and lives of their own that they put on hold to work for the White Upper Class.
White homes are not comfortable for all. As we see in the TV series Little Fires Everywhere, a home that was considered an idealized, cookie cutter, perfect home was full of racism and harm hidden under the cloak of a magazine-worthy home interior, and well-dressed family members.
Home And The Invention Of “Comfort”
I begun to question this word deeply after taking a course entitled Material Culture of American Homes at Amherst College. The texts that we read, mostly from a White worldview were problematic. But they shed some light on what I hadn’t thought about before, due to my own privilege. Here are some of those realization and observations:
Every American home is different. “Home” is a place that can either relieve our stress or add to it. Many Americans cannot enjoy deep and rejuvenating rest at home. Some of us are more accustomed to being comfortable, and to having our needs met than others. The modern-day notion of “comfort,” as we understand it today, was invented during the Industrial Revolution (Crowley). Comfort was only possible due to White Americans violently enslaving, torturing, trafficking and killing Black people. The Black and Brown individuals who White people violently condemned to enslavement could not cultivate wellness the same ways White people could. And that is an understatement. This is a dynamic that still exists today, and is reflected in the play I spoke about earlier, Living Out.
Designing Our Lives Concept Ignores Systemic Issues
The idea that we can design our own happiness is rife with contradictions and cognitive dissonance for White academics writing books such as Designing Your Life. From the earliest colonization of this continent, White Supremacy and the White people who embody it have done harm. White people have stolen everything from Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latino/a/x and other Black and Brown people of the global majority and immigrants. Due to the persistence of White Supremacy, it is only White Americans who have full access to opportunities in the United States. No wonder the White male authors of this book think we can make our lives however we want at any time. It’s realistic and within reach for them.
There is a common misconception, at least within White culture, that design is created of inanimate objects that are neutral and apolitical. If you look at history up until the present, objects and architectural features have always been manipulated and utilized to uphold the separation and oppression, as well as comfort, of the disparate populations who existed within White residential spaces. In the 19th century, architects and builders constructed homes with servants’ quarters, kitchens separate from dining rooms, and differing access to plumbing (Crowley). White enslavers violently stole comfort, relaxation, and ease for themselves—while harming the health, wellness, and livelihoods of Black people.
The fact that some Americans (especially those of us who are White, but also upper class, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied, neurotypical, etc.) have historically, and to this day, had certain comforts that come as a result of exploitation. These comforts come at the expense of oppressive conditions for Black people, Indigenous people, Asian people, Latino/a/x people and other individuals and communities that make up the people of the Global Majority.
While there are White people who have grown up poor or in unpleasant or unsafe living conditions in the United States, we indisputably benefit from White Privilege and have exploited non White people throughout American history in order to financially benefit our families and communities. White Privilege doesn’t necessarily mean that our lives are free of pain or hardship. It means that we don’t have to deal with structural racism and racist violence on top of the challenges that every person faces. We are all moving through the world at the intersections of our various identities - with our privileges and/or lack thereof. Read more about Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term intersectionality, here.
Avoiding Pollution And Access To Safe, Private Living Spaces
Have you ever heard of Environmental Racism? If you are White in America, like I am, it’s much less likely that you grew up in a neighborhood with air or water that sickened you or other environmental toxins contributing to a decline in your health. According to a recent EPA report, people of color are much more likely to live near polluters and breathe polluted air. Van R. Newkirk II wrote this article on environmental racism in The Atlantic. He is a Black American journalist who writes on politics, the environment, race, and healthcare policy. Also, check out his podcast, Floodlines, here.
Not everyone has access to safety or relaxation at home, or in public spaces. The police are killing Black Trans Women and Femmes. Black and Brown children and teens are killed by police in 2024 and are forcibly living in inhumane conditions in immigration detention centers; separated from their parents and families. Given that my grandparents, who I have spent time living with, were raised by parents born in the 1800s, all of the social conditioning that some of us think is defunct is actually glaringly, startlingly close in the rearview mirror. And in the mirror, I see my ancestors reflected, as well as myself in this current moment. How will I choose to live? Who will I decide to become?
Some of us can make choices that improve our health and overall quality of life. This agency is a privilege. Parents with money would never send their kids to schools that "look like jails." Racist real estate markets affect home buying and selling prices, and WASPs discuss good neighborhoods versus bad neighborhoods. Safe and unsafe neighborhoods are racially coded and charged terms. As someone with White Privilege, I will continue to reflect upon my own access to land, resources, and other social capital. Do you have agency in choosing where you live, work, and spend your time? If you do, you benefit from the comfort these choices provide. What are you doing to make sure others have this sort of access to comfort, too?
Sources:
Architecture and Racism: A Conversation. Architectural Record, 29 Mar. 2021, www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/14844-architecture-and-racism-a-conversation.
Brittany J. “What Trauma Porn Is, and Why It Hurts Black People.” The Mighty. 12 October 2020. https://themighty.com/2020/10/trauma-porn/
Burnett, B., & Evans, D. (2016). Designing your life: How to build a well-lived, joyful life. Alfred A. Knopf.
Crowley, John E. The Invention of Comfort: Sensibilities & Design in Early Modern Britain & Early America. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.
Loomer, Lisa. Living Out. 2003.
Newkirk, Vann R. “Environmental Racism Is Real, According to Trump's EPA.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 28 Feb. 2018, www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/the-trump-administration-finds-that-environmental-racism-is-real/554315/.
Driskell, Sara, and Sophie Trawalter. “Race, Architecture, and Belonging: Divergent Perceptions of Antebellum Architecture.” University of California Press, University of California Press, 8 Mar. 2021, online.ucpress.edu/collabra/article/7/1/21192/116425/Race-Architecture-and-Belonging-Divergent.
Saad, Layla. Me and White Supremacy: How to Recognise Your Privilege, Combat Racism and Change the World. Quercus, 2020.
Well Certified. International WELL Building Institute, www.wellcertified.com/certification/v2/.