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ON LANGUAGE
● End the practice of blackface, brownface, yellowface, redface, and cripface. No designer should be forced or allowed to make a performer look like they belong to another race or exaggerate an actors’ features to meet a harmful stereotype. ● Avoid design choices which exoticize non-western cultures, play into colonial power constructs, or contain elements of primitivist fetishization and romanticization with racist undertones. For example: ○ Design choices in line with the “white man going native” trope. ○ Sampling “ethnic” sound snippets without appropriate cultural competency or research. ○ Inaccurate “western gaze” depictions of homes and architecture in particular foreign countries as significantly less advanced than they are in reality.
ON LANGUAGE
We advocate for the following steps: ● Use culturally appropriate language and terms to refer to people. ○ Do not use pejoratives or offensive terms. ○ Honor how individual people identify their heritage. ● Educate all company members on practices and jargon that may be offensive and harmful to BIPOC. For example: ○ Use “meeting” instead of “pow-wow. ” ○ Use “install black colored soft goods” instead of “hang blacks.” ○ Use “lead” instead of “spearhead.” ○ Use “main and understudy” or “primary and secondary” instead of “slave and master” for mics, video servers, and lighting equipment. ○ Use “community” instead of “tribe.” ○ Use “head” or “lead” instead of “master carpenter” or “master electrician.” ● Ensure proper pronunciation and spelling of BIPOC names as well as of foreign languages and dialects in consultation with native speakers and, if necessary, language experts. ● Affirm each person's gender identity, life, and experience; understand that people exist at the intersection of multiple identities and that these identities are not separable. ○ Acknowledge how people identify their gender and the pronouns they use. ○ Understand that some gender identities are linked to culture and are not separable from that culture nor completely explainable within a western context.
