INNOVATION Spring 2021: Decolonizing Industrial Design

FROM COLONIZATION TO LIBERATION

History is told through the eyes of the winners. Design is no different. Design is about storytelling.

In essence, designers tell stories of ideas that don’t exist and validate their reason for being, the details of their form and manufacture, and the context and scenarios of use. And so, the story of American industrial design has been authored by those who have benefited from the conquering of Indigenous peoples, the enslaving of Africans, the appropriation of ideas, the importing of labor and talent, the capitalizing on cheap foreign labor, and the polluting of poor communities of color as a byproduct of manufacturing. These very real and easy-to-ignore sins of colonization have been woven into the very fabric of society, seeping into our material culture, the practice of industrial design, and the education of designers.

The impacts of colonization are palpable, and at this point in history, understanding how far and wide they reach is complex. While colonization began in this country in relation to the people whose lands were stolen, it is now tied to matters of race, nationality, gender, language, and ability. Whether you benefit from, support, fall victim to, or are working to combat colonized design practices, the work to recognize the hallmarks of colonization and to decolonize design will be no less complex.

A Colonized Design Education Colonization is not just the seizure of lands and the poor treatment of Indigenous people, but rather it’s the systemic erasure, the minimizing, and the retelling of history and the contributions of all people who have ever lived in and contributed to our culture and economy.

When I look back on my own education, I can’t help but be angered by how the history of the Indigenous people of North America was taught—it was irresponsibly incomplete, incorrect, and racist. In my adult life and career as an exhibition designer working primarily in natural and cultural history centers with communities connected to Native American sites, I’m often left aghast at the cruelty of the European colonizers as they exterminated the Indigenous people, stole their lands, and erased the history of this continent—so much knowledge, culture, languages, and traditions forever lost to history.

I was never the taught the extent of the design contributions of my own ancestors—enslaved people from Africa—who endured despite the horrible conditions of slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the struggles of the Civil Rights movement, redlining, the school-to-prison pipeline, the war on drugs, and ongoing systemic violence and oppression. Yet Black people literally built this country. We’ve invented new music genres and created art,

poetry, literature, film, fashion, and life-changing inventions that we use every day, including medical procedures, pharmaceuticals, materials, tools, consumer products, and technology.

Instead, I sat through countless slideshows and flipped through enormous volumes on art and design history, was made to memorize every student and instructor associated with the Bauhaus and the New Bauhaus, and was told the stories of the ingenuity of talented and creative white men. Men descended from European colonizers and immigrants who I was supposed to attempt to emulate—although it would be hard considering that I was a woman and, therefore, not as naturally gifted in spatial thinking (true story). Where were references to the contributions to women, Black people, Native Americans, and People of Color from Asia, the Pacific Islands, the Caribbean, and Central and South America? Was it just that BIPOC and women designers never amounted to much? Did we not exist before the latter half of the 20th century? Why was it impossible to find other designers who looked like me?

How Did We Get Here? I won’t get into the time I had to write my son’s school about my concerns over the choice of Peter Pan as the fifth-grade musical and explain that its racist depiction of Tiger Lily and the Picaninnies as “savages” made it a poor choice. Nor will I get into a detailed account of the time, just a few months ago, when my younger son used the Zoom chat to tell his teacher that she was mistaken if she thought Christopher Columbus was a good guy, because he was actually a terrible human with a worse sense of direction who enslaved, murdered, and mutilated Indigenous people, starting a deliberate centuries-long erasure of tens of thousands of years of history, culture, social order, language systems, art, and design.

Let’s just go back to last week when a Facebook friend shared that her son’s Black History Month assignment was to write about five important items that belonged to

the historical figure they chose to study. Her son selected 16-year-old Frederick Douglass, who as an enslaved person was not allowed to own anything other than a single shirt and two pairs of pants. As designers, we tell stories through objects too, but how often do we consider the history of the power structures tied to who made, owned, and used products in our past? What sorts of stories of inequity and bias can be told around the products we are designing and using today?

Three years ago, my oldest son took a field trip to the Federal School, an old colonial one-room schoolhouse built in 1797 that still stands not too far from where we live. In preparation for this trip, the teacher sent home a permission slip that listed all the requirements, including instructions for the kids to dress in period garb with a suggested list of items they might have handy in their wardrobes to pull together a convincing approximation of a colonial-era student. I signed the form and sent it back. It turns out my son’s read of the same form was different. “Hey, Mom, you know that field trip to the Federal School?” he asked a few weeks before the trip. “We have to dress up like the kids who lived back then. I guess I’m going to have to dress like a slave.”

Following a pragmatic discussion with my very astute son—in which I convinced him that his teacher might prefer that he just stick to the colonial white kid wardrobe as outlined on the sheet, even though he was spot-on—I shared the conversation with Facebook for a laugh (along with my recollection of the field trip I took in kindergarten where we picked cotton). I expected some tongue-in-cheek commiseration, maybe a few facepalm reactions. Instead, my post was met with shock and dismay from several white grade school educators confessing that they had never thought of the trauma a “fun” field trip assignment might trigger in students of color.

Had it really never occurred to them that Black people don’t play the time travel game because there was never a decade where we have been free of racism, violence, bigotry? Had it never occurred to them that Black people

were enslaved people up until 158 years ago and, even then, were only considered three-fifths of a person and are still being brutalized by the criminal justice system that was born from the days of the slave catchers? Did they think that we didn’t notice that women barely show up in the history books until they are fighting for their rights to vote and own land and are labeled as troublemakers and jailed for breaking the law? Did they truly lack the empathy that afforded them a view of history that was not their own? Where was their empathy?

The lived experiences of people going through the same system of education is vastly different based on race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, national origin, and physical and cognitive ability. Perhaps authentic empathy is an impossibility? If the conceptual act of empathy—the first step of the design thinking process—is a fallacy, what traumas are designers, through our practice of design and design research, regularly triggering in the people we design for?

If we can’t get empathy right, what else have we gotten wrong in the packaging and reselling of design to the world branded under American exceptionalism? What other harms have we perpetuated in the development of products for the American market built with inexpensive skilled labor in overseas factories? How much care have we given to working conditions in those factories and the environmental impact of this manufacturing dynamic? Our pursuit to create coveted artifacts that represent the standard of “good” design is a result of the American design process. Because it’s not just the standard of good industrial design or the products themselves but also the processes of designing and design thinking that have become some of America’s number-one exports.

This model of creative problem-solving has been swallowed whole by the rest of the world and has led to a homogenous design culture that leaves the door wide open for rampant appropriation and enduring discrimination. It may be design through the eyes and the standards of

beauty of white men, but it is a legacy practiced by all of us who’ve gone through the system and have been influenced by American material culture.

How Do We Decolonize Industrial Design? We are well into the 21st century, and we are long overdue for an overhaul of the way we teach, practice, and share industrial design. To move from colonization to liberation, we need a systemic shift that leads to a more respectful practice that is inclusive and representative of our diverse and intersectional lived experiences. A practice that is both radical and grounded in Indigenous knowledge. We must also actively decenter white and Eurocentric design standards and processes and embrace diverse and intersectional practices and aesthetics. We must shift our focus from being human-centered to being society-informed and community-led. Our leadership must prepare to divest power so that those pushing for a more just, equitable, inclusive, and universal view of design can succeed in reshaping our field.

In this issue of INNOVATION, we’ve asked designers, educators, scholars, and firms to reflect on how colonization shows up in the practice of design and for recommendations on how to push past it. The events of 2020 and 2021 have shown us that there is nothing to be gained by not embracing change, and we will not be able to change unless we get uncomfortable. So settle in, take your time, and listen to the ideas in these pages—a decolonized and liberated practice of industrial design that benefits everyone.

—Raja Schaar, IDSA raja.schaar@drexel.edu

Raja Schaar is an assistant professor and program director of the Drexel University Product Design program and co-chair of the IDSA Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council