August 11, 2023
Everyone in every detail of every aspect
On the erasure and exclusion of Black, African and Caribbean culture and traditions in mainstream design spaces (including Nor)
“We struggled to see what was viewed as a complete picture of what we see on the day-to-day streets of Ontario cities—the vibrancy of little Jamaica, the eccentrics of Kensington Market, the techno-centricity of Kitchener-Waterloo or the stories that existed within the small towns of the province. Most of all, we struggled to see our stories and ourselves within the database—the inspirations we saw daily walking, living, and breathing as Black students and our multiple identities within it. And maybe this was a more incredible testament to Canadian design as an industry and what the ‘Canadian’ identity is constructed to be—who is Canadian, who is not. Whose stories are told and made visible, and whose stories we diminish and bury?”
In Design: A Very Short Introduction, John Heskett states that design “affects everyone in every detail of every aspect of what they do throughout each day. As such, it matters profoundly. Very few aspects of the material environment are incapable of significantly improving by greater attention being paid to their design.”
In practice, though, design, is not the great equalizer. Design—from contemporary visual design to practical tools and appliances to systems — has long erased the contributions of Black, African, and Caribbean people, especially people with multiple marginalized identities. And design, as it exists in an anti-Black capitalist world, has been used to exclude the global majority and draw lines in the sand that are determined by race, class, ability, gender, and geopolitical location.
As a Black undergraduate student living in Ontario—who understands that anti-Blackness is a foundational aspect of our society and systems, regardless of the field or sector—I could see that Black, African and Caribbean were being excluded, sidelined, or erased from mainstream design spaces.
Alice Rawsthorn in Hello World writes, "historically, design has been a boys club, and a white boys club at that, which is why design history books tend to be filled with white male faces.” This is reinforced through cementing selected versions of histories. Through this, we can understand that knowledge production is political and is not neutral and can be subject to manipulation.
In the 2021 essay, Critical disinformation studies: History, power, and politics, Marwick and Kou reinforce this by saying, “European imperial powers used images, speech, and text to reinforce who was “colonizer” and “colonized” and establish racial hierarchies, dehumanizing Indigenous peoples and delegitimizing Indigenous histories, knowledge, and societies.”
These forms of knowledge production and reinforcements of a binary other or marginalization are not limited to those mentioned above, but expand to the design sector and design history, curricula and the practices of exclusion seen in the industry. Rawsthorn says, “Design historians construct a lens through which they view design-and we view design. This lens is selective: It zooms in on a subject and blocks our peripheral vision. We see a narrow segment of design history: one period, one class of designers within that period. What we don’t see is the context, both within the design profession and within social history.”
By doing so once again, binaries are created, and imagination is limited. So, design history, as Rawsthorn says, “creates boundaries: On this side is high design; on that side is low design. Over here is the professional, and over there is the amateur. This is what’s mainstream: that is what’s marginal. Preserve this, discard that.”
BAF and NOR
With this lens on the politics of design history and its present, let’s look at the relationship between the Black and Free Research-Creation project (BAF) and NOR, a living and breathing commons of Canadian Design. Black And Free is “focused on what Black art and culture in different parts of the world teach us about blackness and freedom, especially in societies where Black people’s concerns are actively dismissed, denied, and erased, as cited on the Black and Free website. Currently, the project looks mainly at Black Expressive Culture in Ontario and its complex performance of Blackness and Freedom, connecting the public sector, academia, community and social and economic.
My fellow undergraduate research assistant and I were able to take a backdoor look at the Canadian Design Resource. And we were able to see first-hand what Rawsthorn referred to as a constructed view of design history, a selective lens that “zooms in on a subject and blocks our peripheral vision. We see a narrow segment of design history: one period, one class of designers within that period. We don’t see the context, both within the design profession and social history.” And this narrow segment that was present in this resource told the story of western European design, which is a testament to the Canadian worldview – a worldview based on euro-western epistemology. Initially, when we first explored the database, my first impression was that it looked and felt very Nordic, from the furniture to the jewellery.
We struggled to see what was viewed as a complete picture of what we see on the day-to-day streets of Ontario cities—the vibrancy of little Jamaica, the eccentrics of Kensington Market, the techno-centricity of Kitchener-Waterloo or the stories that existed within the small towns of the province. Most of all, we struggled to see our stories and ourselves within the database—the inspirations we saw daily walking, living, and breathing as Black students and our multiple identities within it. And maybe this was a more incredible testament to Canadian design as an industry and what the ‘Canadian’ identity is constructed to be—who is Canadian, who is not. Whose stories are told and made visible, and whose stories we diminish and bury? The database we explored at that moment reflected ‘Oh Canada’—a story of European descendants who have maintained the culture, music, and food and constructed new identities through ongoing settler colonial violence and erasure of the ‘the other.’ Marwick and Kou refer to European imperial powers that reinforce “racial hierarchies, dehumanizing Indigenous peoples and delegitimizing Indigenous histories, knowledge, and societies.”
In saying this, the question I pose is: what exactly is ‘Canadian identity’ if we understand the settler-colonial histories of the formation of Canada and, in turn, the histories that have shaped Canadian design?
What is Black Design
Ontario is often known as a cultural melting pot – particularly when we think of Ontario, the city of Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area. These places have vast and rich histories and cultures of Black people – from influencing colloquial langue (Toronto slang) to streets filled with African and Caribbean cuisine. Beyond this, various places in Ontario tell the story of resistance and struggle for the pursuit of Black Freedom.
Therefore, in understanding all of this, what to me is Black Design? Well, Black Design is as expansive as the African diaspora. Its intricate details from the fabric, pattern, process, and mechanization tell a story of the Black struggle, resistance, solidarity, and histories of our people. Black Design does not only look at our histories; it is also a site to envision Black freedom and Black futures. It emphasizes our ingenuity and resourcefulness in the face of our erasure.
Black design(ers) and its influence can be seen all around Ontario. In the words of the Harvard conference ‘Black in design,’ Design is Activism. Design is coalition building.
