The discussion will be supported by historical research methods that reveal and define the tropes and archetypes that designers use to perpetuate systems of racism. Throughout history, there have been many examples of the exploitation of people of color and non-mainstream cultures. For example, the ready-mix products by the Aunt Jemima Mills Company made popular for its reference of the “Mammy” archetype icon that parallels a slave persona from the 1800’s “slaving over a hot kitchen stove.” And while there are many historical examples of blatant racism, these racialized designs continue today with national sports teams like the Washington Redskins who “vowed to “never” change the team’s nickname” (Fig. 1).3We will provide examples of designers from the African-heritage, Latinx/Chicanx, Asian, Native American, and allied communities who are using their creative skillset to participate in social justice movements and disrupting societal norms.

Personal experiences have proven to be a key element in empathy building across a variety of disciplines. In fact, real-world storytelling is the first step in the design research process and integral part in understanding the audience the designer is creating for. We plan on introducing this concept through the personal experience of an actual person told via audio with the assistance of a video illustration. The video and audio will serve as a tool to help educators and students alike associate with the experiences of marginalized populations and explores storytelling as a problem framing tool. We’re hoping that hearing stories of everyday racism will help provide support to the historical narrative and assist students as they breakdown how racism shows up in society today. An example of one of our stories, we see how implicit bias plays a role in defining racism.

While there are many examples of explicit bias and racism within design, such as the Washington Redskins logo mark, lesser known examples that depict Racialized Designwill also be discussed and broken down. We will focus on racial dogmas that are so ingrained in our culture they are essentially invisible. For example, Robert Moses a prominent Urban Architecture and a person considered to be the “master designer” of our public roadways from the 1920s-1970s, developed a highway system that became the favorable way of developing mass transit. He developed a bridge system that discouraged the use of public transportation. The bridges were built 9 ft tall, not allowing the 12 ft tall public busses to use the highway system in New York City. In doing this, he purposely excluded people of a lower socioeconomic status, mainly people of color, who primarily use public transportation from specific areas of New York City. This is a strong example of a systemic social inequality that is still in existence today. Moses stated, “whites of upper and comfortable middle class would be free to use the parkways for recreation and commuting.”4Racism like this is heavily ingrained in many systems which designers have the power and privilege to help change. An analysis of urban architecture, education, healthcare, and criminal justice systems are just a few to begin conversations about how design research can make positive changes.

We’d like to offer solutions on how these Racialized Designs can be introduced in dialogue while allowing critical thought and analysis of our culture. In these workshops we will foster a space to develop tools to create historical contexts, through a case study we provide, that would empower faculty to further understand these concepts. We’d hope that by completing this workshop participants would leave with the necessary tools to identify, develop, and integrate anti-racist concepts into their own environments. In doing so, this opens the door even wider for interdisciplinary processes to analyze real-world systemic racism. The methods we have defined highlights successful principles for innovation; creating a space for discovery, and “making” through the process of design research.