“Design can be described as the human ability to shape and create our environment in ways that are not precedent in nature, to meet our needs and give meaning and purpose to our lives.” –John Hackett
It is composed of products that were designed. To create roads, textbooks, and smartphones, it was necessary to have a unique team of specialists. These outcomes have significantly impacted how societies learn, move and communicate. But, with the processes, protocols, and systems established to support them, these innovations would have existed and survived.
Design is the process of assigning meaning and utility to the arbitrary. Design systems are interdependent decisions that train users to associate certain colours, shapes, and patterns with specific outcomes and results. Red is associated with errors and warnings only by human ingenuity. If paired with the shade of green, the same red can signal “STOP” or invoke the holiday spirit.
Design systems are robust, and they extend well beyond product development. They are not only able to dictate user experience but also the human experience. A lot of what we know was acquired through a complex socialization process. It may seem easy to understand in an interface context. Still, the foundations of imagery and colour, shapes, and language are also the basis of an essential system that governs much of modern society: white supremacy.
Colour & Language
Did you know that the white lie is a common phrase? What about blackmail and blackball? Simply by adding the word white to the beginning phrase, it seems that the misdeed is innocent. The opposite happens with the second and third.
Binary opposition is a significant way that we understand the world. Binary opposition is how we know good and evil. We also see white as the antithesis of black. “Binary Opposition is a system of thought and language by which two opposing theoretical ideas are clearly defined and set against each other.”
Skin, the largest organ of the body, comes in many shades. However, none of these shades are truly black or white. A binary of “white” and “black” skin was created. Although it may sound innocuous, binary oppositions almost always place one option as positive and the opposite as not.
Psychologists Kenneth Clark and Mamie Black asked children between 6 and 12 to give dolls several positive and negative attributes in a well-known 1940s experiment called “the doll test.” All the dolls children had to choose from were identical except for their skin colour. Students assigned positive attributes, such as intelligence, pretty, and friendliness, to the beauty with white skin and the doll with black skin.
The effects of colourism, language, and race are not limited to Black and White Americans. The multi-billion-dollar industry of skin-lightening and bleaching products is a huge one. Importers from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East are all over these countries.
The falsehood that white superiority is based on the notion that fairer skin is linked to intelligence or beauty is rooted in the idea of fair skin. White supremacy is not limited to the United States.
The influence of colour and language begins when we are young. The resulting biases that we are indoctrinated to lead to racialized patterns and practices, and interactions that continue into adulthood and affect every aspect of our lives.
Imagery
An African American woman, Hattie McDaniel won the Academy Award in 1940 for her role in Gone With the Wind. The film is regarded as a classic of American cinema. However, the film contains a lot of racist imagery. McDaniel was awarded an Oscar for portraying the role of Mama.
Mammy or mammies are racist stereotypes of Black women in America that date back to the Jim Crow South. Patricia Hill Collins, a sociologist, describes a mammy as a faithful and obedient domestic servant. These images and other depictions of Black Americans, such as the welfare mom and the jezebel, can distil Black people, particularly Black women, into digestible caricatures.
Hattie McDaniel broke the glass ceiling for women who were of colour. However, her portrayal of the character was an extension of a stereotype that places women of colour in subordination to their white counterparts.
The modern media landscape has opened up new opportunities for complex characters to be played by women of colour. But, design systems can be challenging to break and are relatively easy to maintain. Even though it has been more than 80 years since Hattie McDaniel won her Oscar for Best Actress, little has changed in the way Black women are represented and receive the highest honours. Three of five Black women who won an Academy Award for acting in recent years were either welfare mothers, maids, or enslaved persons.
Black women and people are not the only ones that can be boiled down into controlling imagery. All tropes that are used to oppress and control people other than whites include the Latino gangster and the Asian American model minorities, and the Middle Eastern terrorist. This imagery can be used to enforce white supremacy and as a side effect.
Despite this, they are not the beneficiaries or users of the great American design system. They are merely a part of the great American design system.
