Participatory anti-racist design: confronting colorblind racism in predominantly white spaces

Popular cafés are often sites of racial contention and controversy. While notorious examples of racism at the Ink! Cafe in Denver and the Starbucks in Philadelphia gained national attention in 2017 and 2018, there are countless racist interactions at similar cafés around the country that occur daily. Ranging from microaggressions to surveillance to physical and emotional harm, expressions of racism are violent and overwhelming to some, but remain invisible for many others. A collective of owners of a prominent independent café and longstanding local institution partnered with the authors of this paper on a community engagement grant to conduct a participatory antiracist community design exercise. In this paper, the authors present the research design of this project as a case study of a methodological framework for confronting racism in predominantly white social institutions such as cafés. Building on sociological framings of white institutions and colorblind racism, this paper reports on the application of these theories and methods in participatory design. The authors present a two-part methodology that includes methods of collaboration and methods of community engagement, in tandem, as means toward engaging the political stakes of antiracist work. This methodology builds on the lineage of slow, intentional, and redistributive community engagement work. The authors argue that successful engagement with contentious political issues, like racism, requires politicized methods of collaboration. Given the prevalence of colorblind racist ideologies, the predominantly white and affluent community demographic of this case test the limitations and potentials of antiracist design methods in participatory design work. The paper contributes a timely case study of community-engaged design as well as a methodological framework for antiracist design justice that can inform design and institutional change in everyday community institutions where colorblind racism remains a powerful force.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.110.77

Volume Editors
Robert Gonzalez, Milton Curry & Monica Ponce de Leon

ISBN
978-1-944214-40-1