THE ILLUSION OF INCLUSION
George Floyd’s murder sparked the biggest civil rights movement in the United States since the wave of protests that swept the country following the assassination of Martin Luther King. The four days of civic unrest, known as Holy Week Uprising, ended with the signature of the Civil Rights Act of 1968. So far, after weeks of protests, the Black Lives Matter movement hasn’t yielded the kind of lasting change the movement of 1968 earned — but even that is in contention. The progress made since the end of Jim Crow is undeniable. But progress doesn’t guarantee change, no more than access guarantees inclusion.
Universal Design
Universal design is the design of buildings, products or environments to make them accessible to all people, regardless of age, disability or other factors (Wikipedia). Instead of designing for the average user, designers are challenged to create for the broadest spectrum of users. In designing a bottle cap, for example, the designer would ensure that people with strength, as well as those who have lost dexterity in their hands, could open the bottle. Through inclusive and intelligent design thinking, the product should meet the needs of people at both ends of the spectrum, and be smart enough to deny access to children in order to keep them safe. Automatic doors are another example of universal design, while a building that is inaccessible to people with physical disabilities is an example of designing for the average user.
Society as a Non-Inclusive Design
White Patriarchy
Western societies were designed for a very specific average user: white men — not even white women were a part of this design thinking. The fight for equity in the western world is, at its core, a fight for everyone to gain the same rights and protection as the white patriarchy. In the United States, when the forefathers stated in the Declaration of Independence that ‘All men are created equal,’ they were not talking about men with a capital M. They held as self-evident that all (white) men were created equal, and proceeded to build a society that reflected that belief.
The Normalization of White Culture
The myth of white supremacy was the driving force behind colonialism and slavery. Emboldened — both psychologically and morally — by this myth, Europeans launched a global crusade to “discover” new lands and expand their empires. Colonialism was primarily about economic dominance. In the process, Europeans forced their languages, religions, customs and systems of governance onto colonies. Anything other than white culture was labeled and treated as primitive and uncivilized.
The result of those years of genocide and ethnic cleansing is the normalization of white culture. There is evidence of this normalization everywhere you look. It is reflected in almost every country around the world to this day. It’s in the laws, history books, educational systems, schools of thoughts, economic models, politics, traditions, religions and lifestyles. It also shows up in more subliminal ways through philanthropy, movies, advertisements and even cosmetic products, for example, where the average user is white.
To survive and thrive in America requires assimilation to white norms and culture. It is as true for immigrants as it is for non-white Americans.
The Illusion of Inclusion
Adding a ramp to a building — whose original design was not inclusive for people with physical disabilities — is an accommodation. The ramp represents progress, but for the many who are still unable to use and enjoy the building, nothing has changed. To become inclusive, the building would require more radical, structural changes, which is why it is much harder to add an elevator, for example. Access doesn’t guarantee inclusion. And it’s a lot harder to achieve inclusion by making upgrades to an existing structure.
The end of Jim Crow introduced a series of “accommodations” that gave Black people more access. Rules were changed and laws amended to give minorities access to a society that was not designed with them in mind. One of the most notable “accommodations” is Affirmative Action, which gave minorities access to educational and economic opportunities they were once denied. It created social upward mobility and made it possible to break generational cycles of poverty. It gave birth to a black middle class. Affirmative Action made it possible for Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama and many other minorities to break glass ceilings. However, for all its progress, Affirmative Action didn’t reflect a lowering of racist barriers so much as it served as a reminder that racism is so entrenched that without government intervention there would be little progress to boast about — to paraphrase Michelle Alexander in The New Jim Crow.
The kind of progress that “accommodations” yield is dangerous because it creates an illusion of inclusion. But without radical and structural changes that create new paradigms, progress will not guarantee change.
Inclusion as Universal Design
Inclusion requires universal design thinking. It means societies that are not built for the average user, but for everyone — regardless of race, gender, sexuality, ability, creed or religious affiliation. It requires radical, structural changes to the fabric of society and the rules that govern it, because merely updating existing institutions means that we are doomed from the start. The requirements for inclusion alone would already make it very challenging. But in that scenario at least, everyone is committed to making the changes needed for a more inclusive society. The real challenge is the resistance — the lingering myth of white supremacy, the strong grip of implicit biases, as well as the fear of losing the privileges afforded under the current system. Even poor whites cling to the status quo, because racial superiority is a great consolation prize; it’s a “Racial Bribe” (as Michelle Alexander calls it) that makes a coalition between poor whites and minorities impossible, despite their obvious common interests.
Universal design doesn’t mean a colorblind or homogeneous society. It’s quite the opposite. It means a society where our differences are acknowledged and celebrated — a society that takes into account those differences in the process of designing financial, legal, political and social institutions. Where “minorities” take an active part as architects of this new paradigm. Because as well intentioned as we may be, we will always fall short of delivering inclusive design as long as white people try to make decisions for minorities, able-bodies for people with physical disabilities, or men for women. There’s an empathy gap that can never be fully bridged.
As challenging as “designing for all” might be, it is not a radical or even a revolutionary idea. It would simply require that, as Martin Luther King once said, we uphold and live up to the ideals this country was built on — the belief that All men (people) are created equal.
