Sure — your house might beat the pants off your neighbors’. But let’s talk real-world metrics: How woke was the system that led to its erection?
As we continue to learn, there’s no area where social justice can’t prevail.
Apropos of such ascendancy, welcome to the world of architectural enlightenment.
At the University of Minnesota, they’re taking wrecking balls to structural racism.
The school’s placed job ads to Build Back Better.
“Several openings,” UM’s website announces, are “centered in Design Justice.”
In addition to architecture, fields set for renovation include graphic design, product design, and interior design.
All of you professors itching for a new gig, see if the following philosophy tickles your fancy:
Design Justice is a new initiative within the College of Design, seeking to create space, policy, and practices that support the inclusion and retention of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) as well as other communities who have been historically underinvested.
So if you’re interested in helping all people but white ones, virtue can be yours — courtesy of the “Collective.”
Design Justice is supported by a group of individuals across design disciplines, known as the Collective, who are committed to antiracism, decolonized pedagogy, and the liberation of communities who have been underinvested historically, in both design academia and the design industry.
It’s a good thing they’re decolonizing interior design for the marginalized — heterosexual Quaker-types have managed a stronghold for far too long.
Here’s more:
Areas of scholarship, teaching, and/or service will involve: antiracism, racial justice, racial disparities, and/or racial discrimination; equity, power/privilege, and/or bias; benefits to the BIPOC, immigrant, and refugee populations; environmental and social justice; and/or other forms of studying and countering systemic oppression.
Of course, the notion of structural/systemic racism only recently leaped into the American lexicon.
The best I can tell, instead of delving into debate, government and corporate entities immediately declared that such a thing absolutely exists.
They’ve quickly instituted changes intended as a counterbalance, rather than making public the embedded mechanisms they’ve discovered and then simply removing them.
But that’s our apparent mode of attack, so see if you can assist:
Successful candidates for all positions will have the clear potential, demonstrated ability, and/or related scholarship to support our BIPOC and other marginalized communities within their respective discipline. We are looking to expand the Design Justice Collective with a cluster hire of several faculty, in various programs across two years.
Such positions are “100%-time academic year (9-month), tenured or tenure-track faculty” sorts that will be “supplemented by a generous start-up package to support advancement of scholarship and teaching that aligns with the tenure standards of the specific program.”
Some of you may not have considered the revolutionary needs within “Design Studio Pedagogy.” But a makeover of the arena appears a perfectly natural partner to all the other ways in which epiphanous achievements are improving the planet.
Cases in point:
Gender Equality Comes for Crash Test Dummies
Woke in the Water: Shark Advocates Call for an End to the Word ‘Attacks’ in Favor of ‘Interactions’
Colorado University Hosts Teacher Training to Fight the ‘White Supremacy’ of ‘Productivity’
Fish Fry: Social Justice Sizzles With the Woke Renaming of a Racism-Riddled Carp
Just in Time for Mother’s Day: The World Gets Its First Nonbinary-Named Insect
Man Identifying as Woman Sues Female Estheticians for Refusing to Give Him a Lady’s Genital Wax
Change — it comes by way of struggle.
And if you’re unimpressed by the yardage gained via University of Minnesota’s major move, the webpage proclaiming it offers a Land Acknowledgement:
The University of Minnesota Twin Cities is located on traditional, ancestral, and contemporary lands of the Dakota People, ceded in the Treaties of 1837 and 1851. We are committed to recognizing the complex history of this land by honoring the truth of violence, displacement, migration, and settlement that bring us together now.
It’s not the first time a school has said such a thing — and it’s more than the second time one’s subsequently done nothing about it:
Cornell University Announces It’s on Stolen Land During Commencement, Doesn’t Commence to Giving It Back
Still, UM’s writing words.
And perhaps these days, symbolic syllables alter the universe:
We acknowledge the need to end the violence against missing and murdered Indigenous women– a local and national epidemic which can be traced back to the arrival of European colonizers across Turtle Island. We acknowledge and fight against the legacy of white supremacy and culture of anti-Black racism in our own community, which has led to the murders of Jamar Clark, Philando Castile, George Floyd, Daunte Wright, Winston Smith, and countless other Black Americans across this nation. Black lives matter. We stand with our Hmong, Asian, Asian-American, and Pacific Islander communities against the rise of xenophobic violence since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. We recognize that words are not enough and we remain committed to the work of eradicating the injustices against all Black, Indigenous, and people of color caused by systemic racism.
Indeed.
For those interested in applying for one of the new positions, click here.
And just so you know, the whole thing’s a cluster:
Members of the Design Justice Cluster will conduct teaching, research/scholarship/creative work, and/or service centered around the aforementioned areas of design justice… Members of the Cluster will participate in monthly meetings to engage in discussions and/or practices that support our mission and find support for projects you want to pursue, in order to combat racism and/or other forms of oppression.
Onward and upward. And whiteless and woker.
Story cited here.
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