On #Black Lives Matter

Forgive me if you feel that what I’m about to write makes you uncomfortable, because you may have a different viewpoint about the following matter and don’t expect to read someone like me to write about human rights and political issues who publishes a website mostly dedicated to design. However, design is about humans and the collective history and narrative of how humans treat each other what makes this profession (as a designer) so fascinating and important.

Mural in Berkeley near Ashby St and Adeline Ave

For the past few weeks I’ve felt a need and a responsibility to weigh in the conversation and write something about the events unfolding and the horrific killings of George Floyd by a policeman kneeling on his neck for more than eight minutes and Breonna Taylor being shot in her own home and the outpouring of protest that’s followed. 

I left Europe in 1995 for America not only because I pursued opportunities in design and technology following a scholarship I won for Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, but I also left (Europe) because of the repercussions and traumas that I inherited from my parents, who were children and victims growing up during World War II. They have witnessed and experienced some of the worst crimes humanity has endured, and I always and naively believed America was the savior and liberator from those perpetrators who were racists and Nazis in Europe harming and murdering millions of innocent people, simply because they believed that they were of the wrong ‘race’. Yet, quite unexpectedly, I’ve come to painfully witness especially since 2016 is that fear, hatred and racism against African Americans (not Jews, as I learned it in the past from my parents) are among the most powerful forces on earth and almost impossible to eradicate. This has really always been true throughout human history, but in American society we tend to focus only on a handful of their most strident expressions. And even then, we really only consider with any depth our finest moments, those historical events when we’ve been able to marshal truly potent responses: the Civil War, the Second World War (as I mentioned was perceived by me as European as Americans being heros and liberators), the Civil Rights Movement.

Now, more than two decade later — after having left Europe for good, I’ve also come to understand that the real menace of fear, hatred and racism lies not just in these flash points of history, when the contrast between freedom and tyranny are most stark. The real menace is in how infinitely adaptable and resilient these forces are.

Even after they’ve been put down, disbanded or made to heel, they find a way, again and again. They discard their censured hallmarks, whether it’s swastikas, skulls, chains, or segregation laws. And then they change — evolve — into new, more subtle ways of exerting their influence; they co-opt progressive ideals and insert themselves into virtuous agendas, and they assert themselves in popular culture and common language. Their inflection point, the moment when they’ve succeeded, is the moment when society at large accepts them as policies, as laws, as common sense, as pragmatism — while assuming that these methods apply to “other people.”

This moment in time is ripe with human potential, and we must act on it, and we must transform it from mass protests to structural change. But our challenge is also that we must also renew our vigilance and our ability to understand how fear, hatred and racism will adapt and change yet again. Because they will.

It feels distasteful to me to salvage any kind of a silver lining from the horror of George Floyd’s death, but I am grateful for the way that public support for Black Lives Matter and for systemic change in policing has surged over just a handful of weeks. That’s reason for hope that we all will engage in a dialog and awareness of this issue.

I’m also grateful for the clarifying light that these events have thrown on own my understanding, and humbled by the realization of how much I need to do to live up to the principles that I endeavor to pass along to my children. Particularly the idea that we cannot right the world simply by not doing wrong — we must do right, too, and particularly we must do right by those who have been perpetually wronged. Especially when their lives are being unjustly and viciously sacrificed by a brutal system.

I’m grateful for the understanding of how much work and processing we all really need to do. I will start today and remind myself about how much I need to learn, how much I need to ask, how much I need to listen, how much I need to speak up, how much I need to read, how much I need to expect of myself and of my family and my friends, how much I need to give, how much I need to change anything I can possibly change.