{"id":8768,"date":"2021-01-08T11:23:29","date_gmt":"2021-01-08T16:23:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ceros.com\/inspire\/?p=8768"},"modified":"2021-04-21T11:43:57","modified_gmt":"2021-04-21T15:43:57","slug":"design-education-diversity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ceros.com\/inspire\/originals\/design-education-diversity\/","title":{"rendered":"Diversity in the Classroom: How Design Education Needs to Change"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 7<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>\n

\u201cI love the color palette.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That wasn\u2019t the feedback that this freshman design student of color was expecting when he put his painting up for critique inside a Rhode Island School of Design studio. He had been working on a response to the quintessential Old Master motif of Christ being baptized, drawing influence from everyone from Da Vinci to Poussin. He called it, \u201cWaiting in the Lobby to be Baptized,\u201d and he\u2019s painted other famous artists\u2014including Andy Warhol\u2014right alongside himself in the lobby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m standing next to someone who\u2019s, like, revered, highly\u2014and white,\u201d he said of his work in Eloise Sherrid\u2019s documentary The Room of Silence<\/em>. \u201cAnd I made sure that he was glowing white.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But to his disappointment, his classmates didn\u2019t get very far in their formulation of race\u2019s function in the work. He was left with that feedback, and little else. \u201cAll this other shit that I have in this piece, and you like the color palette<\/em>?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is part of a phenomenon that RISD students describe as \u201cthe room of silence<\/a>,\u201d hence the title of Sherrid\u2019s documentary. When race or identity surfaces in a predominantly white classroom, white students\u2014and even white teachers\u2014have nothing to say about it. That\u2019s because, for the most part, white people don\u2019t know, and aren\u2019t taught, how to talk about race<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n