DIVERSITY: Listening and Learning, And Why The Interior & Design Industries Need to Be More Diverse
Well, this is turning out to be a week. After the killing of George Floyd, it feels like people usually unaffected by it are finally attempting to gain a much better understanding of the huge issue of racism. There are protests, and Instagram has been flooded with black squares with messages that people are willing to listen and learn.
I was prompted to write this post by the current world mood, as well as Kate Watson-Smyth (@mad_about_the_house) asking for opinions on the lack of diversity in the interiors industry, and agreeing kindly to link this post to her own blog post on the subject. Why, I hear you ask, have you decided to write about inequality and racism on the interiors blog of a nice, white lady? (And I’ve met her, she is very nice!)
Cape Town is a beautiful city with a complex past. Image. Daniel Dreier/Getty Images
The Dinner Party
Here’s why: usually, when I find myself speaking about race, and what it is like to be a brown woman in this world, more often than not it’s in response to someone asking about my heritage (or telling me about my heritage “You’re Indian aren’t you!” Is that a question? Nope, not Indian). This would usually be in a social situation, the conversation would progress, I’d talk about my childhood in Apartheid South Africa and sometimes the issue of racism would be raised. At this point, I’d see the shutters come down, the eyes glaze over. It may be lack of understanding, uncomfortableness, ignorance or just plain unwillingness to talk about it. Apartheid – ugh, what a depressing dinner party conversation. It ruins the atmosphere.
‘I’m not into politics, people would say. I’m just not a political person.’ And I’d think… oh my God, I would love that! It hadn’t occurred to me that that was even a choice some people had. Imagine how freeing and relaxing it would be to live life that way. But I was born in a brown skin, into an apartheid regime, just like my parents before me. Then, to make my life even more tricky, I decided to settle in the UK, and had instant immigrant status to deal with as well. I did not have the luxury of NOT being political.
These conversations would usually be between small groups of people, and frankly I became tired of them. This also affected jobs I’ve had in the past. I’d always speak out when I’d hear or see incidents of racism, micro aggression, sexism, unfair treatment of staff. But the points I’d raise would be met with resistance “Is this because of where YOU are from” I was asked once at an exit interview. I’d find the management of these situations in the workplace so awful and backward, that I just had to leave the position.
To be made to explain over and over again why you are put-out by racism, by micro aggressions, that white privilege is very real, does exist and is not a figment of my imagination, is exhausting. So exhausting that I don’t feel I have to explain myself in these pointless exchanges any longer. I usually find a way to cut the conversation short and move on.
So the reason I decided to contribute to Kate’s blog post, is firstly because she has made a decision to take some action and has asked people of colour for their opinion on the lack of diversity in the interiors industry. And secondly, she is very a well-known, strong voice in our industry so a few words shared on her platform about my experience will reach so many more people than those tiresome one-on-one dinner party conversations would ever reach. And in the current atmosphere of listening and learning, I hope sharing my reality will reach just a few people who perhaps didn’t understand before.
A country I loved, but that didn’t love me. A history of indignity, humiliation and racial discrimination
I’ve written briefly about growing up in South Africa before. I was born and raised in Cape Town. It’s a beautiful city and an amazing place to grow up in. Yet there were also some harsh political realities that made life difficult. Up until the ‘90s and mostly still up until this day, South Africa’s people and housing were split into groups and areas according to the colour of their skin. I was still in segregated schooling up until the age of 14, in the early ’90s.
Signs on the beaches in Cape Town during Apartheid.
For the forty years Apartheid lasted (and with recent events, some might argue it’s lasting to this day) the paler your skin tone, the more value your life had and therefore the more education, economic opportunity, jobs and housing you were entitled to. The darker your skin, the progressively shitter your life was. White, Black or Brown (or “coloured”, as brown people were creatively named by the regime – this is the category which my family fell into), which skin group you happened to be born into determined your entire existence. It affected the generations born before you, and it would affect those who came after too.
Coming from this history and place is actually what made me so passionate about homes and design. Home is the place you should feel the most safe and supported in, the place you thrive from, and if it’s snatched away, like it was for so many black and brown South Africans, it doesn’t just hurt you, but all of those around you too. Stable homes mean stable societies.
The Bo Kaap, one of the bastions against the Apartheid regime, several attempts by the Apartheid government to claim the land were prevented by the community and the mosques.
My parents worked hard and gave us a nice home. But because of – let’s be blunt here – our race, restriction to the less attractive areas of the city was a problem. No tree-lined streets or homes with beach and mountain views for us. These areas were reserved for our paler-skinned countrymen only. If your skin was brown, you were in the middle, so you would be allowed better than your black counterparts, but not nearly as good as your white ones. You would be assigned to areas like the Cape Flats (the low, sandy areas extending inland), and if you were unlucky enough to be born in a black skin at the time, you’d be restricted to the townships and shantytowns.
This unfairness gave me a strange sort of drive to achieve the things the regime said I couldn’t have. I’m a quiet rebel, and I guess I strove to get the jobs they said we couldn’t have, live in the areas, and in beautiful properties like the ones they extracted us from, and said we weren’t allowed to live in anymore.
A woman walks to her home in Soweto.
You know when someone asks who your dream dinner party guests would be – and people usually answer David Bowie, Barack Obama, or someone else equally inspiring and virtuous?
Mine would be the geniuses that started Apartheid, so I could subject them to a Dragon’s Den style grilling. Why did you think your product was a good idea? What is the advantage of your product over things already on the market (freedom for all)? What is your exit strategy? How will you heal the many that have suffered the indignities and humiliation of racial discrimination? It wouldn’t be the most fun evening, I admit. But confronting those people who never had to deal with the consequences of their actions would be…. interesting.
Why The Interior and Design Industries Need Diversity
Anyway. I left Cape Town in my early twenties. I wanted to escape from the boxed-in, pre-conditioned segregated way of thinking. I wanted to travel and to see how people on the other side of the world worked, lived and thought. Arriving in London, I felt my eyes open to a huge range of possibilities. I loved the buzz, the diversity, and the cosmopolitan feel. And I do love it here, but it is certainly not free of the issues I thought I was largely leaving behind. I’d studied graphic design and advertising in Cape Town, and shortly after arriving in London, I got a position in a small ad company. After a few more graphic design positions, I changed route into the interiors world, and if I thought the design world was lacking faces of colour, the interiors world was even more so.
Kate asked: We want to hear your voices and opinions and thoughts on the lack of diversity in the interiors industry. And she is right; there is a lack of diversity.
I have to admit, it’s not something at the forefront of my mind when I’m working from home, scrolling through Instagram, or flicking though my favourite interiors magazines or blogs, and it does take me by surprise when a brown or black face pops up. Oh yes! I think to myself, we need to see more of this. When not in Corona lockdown, I get to attend a lot of brand and PR events, and this is usually where I notice it most. Sometimes I don’t even spot another brown or black face in the room.
I do believe we need more representation, as the interior design industry has had had quite a bad rep in the past. Before, it was all posh, older white ladies buying furniture and arranging cushions, and home design was seen as a luxury only the wealthy or celebrities could afford. This has changed for sure over the past few years, with a much greater focus on how the buildings we work and live in affect our general well-being. Good interior design is now seen as an integral part of good building design; it’s something that can improve lives. And it’s that which has drawn me into the industry.
It is important that we see more colour in this (and other) industries. But just adding people of colour is not enough, once they are there, you have to include them in the conversations and decisions, listen to their voices and make them feel like they belong.
It is crucial that young people see people like themselves, with whom they can identify, doing interesting jobs that they never even thought existed.
I know exactly what it’s like to grow up in a society where you don’t see any people that look like you on TV, or in magazines, or in positions of power, or doing intellectual, interesting or glamorous jobs. When all you see is people who look like you portrayed as lazy, drunks, or the help, you can only imagine what that does to a young brown girl’s self esteem. And the young black girls, I won’t even pretend that I know what that feels like. Then to go out into a world that has been systematically set up for generations to make your life harder because of the colour of your skin. It takes grit, fight and determination. Always having to prove yourself and go above and beyond the level of your paler counterparts to keep proving that you are worth having around. It shouldn’t have to be this way.
I don’t write this for sympathy, or to make anyone feel bad. I write this to inform.
And I write this for my two girls. So that they can see, at a time that people were calling out to listen and learn,
I took action, I spoke up and I contributed.
Tash x
Some other resources you may like to explore if you’d like to learn more on the issue:
I will add more to this list as I come across useful resources.
I’m reading “Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race”, Reni Eddo Lodge, It’s mostly like reading my own thoughts, but there is a huge amount of UK history - detailing amongst other things, involvement in slavery and right wing movements, that I didn’t know, so I’m finding it a very enlightening read. Racism is certainly not just an American problem. We need to educate ourselves about the history of the place we are in.
I’ve also read the excellent Becoming by Michelle Obama.
In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her - from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world's most famous address.
This is a great article in The New York Times archive from March 12, 1981: APARTHEID IS CRUMBLING ON BEACHES IN SOUTH AFRICA; The Talk of Cape Town about “the people of mixed race who are classified as coloreds refusing to confine themselves any longer to what a white South African would describe as '‘their own beaches.'“
A powerful video demonstrating privilege.