Thanks, everybody, for coming over, down or wherever
you came from. I'm happy to continue the intersections
panel that What are we in our 3rd year
of the intersections panel? It looks at cross
disciplinary conversations about social injustice in the built environment.
Today, we're talking about the topic of privilege,
so I'll introduce our Panelists. Um, and then
they're gonna give you, like, a five minute
quick spiel on their research. And then we'll have
a conversation about the topic of privilege in the built
environment. And, should I plug the November event
quick or Okay, so the next intersections panel I
don't know if I should do at the beginning or
get it done. Plug away. Thank you.
All right, so that one is happening November 7
. Same place, 4 p.m. And the topic will
be unpacking at that one is resilient. Okay,
So our Panelists, I'll just go in order of
presentation. Josh Iorio down at the far end is
assistant director of the Myers-Lawson school of Construction
He is responsible for many of the schools outreach
and inclusion efforts, including mentorship in K 12 programming.
His teaching and research focused on a variety of
non technical topics, including conflict, communication and leadership
and AEC teams. Dr. Faulkner, middle, is
a faculty member and scholar archivist in the Department of
Political Science. She's a multi award winning professor,
some of which include the College of Liberal Arts and
Human Sciences Teaching Excellence Award, its Diversity Excellence Award
and the Universities Diggs Teaching Scholar Award. Her research
interests are in race in public policy and critical race
theory in law. And Dr Frederick Paige, Freddy, is
the assistant director of the Virginia Center for Housing Research
and an assistant professor at Virginia Tech in the
Construction, engineering and Management program. Dr Paige's main
scholarship goal is to create the knowledge needed to develop
an informed public that lives in a sustainable built environment.
Outside of work, Freddy likes to spend his time
thinking about rhymes but never saying Yeah, I too
like rhymes. Maybe a not so cool way.
I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Cathryn Copper,
The art and architecture librarian. Um,
so should we just get started with Sure. Okay
, so Josh is up first. Okay. So
As Catherine Said I studied AEC teams, So
architecture, engineering, construction teams, my research looks
at things like better understanding, conflict, leadership on
communication. And so these teams are the people who
design, engineer and construct our built environment. They're
really responsible for what the built environment looks like,
how it performs its impact on the natural environment and
also how it supports the needs of our communities.
So I want to share a little bit of research
really quickly. Uh, demonstrates the impact of what
we're calling linguistic privilege on who can contribute within these
AEC teams. So who contribute to the decision making
within AEC. Well, background on the study.
Um, we analyzed pauses or silences in an AEC
team that was uh, doing four consecutive design review
meetings for an airport project on the West Coast.
Pauses are meaningful in communication. Um, they
signal when my turn is finished and when the floor
is open for you to take a turn and talk.
So we all often focus on what people say
But what people don't say when we stop that
actually has meaning and what it is an indicator
of is, who can take a turn. Pauses
could be long, so there could be a few
seconds And then it's pretty clear if I pause for
a couple seconds, you know, it's your turn
, and you can start speaking. But in most
conversations, um, pauses are a few 100 milliseconds
. Uh, okay, Catherine. So this is
this is the data, The results that I want
to show on the Y axis. We've got the
length of pauses on on the X axis. That's
basically time. We moved through the four
meetings and a two bottom end of the Y axis
. These are shorter pauses, the top end,
these are longer pauses. And so what we see
here got on the left side. Sorry, I
was supposed to be the easy one. See here
. Is that the women? So this is the
line on the top Are waiting much longer than men
before contributing to the conversation. So basically way this
works is someone says something, Pause that signals for someone
else to come in. What we see here is
that the women wait a lot longer. Okay,
Captain, over time, what happens is the women
start to jump in a lot quicker. They're not
being heard. And so they're saying, Okay,
if there's a little tiny pause I'm gonna jump
in and say something. And then the last one
we'll see down here at the bottom is that in
fact, what the men are doing is that they
are decreasing even further. How long they wait before
joining the conversation, Cathryn? So what we did
, we said, this is really interesting, right?
We've got these two different styles. What are
the men Think about the contributions that the women are
making and the team, and they said things like
they don't bring many actionable ideas to the table.
Ladies on the team doesn't seem to wanna participate.
I wish they would speak up more. I really
value their contributions. But what our data shows is
that the women are in fact trying to speak up
more. And because of the linguistic privilege that the
men have given their speaking style, they're not able
to. So, uh, this isn't a phenomenon
that is unique to men and women. We've got
research that basically shows the same pattern with Indian speakers
of English and Finnish speakers of English. So these
are global AEC teams, and what we found
there was that the Indian speakers actually have a negative
value for pauses, which means that in that style
of speaking, you don't pause. You just talk
over something. There's a really classic linguistic study where
researcher from San Francisco, um, invited her in
laws from New York to come to Thanksgiving dinner,
recorded the conversation and found the exact same thing.
That the speakers from New York had this negative pause
value, which meant that they were talking over one
another, and the speakers from San Francisco felt like
they could never get a word in. This
isn't necessarily about men and women, although it does
play out that way here. Cathryn. And so
, uh, really what I want you to take
from this is that linguistic privilege really can serve as
a way to silence the voice of others on in
the context debate, you see those voices that can
help solve some of the really big problems that we
have with the built environment. Like, how do
we create more sustainable built environments? How do we
make sure that our built environments are, in fact
serving the needs of the community? Not all members
of the community are able to have a voice on
, but it's not surprising we've got these problems that
occur over and over and over again. It's also
not enough just to invite people to the table.
So in this case, we've got men and women
at the table. This is the diversity aspect.
We've got a diverse team, but that doesn't mean
that teams necessarily linguistically inclusive, which means that in
fact, people can have a voice within the
diverse team. So Brandy is coming up next. What
she, what her work shows are the very, really
impacts of cases where people don't have a voice on
teams. What I want you to pay
attention to, in some of her examples is the
language of the examples. The language that some of
these people are using that she's worked with. Think
about whether or not their language, their linguistic style,
has any impact at all on whether or not they
have a voice. You like that? I do, awesome.
So I want to talk about chickens, um,
and think about the relationship between built environments and
industry. The research that I've been involved in was
on the industry in and specifically in the meat and
the poultry industry. And so, um, for
a very long time, at least, the last
50 years, we have known that the meat and
poultry industry is among the most dangerous industries in the
country. In fact, it was OSHA, um
, that determined it actually has the highest rate of
fatalities of all industries. Um, when we look
at US Department of Labor statistics, we can see
that Ah, lot of the meat and poultry processing
plants are in violation of things like wage labor laws
, um, and consistently expose their workers to very
dangerous environments. But what we're also seeing is
that a lot of it is racialized. So what
is the role of race based privilege and power in
the meat and poultry industry? So
I've just outlined here, Um, some of the
demographics in terms of the workers in this industry So
overwhelmingly the non managerial worker positions are black and Latin
next, whereas the managerial positions are predominantly white,
84% of those positions. So it creates a racialized
dynamic that creates some what we call cultural critical incidents
, um, threats to one's safety, health or
welfare that's based on lack of cultural knowledge and cultural
miscommunications, Um, and things like racism, things
like sexism in some instances. So it's a
very interesting way of looking at how this industry is
made. The average non managerial, um
, worker is quite young. Typically between the ages
of 18 and 30 they are overwhelmingly male, as
opposed to female. Huge population of immigrants, particularly non
English speaking immigrants, very low income wage workers.
And these are concentrated in the Midwest and also in
the South. And the research that I did involved
poultry processing plants in the South. Um, I
was looking at a critical race perspective for the reasons
why there has been so little progress. Even as
, um, equipment has improved, even as environments themselves
have improved in terms of construction. We're still seeing
high levels of cultural critical incidents that are jeopardizing workers
in the meat and poultry industry. So why is
that What's happening? Um, here's a couple of
different methods to try to get a total picture of
what was going on interviews and also some discourse analysis
to look at policy and law, and how that
relates to this particular situation and also ethnography, which
is um, I guess in simple terms, when
you have an in depth study of a culture by
immersing oneself in that environment, I actually worked at
these places for several months so that I could better
understand what was happening in them. So some
sample comments from some of the workers there:
Javier, who I still have contact with, George, and Sterling.
I worked really fast, and I'm not always checking
what I'm doing. Even while I'm doing dangerous work
like de-boning with the disk saws. We're slaves. They
don't care. If we aren't done with a full truck
of chickens, we can't leave for work
at the end of our shift. They make us
stay no matter what. I just don't understand it.
Why you treat me like you do? You know
it ain't safe. You don't never asked the whites
to do it. The rest of us doing the
best we can. This came particularly from a worker
who was consistently asked to go into the meat freezer
without the proper thermal equipment on, as were a
lot of the black and LatinX workers with the
white workers were never asked to do that. And then
the last comment here. Don't know much. I don't
know how much longer I can take it, or
they depended on me, though it was too cold
in the freezer for me to be in there as
long as I was. So another black male who
was in the same situation. And so what I saw
from many of their comments. They felt unprotected,
dehumanized, isolated, unsafe, a literal fear for
their lives in the workplace because of the race based
power dynamics between minority racialized workers and white majority supervisors
and managers. Mhm and so um ah, few
frameworks in ways to think about what's going on.
UM, laissez faire economics, which most adhere to
in industry its way of thinking about free markets and
the value of competition and deregulation. And all of
those things are contributing to racialized power. Oh,
there are some who follow incremental enforcement, meaning we
make changes when appropriate and when we can. But
for many of the workers, it's not enough.
And so what I did specifically was do analysis through
the critical race lens. So a few questions that
that all pose How can we protect the health and
safety of meat and poultry industry workers by dismantling systems
of privilege and power and then second, can reimagining
built environments help in this industry to create less oppressed
, oppressive cultures. So some of the questions that
, um, I think about and hopefully you will
as well. So just to
kick things off Thank you, Brandy. I'm gonna
pick up right there in regards to I'm gonna be
talking about the built environment. I'm a civil engineer
and kind of how some of our innovations and things
we've come up with have led to some of these
issues. So if you wanna think about it regards
of civil engineering Before we did some of things we've
done, you wouldn't be able to have these massive
manufacturing plants for chickens. All right, that makes
sense to you. So before I get started,
uh, too in depth. My mom always tells
me I'm the most important person in the room,
but I know that's not the case. So just
so I know who I'm talking to. Can
I know your major by raising your hand in regards
to architecture? Er All right, that's everyone.
except for one. So we got civil
engineering here. I've met you, the back business
management, all right. And the other is
business management. OK, cool. I'll try to
make this apply to everyone. Um oh, you
can't even see there. Communications. All right. What
right for those in the back? Just know there's
seats in the front. If you want to get
closer to me, I don't bite. Exactly how it
goes in class. Chairs you can't sit
in. You know, you just flip them over.
Um, so, one of the biggest things
I want you to get out of my my part
of the presentation, if you don't get anything else
, is that, um there's like a There's a
lethal privilege in the built environment, and it it
hides in the shadows. So when we think of
things such as the Flint, Michigan issue - hoping everyone
here heard of that - where there was actually lead in
the water and the water was coming out brown.
We can see those problems and fix them, right?
But a lot of the issues are actually the
things we don't think about, like the chicken you
get at your home and how that's manufactured and what
kind of power structures are at play because you don't really
even have the option of going down the street and
getting a local chicken anymore. You know, we
have the, we're lucky to have the privilege of the
farmers market here. But does anyone here know where
those farms are? No. And that's because the
way civil engineers have allowed our communities to advance an
industrialized The picture on the
left is pretty self explanatory, But the picture on
the right, it's a little a little more difficult
to understand. And on the right, that's Danny.
Danny lives on Skid Row. Skid Row is
a place in Los Angeles where it's known as the
homeless capital of our nation. All right, when
you look at Danny holding on to that parking meter
, we have enough money as a, uh,
community to have solar powered parking meters. But we
don't have enough money to find him a place to
stay that makes sense to you. So when you
start thinking about the way we change our infrastructure the
way we design it, lots of power goes into
play, and the people who designed that parking lot
. Thought about that? Well, actually didn't think
about that. They didn't think about the people that
may be displaced or actually, how we're using these
these spaces. Oh, I don't know what happened
to my Okay, Well, the title was supposed
to read through. Pdf, uh, changed a
little bit, but small white tables, big colored
communities. All right, so this is
actually on the left is a picture of the ASCE.
So that's the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Um, directors Board of Kansas City, meeting on
the left, and you see in the background,
they have the whole community behind them. They're making
decisions on community scale infrastructure, but on the right
, that is the demographics of Kansas City. All
right, and there's a lot more colors than just
the pink or salmon bar that represents white. All
right, but in the decision making space, those
colors aren't represented. Alright? And then also
, when you think about gender, I didn't look
, I didn't show the gender demographics, but it's
probably gonna be around 50 50 like any major city
for the most part. All right. And you
see, there's there's one female in that picture.
Now I know Josh talked about. Even if we
bring people to the table, sometimes they don't even
have a voice. But there's a major issue!
They're not even at the table. All right,
So when you guys think about your career and think
about the power you have, please understand that you
are a champion for the initiatives that you want to
bring in. And the idea is that you bring
up do matter even if you don't. You think
your voice is being silenced? Um, we're gonna
talk about how that works. So most of my
research is actually on energy, and energy and low income
houses. But that's more of something that gets impacted
by some of these issues, not necessarily a way to
just solve race and gender issues in the built environment
privilege in the built environment. But to kind of
give you some context is when we designed energy efficient
homes, specifically affordable, energy efficient homes. The
reason why they're so important in that space is a
$10 increase in your electricity bill means a lot if
you only have $50 of flexible income a month.
Okay, sometimes that small fluctuation is the changes completely
. The way they eat changes the way they get
medicine, change the way they could buy a new
piece of clothing that they may need, cause something
torn or rip. Okay, But to back it
up and make this more applicable toe this group,
uh, I want to talk about just the policies
and the way this system is, uh, constructed
. And when we talk about having diversity at the
table, we think about okay, why don't these
communities have their own spaces? Well, if
you think about engineering and I don't know as much
about architecture. But how long ago was it when
ah, black person or even a woman could go
to school to get the skills they needed to support
their communities? It's a question. It's not rhetorical
. Any guests just throw a ball park out.
Think it's 50 years, 50 years, some groups
, 100 years. It's not that long of a
time period, right? Okay, This timeline here
is for something I study a lot for. I
teach infrastructure policy at the graduate level. So if
anyone's getting graduate degree, definitely great class, we
accept all majors. Um, it's plugging myself.
Uh, this is a time line for the Fair
Housing Act, all right? And you see 1968
that's when things really got kicked off, right after,
uh, the civil rights movement. And shortly thereafter
, uh, Dr King was assassinated. Um,
but what's really important about this timeline is not just
that black people and we couldn't discriminate by by race
and ethnicity, but each group had to fight for
their rights. Okay, so we had the fair
housing act where we had the wait six more years
for women not to get discriminated against in regards the
housing. So there was a point in time where
if you wanted to buy a home or rent a
home, someone could just say, Oh, no
, you're female. You're gonna bring too many problems
, or you're not gonna be able to pay your bill
because you don't have a man there to make sure
that your income is stable issues like that. And
it kept going. We had to fight for people
in wheelchairs or who had accessibility issues to get their
rights. Then we had to fight for folks who
had, um, not in regards to their gender
, but their sexual orientation, which actually goes against
what our most of our our laws actually talk about
. Sexual orientation is not necessarily a gender, but
in this case they said we cannot discriminate against that
either. On bond, there's gonna be a lot
of transformation in terms of our policies. Um,
so what I want you to think about is the
fight for empowerment is really fragmented. It's not just
one group gets discriminations broken down and hey, hooray
for everybody. Know each group has to have their own
particular champions. But it does show that specific groups
can kind of create a lane for you to start
to open things up. So if you are fighting
for your group, don't think that you're not doing
anything else for another group. But don't also think
you're automatically going to bring them up with you.
So why this is so important and so interesting?
I don't know what happened to the top of the
slides, but top of the slide was supposed to
read that, um, the subconscious things, the
implicit biases that occur aren't by accident. So when
we think about implicit bias, we're always thinking,
Oh, this is just subconscious level. People don't
mean to do this or if you're an architect and
you're designing something or if your business manager and you're
making decisions on someone's financial future and oh, I
can't, I can't be aware of these subconscious things.
I don't really mean to. Well, if you actually
look at the structure of the system that you work
in, it's actually been set up to allow you
to be subconscious. I mean, to allow you
to ignore these things. So, for example,
I can't subconsciously forget that this structural members gonna fail
. That makes sense to you. All right,
So if you put the appropriate things into the engineered
systems, the subconscious biases will get caught. And
that's how we actually design things. And and and
we all know that. And what I like about
this picture here in regards of competence is these are
things we need experience, knowledge, skills, behavior,
performance and goals. So if our goals don't
actually align with if you go into a design or
if you're creating ah business plan and your goal isn't
to help people who need help in regards to whether
there uh, so low socioeconomic status, whether from
any other underrepresented groups. You're not gonna help them
point blank, period. It's just not gonna happen
if you don't have the experience with these cultures,
don't design for them. I'm telling you right now,
just don't do it, okay? Gain the
experience first. Before you think you could do that.
What I really like about aASCE, which
we haven't done a very good job of it,
is ah, part of the professional engineering, Um
, ethics requires you to only work on things you're
competent about. But as you've seen in the other
picture, that's not necessarily what we execute. So
we have this huge charge to basically train more
people of color, color and diversify, um,
ASCE, the civil engineering, um, field.
. But then when I started looking at, I
do do some studies on what we do in regards
to education. We don't even train them design for
their communities. We train them to design for the
communities that are typically being designed for, So we
still need to fix that as well. So I
want you to start thinking more of how things
are systematic and where your power actually lies And how
you can change and empower yourself more. Okay,
that's what I had. Okay, so I can
throw out some questions or if you want to respond
to each other, or if there's burning questions in
the audience slip, the audience asks, they're burning
questions. Their first. Do you mind explaining what
LatinX is? Yeah, LatinX is a
general term that encompasses any member that identifies of,
of being of Latin descent instead of saying like Latino
or Latina, which is the old way of doing
it. Um, it's a recognition that there are
multiple genders, and so we get rid of the
A and the oh, and just he's an ex
. So that's inclusive of many different genders. And
that's a linguistic, you know, type back into
what I was talking about. It's not about pauses
, but that's a linguistic move to be able to
be more inclusive. Um, and if I see
that on a census report or any type of information
about a community I'm designing for as engineer, I've
never heard of that term, I have no idea
what that means. Yeah, exactly. I can't
design appropriately. Good question. I saw a really,
I like to watch people when they listen. And
I saw the females, particularly like in all when
Josh was describing what he was saying. So I
really hope you guys speak up. You know,
this is a comfortable space to get your questions
off. I mean, it's, there's a scenario
that I studied. Does it ring true to anyone?
And it's not just again men and women.
It could be people from different language backgrounds where the
culture that you come from is one where someone finished
speaking and take time to consider the response. And
you are expected not to just jump in and contribute
, but to reflect. And that's how you show
respect by the silence. And then you're recognized and
it's your turn to talk. So there it's not
just about men and women. It's really across the
board. I have a question, if you like
that, he's like reflected very quickly on my own
experience. But I find, when I'm in meetings with
people who know me more, there's more respect,
and there's not that big split. And that's - I
mean, there's a lot of complexity. There are
power dynamics, you know, in these design review
meetings. They can be. I mean, everyone
has an agenda. So there's a threat to letting
other people speak. Um, if you're comfortable,
if you're potentially working for the same firm, if
everybody's lined up, you know you have the same
shared goals. Then it can be. You can
certainly overcome these dynamics. There's other ways to overcome
them as well in class. What do we do?
And there's a There's a functional reason for that.
It's so that the person who is calling on
usually the person in the front, but you can
manage participation. Why do we let that go once
we graduated? How come when you get into a
board meeting people really don't raise their hands to be recognized
by whoever's leading the meeting and are invited to participate?
So everyone doesn't use the Robert's Rules of Order
like that? It's how life works. But there's
a lot, um, that's going on and what
I study are in large part global themes. So
you've got gender dynamics and you've got cultural dynamics,
all the play in the same place. It's very
difficult to navigate. Step one is the awareness.
It's the awareness. As Freddy talked about, realizing
that you don't understand really what the needs are the
community that you're designing for, or that you don't
understand what the linguistic norms are of all the people
who you're talking with, have a couple things to
chime in. Um, because I'm one of the
females that nodded, but I found overwhelmingly when I'm
at a group table or a group discussion, automatic,
if nobody is leading the discussion automatically, people
look at the male at the table, and I've
just been more aware of that recently and the only
way to stop that from happening is for me to
speak up. Uh, so I think that and
I think the kind of continuing theme in all of
you is those people have to be at the table
and make an intentionally make a change for things to
change. And for the architects in the room.
And Paulo, maybe you can help me with this
one. But the project that I think of where
the architect really did go and talk to the community
and made a big change is, um, Alejandro
Aravena, right from the firm Elemental. Um and
he was designing. I think there was hurricane or
something that went through Chile. And, uh,
he was designing social housing basically, and he went
and spoke to the people, like, how can
I make a difference? And instead of building structures
, you know, that packed people in high he
built essentially which were half built homes so you could
get in at a reasonable price and then build equity
. Um, And then you could finish the home
when you had the money, and this was really
like the first time I know of
that, this happened. It was super successful because
all of a sudden it gave people in low income
the chance to build equity, create a home for
themselves. So that was a really nice project.
And I think it folds into everything that you're talking
about. He gave the people a voice. When you
kind of get you more engaged in the conversation, when
you have a class assignment and the teachers very vague
on what you have to do, is that difficult?
Rubrics? Yeah. Um, So what with
that? With that extra added difficulty, just want
you to think about don't specifically engineering, we do this
a lot. We think going into the community is
a burden. It's very hard, which it can
be difficult, but you're actually getting free help.
That makes sense to you. I don't think he
would have came up with that solution if he didn't
fully understand the community. Because you would think Who
wants a, a not complete home, you know, But
until you get in there, understand their experience,
then they provide you with that solution. So just
want you to take that in to mind.
Thank you. Um, well, there's a couple
of things. Their comments. I don't have anything
too specific, but I am from Argentina originally,
uh, so being a woman there and having a
voice on the table is, was, at least while I
was living there more difficult. At school
itt wasn't that obvious. When I moved into
the working world it became really obvious.
Yeah. You know, the one time
I remember is when I was asked to shut
up. Mm. We were looking at something and trying
to figure out something. I was like, What
about? "Shhh! Shh!" So I think that that
is obviously gender culture. I think that because of that,
I also had maybe a tendency to interrupt because
I had to try to get ideas through.
Which I think I have been like, modifying
while I've been here, trying not to interrupt.
Then I'm looking at your presentation.
I think it's interesting because my
Masters was about homelessness in Los Angeles,
then looking also representation. I understand all these things
, but at the same time, I'm not quite
sure what to do with because there is so complex
and there's so many variables that make it that way.
I can't remember the title of movie and it's
a movie that is actually true. But it was
about - I think it Mexico was
a lot of immigrants coming to work in the plant
and still the abuses that were occurring there. But
actually that mid managerial, were also Mexican is that
they could, uh, be community. So they
were also as abusive. Uh, I am not
invalidating at all what you are saying, but it
just means we realized that the level of complexity of these
issues and then I want them to be different.
What? What can we do? What do you
think is a way in which to address these issues, not
only recognize them, but address them? Some of what I did
in my discourse analysis was to look at policy responses
to the problems that were happening and what was told
to ah, lot of workers, particularly those who
were sneaky enough to talk to folks affiliated with unions,
um was to organize right outside of work and
then to bring that inside the workplace. But also
not to be afraid to start litigation processes when
their rights were being ignored when they were being abused
in the workplace. Okay, what's the American way?
You sue! And so looking at the outcome
, um, over a series of cases in which
the workers did decide to take a stand through the
legal system, the outcomes were horrible! The outcomes
actually upheld the power dynamics in the industr!. So
you're saying to the workers, you can't be
afraid to to bring a suit against this company.
They go through that long and arduous process, and
then they are still at the end of it in
the exact same situation. So, um That doesn't
answer you, to quote your question about what to do.
But it does maybe give us some room to
think about what isn't working well. And litigation is
one of the things that isn't working. Well,
um, because of the way that our system is
structured, it upholds the power system. Others felt
that, um, if they just kept their heads
low, did their jobs, they wouldn't be targeted.
Right? And what I saw from ah lot
of the workers and they're just generally dehumanized demeanors is
that they had actually internalized or oppression to the point
where they did just that. I'm here. I'll
do my job for the next 16, 17 hours
and then I'll leave. But even for the workers
who had those kinds of attitudes, it didn't mean
they were absolutely safe from being asked to do tasks
that the majority white in the organization were not asked
to do, um, to have themselves in very dangerous
conditions that others weren't asked to be in. So
I don't know what the ultimate solution is, other
than understanding that this is deeply structural and that any
solution also has to address those structures that are creating
the problem and what we sometimes tend to do is
think of it at an individual level. Oh,
let's just change some people. Oh, that's just
a bad manager. Let's replace him with a better
manager. No, that's not the solution, right?
So we have to start thinking about
systems of oppression and how they reinforce one another and
tackle it from that angle. But even that is
a battle. So I hear you. I agree
with you. It is very difficult to think about
, Um but any solution has to include those who
are directly affected. Their voices have to come first
, and we don't do a very good job with
that. We assume we know what's best for everyone
. But how often are we actually involving directly affected
people in the solutions to their own problems? So
maybe that's start it doesn't solve all problems, but
we have to get better with that. I think
, you know. And in the context of any
looked at you know, is in these manufacturing plants
but you can rest assured that it's exactly the
same on the constructions. You know, construction workers
are in the same kind of context go back toe
Freddie's point. You know, you've got African Americans
making some progress, but not women. What we
have to avoid is having factory workers make some progress
, but not construction workers. That this is a
group of people. Uh, maybe it's a class
, um, that need to be addressed systematically and
not kind of will fix it here but not worry
about these people. And then that will fix this.
Because here we are, 100 years later,
we've made a little tiny bits of progress. But
it's not comprehensive, kind of transformative progress. If
you look into the fair housing Act itself. There's
a lot of interesting videos that just came out in
the last year because they just went through, I
think the 50th year anniversary. And it was very
clear that the civil rights activists knew that the act
was not gonna end discrimination and they knew it actually
wasn't going to solve their problems. It was a
start to get the conversation going, and then an
extra weapon that certain people could utilize. So if
you had the money to start the litigation in regards
that you've been discriminated against and if you also had
the access to a home to live in while you
were waiting on this discrimination claim to go through.
They just wanted folks to have that option. So
they actually knew it was kind of like a small
strategy, like a chess play, chess game.
And they also knew it would kind of start these
next conversations about not just housing, but other aspects
of life that are that are necessities. Um,
so, yeah, in regards to the solution,
I really think it is us kind of internalizing and
understanding what our individual power is and how that works
in a system. And what kind of change are
you actually gonna enact? Well, what are you
going to demand? What are you gonna actually do
with your own two hands and then the other hands
that you can influence on until we get to that
point? I think we're just gonna be kind of
loss because we're gonna follow what the system has have
had us doing. So, you know, if
you come to Virginia Tech and you look left or
right in your class, you don't see different cultures
and you don't challenge that. Ask, why don't
I see different cultures. I want to be an
architect that is well versed in different culture, because
I wanna be able to design in many different contexts,
then you're not doing your job and don't expect results.
Question about designing communities. I've worked briefly in land
development, and the focus is definitely on profit and
all other things are secondary to that. And
so there there must be specific communities that are just
the most profitable to design, for it seems to
be creating profit for different types that, for project
owners and design firms, is the way to exactly
designed for different communities. But the future in In
my space we started talking about this thing called the
Triple Bottom Line. So usually the bottom line is
just, uh, profit. But then getting all
the way to economic sustainability, then also social sustainability.
So we're kind of changing our vernacular because we've actually
had data to show us that these diverse communities are
doing better than the communities that were developed in this
monolithic way. Um, so if you look at
white suburbia, it actually fails. A lot of
people don't wanna live there anymore because it's so far
from the things that they actually need and want other
than good schools on, I guess, safe neighborhoods.
But then, as you looked at the news
now those neighborhoods actually aren't that safe anymore. So
that's where we need to figure out. Okay,
What kind of data can we leverage? What?
How can we make the business case of diversity,
of inclusion and of breaking down privilege? But we
also got to remember the people who have this privilege
have a lot of money, and they're using it
to keep that privilege. So if you think that
you're just going to say, Hey, it's the
right thing to do, it's not gonna work.
So I was just at a conference in the senator
, spoke and he talked about in regards to sustainability
all the big corporations like Exxon and other corporations that
have large interest in fossil fuels and unsustainable business practices
. They utilize their power very effectively, but the
good guys don't necessarily do the same. So he
talked about Exxon, Um, or maybe with BP
. Actually, they spent more money on the marketing
of the sustainability than their actual sustainability research. But
then, when the good guys come in, They
actually don't say much. They you know, they
say they're very friendly corporations like Apple or Google,
and they promote diversity, but they're not really lobbying
to the same extent as the other groups.
So we have to figure out. Okay, what
are weapons gonna be and how we're gonna maximize them?
Because I like to think there's more of us
than the bad guys. And that's why the bad
guys are so good at doing, or bad girls as
well, at doing what they do. Um, because
they know they're actually threatened. So it's like,
Okay, we're trying to control a large group of
people. We need to be very strategic and maximize
our impact. Where way Kind of think it's just
gonna work out. Good things are gonna happen.
And that's not the case. I think it was
an interesting way to frame it. You know,
how do we, um, make building or designing
in those communities more profitable? But another way to
think about it is how can we remove the profit
for some communities altogether, Right. So, um,
in the way that you framed it puts the
onus on those victimized communities to somehow show or prove
their worth or their value. And that shouldn't be
the case. Why can't we train architects and engineers
to design for communities and not have it be profitable
? Right? It requires a different type of orientation
to purpose and meaning, but it's something that we
could certainly do now that would require an entirely different,
first, the education, Uh, and I'm not
sure how many would buy into that. But we
have to think about ways to reframe what we think
should be standard or normal and and realize that sometimes
our standards and our norms are the problem themselves effective
that also say something. Yes, there's not sure
this is like a widespread thing. I know in
Baltimore, they have a neighborhood design centers on you
see, and it's kind of I sat in on
a few meetings a few summers ago and they're sort
of representative of the entire community. There's like
teachers business on and then, like architect offers on
, they kind of offer their services pro bono in
those meetings. Awesome. Yeah, there's this big
room, and it's kind of like this giant roundtable
, and they kind of doing that clockwise order and
everyone has something to say. Hmm. So I
think when I was there, there was a project
to renovate, like the storefronts, some of
the streets damaged in riots. So
owners of some of the businesses were there, and local government
officials, I guess. But one more broadly,
there is like this atmosphere, of mutual respect,
I guess, even if some people more power,
thank you. It wasn't it seems like everyone's choice
it's about yeah, excellent example. I think that
that neighborhood designs center is a good ways approach. Excellent
. It's interesting, right? Because you've got all
these people in the room. You didn't invite them
in to just listen quietly. You invited them in to contribute
And that's a really good way to make sure
that everyone has the opportunity, regardless of language,
background, to be able to make the contribution. We
typically, don't expect people to just sit
and be passive. We want the contribution so we
can create space, but we also need to create
the kind of interaction norms that allow people to contribute.
I'll challenge that idea, though in in civil
engineering, specifically, even construction engineering we're very careful
on how we train students and engineers to craft their
messages and be very careful with their designs, even
systematically, if you look at a blueprint on how
detailed and specify those could be in inaccessible to the
communities that you're designing for, um So sometimes I
think we actually do want people to come to the
town hall meetings or actually not even show up to
the town hall meeting so we can get the job
done. Uh, I don't know how many of
you have been to meetings for different types of developments
just even in the Blacksburg area or your local area.
Usually no one's there, and it's because of
the timing. It's because of the type of incentive
structure you have for going, um, so I
would challenge that for my space. I would love
for us to change it, and I feel like
there has been examples of us attempting to change it.
But as long as profit is like the number
one goal, um, it's gonna be really hard
to do it. I talked to a lot of
young students embarking on their higher education journey, and
they're always like I'm picking the engineering major that makes
the most money. Why would you do that?
They all make money. So you know, you
should actually pick something that you actually enjoy and you're
gonna be passionate about that wakes you up and makes
you feel good. And we started to see a
shift we've been doing Some surveys with students have been
working with in that, but that's just self reported
. It's not necessarily what they're actually acting on.
So I would love to see more about the external
pressures and internal pressures that really put people in these
positions of power. Because extremely powerful everyone in this
room is extremely powerful. I hope you get that
. From what I'm trying to tell you, your
designs are gonna change people's lives, your business plans
or whatever you're doing business. It's gonna change people's
lives the way you communicate changes people's lives. So
it's a responsibility. And a privilege. A privilege.
It's gotta be some more burning questions. Burning seats
are getting hot. I got one in the back.
Great. So I'm actually here because I'm taking a
class and something our professor told
us and talked about was ah, lot of employers
that recruit Tech students across the board complained with one
V. Tech students are not able to comprehend and
understand its cultural diversity, a diversity in the workplace.
So I just want to experience some research. What
would you say? The best things that students could
do to become more, well, diverse, obviously
like this is like attending events of understanding, having
conversations. But if you had to say, like
across the board university level, what are ways?
I think it's Actually there's
a pretty straightforward solution. To integrate diversity
into the courses, rather than having a space where
we pull out of everything else that we do and
talk about this that frames diversity of something that's on
the side. That supplemental. A lot of what
we're trying to do is to bring diversity and inclusion
issues into our core curriculum. So for us in
construction, it's things like, How do you,
uh, span cultural boundaries between management? This is
the same context Brandy is looking at between management and
workers. So how do you actually motivate workers on
site or we're gonna build a school in your community,
but we have eminent domain, which is gonna
take out a bunch of houses. How do you
go into that community? And can you develop a
workforce development plan that employs the people that you are
in fact displacing? And so how does I'll give
another example? I teach performance management. So this
is within a team. How do you track performance?
How do you motivate people? How do you
hold people accountable? And the reason that you collect
data is to defend against unconscious bias. So as
I'm teaching them, how what kinds of performance can
we track? How do we quantify performance? How
do we evaluate performance? I'm embedding lessons about unconscious
bias and the need for data so that we're not
just responding to our stereotypes, so that's not easy
to do. How do you do that in that?
How do you do it in some of these
really, really highly technical, uh, theoretical kinds
of subjects? I don't know, but I think
that that goes a long way to kind of normalize
discussions about diversity and not make it here. We
are in the panel on privilege, and this is
the only time you'll hear about this thing. One
great way to do it. To have students value
diversity is tell them it's gonna be on the test.
Ten points and then make it so!
Evaluation is really big. Unfortunately, the way we
evaluate and assess diversity is horrible. I'm very respectful
of diversity. Award that Virginia Tech recently one.
And I love the people in our diversity office.
Uh, I came here basically off a diversity of
initiative, but it is pretty clear for someone who
has any type of understanding of how you evaluate something
, that it's a broken system and it's gonna take
a lot more than just talking about it. And
also doing these small, incremental things it's gonna be
has to be radical, um, to shift this
and turn this big boat around where it is,
because that's that's kind of what I see it.
This is like a ship that gets predominantly white,
affluent students into positions of power. That's how they
want it. So my biggest thing is just allowing
you to interact and actually experienced people on the human
scale and in genuine manners. I think that's extremely
important way we need to invest a lot more into
that So when we do the numbers counting of just
trying to change the way Virginia Tech looks, I
think that's important. But if they're all kind of
in these fragmented sections, they don't really have any
reason to intersect. Or if you haven't even hit
critical mass for the groups of people you're trying to
help or add to your community, then you've wasted
your time. Eso we have rural Appalachia right next
to us, and we consistently talk about Don't go
there. That's Trump County, and that's not really
what Blacksburg represents. And that's just an obvious example
of if we're really trying to diversify its not let's
go ship a bunch of black kids from Roanoke over
here. Or, you know there's there's things we
can do that make much more sense for the context
of Virginia Tech. Mhm, somebody said to me
recently that diversity happens at the self level and that
really stuck with me. So if you look around
it like your close circle like, who is it
? You know, even though I think of you
may think of yourself is diverse and open minded.
But who do you talk to and value out of
everyday level, but their systems in place that make
you who you are. So don't just think I'm
a horrible person. I only talk to white people
. I only talk to females that no, it
Zubin done to you. And until you are aware
of that, then it's gonna be hard to break
out. Even black people like so my West Indian
family made it very clear. Uh, Freddie,
you need to be hanging out with folks who are
scholars and lawyers and engineers. If that's where how
you want to be successful and way do it institutionally
way, internalize it ourselves as well. So just
once you could break out of that. That's where
my circle change. But also, if you're coming
from underrepresented group, you're actually forced to do it
Anyway. You're gonna have to talk to these other
folks. But when it's not a genuine connection,
then you're just getting whatever you need. You don't
really appreciate those individuals. You don't learn their culture
, you don't gain their respect. And that's what
goes back to what I was saying. It just
doesn't matter. I don't like that. I think
that it is a bit like with you were saying
at the beginning, you could bring the people to
the table, but it may not happen. That
may not be that should not be there. I
still think it's important to bring everybody to the table
, but I agree that percentage is nothing. They're
not diversity, just people in the same space,
but not necessarily relating affecting, impacting, transforming each
other. So it's the first step. But then
the other part where yeah, where we could get
overactive is in being aware of that as initiating those
exchanges. Um, in general, I don't think
that there's effort that needs to go into that.
I think that, you know, maybe I could
talk for for our school or our practices that are
more curious oriented, that maybe we have a bit
more these and being curious about it. Why?
But I think that, yes, that university is
not diverse because we have [inaudible]
preparing the grounds for that are making each of
us. I really want to use it. And
I also want to emphasize that the diversity and inclusion
isn't just about difference, right? We have a
lot of conversations about being different. No it's about
power and who has it and who doesn't. So
even when you have what most would consider a diverse
environment, if the power structure has not changed,
you will still have the same problems. So we
have to think a little bit more deeply about what
it actually means to change the dynamics of an environment.
And it's not just making sure we have two of
you and two of you and 1.5 of this type
and that type over here. There's just way more
to it than that. Appreciate the question. That's
a good question. So we're at five o'clock.
But I just wanna point out that this is just,
you know, opening a conversation and it doesn't
stop here. And I just, if real quick,
you could give everyone like an action item like what
you could do when you leave. Mm Oh,
that's a great one there. I'll give
you two. Make sure that everybody contributes the next
time you're in a meeting and learn how to listen
and learn how to listen. Just add, I
don't know who came up with the adage, but
we speak to teach and we listen to learn,
um, spend a lot of time listening. And
teaching. I guess I would add to that,
um, start having conversations and also reading outside of
your discipline. My action item is actually gonna change
from what I told you before. And I had
a class, uh, to prepare me for this
job in a part of that class I learned.
I read a book that specifically designed for white women,
but it worked for me as well. So
read out of your discipline called The Negotiation Gym.
I'm gonna ask you to either look
into that book or if you already have great negotiation
skills, you skip the book and negotiate your power
. So find someone who has power over you in
some way, shape or form, and negotiate and
try to force them to give up some of that power.
So you can empower yourself mpre to create some
type of diversity initiative or some type of shift and
change in the status quo. Unless that's your professor
Got a hold onto it! Earned it.
I'm doing this for the next. Yeah, a
little one. Okay. Thank you. And thank
you for being here. Thank you. Okay.
Thank you.