Inclusive Spaces by Design
Original Image by Danielle Evans
Starbucks was never about black coffee.
That is to say the company has no problem selling a concoction of sugared milk and baking spices with a splash of coffee, marketed as the seasonal drink of choice to white girls. Yet the coffee juggernaut prohibited employees from wearing Black Lives Matter apparel to work in June for fear of boycotting (this was overturned and company-sanctioned BLM shirts were distributed after a weekend of backlash). Dress code policies aside, Starbucks’s individual franchisees have struggled to accept Black folx freely in their spaces. Starbucks prides itself on its toned-down, worldly aesthetic, like the living room of that rich friend that travelled the world post-college but prefers to stay closer to home these days. It’s supposed to be the most non-threatening vanilla meeting space, but is it really for everyone? And is this the parent company’s fault?
“Design is Not Neutral”
Not necessarily, but it bears remembering Black folx have an acute sense of exclusion in public spaces based on generations of explicit segregation, and non-Black folx like myself are woefully ignorant by comparison. As non-Black folx, it’s easy to forget that our parents grew up during the desegregation process. But BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities haven’t known such a luxury and still practice hypervigilance for existing in physical spaces. This awareness stems from something more serious than being the new kid, it’s an issue of safety. Design was everywhere reminding Black people that their bodies are different, that they couldn’t drink from the same water fountain or swim in the same pool as non-Black people. That they shouldn’t dream of wearing the same clothes. We forget neighborhoods were built on the premise of skin color through redlining, that the ultra-rich were relegated to lower quality housing next to the ultra-poor, which created a cocktail of desperation and crime. Black Americans were told through legislation they were less worthy of equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We underestimate their ability to read microaggressions in public spaces meant the difference between life and death. Green books exist not as a sight-seeing manual but a culture guide to travel safely from region to region.
So what does design have to do with a cup of joe? Simply, “Design is not neutral,” according to Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, the co-authors of Nudge. It never was. Designers love to wax poetic about minute details of a project. We have answers for the color palette we chose, how different chair styles in a common seating area creates nuanced divides. And it is true, every detail is a sentence on the page that makes for a more interesting design story. If asked about any component, a design thinker can argue the exact logic down to the studs. And yet when marginalized audiences tell us that we have not created spaces for them, we wonder how that could be. We clearly thought of everything that would make this open and welcoming. But we did not consider what our carefully planned choices mean to people who are painstakingly aware of the differences between us and them.
The Standpoint Stadium
Mainstream American culture is fairly straightforward: white, evangelical, middle to upper-middle class. A personified frappuccino. And we like to believe our perspective from these places is the most neutral because our identities don’t have to be broadcast directly. This is the basis for standpoint theory. I first learned of this phenomenon from writer Sebene Salesse on Jocelyn Glei’s Hurry Slowly podcast. She explains, “There’s sort of an assumption of standpoint theory, that a dominant assumption that those in the center have objectivity because their identities are somehow not getting in the way. But those in the margins have the most understanding and greater objectivity than those at the center.”
To Salesse’s point, cis-het White people see ourselves as front row to popular culture. We do not have to speak about our identities in the workplace, nor do we encourage it. We see this concession as a generosity, that our mainstream culture is the epitome of accessibility and equality because we avoid specifics. It’s easy to envision this culture as a mountaintop, an ascended point of view others can reach if they’re willing to put their orientations, gender, and ethnic backgrounds aside. This vantage point is moral supremacy. We have it backwards; living in the mainstream is like sitting at the small end of a funnel. Pop culture perspective is like the ground level at a stadium sports match. Those on the ground floor have the quickest access to amenities. They can show up late to the party if they so choose. They probably sit around “very fine people” who could afford the good seats and have raised expectations for their neighbors' level of interest in the game, lifestyles, and affluence. Those of us closest to the main event never have to turn around and wonder who is sitting behind us. Our focus is on the event itself, maybe those directly around us. Those outside of the mainstream look down from the nosebleeds and have to access their seats starting at the ground floor. They move through the entire stadium to find their seats or grab a snack, and they see more of the attending crowd. They know who is at the match and have a greater sense of crowd scale.
What is it about commercialized places like Starbucks with their carefully prescriptive tile and their loosely ethnic, standardized murals that doesn’t translate to coffee for all? When Starbucks reached rural Ohio, it was an epicenter of music. Napster was in its glory back then, but it was difficult to find authentic international music on the Internet. The coffee shop was like a jukebox where you could sample fresh tunes and buy the CD at the register. Eventually the chain had shops on every corner in the world, so policy changed; baristas chose the music they played in each location. The closest Starbucks to my house began playing Christian music; if not overtly blasting the name of Jesus all over the coffee shop, there were the implied feel-good songs that could be interpreted as biblical. However, music categorized as Black religious music like Gospel or R&B was discouraged. It didn’t fit the vibe, apparently. After a couple months, this location became a prime spot for White Bible studies. The spot was much smaller than other Starbucks locations in town, the first drive thru location we had, yet people were cramming into this small space, loudly reading and praying from their holy book. The initial chill environment grew to be an immense distraction. It no longer felt like a place for me, a bookish kid who wanted a quiet spot to get lost in her thoughts. I heard many White pastors giving loud, verbose sermons under the guise of one-on-one public meetings.
I think about customers of other faiths and those without a god that had to endure this. People who would sit quietly and politely while someone else dominated the room because a simple factor like ambient music was permission to be loud and proud. I watched these customers eventually disappear for somewhere else. Sound design, an innocuous detail, made a public business less inclusive. Most curious of all, many of the young loiterers that piled on top of each other in the plush, high backed chairs didn’t drink coffee. The business became a hangout for White kids. I remember when two Black men were arrested in a Starbucks while awaiting a friend on the premise of loitering. If sound design was so effective at segregating space, a publicized incident of racial profiling was far more impactful.
A Simple Solution
There is a simple and a complex solution for all of this. First, after centuries of explicit exclusion, Black patrons and passerbys must be explicitly welcomed into commercial spaces. When we say “this space is for everyone, BIPOC and queer communities welcomed”, we not only signal our openness but we set a boundary against intolerance. Those that cannot appreciate a diverse space won’t be comfortable setting foot in an inclusive place. After the wrongful arrests, Starbucks closed all US stores for a week of mandatory diversity and inclusion training in 2018. While the coffee conglomerate has since defined some protections for Black employees, the language around explicit care of Black customers remains vague. Welcome creates safety, and when everyone feels safe, the conversation shifts to defining a better culture.
Secondarily, it is impossible for brands to create inclusive environments without involving Black designers and strategists during the creation process. Because it is not enough to stock Kwanza gift cards at the register or paste a photo of Black professionals into the electronic menu boards. One of my favorite cafés in my city prior to COVID is a Black café, period. The music is always a quirky mix of funk or a rap/jazz mashup. On busy days you’re fighting the roaster for elbow room, and it runs on Tuesday and Thursday, so you have to yell over it during afternoon meetings. The seating is tight so people have to mingle. The art rotates every couple of weeks, from Aminah Robinson homages to tribal masks. The owners are Eritrean, and the staff is young. Their beans are a dark roast, so dark that some days it catches in your throat, but it’s perfect on a cold Tuesday morning. Wandering in with a little brain fog, you might mistake it for a typical Starbucks on any street corner in the world. The shop is alive and balanced; yes it’s Black, but everyone lives there. Black experiences will provide balance that White perspectives alone cannot. It is impossible to self govern because non-Black designers are blind to the cues we have inherited from hundreds of years of exclusion. We have been taught to be ignorant and rewarded for doing an un-designerly thing: not being curious about an obvious problem. Since White society reviled the Black experience for centuries, prioritizing Black perspectives in the present makes room for all BIPOC to experience welcome and safety in public spaces.