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Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc./Patrick O'Neill Riley
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article, which was published March 16, 2021 and updated March 22, 2021.
Design remains a largely white profession, with Black people still vastly underrepresented – making up just 3% of the design industry, according to a 2019 survey.
This dilemma isn’t new. For decades, the field’s whiteness has been recognized as a problem, and was being openly discussed as far back as the late 1980s, when the few Black graphic design students preparing to enter the profession spoke of feeling isolated and rudderless.