A MESSAGE TO BIPOC

Grab The Mic

A message for Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) I presented at the University of Texas at Arlington Art + Art History Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Committee’s Grab the Mic event on February 12, 2021.

Yo! Ya friendly artsy neighborhood goth here.

So to start, I've always felt a duty to support our community but really struggled on how. I started working for local Black-owned companies that needed support in the design/branding department. But with the heavy strings of murders that happened in June, the hole I already had in my heart grew. I need to do more. But what can an empath designer like me do? Creatives and their responses really gave me hope that I could find a place and I'm in the progress of doing that now by working to become an advocate in my workplace for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Another element that saved me was finding my community. My Black peers and I didn't have a community of designers to be a part of while attending UTA. And as a designer, I personally felt lost and found difficulty in finding my identity as a designer. Luckily a couple of years after graduating I found Dallas Black UX where my connections there lead me to Citi. At that point, I really understood the extreme importance of surrounding myself with other Black designers like me. And especially ones that understand the complexity of navigating this society as a creative. And it's been like therapy being able to connect with them about our experiences.

So a couple of things I want to pull forward out of my experience:

ONE: Pair your emotion with your strengths and make it your superpower.
Besides user interface design, I also do fine arts and won a scholarship to do an Afrogoth portrait series at UTA back in 2017 for representation. So take what you're good at and let your emotions fuel that into finding your place in our community. If you struggle with defining that, invest in your personal development. Take some personality tests and ask trusted teachers/family/friends for their feedback. I promise you, book smart versus street smart is a shallow view of our intelligence. There are nine types of intelligence. There’s naturalistic, musical, logical-mathematical, existential, interpersonal, linguistic, bodily-kinaesthetic, intra-personal, and spatial intelligence and you are going to have strengths in at least a couple of them. I am so excited to see what we will accomplish because we are powerful. The potential of our growth is literally unbound. Our existence here, right now, is proof of that. As Whitney Houston says, “It would take an eternity to break us.”

TWO: Find your niche community.
Historically, it is proven that our society banks off of us being separated. They glorify our struggles in being able to break us but also enjoy watching us break each other. Surround yourself with other powerful people both within our community and outside of it. Nothing is more satisfying than seeing beautiful melanated Black people in all our multifacetedness, LGBTQIA+, disabled, indigenous, and more on my Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and everywhere else. Living authentically as we should receiving the love we deserve.

So I end it with this,
Pair your emotion with your strengths and make it your superpower.
And find your niche community.

Because nothing can stop you if you fortify yourself and have a community to back you.

As for you…you will be happy. You deserve it all. You deserve to rest and you deserve to live. I don't know you, but I see you. And I love you.