Hello world
Microaggression
The history of exotypes
Eurocentrism in design
Decolonising design
Goodbye
1. a mass shooting that occurred on 16 March 2021 in Atlanta, Georgia. A total of eight people were killed and one person was critically injured. Six of the dead were women of Asian origin.
2. Vicha Ratanapakdee was an 84-year old Thai man who was killed as a result of being forcefully pushed to the ground in a daylight attack in San Francisco, California, United States.He was walking around Fortuna Avenue when 19-year-old Antoine Watson ran across the street and violently shoved him to the ground. Vicha’s head hit the pavement as he fell. He never regained consciousness and died two days after arrival in the hospital from a brain haemorrhage.
3. Derald Wing Sue, “Racial Microaggressions Against Black Americans: Implications for Counseling”, Journal of Counseling & Development, 3 (2011): 330-338, accessed Sep 4, 2024, doi:10.1002/j.1556-6678.2008.tb00517.x
Microaggression The history of exotypes Eurocentrism in design Decolonising design Goodbye

#StopAsianHate

When you see this hashtag, what is the first thing that comes to mind? The 2021 Atlanta spa shooting?1 The killing of Vicha Ratanapakdee?2

Even though you probably didn’t think of the exact same cases, I assume that you thought about hate crimes against Asians, or maybe even #BlackLivesMatter.

It is absolutely important to remember these events and to prevent such hate crimes from happening again. However on a personal level, something that is way more common and relevant to me and likely other Asians is micro-racism or microaggressions. It can happen to me as an Asian every day, in every part of my daily routine, on the street on my way home or even at the workplace.

Of course, being murdered by a stranger on the street just because I’m Asian is more serious than being greeted by “Ching Chang Chong” or “Ni Hao”. However, everyone can imagine that the odds of me being targeted by “Ching Chang Chong” or “Ni Hao” are much higher than the odds of me being shot on the street.

I know this because I’ve been lucky enough to not have been killed for being Asian, and I’m still here, writing this, but I’ve heard countless “Ni Hao’s” from strangers on the street, and I know this from the similar experiences of many of my Asian friends.

You may not be aware of the importance of micro-racism, or you may think that racism is only when someone is attacked or killed because of their race, but social scientists Sue et al. have described microaggressions as "the new face of racism". They say the nature of racism has transformed over time from obvious expressions of racial hatred and hate crimes to more subtle, ambiguous and often unintentional expressions of aversive racism like microaggressions.3

In this text I will talk about microaggressions from my personal experience and about microaggressions in the field of graphic design, especially fonts and types. After that I would like to discuss the Eurocentrism in (graphic) design and its education and introduce decolonise design which aims to counter this Eurocentrism.