I haven't had to work this closely with white men this much in my life, and maybe that is the first thing I should say before I say anything else, because maybe I have been lucky, maybe I have been protected by the fact that I have always found myself in education, surrounded mostly by women, surrounded by people who at least understand care as a language even when the institution itself does not care, but now that I am working in design, graphic design specifically, I have had to work closely with an industry dominated by white men, and damn, the level of fragility that comes with it is exhausting.
And I know that word, fragility, has become too clean now, too academic, too workshop-friendly, too much like something people say in diversity training before everyone nods and goes back to doing exactly what they were doing before, but I mean it in the body. I mean the way a man's face changes when you name something he thought belonged to him. I mean the coldness that follows critique. I mean the silence in the corridor. I mean the professional avoidance dressed up as nothing. I mean the way a white man can make his discomfort feel like the moral centre of the room, even when the thing you named is five hundred years of exploitation, extraction, branding, race-making, internal racism, colonial desire, stolen land, stolen labour, stolen imagination.
The first one is the guy who would not talk to me because I told him I was not going to teach branding the same way they have been doing it for the last 500 years, the same way that resulted in my people being exploited, the same way that has produced levels of internal racism that would even shock Fanon, and I say Fanon because who else do you call when the Black person is standing inside the white institution, watching the white man become injured by the simple fact that the Black person is no longer willing to be interpreted by him?
Fanon knew this before I entered the room. He knew what it meant for the Black body to arrive already spoken for, already turned into problem, already made into symbol, already asked to explain itself in a language that was never innocent. But what I keep thinking about now is not only what Fanon says about the colonised. I keep thinking about what happens to the white man when the colonised refuses to perform gratitude, when the Black academic does not enter the room saying thank you for letting me in, when he says instead, no, I am not teaching branding as if empire did not have a logo, as if capitalism did not have a colour palette, as if colonialism did not know how to package desire, as if the same visual systems you call professional did not help make stolen things look legitimate.
And so now he sees me and walks past me.
Maybe I am handsome and he is shy.
No, because let us not be stupid.
In his privileged whiteness, the question is probably: why is this guy wanting to do things differently? Why is he disturbing the system? The system works perfectly. It gives me so many privileges that I refuse to see, and if I see them, I can pretend they are not my problem. Everyone else is lazy. Everyone else is emotional. Everyone else is making it about race. Everyone else is bringing politics into design, as if design was not already political when it was building brands for empire, when it was selling civilisation, when it was making whiteness look clean, rational, minimal, modern, desirable.
That is what these rooms do. They act as if the history starts when the white man feels uncomfortable.
They do not count the violence that made the room. They count the sentence that named it.
bell hooks understood how domination moves: not always shouting, often arriving as good manners, as silence, as the refusal to greet, as a colleague deciding that your critique has made you unsafe, as if your words have done more harm than the world your words are trying to describe. She knew that love without justice is just sentiment, and collegiality without truth is just another way of asking the wounded person to protect the comfort of the person who benefits from the wound.
That is the thing I find so insulting. I am expected to be careful with their comfort while they are careless with my dignity. I am expected to translate the violence into acceptable institutional language, to say "there are tensions in the curriculum" when what I mean is that the curriculum has been carrying colonial arrogance like a family heirloom. I am expected to say "there may be some resistance" when what I mean is that some men are so used to being mirrored by the discipline that they experience critique as dispossession. I am expected to say "we need to diversify the field" when what I mean is that the field has been worshipping itself for too long and calling that worship standards.
And then there is the worse one. The one who thinks you are there because you are Black.
Let us sit with that, because that one is a special kind of violence. Not because he says it directly. They are usually too careful for that. It sits in the air. It sits in the look. It sits in the tiny disbelief. It sits in the way they calculate your presence against their own mediocrity and decide the only way the maths works is if someone gave you something.
Not because he took so many years to finish a PhD.
Not because he got so many chances in life that he was able to drop out of university, go get a job, travel the world working, have mummy and daddy buy him a house, and then finally decide he wants to do a PhD.
Not because he landed a scholarly job with no publications, no real output, nothing much behind him except the ease of being allowed to arrive slowly, the ease of being allowed to be unfinished, the ease of being allowed to wander into seriousness after a long private life of being supported by the very structures he will never name.
But I am in the same role with him, so in his mind the obvious reason, the only reason, is that I was given it because I am Black.
Given.
What exactly was given? Was West Africa given? Was colonisation given? Was slavery given? Was epistemic violence given? Was the visa anxiety given? Was the need to cross oceans and still sound intelligent in the language of the people who made intelligence look like themselves given? Was the PhD given? Were the three books given? Were the publications given? Was the national grant given? Was the international recognition given? Was the exhaustion given? Was the pressure to be better than good, because good is never enough when they are already suspicious, given?
And even needing to say that, even the reflex to list the evidence before claiming it, tells you the trap, because why should naming my own work sound like bragging when his unearned confidence has been moving through the world without apology?
Why do I have to list everything?
Why do I have to prove what he is allowed to assume about himself?
Why do I have to carry my evidence in my mouth all the time?
He can be ordinary and still be read as worthy. I have to be exceptional and still be suspected.
That is the part that could make a person lose their mind. That is why Fanon matters. That is why hooks matters. That is why Cabral matters. That is why Ngũgĩ matters. Not because I need names to decorate my anger, but because they remind me that this thing I am feeling has history, structure, grammar. It is not just my irritation. It is not just one colleague. It is not just "personality." It is the old colonial theatre where whiteness mistakes its own protection for natural superiority and then experiences the arrival of the other as theft.
His insecurity becomes my burden. His lack becomes my explanation. His ordinary record becomes invisible because whiteness has always known how to hide its own scaffolding.
And I guess I am on his land too, the land his ancestors stole and committed genocide for, and somehow I am the one made to feel like the guest who should be grateful. That part almost feels too absurd to write plainly, because how do you sit on stolen land, inside an institution built from histories of exclusion, and then make the Black person feel like he is the one who has arrived through unfair advantage?
What do you say to these men?
A friend said they deserve professional slaps. I do not preach violence. Fanon does, but I want to be careful, although even that carefulness annoys me because why am I always the one managing the edges of the sentence? Why am I always the one making sure the anger does not become useful to the people who caused it? Why do I have to think about how my words will be received by those who have never once thought about how their silence lands on my body?
Maybe the professional slap is not violence. Maybe the professional slap is saying the thing without decorating it.
I am not here because the bar was lowered. I am here because I kept clearing bars that were never built for me.
I am happy to discuss design, branding, pedagogy, curriculum, history, colonialism, racism, and power. I am not available for your fragility.
Your discomfort is not evidence that I am wrong.
You do not get to mistake your privilege for merit and my survival for charity.
You do not get to call yourself neutral because the canon speaks in your accent.
You do not get to walk past me like your silence is innocent.
You do not get to benefit from a system and then act wounded when someone names the system.
And no, I will not teach branding as if branding has not helped organise exploitation, aspiration, internal racism, and colonial desire. I will not teach it as if the field is just about logos, typography, grids, market segmentation, tone of voice, strategy, audience, and all the other clean words that make capitalism sound like a studio brief. I will teach it with the dirt still on it. I will teach it with the plantation in the background. I will teach it with the missionary school in the room. I will teach it with the mine, the shipping route, the stolen land, the imported standard of beauty, the skin-lightening billboard, the luxury brand using Blackness as atmosphere, the university using diversity as brochure texture, the white designer calling all of this "good visual communication."
Graphic design is not innocent.
Branding is not innocent.
The classroom is not innocent.
The silence in the corridor is not innocent.
The fragile white man who thinks critique is violence while his whole comfort rests on histories of violence is not innocent.
And I am tired of pretending that naming the wound is worse than the wound itself.
I am tired of being expected to be calm in the face of insult. I am tired of translating rage into language that will not frighten the people who benefit from the thing I am naming. I am tired of having to be brilliant and harmless at the same time. I am tired of being exceptional in rooms where others are allowed to be ordinary.
That is the sentence I cannot escape: being exceptional in rooms where others are allowed to be ordinary.
Some people get to take 10 years. Some people get to pause. Some people get to travel. Some people get to have family money. Some people get to have mummy buy the house. Some people get to return to academia later and still be welcomed as serious. Some people get to have no publications and still be imagined as potential. Some people get to be slow, unfinished, uncertain, protected, mediocre, and still legible as deserving.
Then some of us arrive with everything we could possibly carry, and the first story waiting for us is suspicion.
What more do you want?
Should I bring the village too?
Should I bring the colonial school?
Should I bring every language I have had to carry?
Should I bring the visa?
Should I bring the three books and lay them at your feet so you can decide whether my Blackness has finally earned the right to sit in the meeting?
Should I bring Fanon to explain why your silence is not neutral?
Should I bring bell hooks to ask why your comfort matters more than my dignity?
Should I bring Cabral to remind you that culture is not decoration, it is struggle?
Should I bring every ancestor who survived the world that made your ease possible?
Or can we finally admit that maybe, just maybe, I am here because I am good?
Not just one man walking past me. Not just one man quietly imagining that I got here because I am Black. It is the whole structure that lets some people move through life with pauses, breaks, second chances, family money, houses, time, softness, and still call the final result merit, while people like me arrive carrying whole histories, whole continents, whole violences, whole languages, whole proofs of work, and still someone looks at us and thinks: diversity.
Diversity.
That word they use when they want the institution to look moral without surrendering power.
Diversity, when they mean decoration.
Diversity, when they mean tolerable difference.
Diversity, when they mean come in, but do not rearrange the furniture.
Diversity, when they mean be visible enough to make us look good, but not so visible that you make us look at ourselves.
But I have not come this far to decorate the room. I have not come this far to be polite about my own erasure. I have not come this far to let fragile men turn my presence into their injury. I have not come this far to teach design as if the world has not been designed against people like me.
So what do you say to these men?
Sometimes nothing, at first. Do not confuse that silence for submission. Silence is sometimes a room where the evidence gathers. Sometimes patience is not peace. Sometimes restraint is strategy because institutions remember Black anger faster than they remember white harm, and I know that too, I know the danger of becoming the example they were waiting for.
But still, I will not make myself small so someone else can continue believing the system that made him comfortable is innocent.
If that unsettles them, good.
Maybe the soul only begins to learn when comfort fails. Maybe the classroom begins where the lie can no longer breathe. Maybe design begins when the grid cracks and history enters. Maybe that is what they are afraid of. Not just that I am Black. They are afraid that I know what the room is made of. They are afraid that I can see the privilege they have mistaken for personality. They are afraid that the system they call merit has fingerprints on it. They are afraid that I will teach the students to see it too.
And I will.
Carefully when I need to be careful. Strategically when I need to be strategic. But not gently for the sake of their innocence. Not softly so the room can keep lying to itself. Not politely enough that the violence becomes abstract again.
I will teach branding with Fanon in the room.
I will teach design with bell hooks in the room.
I will teach coloniality as something that lives in colour palettes, logos, studio culture, market segmentation, institutional silence, and the white man who walks past you because he cannot survive the fact that you named the thing that made him.
What do I say to these men?
I am not here because you made room.
I am here because I survived rooms that were made without me.
I am not here because the institution became generous.
I am here because my work made refusal difficult.
I am not your replacement fantasy.
I am not your diversity panic.
I am not the evidence that the world has become unfair to you.
I am the evidence that the world was never fair to begin with.
And now I am speaking.