Arguing with Brick Walls and Burning Buildings

By Bryan Lee Jr

At the end of 2024, in my new position as incoming president of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA), I was asked to weigh in on an issue that has consumed much of my professional life and intellectual energy. Some of my thoughts on this are more well-documented than others, but all stem from a deep understanding of how architecture shapes our social reality.

For context, I am an Architect with 20 years of experience building projects and programs to support equal access to the profession as a resource for young people, disinherited communities, and other design justice practitioners. My work fundamentally challenges the privilege and power structures that use architecture and design as tools of oppression. Through this lens, I’ve witnessed how the built environment can either perpetuate injustice or foster liberation.

Here’s what was painfully obvious and on my mind at the top of the year:

Considering the first half of this prediction has swiftly played out exactly as described, I want to elaborate on the significance of anti-DEI positions in our profession; to unpack the push for resegregation from the same old racist movement resurfacing with a new, more destructive hydra head.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, or DEI as it has been initialized, is the most recent term to be consumed, bastardized, and weaponized by the fearful, the privileged, and the ignorant. DEI follows a long line of words and phrases co-opted as euphemisms and used as dog sirens (louder than a dog whistle, keep up) to “other” the most marginalized within our society. A non-exhaustive list of similar terms would include words ranging from broad and ubiquitous to targeted and malicious. Words like urban, city, undesirable, woke, welfare, thug, and many more — all coded language that helps perpetuate systems of oppression while maintaining plausible deniability.