The Non-Neutrality of White

One of my clients walked into my office yesterday looking sheepish. I recognize that look at fifty paces; it means, “I’m terribly sorry but I have to make further asinine requests of you and I hate to do it, but you know how it is.”

He sits down, smiling awkwardly, and says, “You know I love the site design. It’s sharp and bright and modern. But, well, the committee has a few complaints. The main one, the big one…well, I know I said I liked having minorities on the homepage, but they’re worried that if we have minorities on the front page people will think that we only cater to minority health awareness.”

I blink. “Wait, what?” I’m hoping I’ve misunderstood. Because what I think he’s saying seems completely ridiculous as he’s saying it.

He looks uncomfortable. “Well, they said that maybe if we just used less…like, less minority looking people, maybe just some generic…”

“Hold on,” I interrupt. “There’s no such thing as a generic person. Client, if I put white people on the website, someone might think it’s a service only provided to White people!” I let the sarcasm sink in for a second. I do feel slightly bad. This isn’t his request. “No, probably not,” I allow, smiling for his sake. I realize that it might be uncomfortable for him, being a clean-cut middle class White guy talking to a Black girl in jeans with frizzy hair. It had been raining.

“But do you understand what I mean about no such thing as a generic person? You’re in advertising, so you probably know this as well as I do. Everybody represents some group. The fact that in your mind white equals neutral is a symptom of a social dysfunction, and while I understand it, it doesn’t mean it’s right.”

As a creative person, I have a responsibility to my culture. Creative people are culture creators: we write the literature, we design the buildings, we limn the artwork that shapes our shared aesthetic, that contributes to our values. When I design a website and put it out there, I have to hope that someone experiencing my website will be in some way touched by it; if I didn’t want an emotional connection I wouldn’t bother making my work easy to use, lovely to look at, or interesting to read. And if they are engaged, if I do hold their attention, I have the opportunity and the power to leave an imprint, to suggest a message. I can choose to submit to the status quo, which is the easy way out, or I can attempt to change the world, in a tiny but important way, not by relying on how things are, but by encouraging what should be.

As a designer, then, I have an obligation not only to educate my clients about visual culture and what messages certain images send, but also to encourage neutral use of traditionally non-neutral images: folks in wheelchairs, fat folks, black folks, unattractive folks. Visual media make these people almost invisible. If I want to end the idea of White (or thin, or pretty, etc.) as neutral or standard, then I have to include more imagery of the Invisible Other. Otherwise, I’m playing someone else’s game. And I’m not okay with that.

I recognize that most Americans consider White to be non-threatening, neutral, non-evocative. And until we start seeing prevalent images of Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, etc. not in minority-focuses campaigns but all over the media (in Gap ads, Colgate commercials, and Fruit of the Loom billboards) White will continue to me misunderstood as neutral.

The problem, of course, is that we don’t really need to strive for neutrality so much as for inclusion. As I said to my client, people aren’t neutral. White people, thin people, ugly people, fat people, Asian people—they all represent something. Different experiences. Different cultures. Different lifestyles. These are differences to be celebrated, not ignored in some ridiculous attempt to be “color-blind”, and certainly not to be glossed over in favor of some unattainable goal of neutrality.

Tags: ethnicity, race, race issues, race in advertising, visual culture

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