Blacklisted

Today, cities are experiencing radical redevelopment, especially in neighborhoods dominated by African and Latino-Americans. Yet, there are few black and Hispanic professionals with architectural
and planning experience involved in the destinies of the communities that produced them. Less than two percent of licensed architects are African-American and three percent are self-identified Latino-American.

Barja Wilson spent much of her youth in Mobile, Ala., watching her father work hunched over his desk. James E. Wilson was a black architect, a rarity in the ’80s, consumed in designing and drafting. He worked for the Army Corps of Engineers by day and ran a private practice at night. During his time with the Army, he was passed over for promotions by the same white employees he trained. Even in his own community, he was overlooked by black churches that trusted white architects to do work he was more than qualified to do.

Despite her father’s passion, Wilson decided early in life not to pursue the same path. In college, she majored in English. Her minor in studio arts, however, drew her back to architecture. In 1991, there were 1,332 full-time African-American students in architecture schools compared to 1,268 in 2003, with numbers of graduates falling from 214 to 156 during the same time. Wilson graduated from Tuskegee University with a bachelor’s degree in architecture, but it wasn’t easy. The department was under-funded, and the equipment was outdated.

“We had the talent,” Wilson says. “We just lacked the technology.”

After graduating, Wilson got a job with Spectrum Associates, a small, black-owned, Mobile, Ala.-based architecture and engineering firm. Few cities need architectural professionals like Mobile — a city that America’s most devastating hurricanes have used as a front-door mat. Lance Jay Brown, 2005 Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, said in his address to the Regional and Urban Design Committee, “Not since the end of the Second World War has our population experienced the radical relocation that was produced by the combined hurricanes of Katrina and Rita.”

Despite the demand for architects, it’s been an uphill battle for small companies like Spectrum Associates to get work. They get out-bid by major firms that are exclusively owned and staffed by white professionals. Their best hope is a partnership with the majors, or having small portions of large-scale developments sub-contracted to them.

When the Montgomery, Ala., public school board hired black architect Major Holland to build new schools, he told the local news team, “Invitations are normally sent out to firms, and I don’t recall being invited to submit a proposal.”

Given America’s history with African-American builders, it’s disappointing more don’t exist. About 35 percent of the 1,625 licensed black architects (of which only 210 are women) come from the seven Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) that offer the discipline. That number may soon drop to six. Last year, Tuskegee University’s architecture department lost its accreditation — the same institution founded by black architects such as Booker T. Washington, who emphasized agricultural and architectural mastery to combat oppression. Many of the Tuskegee buildings standing today were designed and constructed by the school’s first students.

...white girls come in as interns and in little time are given tasks and responsibilities it took me years to get.”
— Ray Chandler about his experience in the architectural industry

Hispanic builders and designers are also in tough positions. Latino workers are often demonized as unwelcome immigrants or identified as roof-patchers working for slave wages. Hispanic architects make up just three percent of all licensed professionals despite Hispanic Americans inhabiting large portions of the Southwest. The sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-contracting game ruled by white corporations ensures that Hispanic workers will mostly get the grunt work while earning low wages with no guarantees of health insurance.

Twenty-four-year-old Ray Chandler is an American of Puerto Rican ancestry living in Los Angeles, where Latino-American architectural designs almost always define the landscape. Like Wilson, he grew up influenced by a father immersed in the art of home and community design. His father couldn’t secure work, though, until he changed his last name from Mercado. Within a week of the switch, Ray’s father found employment.

Chandler has been working in architecture since he was 17, when he lived in Boston — “the most racist shit I’ve ever experienced in my life,” he says. He’s in his third year of undergraduate studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, but expects to be in school for at least another three years. After that, he’ll need to apprentice with a licensed professional for five years (in most states it’s three) before he qualifies to take the nine exams required for a license.

“It took me a really long time to prove I was capable of doing what I’m doing today,” says Chandler about his current job as a construction assistant. “But white girls come in as interns and in little time are given tasks and responsibilities it took me years to get.”

Students and professionals who feel Chandler’s pain recently staged power-plays for change. During last year’s National Urban Planning Conference at Harvard, 60 black college students confronted two major professional-city-planner networks, demanding they finance schools and award scholarships to develop emerging black talent. At the 2006 National Organization of Minority Architects conference in San Francisco, three priorities were named: Creating summer camps for high school students, strengthening struggling HBCUs and creating a “meaningful presence” in Gulf Coast recovery efforts.

“It’s all about being in the loop,” says Barja Wilson about her own company’s struggle to sustain a presence in the Gulf Coast. “Down here, we don’t have many licensed black architects — maybe two or three. It’s changed a bit since my dad’s time, but you have to grind just as much now as you did back then.”