On Pay Equity: Part 2 of 3. I'm Black in Historic Preservation (+ Architecture) ...
of course, when I see something, I say something in the name of pay equity
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In Part 1 of 3 of this series on pay equity in the architecture profession, I shared the Call to Action that I gave for pay equity in the profession at the Center for Architecture in New York.
Part 2 continues with AIANY’s Response. For continuity of care, I am re-sharing the Disclaimer that preceded Part 1.
Disclaimer from the author: Shaming is not in my toolkit for change. However, it is important to hold people and institutions accountable for their behavior that is a barrier for the change we need for a just and equitable society. With this in mind, while I mentioned members of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIANY) leadership/staff/consultants by title or AIANY, the non-profit, I do so to share my experience as an AIANY member and to tell a fuller story for equity and healing of myself and others.
Even with my attempts not to shame people in telling my story, I realize that some might perceive that I am. This attempt to tell fuller histories about the traumatic lived experiences of Black people, like slavery and redlining, and a more honest (hi)story of the United States in general, is one that people view as shaming White people. However, at some point, for the equitable society that most people want, critical thinking with discernment on whose comfort takes priority in storytelling about the past is key.
As the incident of Nov. 9 is now my second experience of aggression at the official home for architects in New York, the Center for Architecture, I feel it is important to share one of the more egregious experiences as a Black woman in architecture as a teachable moment for AIANY and the profession at large on conflict and post-conflict restoration. Throughout my architecture career and education, I have felt like someone’s or an institution’s teachable moment – and the one I describe in this article might be the biggest one.
Also, the details within are of verbal abuse and trauma that some readers might find difficult to experience. Proceed with care for well-being. Thank you.
AIANY’s Response
“The same voices that cannot be trusted with our histories certainly cannot be trusted with a story unfolding. When you don’t know who to trust, listen first to the one who’s still bleeding.” - Cole Arthur Riley, author of This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us (2024)
One week after the Nov. 9th AIANY CLP Public Event that I co-planned and co-hosted with five out of the ten 2023 CLP cohort members, AIANY CLP emailed five of the 2023 CLP cohort. In this email, they addressed their concerns about AIANY CLP founder’s response to my Call to Action. They did not include me in this email or the four other members of my cohort. Two weeks after the Nov. 9th event, AIANY emailed the entire 2023 cohort, inviting us to share our concerns in one of two Office Hours with AIANY’s Executive Director, AIANY’s Senior Staff, and AIANY CLP’s Advisors.
In the email from AIANY’s Senior Staff, dated Nov. 21, they stated:
“At the first 2023 CLP public event, kennedy presented closing remarks to the audience in which details of the budget structure of the CLP program were presented to the public and asked audience members to participate in a call on AIANY leadership to change the program spending pattern and seek more funding.
This call primarily expressed dissatisfaction that the program speakers and the CLP cohort were not being adequately compensated for their participation in the CLP by AIANY. [Name redacted by kennedy, to protect herself, a member of a vulnerable community, from accusations of public shaming], as a participant in the program gave an impromptu response.”
In this narrative, AIANY’s Senior Staff devoted several sentences to the comments that I shared in the architecture pay equity Call to Action and one sentence to what many have described in so many words as an aggressive, public response personally directed toward me from someone who is not just a “participant in the program.”
Stating that [Name redacted by kennedy to protect herself, a member of a vulnerable community, from accusations of public shaming] responded as a “participant in the program” is an incorrect framing of the events that transpired. And, perhaps, was an attempt by AIANY’s Senior Staff, and because the Senior Staff is an authorized representative of AIANY, an attempt by AIANY the non-profit institution, to pose an objective framing of the narrative, to minimize any impact [Name redacted by kennedy to protect herself, a member of a vulnerable community, from accusations of public shaming]’s words might have had on me and others. [Name redacted by kennedy to protect herself, a member of a vulnerable community, from accusations of public shaming] is a founding member of AIANY’s CLP, a program of AIANY. The following tells a fuller story and communicates the power dynamic that night at the Center for Architecture:
“[Name redacted by kennedy to protect herself, a member of a vulnerable community, from accusations of public shaming], as a founding member of AIANY’s CLP, gave an impromptu response."
Moreover, based on our society’s perception of founders, they are a member of AIANY leadership. On Nov. 9th, before he gave his “impromptu response,” they introduced themself to the audience as a co-founder of CLP and followed his introduction with a brief origin story of the program. I am a participant and [Name redacted by kennedy to protect herself, a member of a vulnerable community, from accusations of public shaming] is a founder. And I am a Black woman, and the person in question, when they gave the remarks, stood over me as I was seated spoke directly at me, taking the Call to Action personally, as others have shared. Therefore, there was a power differential between me and the AIANY CLP founder when they chose to respond publicly to my comments.
As I hold space for the shock that AIANY staff, advisors, consultants, past CLP participants, and my fellow CLP cohort members might have experienced during the pay equity Call to Action for AIANY that I shared, I also hold space and compassion for my emotional and psychological response to being the direct recipient of an attempt to publicly shame me for using my voice, as an architect and leader, specifically, civic leader in the context of AIANY’s Civic Leadership Program, in the name of equity for the collective good.
This voice is one that I have silenced and, with the famous 2021 Oprah Winfrey/Meghan Markle interview in mind (“Were you silent or were you silenced?”), has been silenced for most of my architecture career because I am a Black woman in a White-dominated field, reflective both in numbers and cultural mindset. Reflecting on my response, the word “shock” is the word that has come to mind to describe how I felt after the Nov. 9 experience.
Because of the way AIANY’s Senior Staff neutralized the narrative of the Nov. 9th AIANY CLP Public Event’s conclusion, in her email invitation for a meeting with AIANY leadership and staff, I initially planned to decline. However, because of the support of my fellow cohort members, I chose to attend.
The Architecture of Truth, Reconciliation, Forgiveness, and Compassion
"For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?"
—bell hooks in conversation with Maya Angelou, 1998
On Nov. 30, AIANY met with the 2023 CLP Cohort to, as the Senior Staff stated, to listen to the cohort’s concerns. In this meeting, I asked one of the Advisors why they did not include me in the email that they sent to the five cohort members who were planning the second Public Event. As a part of the CLP, cohort members are tasked with planning five development sessions that are closed to the public and two public events. The Advisor, in response to my question, claimed that they did not remember the email.
Understandably, in addition to the timing around Thanksgiving, it had been a stressful time since they sent the email to the five cohort members on Nov. 15, 2023. Thankfully, other cohort members were present in this Nov. 30th meeting at the Center for Architecture, and confirmed receipt of the email addressed to half of the cohort. Those who did not receive the email confirmed that they saw a copy from the direct recipients. That moment of support from my fellow 2023 CLP Cohort Members and so many others in the Nov. 30 meeting with AIANY, healed wounds that I still carry from past moments of exploitation in the architecture profession that I alluded to in the Nov. 9th Call to Action.
In the email dated Nov. 15, AIANY CLP acknowledged the silence / the fact that AIANY CLP did not acknowledge the closing dialogue of the Nov. 9th AIANY CLP Public Event. This acknowledgment is a necessary step for making amends and apologies (for more on this, see NPR Hidden Brain episode, The Power of Apologies, published Nov. 27, 2023). However, I questioned why they did not send this email to the entire cohort, especially to acknowledge my experience on Nov. 9.
An AIANY CLP Representative also attempted to poke holes in my request for AIANY to pay the Civic Leadership Program cohort members a stipend. The Representative claimed that the program is not a fellowship program where fellows produce work in exchange for a stipend. AIANY Executive Director supported this claim by mentioning the Center for Architecture Lab’s program as an example of a fellowship program, justifying that the Center pays each of the three residents $10,000.00 each.
AIANY CLP cohort members, like fellows in a fellowship program, produce deliverables for the sponsoring agency and public. These aforementioned CLP deliverables are worthy of compensation. As I shared in the Nov. 30th meeting with AIANY, I shared this Call to Action as an action of compassion for the hours of unpaid labor they extolled in the program.
The AIANY Executive Director/Center for Architecture Director apologized to me. He also said that feedback like the feedback I shared in the Call to Action is important for an organization to receive as they develop programs like the Civic Leadership Program. I appreciate this perspective on the feedback and I thanked him during the Nov. 30th meeting for the apology. I credit my cohort members in providing their observations of [Name redacted per aforementioned reason] replied to my architecture pay equity Call to Action on Nov. 9th, how other people from hearing of my experience with [Name redacted as stated above] question if the AIANY/Center for Architecture is a safe space for them. To date, I have not returned to the Center for Architecture since November 30, 2023.
In AIANY’s Senior Staff’s follow-up email to the Nov. 30th meeting, dated Dec. 1, 2023, while they did take one of the necessary steps we discussed in the meeting, and they shared the procedure for AIANY newsletter article publication for the Public Event No. 1 summary article, this opening sentence to the email gives me pause:
“Thank you all for the discussion yesterday evening which gave me a lot of missing information about hurts, hopes, and concerns for the CLP cohort and program.”
With an emphasis on “missing information” (Who is the source of the “missing information?”), and a lack of specificity about the “hurts, hopes, and concerns,” there still seemed to be this lingering defensiveness communicated by the Senior Staff in the Nov. 30th meeting, in the tone of their follow-up message and blame by them on the cohort for their/the institution’s ignorance about power dynamics:
between men and women,
between Black women and men of all races,
between AIANY and its members, especially AIANY and its younger/emerging leader members, who ironically, are the target audience of the Civic Leadership Program at the center of this communication conflict
and its connection with the exploitation of labor in the architecture field, both internally and externally, that some would say begins with an architecture school culture influenced by white supremacy that is harmful to everyone in our ecosystem
Due to the defensiveness and blame placed on me for, in essence, publicly airing family business, and defensiveness and blame toward other cohort members by AIANY staff present at the Nov. 30 conversation, and the lack of awareness of the power dynamic that occurred when [Name redacted per aforementioned reason] replied to my architecture pay equity Call to Action Nov. 9th, there is, understandably, more work for AIANY to do to support its integrity.
What was so odd about this response from the AIANY leader was that they saw the CLP founder personally attack me with their words, and yet the Senior Staff’s response to me in the Nov. 30th meeting, was that they did not notice the power dynamic between me, a CLP cohort participant and the CLP co-founder. This AIANY leader expressed that the contents of the architecture pay equity Call to Action that I gave made them feel uncomfortable. Yet, their discomfort seemed to take precedence of the clear discomfort of a participant in an AIANY program exercising the very leadership the CLP aims to cultivate.
The closing of the Nov. 9 Public Event on storytelling was the most egregious of actions of a pattern of questionable behavior by AIANY staff and leadership. The other incidents include journalistic practices that would be deemed unethical that the 2023 cohort addressed prior to the Nov. 30th meeting and revisited in the meeting with AIANY leadership, staff, and CLP advisors: (1) not attributing authorship of articles that the 2023 CLP cohort wrote and (2) publishing an edited article in AIAY’s newsletter by two of the cohort members without prior conversation with them. More details about the latter: AIANY chose not to publish that an AIANY member firm declined an invitation from CLP cohort members to speak with us in a private, conversation about their community engagement practice.
The entire episode was a case study as well on how to handle public feedback, both for architects and for AIANY. The follow-up conversation on Nov. 30, 2023, to the Nov. 9th Public Event exposed deficiencies in AIANY leadership, consultants, and staff involved in CLP’s Public Event in their inability to support conflict, especially conflict when it involves racialized members of AIANY, their programs, and the public at large. One of the CLP Advisors shared a wish for prior notice of the Call to Action or an internal conversation. But, given the obliviousness of AIANY leadership to their own blindspots about power, race, and class dynamics or willful ignorance of it and lack of dialogue with cohort members before editing their article, I question if AIANY’s response would have been any different with prior notice or if someone from the general public made a similar pay equity Call to Action.
And as much as it might hurt to read this, there is something deeply flawed about a professional organization that allows for one of its leadership staff to earn an annual income that is more than the annual average salary of its members when the person in question was oblivious to the potential harm one of its members/leadership might have caused at an event the organization sponsored so much so that they did not reach out to the targeted recipient of the harm, another member and program participant, to check-in with them. As one of my cohort members mentioned, the impromptu response from the CLP founder plus AIANY’s leadership’s silence after does not reflect well on the institution.
Perhaps, with conversations like the one on Nov. 30th, listening to their Black members' and young/emerging/mid-career members’ experiences in architecture that might make them feel uncomfortable, having conversations about the power dynamics within the architecture profession, self-awareness about the perceptions of AIANY and AIA, comfort with the feedback that makes them feel uncomfortable (something that their members are aware of from their architecture school experiences in design critiques), increasing their knowledge of conflict resolution and how to give apologies, the difference between shame and accountability, maybe AIANY leadership and staff will minimize the apparent cognitive dissonance among AIANY staff and AIA as a whole and better equip themselves to be more supportive of the members they are to serve, especially the ones who need the most care, i.e., onward toward an equitable practice in practice not just in name and EDI initiatives and the identities of its leaders.
…….Concludes in Part 3:
Thank you for reading + Enjoy the day of your choosing.
k. kennedy Whiters, AIA (she/her), is a New York-based architect, social scientist, published writer, and guest speaker. She is the founder of wrkSHäp | kiloWatt, home to three initiatives she founded to support racial equity: Black in Historic Preservation (BiHP), Beyond Integrity in (X), and (un)Redact the Facts. kennedy has been featured by the Advisory Council of Historic Preservation (ACHP) and on the UK/Canada-based podcast "The Allusionist.”
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