Reflections on a racist printer

We had a moment in our spring Course Committee last week. I call it a moment because we had to take an actual moment to think about what we’d just heard.

“Racist printers”

An unexpected combination of words.
A realisation that their combination was not accidental.
Nor intentionally comical.
A more deeply unsettling realisation that they described a lived experience.

And here it is…

A student attempts to print a document in the Library.
The text of the document is not in a Latin character set.
The printer spits out an error instead of a print out.

Apparently, this happens regularly.

I found this story deeply unsettling. In the past week, I have found myself discussing it with a lot of people. Most seemed to find it funny. But an awkward funny. A funny that’s followed by a short silence and a quick change in subject.

I find myself reflecting on why it unsettles me. What does it mean for me? As a person. As a tutor. As a tutor of predominantly ‘International’ students. Students who probably print things out in non-Latin character sets all the time and get this error. This annoying barrier that I’ve never had to deal with.

And there it is. This is unsettling because it reveals a set of dynamics that are invisible to me. Yet they are dynamics so systemic, that they are communicated by seemingly inanimate objects.

I have never been ‘other-ed’ by a printer. I likely never will. I can say that with absolute certainty. Which is one of the most unsettling things of all.

I ask my students about it. They laugh. They say that it happens all the time. That they’re used to it. They understand that ‘we’ speak English and so do our printers.

I am mortified.

“Racist printers” are not an event. They’re part of a system which is now a little more visible to me. A system in which I need to consider my complicity.

I imagine myself as the printer. I think about the messages I am spitting out on a daily basis. Messages that implicitly communicate ‘the order of things.’ Messages about validity and belonging. I wonder who I am thoughtlessly and effortlessly other-ing.

As I extend the printer metaphor I go to places I’ve never been before. Uncomfortable places with uncomfortable implications for my teaching practice.

For the first time, I consider that I am not the ‘norm’ in the studio. Certainly not in the context of my course, where 85% of the students are ‘International’ and 100% of speak English as a second, third or fourth language.

I go back through my teaching materials and I consider my references; my (still) predominantly Anglo/Euro centric references. I consider my historic and frequently-vocalised rage at the lack of female representation in the canon. I consider it in relation to my silence about the overwhelming whiteness of that very same canon.

I realise that after 4 years of teaching cohorts of students who are majority Chinese, I still can’t name a single Chinese Graphic Designer. Not one.

There’s a moment where I am most literally the printer. It’s when I consider my latin-centric definition of ‘typography.’ I contemplate the void where my knowledge (or at least my appreciation) of other writing systems and character sets should be. I ponder what use my left-to-right, horizontally constrained typographic worldview will be to my students in their futures. Particularly the ones who choose to practice graphic design in their home countries. Those ‘other’ places. With their non-University-printer-tutor-approved character sets.

I reflect on all the opportunities I have missed to learn something about all of this from the many students I have taught over the years. The knowledge they might have been able to send to me. All the error messages I sent back in return.

I realise all the ways that I am the printer.
How we are products of the same system.

I realise that I have a lot of work to do to.