05/17/2021

Association’s Scholarship Contest Highlights Racial Barriers in Its Field

A contest exposed inequities in a profession long dominated by a white majority

Finding out what obstacles young people face when they are thinking about entering a profession can sometimes shine a light on uncomfortable realities about an industry, as evidenced by a response to the National Association of Minority Landscape Architects inaugural mini-scholarship campaign, which offered a $500 prize.

A prompt on NAMLA’s Instagram page gave landscape architecture students an opportunity to speak their minds in response to a deliberately thought-provoking post: “What do you think is the biggest challenge for minorities in obtaining leadership roles in landscape architecture? And what would you propose to remedy this challenge?”

The winning response, written by Dana Tinio, a graduate student in landscape architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, stated that landscape architecture in the U.S. is a “historically white profession guided by Western pedagogy, thought, practice, and bias.” She cited those issues as the main obstacles for minorities trying to establish a foothold in the profession.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Associations Now.