A pechakucha-style presentation ("lightning talk") at the Digital Humanities Institute of the Triangle, to be presented at Friday, March 5, 2020 conference held this year on the UNCG campus.
My seven-minute presentation text is in boldface. Elaborations are in regular typeface.
"Digital humanities" as a concept came to my attention about six years ago when I attended a presentation and later a dinner with scholars from out of state who had been invited to give updates and try to energize an old fashioned faculty. Because of my technology and game background I could easily keep up with the basic techniques and approaches that the presenters were so excited about. For example, I discussed the possibility of digitally reconstructing Montagnard villages prior to their destruction in the Vietnam War based on photos taken by GIs. But in the narrow funnel of academia, such ideas could not be pursued without faculty and institutional interest, and I was no longer a faculty member. It would take (in this example) Montagnard youth coming on to campus and our collective community engagement efforts to prepare the ground first. Until then, "digital humanities" would have to wait.
A.Young, Concept art for a puzzle game inspired by Italo Calvino’s Italian Folktales, 2003
The sharp contrast was not the so-called “digital divide” about who had access to latest technologies and who didn’t, but instead about how steadily cheaper phones and communications (the cost of long-distance and international calls) were becoming and how the poor and dislocated were using them. Instead of VHS video cassettes, CDs and DVDs of births, weddings and funerals being mailed between families back home and here in the Triad, Skyping and similar online services could give more and more families instant access. And as if to underscore the point, both war makers and perpetrators of violence as well as victims of war and persecution like the refugees resettled in our area could make and post real-time videos broadcasted across the planet. Friedman thought we were moving for the good into a globalized economy that would erase historic disparities.
Facebook posts and images by refugee, immigrant and newcomer residents of Summit-Cone apartment complex, 2018.
My seven-minute presentation text is in boldface. Elaborations are in regular typeface.
(Title Screen)
The artwork shown here was a mockup for an adventure game inspired by Italo Calvino’s “Italian Folktales”, a favorite of my children. The player would choose to be the boy or girl and go about trying to solve typical puzzlers faced by children in such tales. Because the “DaVinci Code” was popular at the time, the working title for this game was “The Macaroni Code”.
The artwork shown here was a mockup for an adventure game inspired by Italo Calvino’s “Italian Folktales”, a favorite of my children. The player would choose to be the boy or girl and go about trying to solve typical puzzlers faced by children in such tales. Because the “DaVinci Code” was popular at the time, the working title for this game was “The Macaroni Code”.
"Digital humanities" as a concept came to my attention about six years ago when I attended a presentation and later a dinner with scholars from out of state who had been invited to give updates and try to energize an old fashioned faculty. Because of my technology and game background I could easily keep up with the basic techniques and approaches that the presenters were so excited about. For example, I discussed the possibility of digitally reconstructing Montagnard villages prior to their destruction in the Vietnam War based on photos taken by GIs. But in the narrow funnel of academia, such ideas could not be pursued without faculty and institutional interest, and I was no longer a faculty member. It would take (in this example) Montagnard youth coming on to campus and our collective community engagement efforts to prepare the ground first. Until then, "digital humanities" would have to wait.
A.Young, Concept art for a puzzle game inspired by Italo Calvino’s Italian Folktales, 2003
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1
INTRO
Hello, my name is Andrew Young. I’ve lived and worked in this area for more than 30 years.
As a visual artist, I was trained to observe. It’s a primal act. Observe, record. Observe, orientate. Reconsider. Rethink. Decide. Then act. Repeat the process.
Old fashioned drawing and painting methods slow down what the human eye captures at the speed of light and which the human brain processes in seconds. The artist must consciously go over what the eye and brain are telling him, turning (if it is a black and white drawing) colors and forms into values and shapes. Instead of all at once as the eye or digital camera seem to operate in the creation of an image, a drawing is created through thousands of steps. Because of this highly concentrated process, I can look at these drawings and recall the time of day, studio space and other details contained both in the drawings and my memories about the experience of creating them.
A.Young, Anatomical Drawings sketchbook, 1975
Old fashioned drawing and painting methods slow down what the human eye captures at the speed of light and which the human brain processes in seconds. The artist must consciously go over what the eye and brain are telling him, turning (if it is a black and white drawing) colors and forms into values and shapes. Instead of all at once as the eye or digital camera seem to operate in the creation of an image, a drawing is created through thousands of steps. Because of this highly concentrated process, I can look at these drawings and recall the time of day, studio space and other details contained both in the drawings and my memories about the experience of creating them.
A.Young, Anatomical Drawings sketchbook, 1975
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2
OBSERVE
My practice as a studio artist and employment as a professional game designer have had profound influences on my community work and perspective on the gaps between campuses and communities.
Having taught digital media from its early days, I observed old industries die and people lose jobs.
Within days of the release of one of the earliest games I designed, more people saw my art than had ever walked into a gallery show of my paintings and drawings. Or for that matter, more people saw my game art than would ever see anything of mine in person. So, what did that mean? By the mid 1990s, it meant a huge shift in the world of fine arts, private galleries, and museums. It also meant that artists in training, students in the education system, would play catch up since their professors knew little about anything digital. But for me, the experience meant reducing people to numbers, so many tens or hundreds or millions of viewers and game players (they were not art connoissuers) across the planet, but nobody I knew personally. However, the big game site which commissioned one of our early games kept it available for ten years or so — long enough for someone to comment that they played it with fond memories as a kid.
Within days of the release of one of the earliest games I designed, more people saw my art than had ever walked into a gallery show of my paintings and drawings. Or for that matter, more people saw my game art than would ever see anything of mine in person. So, what did that mean? By the mid 1990s, it meant a huge shift in the world of fine arts, private galleries, and museums. It also meant that artists in training, students in the education system, would play catch up since their professors knew little about anything digital. But for me, the experience meant reducing people to numbers, so many tens or hundreds or millions of viewers and game players (they were not art connoissuers) across the planet, but nobody I knew personally. However, the big game site which commissioned one of our early games kept it available for ten years or so — long enough for someone to comment that they played it with fond memories as a kid.
Around our region, textile and furniture plants were going under. Printing firms were struggling. Tobacco stopped being a huge moneymaker. Kids were coming straight from local high schools into my classroom. Displaced workers, too. One old guy could never get the hang of the mouse. His bewilderment and nervous giggles eventually resolved themselves into surrender. After a few sessions, he left. For many workers, learning how to use the Mac Plus was do or die. Either their employer would retain them or they’d lose their job.
A.Young, Graphic interpretation of the Boyd Loop, 2012
A.Young, Graphic interpretation of the Boyd Loop, 2012
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3
ORIENT
While we were inventing new standards and practices, I saw computerization rejected by academics who thought teaching software was below them, but fortunately for me I had left the liberal arts behind in favor of technical college.
Now I’ve lived to observe its wholesale embrace by higher ed as an indispensable marketing tool.
If I hadn’t gotten off a liberal arts campus I would have not had the freedom to hitch a ride on the digital revolution, a time when the cost of a laser printer was exorbitant, when endless debates went on about Mac and PC platforms, and RAM upgrades cost thousands of dollars. At the time, recently graduated university students were enrolling in community college programs like mine just to learn the basics of desktop publishing software, because that’s where all the jobs were going.
If I hadn’t gotten off a liberal arts campus I would have not had the freedom to hitch a ride on the digital revolution, a time when the cost of a laser printer was exorbitant, when endless debates went on about Mac and PC platforms, and RAM upgrades cost thousands of dollars. At the time, recently graduated university students were enrolling in community college programs like mine just to learn the basics of desktop publishing software, because that’s where all the jobs were going.
Game Theory and Design, a course I inherited from a faculty member departing from a local university, was my chance to catch up as a recent practitioner, to read up on behavioral economics and information and systems theory. Until then, it was still just barely possible for an individual designer to create a game from beginning to end, but 3D and much more powerful processing speeds were already pushing the pace of knowledge and experience into specialized positions. Blockbuster games rolled credits resembling Hollywood movie credits. From this point I had the choice to put on an academic hat and start publishing papers on, say, the impact of games on learners or gamification trends in society, or to assume the role of campus technology evangelist trying to convert entrenched, tenured professors. Instead, I detoured into community, trading my double computer screens for a simple white board and adult learners from the local Montagnard refugee population struggling to learn English.
A.Young, Whiteboard of student analysis of game theory, c. 2012
A.Young, Whiteboard of student analysis of game theory, c. 2012
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4
DECIDE
However, for local refugees, digital media have been the means to maintain relationships across vast distances and instantly communicate with families and friends unable to escape war and persecution.
Once here, they can tell each other and people back home about disasters like the death of children at the Summit-Cone apartment complex.
The sharp contrast was not the so-called “digital divide” about who had access to latest technologies and who didn’t, but instead about how steadily cheaper phones and communications (the cost of long-distance and international calls) were becoming and how the poor and dislocated were using them. Instead of VHS video cassettes, CDs and DVDs of births, weddings and funerals being mailed between families back home and here in the Triad, Skyping and similar online services could give more and more families instant access. And as if to underscore the point, both war makers and perpetrators of violence as well as victims of war and persecution like the refugees resettled in our area could make and post real-time videos broadcasted across the planet. Friedman thought we were moving for the good into a globalized economy that would erase historic disparities.
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5
ACT: SERIOUS GAMES TO SERIOUS ENGAGEMENT
More than ten years ago I decided to take what I knew about the arts and game design out of the studio, out of the classroom and business realm and into community.
Digital humanities was new and inevitably, papers on gamification appeared.
I, on the other hand, seemed to be traveling backward.
Online games and gaming communities were growing, academics were at last catching up, and whole new fields of study emerged. More stuff to talk about, study and write about. Theory began to catch up to practice and almost overnight games became the domain of specialists. When it became an industry and found its legs firmly in the entertainment world was about the time I lost interest. I had been in a similar place before. In the 1980s the art world seemed less about the art one made and more about an art “scene” and the relentless pursuit of career. The more my creative interests became something less about what I observed in the world, the less real and understandable the arts as a practice and profession had become to me. Blame commercialism, but there were other forces in play, too. When my team created a serious game for training students to become surgical technicians I could still sense the value and purpose to my work and the good it could do. The game we created for healthcare students was intended to free their instructor and themselves from boring, rote memorization exercises, or huge "info dumps" that could be better presented and learned online. Watching the game’s would be publisher fumble around as she sought to carve her own career out of it was not where I wanted to spend my time.
The right side of the slide is a sketch of traditional farmers’ tools I knew were familiar to my Bhutanese friends. They used the sketch as a visual guide as they went door to door asking their neighbors what they needed to get their food gardens going that year. In this sketch one can also see the apartment numbers they noted by each illustration. My experience with local refugees has had a profound affect on my understanding about how technology can and cannot work to mobilize and organize communities.
A.Young, project coordinator and lead designer, Surgical Technology Skills Builder, a serious game project created by a team of Piedmont academics, 2010
A.Young, Garden checklist for Bhutanese farmers with notes by Glen Haven Mother's Club, 2016
Online games and gaming communities were growing, academics were at last catching up, and whole new fields of study emerged. More stuff to talk about, study and write about. Theory began to catch up to practice and almost overnight games became the domain of specialists. When it became an industry and found its legs firmly in the entertainment world was about the time I lost interest. I had been in a similar place before. In the 1980s the art world seemed less about the art one made and more about an art “scene” and the relentless pursuit of career. The more my creative interests became something less about what I observed in the world, the less real and understandable the arts as a practice and profession had become to me. Blame commercialism, but there were other forces in play, too. When my team created a serious game for training students to become surgical technicians I could still sense the value and purpose to my work and the good it could do. The game we created for healthcare students was intended to free their instructor and themselves from boring, rote memorization exercises, or huge "info dumps" that could be better presented and learned online. Watching the game’s would be publisher fumble around as she sought to carve her own career out of it was not where I wanted to spend my time.
The right side of the slide is a sketch of traditional farmers’ tools I knew were familiar to my Bhutanese friends. They used the sketch as a visual guide as they went door to door asking their neighbors what they needed to get their food gardens going that year. In this sketch one can also see the apartment numbers they noted by each illustration. My experience with local refugees has had a profound affect on my understanding about how technology can and cannot work to mobilize and organize communities.
A.Young, project coordinator and lead designer, Surgical Technology Skills Builder, a serious game project created by a team of Piedmont academics, 2010
A.Young, Garden checklist for Bhutanese farmers with notes by Glen Haven Mother's Club, 2016
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6
APPLIED KNOWLEDGE
I only rejoined academia when I took on the job of training youth to get off campus and apply their knowledge.
I soon observed that civic engagement and other so-called experiential learning activities were meaningless without hard, reflective exercises that examined how we think, make stories about ourselves and the new environments and people we encounter.
Instead of teaching painting or drawing, or art history or Photoshop or typography, I happily returned to academia in order to demonstrate to college students how they could use their school skills and community knowledge to immediately effect social change with no need to wait for them to complete their degrees. In some instances I had taught their parents in ESOL class and knew them as children. In 2016, I was proud to see Togolese and Sudanese college students go with me to the decrepit Summit-Cone apartment slums where so many refugees had been placed there by resettlement agencies. There they used their language and cultural skills to make connections to families. Several months later those community connections proved invaluable after the horrific fire killed refugee kids living there and no one took responsibility. College youth listened to residents' complaints, photographed apartments, listed problems and sent them to the landlord and to the city's housing inspectors, making sure that complaints were formally entered to cut off the usual dodge of the landlord, ie, that no such complaints were ever filed. Instead of the normal fear and utter lack of support that kept refugees from speaking out in past disasters, apartment resident leaders from Congo and Sudan spoke up loudly and critically. Their brutal assessment of their living conditions as told to elected officials and other responsible authorities left no space for bureaucratic excuses.
A.Young, College service learning youth from Muslim, Togolese and Sudanese communities meeting Summit-Cone families, 2016
Instead of teaching painting or drawing, or art history or Photoshop or typography, I happily returned to academia in order to demonstrate to college students how they could use their school skills and community knowledge to immediately effect social change with no need to wait for them to complete their degrees. In some instances I had taught their parents in ESOL class and knew them as children. In 2016, I was proud to see Togolese and Sudanese college students go with me to the decrepit Summit-Cone apartment slums where so many refugees had been placed there by resettlement agencies. There they used their language and cultural skills to make connections to families. Several months later those community connections proved invaluable after the horrific fire killed refugee kids living there and no one took responsibility. College youth listened to residents' complaints, photographed apartments, listed problems and sent them to the landlord and to the city's housing inspectors, making sure that complaints were formally entered to cut off the usual dodge of the landlord, ie, that no such complaints were ever filed. Instead of the normal fear and utter lack of support that kept refugees from speaking out in past disasters, apartment resident leaders from Congo and Sudan spoke up loudly and critically. Their brutal assessment of their living conditions as told to elected officials and other responsible authorities left no space for bureaucratic excuses.
A.Young, College service learning youth from Muslim, Togolese and Sudanese communities meeting Summit-Cone families, 2016
A.Young, Louis Machengo, resident and Summit-Cone community leader, confronting the City of Greensboro City Council 2018
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7
POWER AND PERSPECTIVE
And whether overseas or here, I decided that the same dynamic exists — outsider and insider perspectives left unchallenged allow dangerous biases and inaccuracies to fester, narrow inquiries and research to be pursued and ineffective policies and practices to remain in place.
Although the Southeast Asian Montagnard community has been in the area for over thirty years, they remain politically invisible and the topic of newspaper “feel good” stories that often feed into stereotypes of Asian-Americans being a model minority, compliant and unlikely to complain. Instead of seeing their multiple language skills and knowledge of their own communities’ talents and strengths, they get invitations to perform in traditional dress. Instead of supporting them with funding and resources to create a stronger community, they are the recipients of imperfect care, policing and education.
This slide comparison was part of a slide set that Montagnard community health workers and I presented to representatives of the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro. The point of the slide was to show the huge perception gap that prevented social progress. The ladies were trusted and respected by their peers and were key to the success of formal research work on food insecurity, because only they could line up interviewees, explain cultural practices or the depth of family problems. On multiple occasions our interviews stopped and direct intervention, usually in the form of food assistance or medical help, took place.
A.Young, Excerpt from a slideshow, (Montagnard) Women's Learning Group Report, 2012
Although the Southeast Asian Montagnard community has been in the area for over thirty years, they remain politically invisible and the topic of newspaper “feel good” stories that often feed into stereotypes of Asian-Americans being a model minority, compliant and unlikely to complain. Instead of seeing their multiple language skills and knowledge of their own communities’ talents and strengths, they get invitations to perform in traditional dress. Instead of supporting them with funding and resources to create a stronger community, they are the recipients of imperfect care, policing and education.
This slide comparison was part of a slide set that Montagnard community health workers and I presented to representatives of the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro. The point of the slide was to show the huge perception gap that prevented social progress. The ladies were trusted and respected by their peers and were key to the success of formal research work on food insecurity, because only they could line up interviewees, explain cultural practices or the depth of family problems. On multiple occasions our interviews stopped and direct intervention, usually in the form of food assistance or medical help, took place.
A.Young, Excerpt from a slideshow, (Montagnard) Women's Learning Group Report, 2012
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8
OPTIMIZED LEARNING
Teaching refugee youth how to engage dominant culture was based on “flow” theory, optimized human learning and performance.
We used this approach in the design of games, creating systems to keep players immersed, sharply focused and committed to overcoming challenges.
Czikszentmihalyi’s ideas have been used to explain athletes performing at peak levels, when they’re “in the zone”, when time seems to slow and achievement appears to be effortless, but it’s also been used to describe game players at maximum concentration, playing hour after hour without regard to time or bodily needs. For refugee youth and other learners, I would often ask them about the physical conditions around them and preceding events, actions, habits and feelings leading up to success or failure with the purpose of making them consciously aware of how they best learn, adopt, or find solutions. I found this an especially useful approach since English was not their first language and they struggled with feelings about not fitting in or not being able to keep up or compete with classmates, phenomena well known to college student development experts. But refugee students' needs could not be simplistically addressed by giving them a campus social club, a special recognition day or a few minutes of time with a counselor. Youth who responded learned to identify powerful social and cultural factors like race and history.
Czikszentmihalyi’s ideas have been used to explain athletes performing at peak levels, when they’re “in the zone”, when time seems to slow and achievement appears to be effortless, but it’s also been used to describe game players at maximum concentration, playing hour after hour without regard to time or bodily needs. For refugee youth and other learners, I would often ask them about the physical conditions around them and preceding events, actions, habits and feelings leading up to success or failure with the purpose of making them consciously aware of how they best learn, adopt, or find solutions. I found this an especially useful approach since English was not their first language and they struggled with feelings about not fitting in or not being able to keep up or compete with classmates, phenomena well known to college student development experts. But refugee students' needs could not be simplistically addressed by giving them a campus social club, a special recognition day or a few minutes of time with a counselor. Youth who responded learned to identify powerful social and cultural factors like race and history.
Otherwise, I believe it is true that the deficit model is alive and fully operationalized against local refugee communities and their young people, an approach that feeds on their economic and social insecurity and the history of trauma that defines them as refugees.
Screenshot from Mihalyi Cskszentmilhalyi's FlowTED Talk, 2004
Screenshot from Mihalyi Cskszentmilhalyi's FlowTED Talk, 2004
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9
FLOW IN ACTION
Here is a local refugee youth performing in front of an audience of international and academic health experts.
With practice, she was neither overly anxious nor complacent. Her delivery was spot on.
She was “in the zone”.
The individual pictured was among the many “firsts” I had the pleasure to work with. Some were the first from the Jarai indigenous people to attend the local private college, the first Karen people, the first Karenni, Bahnar, Sudanese, and so on. In this case she was the first from her local Bhutanese refugee community to attend and the first to be able to fully connect fellow students and academics to her community. But this was not without tremendous struggle and stress on her. To the institution she was officially a series of check boxes and financial obligations. For example, she was classed as “Asian American” even though she was a refugee, a recent arrival who lacked the normal social, cultural and economic support the institution assumed. When the director of Greensboro’s human relations department asked for an interpreter at an address to Bhutanese elders, she rose from the audience, took her side on the stage, and performed the most impressive interpretation demonstration I’d ever seen, nearly simultaneous and with almost no hesitation. Her presentation at the Triangle Global Health conference gave experts a further demonstration of the deep cultural and practical knowledge she and others like her have about their communities. Such knowledge is extremely valuable to local and international public health researchers and practitioners even if these talents are not evident in her college’s check box profile. The two pieces that helped her connect to conference attendees consisted of familiarizing her with the technical language of food insecurity and the technical assembly of photos for her slide show, technicalities well within the scope of digital humanities practitioners.
A.Young, Mamta Gurung practicing at Triangle Global Health Conference, 2015
A.Young, Still frame from a video of Why is My Community Sick? delivered by Mamta Gurung, a refugee college student, at the Triangle Global Health Conference, 2015
The individual pictured was among the many “firsts” I had the pleasure to work with. Some were the first from the Jarai indigenous people to attend the local private college, the first Karen people, the first Karenni, Bahnar, Sudanese, and so on. In this case she was the first from her local Bhutanese refugee community to attend and the first to be able to fully connect fellow students and academics to her community. But this was not without tremendous struggle and stress on her. To the institution she was officially a series of check boxes and financial obligations. For example, she was classed as “Asian American” even though she was a refugee, a recent arrival who lacked the normal social, cultural and economic support the institution assumed. When the director of Greensboro’s human relations department asked for an interpreter at an address to Bhutanese elders, she rose from the audience, took her side on the stage, and performed the most impressive interpretation demonstration I’d ever seen, nearly simultaneous and with almost no hesitation. Her presentation at the Triangle Global Health conference gave experts a further demonstration of the deep cultural and practical knowledge she and others like her have about their communities. Such knowledge is extremely valuable to local and international public health researchers and practitioners even if these talents are not evident in her college’s check box profile. The two pieces that helped her connect to conference attendees consisted of familiarizing her with the technical language of food insecurity and the technical assembly of photos for her slide show, technicalities well within the scope of digital humanities practitioners.
A.Young, Mamta Gurung practicing at Triangle Global Health Conference, 2015
A.Young, Still frame from a video of Why is My Community Sick? delivered by Mamta Gurung, a refugee college student, at the Triangle Global Health Conference, 2015
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10
LOST IN LEARNING
How many times did students complain to me that they didn’t know if they had earned an an “A” or a “C” by midterm?
In game design, it’s intolerable for a player not to know their status during game play.
Wins, losses, and learning progress are there for them to see in real time.
Online games take advantage of the computer’s power to track the state of the game and to provide regular feedback to the player. This is “under the hood” processing that remains hidden from the player and saves time. Playing an online version of Monopoly? No need to physically count your money. Playing online Scrabble? Your word score is immediately tallied. Wargaming online? No need to roll dice and look up casualty and damage charts.
Online games take advantage of the computer’s power to track the state of the game and to provide regular feedback to the player. This is “under the hood” processing that remains hidden from the player and saves time. Playing an online version of Monopoly? No need to physically count your money. Playing online Scrabble? Your word score is immediately tallied. Wargaming online? No need to roll dice and look up casualty and damage charts.
As an educator, I realized just how valuable immediate feedback about the learner’s performance was to the learner. For example, I found that another online Scrabble-like word game we created was popular among adults learning English. In this game, the player could play it over and over without exhausting the patience of their teacher or classmates. It could be played at the learner’s convenience, with no classroom embarrassment associated with wrong answers. And nobody was there to judge them if they didn’t get a top score. They could always try again.
A.Young, lead game designer and artist, screen capture from Pat Sajak's Lucky Letters, 2000
A.Young, lead game designer and artist, screen capture from Pat Sajak's Lucky Letters, 2000
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11
DIFFERENT PRIORITIES
In games and in community, winning means skills mastery and gaining experience, and for the individual, unlimited tries until they succeed or they quit.
Such timescales are utterly different from official, bureaucratic schedules and priorities.
Pictured here are players thrown into a game they neither devised nor volunteered to play in. Who is winning? Unfair question. Ok, then what was the aftermath? The answer is that officials walked away with a few photos I took. Maybe in the far future their influence will make an impression on their Raleigh bosses and trigger policy change. In the meantime, there was almost no support for the 30+ families who were forced to relocate following the apartment complex fire. For refugees already traumatized, emergency funding should have been available to pay for full assessments, case management and follow up. Nothing even close to this happened. Most analysts would call this total system failure and initiate a system review.
A.Young, Summit-Cone refugee residents listing housing complaints to NC DHHS officials following the 2018 fire, 2018.
Pictured here are players thrown into a game they neither devised nor volunteered to play in. Who is winning? Unfair question. Ok, then what was the aftermath? The answer is that officials walked away with a few photos I took. Maybe in the far future their influence will make an impression on their Raleigh bosses and trigger policy change. In the meantime, there was almost no support for the 30+ families who were forced to relocate following the apartment complex fire. For refugees already traumatized, emergency funding should have been available to pay for full assessments, case management and follow up. Nothing even close to this happened. Most analysts would call this total system failure and initiate a system review.
A.Young, Summit-Cone refugee residents listing housing complaints to NC DHHS officials following the 2018 fire, 2018.
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12
TECHNOLOGY V ATTITUDES
In Greensboro, so much goes on just a few minutes beyond higher ed campuses.
Digital technology doesn’t bring us closer together.
Not unless we pay attention.
Not without demolishing barriers that make the resources and expertise seem like a million miles away.
Since the Montagnard refugee community had almost no traditional holidays of their own, Memorial Day had been a special day of remembrance of the war and struggles back home. But beliefs and patterns such as this do not clearly register in the minds of outsiders. Without fundamental field work (that is, extensive time spent within the community), little progress can be made. Because scholars and educational and research institutions hold the financial, cultural and social power, they have a large responsibility in closing gaps.
A.Young, Montagnard Volunteer Task Force at the National Guard Armory, c. 2010
Since the Montagnard refugee community had almost no traditional holidays of their own, Memorial Day had been a special day of remembrance of the war and struggles back home. But beliefs and patterns such as this do not clearly register in the minds of outsiders. Without fundamental field work (that is, extensive time spent within the community), little progress can be made. Because scholars and educational and research institutions hold the financial, cultural and social power, they have a large responsibility in closing gaps.
A.Young, Montagnard Volunteer Task Force at the National Guard Armory, c. 2010
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13
TRAPPED IN OUR OWN CULTURE
Richard Leakey summed up the dilemma well:
“We are so very much a product of the culture that shaped us that we often fail to recognize it as an artifact of our own making, until we are faced with a very different culture.”*
*Richard Leakey, The Origin of Humankind (1994)
Colleges and universities in North Carolina spend millions of dollars to send students abroad in order to round out their "21st Century Education", but arguably their students could learn from newcomers right here in the state who are changing the white-black binary. Often I observe educators who cannot see what is in front of their noses, youth from Latinx and other newcomer communities sitting in their classrooms. I was shocked when academics, thankful for taking the time to take an “alternate history” bus tour, confessed they never knew about the many neighborhoods and communities in their city.
A.Young, Name tags for Women's Learning Group members selling their garden vegetables and practicing English at the Greensboro Farmers' Curb Market, c. 2012
Colleges and universities in North Carolina spend millions of dollars to send students abroad in order to round out their "21st Century Education", but arguably their students could learn from newcomers right here in the state who are changing the white-black binary. Often I observe educators who cannot see what is in front of their noses, youth from Latinx and other newcomer communities sitting in their classrooms. I was shocked when academics, thankful for taking the time to take an “alternate history” bus tour, confessed they never knew about the many neighborhoods and communities in their city.
A.Young, Name tags for Women's Learning Group members selling their garden vegetables and practicing English at the Greensboro Farmers' Curb Market, c. 2012
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14
BAD GAME DESIGN
Like games, systems have implicit, operational and constituative rules that govern them.
I used this simple rock, scissors and paper game to explain why the local health system assumes a winner and loser rather than being what it should be, a collaboration towards better health.
We presented this scheme at the 2012 National Refugee and Immigrant Conference held in Chicago. What I sought to demonstrate were the actual behaviors of the local refugee Montagnard community, Southeast Asian indigenous people who live in Greensboro, and the region's health system. As our subsequent work with the community has shown, chronic disease and other disasters befall this community because there are no incentives for either side to work together. Low English proficiency, low education and low income are not offset by the proximity of Moses Cone Hospital, which is walkable from a large Montagnard neighborhood, or Guilford County Public Health, which is about two hundred yards away, or Guilford County Social Services, which is a ten-minute walk away. Nor does their time in the US explain poor health outcomes. Unlike many recent arrivals, Montagnards have been in the area for over thirty years, time enough for systems to have learned how to service clients and deliver better outcomes.
A.Young, Slide design and presentation, Workable Solutions for Community Empowerment, at the National Refugee and Immigrant Conference, Chicago, 2013.(Team presenters S. Morrison, M. Nsonwu., A. Young)
We presented this scheme at the 2012 National Refugee and Immigrant Conference held in Chicago. What I sought to demonstrate were the actual behaviors of the local refugee Montagnard community, Southeast Asian indigenous people who live in Greensboro, and the region's health system. As our subsequent work with the community has shown, chronic disease and other disasters befall this community because there are no incentives for either side to work together. Low English proficiency, low education and low income are not offset by the proximity of Moses Cone Hospital, which is walkable from a large Montagnard neighborhood, or Guilford County Public Health, which is about two hundred yards away, or Guilford County Social Services, which is a ten-minute walk away. Nor does their time in the US explain poor health outcomes. Unlike many recent arrivals, Montagnards have been in the area for over thirty years, time enough for systems to have learned how to service clients and deliver better outcomes.
A.Young, Slide design and presentation, Workable Solutions for Community Empowerment, at the National Refugee and Immigrant Conference, Chicago, 2013.(Team presenters S. Morrison, M. Nsonwu., A. Young)
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15
CULTURE V MONEY
“Money is not a goal. It's the best means, but I give it zero as a goal… But where are the important goals? Of course, it's human rights.
"Human rights is the goal, but it's not that strong of a means for achieving development…
"Culture is the most important thing, I would say, because that's what brings joy to life. That's the value of living."*
*Hans Rosling, “New Insights on Poverty (2007).
In the case of US healthcare, the driving force is clearly short term cost reductions to its operations while maximizing profits. The long term consequences of individuals and families avoiding check ups because of costs in money and time generate undiagnosed but preventible illness and death. The majority of the Montagnard community living in our area receives care through the local health system, so if representatives of the system really cared they would be interested in mortality and morbidity rates in this population. But such a system has little time or interest in individual dignity, human rights or community cultural preservation.
Screen capture from Hans Rosling's New Insights Into Poverty TED Talk, 2007.
Screen capture from Hans Rosling's New Insights Into Poverty TED Talk, 2007.
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STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE IN THEORY
In the real world, systems can work against social justice and towards structural and cultural violence.
Outcomes can be emergent or deliberately designed to cause harm.
It’s these systems that we must fight when we apply our digital tools to community engagement.
In Greensboro, newly arriving Syrian, Congolese and Sudanese families were placed into an apartment complex with a reputation for poor management and exploitation that has gone on for decades. The units would degrade, then receive fixes and pass minimum code standards, and then be filled with refugee resettlement agencies’ clients. Agencies would then walk away from families struggling with leaking toilets, broken fixtures and appliances, and in the case of the Mugabo family, complaints that their stove would not shut off. Greensboro, NC, a medium sized Southern city with a clear geographical division between black and white races and a history of violence reflected in the 1979 Klan massacre, more recently had been among top cities in the US suffering from food insecurity. It ranked first in the state in housing evictions. Urban sprawl imposes a huge time and money cost on poor individuals and families. Yet, when the terrible fire killed their children, agencies that placed them there claimed that refugee families could move anytime they pleased. They were not to blame, they said.
A.Young, Keyframe from the animation, How Structural Violence Works, 2019.
In Greensboro, newly arriving Syrian, Congolese and Sudanese families were placed into an apartment complex with a reputation for poor management and exploitation that has gone on for decades. The units would degrade, then receive fixes and pass minimum code standards, and then be filled with refugee resettlement agencies’ clients. Agencies would then walk away from families struggling with leaking toilets, broken fixtures and appliances, and in the case of the Mugabo family, complaints that their stove would not shut off. Greensboro, NC, a medium sized Southern city with a clear geographical division between black and white races and a history of violence reflected in the 1979 Klan massacre, more recently had been among top cities in the US suffering from food insecurity. It ranked first in the state in housing evictions. Urban sprawl imposes a huge time and money cost on poor individuals and families. Yet, when the terrible fire killed their children, agencies that placed them there claimed that refugee families could move anytime they pleased. They were not to blame, they said.
A.Young, Keyframe from the animation, How Structural Violence Works, 2019.
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17
STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE IN PRACTICE
Educators can choose to collaborate or compete with community, or avoid or ignore it.
At Summit-Cone, where five children died in an apartment fire, we found ourselves in active competition against players pursuing strategies of avoidance and feigned ignorance, to the detriment of traumatized survivors.
And so while the data and history are there in abundance, charitable organizations and various agencies and groups that make up the refugee resettlement system in the Greensboro area (described as a “patchwork” by reporter Lorraine Ahearn in 2010 and criticized by Summit-Cone refugee leaders in 2018 as being discriminatory, murderous and uncoordinated) continue to be excused and defended by academics. This raises a serious questions like, Whose side are they on? and Why are they defending a system which has so badly failed?
And so while the data and history are there in abundance, charitable organizations and various agencies and groups that make up the refugee resettlement system in the Greensboro area (described as a “patchwork” by reporter Lorraine Ahearn in 2010 and criticized by Summit-Cone refugee leaders in 2018 as being discriminatory, murderous and uncoordinated) continue to be excused and defended by academics. This raises a serious questions like, Whose side are they on? and Why are they defending a system which has so badly failed?
To put in another way, in the words of Orwell (In Front of Your Nose, 1946): “... we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time…” Structural violence is a term that's been used to try to explain how, for example, individuals in a group or organization needn't hold explicitly racist views but perpetuate racism through their acts. They fail to recognize their position in a group or organization was made possible through race-based hiring or related biases. Structural violence against the families at Summit-Cone was committed time after time as agencies and organizations, knowing full well that families had to be relocated, delayed action, delayed answers, refused to cooperate or coordinate. One program practically denied they had any responsibility placing a family into Summit-Cone that had been under their care and guidance prior to the fire. Another organization blamed college youth! And so on and so on.
A.Young, Abandoned furniture from an "ECAR" family placed into the Summit-Cone apartments, 2018
A.Young, Abandoned furniture from an "ECAR" family placed into the Summit-Cone apartments, 2018
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18
HONESTY, TRANSPARENCY, ACCOUNTABILITY
A game can reflect the kinds of things most people want to see in complex systems operating in real life and affecting real people: honesty, transparency, and accountability.
Chess is a game of perfect information.
Both players can see exactly what the other is doing.
For those who don’t play the game or aren’t familiar with the rules, these two diagrams show the same game state from the perspectives of the white and black player siting opposite of one another. Yet from the very first move by white, all information is available to both sides. In contrast, poker is a card game which exemplifies players trying to anticipate, guess and calculate multiple variables based on limited, incomplete (and hence, imperfect) information.
For those who don’t play the game or aren’t familiar with the rules, these two diagrams show the same game state from the perspectives of the white and black player siting opposite of one another. Yet from the very first move by white, all information is available to both sides. In contrast, poker is a card game which exemplifies players trying to anticipate, guess and calculate multiple variables based on limited, incomplete (and hence, imperfect) information.
Many communities I work with wish to believe they are playing a game of chess against the new American culture and society they find themselves in. Because quite often they are powerless and with no money and few contacts when they come off the airplane, they have no choice but to believe they are operating in a system which is honest, transparent and accountable. Soon they find this is not the case. They discover that they are at a constant disadvantage without full information to make informed choices for themselves or their family. They toil in warehouse jobs and chicken plants. They don't know their rights as workers. They live in unsafe rentals because they fear retaliation and don't know how to assert their rights. They wind up trusting those who hold all the Aces because they have no choice. The game into which they are forced to play is against an opponent who is also the Dungeon Master, the game’s organizer, judge and referee. The rules are chaotic, seemingly arbitrary and constantly shifting. This explains why community leaders say stress — not housing, jobs, wages, citizenship or education — is the number one concern of community members. Stress is endemic. It is generated by the very system that claims to be addressing it. It conjures feelings refugees experienced in their homeland or in refugee camps. This would explain one leader’s conclusion that the agency handling him and his family is corrupt.
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All forms of technology, including game technology, don’t mean anything without the will to observe, to listen, to withhold judgment, to control one’s emotions, to understand how one makes meaning and how others make theirs, and the ability to shift frames in the face of cultural challenges.
In the face of death, the death of children in a preventible fire, the death of a mentally ill middle aged woman by police, the death of young men by easily available firearms, the most consistent and predictable response by informed, knowledgeable and educated authorities and advocates has been to deny the problem, to offer competing narratives that wish it away, to create band aid programs they themselves wish to run, or to avoid the topic entirely. In 2010, it took the rare occasion of Iraqi refugees loudly complaining about their poor housing conditions, actions supported by Muslim community leaders and reported in the media, in order to force the refugee agency to respond. (R.H. DeHoog, “With Heart and Soul: Closing a Faith-Based Refugee Resettlement Office”) Similarly, in 2018, it took Summit-Cone refugee residents led by resident leaders and backed by the media to force agencies to respond. This places agencies and their supporters on a spectrum of denial, polarization and minimization in the face of situations for which they have little feeling or ability to comprehend, to use language borrowed from cultural competency experts.
In the face of death, the death of children in a preventible fire, the death of a mentally ill middle aged woman by police, the death of young men by easily available firearms, the most consistent and predictable response by informed, knowledgeable and educated authorities and advocates has been to deny the problem, to offer competing narratives that wish it away, to create band aid programs they themselves wish to run, or to avoid the topic entirely. In 2010, it took the rare occasion of Iraqi refugees loudly complaining about their poor housing conditions, actions supported by Muslim community leaders and reported in the media, in order to force the refugee agency to respond. (R.H. DeHoog, “With Heart and Soul: Closing a Faith-Based Refugee Resettlement Office”) Similarly, in 2018, it took Summit-Cone refugee residents led by resident leaders and backed by the media to force agencies to respond. This places agencies and their supporters on a spectrum of denial, polarization and minimization in the face of situations for which they have little feeling or ability to comprehend, to use language borrowed from cultural competency experts.
Czikszentmihalyi has cited his personal motivations for understanding human psychology and performance. It was embedded in his childhood memories of World War 2. The modern refugee resettlement movement began in the middle of that war. Some refugee resettlement agencies trace their origins to that time. As that war fades and is no longer a part of living memory, it becomes harder and harder for us to bridge the past to the present, to imagine how or why in a more recent era Southeast Asians became the largest refugee group in US history.
Facebook screen capture from a local refugee youth, 2020
Facebook screen capture from a local refugee youth, 2020
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20
At the Rhode Island School of Design and Yale School of Art where I studied, nobody talked about the rhetoric of design or impact of technology, but observation was the heart of my training. It remains with me til this day.
An important part of my work has been to explain refugee resettlement and the impact of immigration in our part of North Carolina to local authorities, elected officials, and others in responsible positions. The kinds of responses I get are enlightening. Those in the field I am most passionate about, the arts, tend to regard the cultures of newcomers as exotic, worthy of the occasional ethnic dance performance, diversity celebration or craft sales of the Ten Thousand Villages variety. They accept "major artists" from outside the US or from various diverse backgrounds if they are legitimized by their appearance at major venues. Local refugee weavers, even if they win the State of North Carolina's Heritage Award, are ignored. In academia, which includes some of our region's most highly educated and progressively minded professionals, our small group formed the Montagnard / Southeast Asian Community Disparities Research Network in order to more effectively promote our collective work and mission, and to (in some large sense) signal the inability of our region's institutions of higher ed to come together, especially about community based research and community engagement. In our healthcare system, also a field which should share mutual interests and goals, there has been scant interest in our community-based initiatives and a clear interest in keeping existing small programs small and under-resourced. Public schools have been most effective through Newcomers School through which many refugee youth must through before assignment to their regular school. Some of the most attentive and caring are ESOL teachers and social workers because they have often spent the most time working with children and getting to know their families. Elected officials have increasingly shown concern, especially after refugee leaders spoke up boldly following the Summit-Cone fire and children's deaths, but they don't yet understand how government offices can intervene to protect and assist communities or even how to effectively promote small businesses. Their attitudes surely influence police and fire departments, social services and other offices and departments that regularly interact with refugee communities. Finally, the organizations which make up the patchwork refugee resettlement system have displayed such a historically consistent pattern of ignoring criticism, deflecting blame and competing against the interests of the communities they purportedly serve that it raises questions about whether they are capable of listening or changing, a truly disturbing and alarming situation as Trump's finely calculated policies of intolerance and division continue to erode trust and cooperation in American life.
An important part of my work has been to explain refugee resettlement and the impact of immigration in our part of North Carolina to local authorities, elected officials, and others in responsible positions. The kinds of responses I get are enlightening. Those in the field I am most passionate about, the arts, tend to regard the cultures of newcomers as exotic, worthy of the occasional ethnic dance performance, diversity celebration or craft sales of the Ten Thousand Villages variety. They accept "major artists" from outside the US or from various diverse backgrounds if they are legitimized by their appearance at major venues. Local refugee weavers, even if they win the State of North Carolina's Heritage Award, are ignored. In academia, which includes some of our region's most highly educated and progressively minded professionals, our small group formed the Montagnard / Southeast Asian Community Disparities Research Network in order to more effectively promote our collective work and mission, and to (in some large sense) signal the inability of our region's institutions of higher ed to come together, especially about community based research and community engagement. In our healthcare system, also a field which should share mutual interests and goals, there has been scant interest in our community-based initiatives and a clear interest in keeping existing small programs small and under-resourced. Public schools have been most effective through Newcomers School through which many refugee youth must through before assignment to their regular school. Some of the most attentive and caring are ESOL teachers and social workers because they have often spent the most time working with children and getting to know their families. Elected officials have increasingly shown concern, especially after refugee leaders spoke up boldly following the Summit-Cone fire and children's deaths, but they don't yet understand how government offices can intervene to protect and assist communities or even how to effectively promote small businesses. Their attitudes surely influence police and fire departments, social services and other offices and departments that regularly interact with refugee communities. Finally, the organizations which make up the patchwork refugee resettlement system have displayed such a historically consistent pattern of ignoring criticism, deflecting blame and competing against the interests of the communities they purportedly serve that it raises questions about whether they are capable of listening or changing, a truly disturbing and alarming situation as Trump's finely calculated policies of intolerance and division continue to erode trust and cooperation in American life.
My efforts as a community activist, educator, semi-academic, researcher, etc. compel me to be a storyteller who adjusts his story according to his audience. The language changes but the goal is the same, catch their attention, evoke some level of understanding, intellectual curiosity and emotional connection that leads to action. Most people at the bottom of society's pyramid want to see change. Most people I deal with who have the most power and influence to make change prefer to talk. Professionals talk one way, academics talk another way, church leaders talk yet another way, and so on. Mastering their buzz words and mannerisms is the subject of sociologists like Irving Goffman, another acute observer of societal norms and moral panics. All the projects I’m currently working on depend on digital media; they simply would not be possible without the tools to gather, store, organize, analyze, etc.
My father was drafted into the US Army during World War 2. He was raised in a time of intolerance, segregation and racism. Yet he rose in the ranks to become an officer leading a combat unit from Italy to France and Germany as the numbers of veterans like himself dwindled and replacements to fill their spaces came in droves. On the way to Munich and Dachau he saw the hordes of fleeing refugees, slave laborers and liberated prisoners of war. As a Chinese American officer leading white troops, his experience was undoubtedly unique. Late in life he took on two assignments as an immigration officer to go to camps in Southeast Asia and assist in the processing of Vietnam War refugees. I believe he did this with the full knowledge and memory of the ruined lives and physical devastation he saw in Europe as a young man, even perhaps, of the lives he had taken as a soldier. My mother, too, had been to Germany and Europe immediately following the war as a civilian hired by the Army to assist in reconstruction. She saw Dachau as well. Thus, my family had a direct connection to the making of the world as it is today, one that for me is also tied to the individuals, families and communities I work with daily.
A.Young, Yale Studio, 60" x 60', oil on canvas, 1980
A.Young, Yale Studio, 60" x 60', oil on canvas, 1980
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Many thanks for your time.
