Beyond diversity, equity, and inclusion: Designing spaces that empower youth

There has been increased attention to issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) across fields, especially in those that work with children. The field of child-computer interaction has long paid attention to DEI issues, but primarily from the perspective of empowering children to have voices in design or in the inclusion of children with disabilities; far less emphasis has been placed on issues of racial bias or systemic oppression. However, as more researchers heed the call to examine racial DEI in design contexts, others voice concerns that such an emphasis is a political issue that we should not focus on. In this paper, I take the former position, addressing this argument from the perspective of a Latina immigrant who grew up in Black, Brown, and immigrant spaces and attended low-income schools with a majority Black/Brown population. I do so to help my colleagues, especially those outside the United States, understand why racial DEI is critical in fields responsible for designing for children and empowering the next generation of design innovators. Towards this aim, I provide an accounting of the lived experiences of children of color in educational spaces and the harm they experience every day in formal and informal learning spaces. I then close the paper by providing six principles for the creation of child-centered empowerment in technological design spaces that we can use to mitigate many of the issues I raise.