by Ify Obi
Described as a “genius, pure and simple” by former president Barack Obama, Sir David Adjaye is without a doubt a juggernaut in his field.
The Ghanaian-British architect is famed for designing elaborate buildings around the world, from the Abrahamic Family House in Abu Dhabi to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. An Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), a Gold Medal awardee of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and an honorary knighthood recipient, Adjaye possess great notoriety and power.
However, the very definition of the word "power" posits the existence of those who its sheer magnitude is wielded against and imposed on. Time and again, Black women have found themselves as the unfortunate receptors absorbing the force. As is the case with Maya, Gene, and eventually Dunia (names changed for privacy).
On July 4, an investigative story by the Financial Times detailed the accusations of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and promoting a toxic work culture by the three former Black women employees against Adjaye.
The story begins with the promise of a place to amplify extraordinary Black talent and reshape the African architectural landscape. With beaming eyes and the need to care for their children as single mothers, Maya, Gene, and eventually Dunia took up positions at Adjaye Associates. What would, however, ensue is a flurry of harrowing experiences that left them in states of despair. “She was so depressed, she was so insecure, she had fallen apart at the seams,” Maya's cousin narrates the aftermath to the Financial Times. “Someone who was so passionate has been broken by it all,” said a friend of Dunia's.
Maya, Gene, and Dunia's experience is part of a hapless tale as old as time. A phenomenon where men who have acquired mass success and power weaponise it to harm women, particularly Black women. According to Rutgers University historian Deborah Gray White, the phenomenon dates back to slavery when black women’s bodies were not theirs and racist stereotypes were peddled to justify abuse. “Black women’s bodies, from Day One, have been available to all men,” she said in the wake of the #MeToo Movement. In her recollections, Dunia highlighted Adjaye as describing black women as “low-hanging fruit”, meaning they were “easy, cheap — like we are sitting waiting to be picked. If I was, white he would have had respect for my body,” she added.
“Coming forward against a black man who is liked by his community, I don’t know if anything is as difficult as that in terms of a situation a survivor can be in,” says Saida Grundy, an African-American women’s and gender studies professor at Boston University. To be a successful black man is not a particularly easy feat and contains several hurdles. And the reality that Black women are too often made the footstools by Black men in the climb up the ladder of their success is abysmal. From R. Kelly to Tory Lanez, Dr Dre, and now, Adjaye, high-profile cases of physical and sexual violence against black women involving black men persist, but how do we curb this as a society?
In her 1990 book, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics, Bell Hooks writes, “Many of us were raised in homes where black mothers excused and explained male anger, irritability, and violence by calling attention to the pressures black men face in a racist society … Assumptions that racism is more oppressive to black men than black women, then and now, are fundamentally based on acceptance of patriarchal notions of masculinity.” Holding this notion prescribes a system that seeks to protect Black men at the expense of Black women. However, the first step towards creating a suitable counter system that protects Black women and girls in professional spaces is acknowledging the problem of specifically targeted Intra-racial sexual and physical violence.
To alter these harmful notions of societal gender norms that enable and excuse sexual violence, a complex approach is required. According to the United States Institute for Peace, "For deterrence to be effective, perpetrators need to believe that there is an increased likelihood that they will be arrested and face punishment.". This can be achieved by shifting the outlook of gendered violence through the use of mass media.
Other long-term solutions may take the form of advocating for funding towards prevention programs, the elevation of more women's voices and perspectives in higher positions of power, and stronger policies against discrimination in professional organisations. But of course, the onus of implementation of these solutions falls primarily on men.
Adjaye, through his lawyers, has since denied the more serious allegations “in the strongest possible terms” while stating that he is "deeply sorry" for blurring professional boundaries through what he refers to as “entirely consensual” relationships.
Following the article's release, the architect Adjaye stepped down as a Design Advocate for the Mayor of London and resigned from his position as a Trustee of the Serpentine Gallery. He is also suspended from UK Holocaust Memorial, his association with the Studio Museum in Harlem, and his Africa Institute project in the UAE. It is, however, not presently known if Adjaye will be facing any criminal charges.