There is a stain on your masterpiece.

Martin Luther King Jr, the revolutionist – not the watered down, palatable, let’s all get along version that white people love – once said, “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.” The silence of the architecture community in authentically addressing the blatant injustice that has begrudged African American people in the United States layers that stain.

The continued, unprovoked and senseless murders of Black people in public spaces, oftentimes in broad daylight at the hands of the power-hungry police and racist citizens living out childhood cops-and-robber fantasies with Black bodies, is infuriating. Architects have been mostly silent as their work, meticulously designed, constructed and deemed the crowning jewel of urban skylines, serves as the backdrop of injustice.

There is blood on the concrete in front of your storefront systems where Black women who look like my wife, Black men who look like me and Black boys who look like my son, have taken their last breath. And there, your masterpiece stands right next to a stain.