(..that’s a reference to my Filter fans…)

Soooo – I have been getting questions about the title of my book.
Basically – the name 200 Something hints to the fact that I was about the 233rd (or something) African-American FEMALE to become a registered architect – EVER in this great nation of ours…

…Perhaps we need to work on that, huh?

Here is a video of an INCREDIBLY EYE-OPENING lecture by Theodore Landsmark, President and CEO, Boston Architectural College – March 16, 2007

“If there is any kind of profession that’s gotten away with a kind of benign neglect of diversifying itself over the course of last 30 years, it’s architecture,” says Ted Landsmark. With one chart after another, he plots the dismal record of design schools, firms and professional associations in modifying their singularly white profiles.

Of the 100 thousand licensed architects in the U.S. today, 1,571 are African American and 186 of these are African American women. In 2003, a mere 40 Masters students graduated. And more than 1/3rd of these graduates obtained their degrees from an historically black college or university. The rest of the schools offering architecture educations have graduated a few score of African Americans, compared to thousands of white students. “If we were to triple the number of African Americans who graduated from programs over the next decade,” says Landsmark, “we would still only be up to 10%.”