Tackling race relations issues through the medium of board games, on the one hand seems a perfectly reasonable if a bit touchy-feely liberal way of educating people about social issues. However on the other hand, it's a potential recipe for cringe inducing disaster. Involving embarrassingly naive stereotypes, there games that have been produced with all the right intentions, but have ended up being nothing short of shocking examples of how something as simplistic as a board game cannot in anyway express the deeply complex issues of race relations, or being part of a ethnic minority group within society.
| Life As A Blackman: The Game (1999): Apparently game designer Chuck Sawyer wanted to express through this game his own personal experiences as someone from a minority group, trying to make their way through corporate America. So what do we have? An insight into what it's like to young and black in America? Not quite, it's more a game littered with black conservative Christian stereotypes of African-American culture. Like a Crosby Show reworking of Boyz N The Hood of board games. In the game players must make choices between good and evil, or between the church and a life of crime. |
And that's only the start of how "black and white" the attitude of this game is. Players all start as 18 year old black males either in Glamourwood, Black University, the Military, or in the Ghetto. Church provides strength and guidance. Crime has consequences, and while lucrative, it also leads to frequent encounters with police and ultimately, prison. The first person to reach the Freedom space at the top of the board wins. The game attempts to deliver its political message through satire, that falls flat, and just ends up as a litany of racial and social stereotypes. Who the game was supposed to be aimed at is an utter mystery.
| Black & Whites (1970): You'd think a game first published in the respected journal Psychology Today in March 1970, would have delivered a carefully considered game with a social conscience. What they actually delivered wasn't a game that helped to create awareness of the divide between blacks and whites, but inadvertently between the haves and have nots, irrespective of race. As blacks are portrayed as stereotypically poor and whites as wealthy, with stock dividends and wads of cash. |
The game essentially blamed racial inequality on housing issues and made it impossible to win the game if you chose to play as a black player. Needless to say, it turned out to be one of the most controversial board games of all time and even merited an article in Time magazine: "The game, produced by Psychology Today Games (an off shoot of the magazine) now on sale ($5.95) at major department stores, was developed at the University of California at Davis by Psychology Department Chairman Robert Sommer. It was conceived as a painless way for middle-class whites to experience — and understand — the frustrations of blacks. In Sommer’s version, however, the black player could not win; as a simulation of frustration, the game was too successful. Then David Popoff, a Psychology Today editor, redesigned the game, taking suggestions from militant black members of 'US' in San Diego. The new rules give black players an opportunity to use — and even to beat — the System."
