[1518] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
NYTimes.com Article: An Ugly Game
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (jwiz@8INC.COM)
Fri Oct 17 09:49:34 2003
Errors-To: articles-email@ms1.lga2.nytimes.com
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2003 07:19:56 -0400
Reply-To: jwiz@8inc.com
From: jwiz@8INC.COM
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
This article from NYTimes.com=20
has been sent to you by jwiz@8inc.com.
Bob Herbert's take on Ghetto-opoly and black culture. If he can say "nig=
gaz", "ho's", "bitches", and "pimp" in print, in the *New York Times*, th=
en why can't we?
David McIlroy
jwiz@8inc.com
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An Ugly Game
October 17, 2003
By BOB HERBERT=20
=20
Ghettopoly is a board game, based on Monopoly, and it has a
lot of people fired up.=20
Marches and protests by people denouncing the game as
racist have distributors running for cover. Yahoo and eBay
have blocked the sale of the game on their sites, and the
Urban Outfitters chain has stopped selling it in stores.=20
People are outraged - outraged! - that a game would portray
inner-city blacks as pimps and hustlers and ho's.=20
Kweisi Mfume, president of the N.A.A.C.P., has threatened
to boycott sellers of Ghettopoly, which he described as
"demeaning, repugnant and reprehensible, to say the least."
For the record: Ghettopoly is without question an ugly game
that promotes disgusting racial stereotypes. It presents
blacks as murderous, thieving, dope-dealing, carjacking
degenerates. Instead of the familiar Monopoly pieces, like
top hats and thimbles, Ghettopoly players get to move
around the board as pimps, machine guns and rocks of crack
cocaine.=20
So I'm not feeling sorry for David Chang, the game's
beleaguered 28-year-old creator. What I'd like to know is
why all this outrage is springing up over a board game when
so little is heard in the way of protest about the
outlandishly self-destructive behavior that gives rise to a
game like Ghettopoly, and which is burying any chance of a
viable future for extraordinary numbers of young black men
and women, and their children.=20
How can you march against a game and not march against the
real-life slaughter on the streets and in the homes of
inner cities across America? Violent crime, ignorance and
disease are carving the very heart out of America's black
population.=20
The president of the Los Angeles Council of Churches, the
Rev. Leonard Jackson, told me last spring about the long
line of funerals he's had to conduct for young black men
and women, and boys and girls. He seemed on the verge of
tears. "The young people have more of a chance of dying
here in South Central than in a military combat zone," he
said.=20
Instead of using their influence to help stop the
slaughter, certain truly twisted elements of the hip-hop
culture encourage it, celebrating it in songs that not only
glorify murderous violence, but also degrade black people
to a degree that should leave any sensible person
stupefied.=20
"We dangerous," says one song. "Bitches pay a fee just to
hang with us."=20
Trust me, we've got some problems that are bigger than
Ghettopoly. We've got insane young men who take their heavy
armament into the street and shoot up the neighborhood, and
then go back inside to listen to music that celebrates the
act of shooting up the neighborhood. That is not a sign of
a healthy culture.=20
It's not that there's been no protest. Marc Morial, the new
president of the Urban League, said in a speech last summer
that "too many of our young black males believe that
manhood is defined by the ability to injure or damage
another man, rather than helping another man."=20
The Urban League, the N.A.A.C.P. and many other groups and
individuals are trying to address some of the myriad
problems facing black America.=20
But the efforts have been too few and too timid. And they
haven't been accompanied by the bold, honest, creative and
self-critical thinking that is an absolutely necessary
precursor to action that would be effective.=20
Ghettopoly is a stupid and offensive game. But its reach is
nowhere near as vast or as dangerous as the <object.title
class=3D"Movie" idsrc=3D"nyt_ttl" value=3D"80468;30048">"Lord of
the Flies"</object.title> street culture that is seducing
one generation after another of black children, and
producing freakish entertainers like Nelly and 50 Cent.=20
We learned last month that Nelly, a male rapper from St.
Louis, was marketing a new drink called Pimp Juice - aimed,
I suppose, at niggaz and ho's. The drink was a follow-up to
Nelly's hit song of the same name, a song with such
immortal lines as "You ain't from Russia, so bitch why you
Russian?"=20
50 Cent has the top album of the year, and one of the hit
songs is "P.I.M.P." He brags in the song that he'll have
his ho "stripping in the street." Of one of his women, he
says, "The last nigga she was with put stitches in her
head."=20
That's not entertainment. That's a symptom.=A0=A0=20
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/17/opinion/17HERB.html?ex=3D1067389596&ei=3D=
1&en=3D19a686d4840850da
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