I love this column:
Gregory Kane: Ghettopoly's Missing Characters
10/15/2003 09:38 PM EDT
By GREGORY KANE
BlackAmericaWeb.com
David Chang, the self-proclaimed witty fellow
who thought up the game Ghettopoly, seems to have forgotten a few things that should have gone into his flagrant rip-off of the classic board game Monopoly.
Ghettopoly made the news last week when some blacks condemned the stereotyping in the "game." Chang included in his version what he obviously feels are the salient elements of black life: crack cocaine, a pimp, a "ho," a 40-ounce of malt liquor, a machine gun, a marijuana leaf and a basketball. (Those are the pieces for this "game.") Chang proclaimed himself innocent of any racist motives and said it was all in good fun. Several black leaders called for the game to be yanked from store shelves.
That would let Chang off too easy. We should insist that if he's going to peddle Ghettopoly, then at least tell the truth about all those who play a role in ghetto life and include them in the game. Here are just a few of the folks Chang left out who should be included as pieces in Ghettopoly.
1. Stupid cops and stupid judges: Surely Chang remembers the case of Alberta Spruill, the Harlem woman who died of a heart attack this past May. Spruill's heart attack was induced when cops, acting on highly unreliable information supplied by a confidential informant, broke down her door and hurled a concussion grenade into her apartment. New York's finest were
looking for guns, drugs and a suspect. There were no guns or drugs. The suspect they were after was locked away in jail at the time of the raid. Activist Rev. Al Sharpton and lawyer Johnnie Cochran raised holy hell, and rightly so. But their anger focused on police. The real culprit here is the stupid judge who signed the warrant with no more probable cause than the word of a confidential informant. That brings us to the next group of folks
missing from Ghettopoly.
2. The confidential informants themselves: Police probably couldn't do their jobs without them, but confidential informants are, in the words of one Maryland police chief, people who, for the most part, should be in jail themselves. They're an integral part of ghetto life, as are:
3. The cop on the take and,
4. The trigger-happy cop (Chang should do a Google search for Amadou Diallo) and the psychotic cop (do a Lexis-Nexis search for Abner Louima, Mr. Chang).
5. No genuine game of Ghettopoly would be complete without: whites who drive into the ghetto to buy drugs. How could Chang ignore these folks, without whom the drug trade couldn't possibly survive? Ghetto residents see these slumming, spaced-out Caucasians all the time. Their dollars help fuel those drug turf wars and violence that Chang seems to think are oh-so-funny. But druggies aren't the only whites who visit the ghetto. No
Ghettopoly game would be complete without:
6. White johns who leave their wives in the suburbs to venture into the inner city searching for black prostitutes.
7. And how could Chang leave his own ethnic group out of Ghettopoly? Asians own most of the small stores in the ghetto. An authentic board game about inner city life would feature a storeowner like the one who fatally shot Los Angeles area teen-ager Latarsha Harlins in the back of the head after a dispute over a bottle of juice. Perhaps adding those Asian store owners who
let drug dealers sling from inside their stores, or who knowingly sell tobacco products - including cigars from which blunts are made - to minors, would be a nice touch.
Some black ghetto residents have stereotyped Asian storeowners as rude, aloof, bigoted price gougers. Since one good stereotype deserves another, Chang shouldn't hesitate about including Asian stereotypes in Ghettopoly.
But I suspect at this point Chang's sense of humor - so well developed
where blacks are concerned - will perhaps start to desert him.
Maybe then he'll get the point: black ghetto residents who've seen their children caught in the crossfire of the drug wars, who are held hostage in their homes by drug dealers, or who've witnessed the rash of gang slayings like the ones that have shocked Los Angeles don't see the humor in it all.
Funny man Chang should get the message: Ghettopoly is a bad idea whose time should never have come.
Gregory Kane is an award-winning columnist for the Baltimore Sun. In 1997 he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on slavery in the Sudan. That work won him the 1997 Overseas Press Club Award.
BlackAmericaWeb.com Staff
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