Life as a Black Man

[Bamboozled]

Hey y'all,

Life has been extremely busy lately, so I haven't posted much. I've been trying to make my way back and the following article prompted me to do so. Please give me your thoughts on this mess. I swear, sometimes we are our own worse enemies.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/D...nsamigame.html

A New Game of ‘Life’
Players Are 18-Year-Old Black Males Struggling to Make It
By Steve Osunsami


The multi-colored board game comes neatly shrink-wrapped in a black cardboard box. Inside are hundreds of cards that must be sorted, two pairs of dice, and colored chess-like pieces.

But this is no "Monopoly."

The game is called "Life as a Black Man," and its title alone has raised a considerable number of eyebrows from coast to coast.
Each player is an 18-year-old black male, struggling to make it. The goal is to make it from any one of four starting points: the ghetto, the military, the entertainment industry or the halls of a black university, to end the of the game board, to a place called "freedom."

Along the way, however, are what the game's creator says are typical pitfalls for young black men — trouble with the law and money issues. Land on a racism space, and you're forced to pull a card that reads: "You're pulled over by police for driving a new car, back two spaces."

Game creator Chuck Sawyer, 33, says he's 'just being real,' using his own experience growing up in California, to educate the masses.

"It's about educating and heightening awareness," he says. "I want everyone to be aware about life as a minority."
One of the cards, he says, drives his point home. Any player who draws it, dies.

"When you pull that ghetto card and it says you get shot and killed in a drive-by shooting, I'm truly demonstrating to you that your life is over and your game is over."

In only a few months, and with limited distribution, Sawyer has sold 10,000 games. But not every black family is running to the toy store to get one. Many just don't buy the humor.

Outside a store selling the game in suburban Los Angeles, one African-American man said his "life is far too serious to … roll the dice and get pushed back two spaces."

Another black woman said she couldn't understand why anyone would buy such a thing.

"I have two very good sons," she said. "I need something that's going to teach them how to be strong black males."
The issues the game underlines are no joke. Racial profiling, discrimination, unemployment, prison. And while there isn't anything in the game that says these issues are exclusive or universal to black people, many concerned African-Americans say the implication is made by the title alone, further fueling controversy in the black community.

A group of white players, who tried their hand at the game, said they found the choices each player was forced to make depressing.

A middle-aged white woman was confronted with: "Your brother's been arrested, pay $1,000."

A middle-aged white man needed to deal with becoming a 'baby-daddy,' again: "Another baby card, I've got another baby."

Politely, the group told us they wouldn't be playing the game at home.

"Well, the two choices that really make you think are the crime cards," said one player, "where you have a choice to do the crime or not, and I obviously wasn't going to do the crime, and then all of a sudden … I realize that I need a car."

A player who went by "Dan" broke it down even further: "Outside of college students, I'm not sure that mainstream white America will play the game."

Sawyer says that's his point. Most Americans don't have to play the game, on a board, or in life. But as a black American, he does.