As far as I know, the popular culture image of “blacks == gangstas” have been perpetuated by the media companies, which are run by rich white guys, for sale to young white guys. I certainly don’t recall seeing any gansta-wannabes whenever I go into places like south-central L.A.
I am not aware of any members of the black community having any real say in how they are portrayed to the rest of the world. I have seen members of the community denounce the “gangsta black” image that the media companies keep peddling, to the point where it’s a recurring joke in Aaron MacGruder’s Boondocks comic.
It all boils down to this. Certain black people have been getting rich by portraying stereotypes of blacks for a long time now. (Hiphop/r&b, mtv / videos/ bootys, hoochiemammas, pimps, drugs etc.)
When an Asian dude does something similiar, some people have a problem with this.
The thing that disturbs me most about Ghettopoly isn’t the images or even the fact that it was created by an Asian (which is beside the point) who went to private schools and has a degree in economics (which is not).
It’s the fact that it’s being marketed by Urban Outfitters, which is a store for people who want to be hip and trendy. A place that sells overpriced ‘funky’ items like inflatable couches and smiley-face soap. Things that get attention; things for people who make social contacts on Friendster and insist there’s a difference between all two hundred Starbucks coffees. A place for people who record the minute personal details of their lives in a blog and expect others to be deeply interested.
Of course, I realize that UO has carefully researched its target market; they, like A&F, American Eagle, the Gap stores, Pottery Barn, and so on, are ‘lifestyle’ stores. They decide on the kind of people (i.e., which subset of affluent middle-class white people) they want to profit from, and they sell everything those people might need for a glossy magazine-cover lifestyle.
The UO target demographic isn’t exactly the same one that gets mass-produced branded ‘urban streetwear’ sold to it. Still, the ‘hip-hop’ lifestyle (and the music) is essentially a commodity which has been found to be highly profitable. It’s an excellent product for young suburbanites who are sufficiently badass/‘rebellious’ not to listen to mass-market pop, but not badass enough to consider the possible existence of music which is not manufactured for a certain market.
So – what offends me isn’t so much the portrayal of urban culture as the fact that this is yet another attempt to make money off it. Off the corporate caricature of inner-city life, that is. It’s not really gangstas, bitches and hos – but it’s far more attractive to suburban (mostly white) kids if it’s sold that way.
Duh! You wrote it, you knew what you were trying to say. Sorry wasn’t more specific in my first post, I just didn’t know where to start. I think I’m ready to walk through this empty parenthetical now, though:
“Certain black people have been getting rich by portraying stereotypes of blacks for a long time now. (Hiphop/r&b, mtv / videos/ bootys, hoochiemammas, pimps, drugs etc.)”
First, there’s just a complete lack of any type of grammar in the thing. It’s just a list of random things with nothing to glue them together. I can only assume that the parentheses are supposed to contain examples what the preceding sentence states, since you didn’t include any helpfully cohesive words within them (perhaps a “through”, or an “i.e.”). That’s the only way the last three items could make some sort of sense. But the first three aren’t examples of anything. “Hiphop/r&b”? You might as well put something as broad as “movies”, especially for the “r&b” part, which I think many people need your help in finding your point in that example. I’ve never heard of R&B being a vehicle for harmful stereotypes, and there are hiphop songs about everything. Same goes for “mtv/videos”. “Bootys” and “hoochiemammas” are the most baffling as they’re nothing but slang words. Whites might say “asses” and “sluts”. I just can’t figure out what you’re trying to say right there. That the videos make all black women out to be sluts? Okay, a few more words might have helped there, but what about the “bootys” part? How is that a stereotype? “Pimps”, I’ll give you that, but there’s definitely not a “black community”-wide endorsement of pimp idolization. “Drugs”? Do you mean marijuana? If so, then maybe you should drop the pluralizing “s”, because maybe I’m out of touch, but I’ve never seen any drugs besides marijuana glorified in black pop culture.
IMO, it makes a big difference who is doing the parody and who is not. I make humorous self-deprecating remarks all the time. And friends–who do it in a teasing, good-natured way–are invited to laugh at me, too. But have a stranger make the same jokes about me that I would make about myself and it’s different. Have someone who I don’t even know start mocking the way I talk, dress, or wear my hair and it’s offensive. And if this stranger is cracking jokes about me behind my back, then it really becomes a whole different animal.
So you can’t really compare this schlep to Chris Rock humor. I’m looking at you, John Mace.
Put it another way: any in-jokes – cruel, cutting or kidding – made by someone who’s a participant in the group/culture are usually more acceptable than similar jokes and comments made by an outsider to the group/culture being commented on.
I can call my family ‘a bunch of stupid idiots.’ A total stranger who tries it, is toast. It may be a “right” to do it, but a lot of things that are tactless, rude and thoughtless are people’s ‘rights’. Big deal.
Ghettopoly, created and marketed by blacks to other blacks, would be merely childish. Created by some middle class Asian guy and marketed to non-blacks is pandering and racist.
You did. (Understandably so. Perhaps you are unaware of my blanket refusal to censor art.)
I think holmes was spot-on with his version of (screw this Asianopoly business) Chinkopoly or maybe Gookopoly. You should be forced to talk like Charlie Chan all through the game. You think Yoda-speak is bad? Just wait.
I also agree that Fundiopoly represents a near-infinite lode of material to be mined. Now, someone please try and tell me they wouldn’t be burning that one along with Dixie Chicks CDs in parking lots all over the South if it ever came out.
GIGObuster, I think you probably have the most succinct synopsis of the big problem here. In the absence of a Gookopoly product from this same inventor, it’s hard not to look askance upon his “contribution” to the gaming world. I am a card carrying equal opportunity offender (witness all of my Pit threads) and find this one to be a little over the top in terms of offensiveness. No censorship should be needed, just a nice boycott of the product and of Urban Outfitters for having the distinct lack of class to market something like this.
If the game cut back on some of the real nasty bits, it could just be a middle-class guy cashing in on gangsta rap and crime, which is nothing new. But why make it race-specific? Are you telling me that there are only blacks in the ghettos? I’m sure you’ve got poor white kids and latino kids and asian kids as well? Why all the caricactures? Why include MLK or Malcolm X? That sort of thing suggests that this isn’t a game about the ghetto, it’s a game about black people. It strongly suggests a racist agenda.
I’d also like to point out that games glorifying crime (and exploiting steroetypical racial connections with crime) aren’t new. How about this one?
I’d be interested to see a cite saying Snoop wasn’t a pimp. I googled briefly but both allmusic.com and rollingstone.com mention his criminal activities, saying he “was raised in Long Beach, CA, where he frequently ran into trouble with the law. Not long after his high school graduation, he was arrested for possession of cocaine, beginning a period of three years where he was often imprisoned. He found escape from a life of crime through music.” (All music)
It seems plausable to me that pimping could have been involved in his life at some point. Of course, as you say, he’s now playing up the lifestyle for kicks (and perhaps to show that he hasn’t changed and is still ‘real’).
I’m with AirmanDoorsUSAF. I find it unlikely that Calvin Broadus (Snoop to you) was EVER a pimp, and has almost certainly embraced the pimp/playa counterculture to broaden his appeal and legitimize his street cred. That he dealt drugs is a given – used marijuana, crack and cocaine to finance his admission into street life, the rap game, and getting women. Pimps pimp – that’s their thing. They use and prey on women. Despite what you see in the movies, you really don’t want to mix up dealing AND prostitution, because it basically doubles your chances of getting caught/stung by 5-0. He could’ve been pimping, but if he hasn’t done time for it even ONCE, I just don’t see it as very likely.
The game is certainly in bad taste… but to censor it would be even more.
I do look forward to the other version thou… Bushopolis would be fun to see. Places like Iraq, Syria and Cuba to be taken. Pass thru Congress to get money. Conquer new lobbies and contracts… great stuff.
It just seems to me that making a big deal out of it is self defeating. I NEVER would have heard about it, and the news NEVER would have done a story on it if there weren’t people protesting against it. If the people organizing the boycott had just let it slide it would have been much better for their “cause”. Now it is in the news and all over the internet, which means more people are going to the UO website, which means more people are looking at the game, which means more people are buying it.
There was no need to organize a boycott…people that were offended by it would not have purchased it anyway, people that were not offended by it probably would not have actively pursued a “ghetto” monopoly game, and the people who actually would have pursued it, would have, and still are going to buy it anyway. Now, by getting it in the news, more people who might not have actively pursued a ghetto monopoly game, are going to be exposed to it, and some of them will want to buy it. Not to mention that people going to the website to see the game will also be exposed to other UO products, and many will purchase other items from UO while they are there.
It gets absolutely nothing accomplished, and in my mind it makes things worse because it draws the “us vs. them” line that only further divides us. If the group who is protesting this game and organizing a boycott against UO really wanted to do something constructive, they would use the time and money spent on organizing this boycott to buy new books for a school in the ghetto, or volunteer at a drug rehab clinic in the ghetto, or even go down and clean up some of the trash in the streets in the ghetto. There are so many more worthwhile ways to take a step towards the same goal that this boycott is so poorly attempting to achieve.
You may be right. But, my request for a cite was more out of personal interest than a challenge to AirmanDoors. That said, I think that considering we are in GD, we should engage in fact rather than assumptions and rumour. Snoop may not be a pimp (as the Allmusic bio I quoted said, he extensively mixed fiction and reality in his music), but if you’re going to say it, you should back it up.
Now obviously the difference is one was meant to be positive and try and educate, and the other is negative and makes fun of people.
But look at the similarities between the two. The supposedly ‘positive’ game states things like:[ul][li]“typical pitfalls for young black men - trouble with the law”[/li][li]“Your brother’s been arrested, pay $1,000.”[/li][li]“You’re becoming a ‘baby-daddy,’ again”[/li][li]“You get shot and killed in a drive-by shooting”[/li]“You’re pulled over by police for driving a new car, back two spaces.”[/ul]Its not a very big leap from this to, “You’ve got yo whole neighborhood addicted to crack! Collect $200”
Well, it really boils down to this: what is the game parodying, black folks, as the whine-groups claim, or the whole gansta lifestyle promoted to high heck by a small group of people?
It is obviously not parodying black people, unless you choose to assume that they want to get “yo whole neighbahood addicted to crack”. Therefore, it is parodying a certain media genre. Which nobody should object to.
Any connection between the glorified gansta and black people is another topic for another day.
I don’t get this line of thinking. Boycotts are organized to summon the attention of conscientous consumers. Even if actual sales aren’t affected, bad PR creates the perception that they are. If done well, they work. That’s why people use them so often.
But I don’t think this is a “big deal”. Most black people–and most black organizations, for that matter–aren’t even aware of this controversy. All it takes is someone to call up a newspaper and it suddenly becomes a “big deal”.
Personally, I agree with what most reasonable posters have said: it’s offensive and not funny. Urban Outfitters has a right to sell the game, but consumers have the right to be pissed off and not buy the product.
I’ve bought some things from UB before. The place is wayyy too overpriced and tries too hard to be kitschy-cool. For instance, they sell $30 t-shirts emblazened with haha-aren’t-I-witty messages like “Jesus is a Cool Dude.” The store is a haven for white kids with a large disposable incomes. Go to UB in Chelsea NYC and you’ll see what I mean.
If Chang wants to teach people how to laugh at themselves (as if black people need a lesson in self-deprecating humor!!), he should have started off with the rich white kids who would be buying his product in the first place. You know, like, the ones who try to be hip by spending a hundred dollars on clothes you can get at Value Village for two bucks.
If it’s not parodying black folks, athelas, then why the Malcolm X and MLK references? They’re black activists not gangsta rappers. Why are all the people illusrated on the board black?
There’d be nothing wrong with this game if it was a gangsta game. I’m just concerned that it’s a black game.