The Lonely Goatherd Blog And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats - Matthew 25:32
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October 25, 2003
Ghettopoly- Hilarious fun for the whole family! So this Asian-American has come up with a clever little parody of the classic Monopoly game called "Ghettopoly" which features a lot of pimpin' and dope and such. Naturally, the perpetually aggrieved are, not suprisingly, aggrieved, hollering about this game promoting racism and such.
As Sgt. Hulka said to Psycho in Stripes, "Lighten up, Francis."
Naturally Hasbro doesn't appreciate the association and they're suing. I can understand their position, but Ghettopoly can reasonably be seen as a legitimate parody of this most iconic American game, and how those capitalist ideas play out in the cheap seats.
There's more than one way to take something like this Ghettopoly. Some professionally agitated black folk will insist on taking it as belittling your race, as if the intent was to foment hate against black folk. It's part of the conspiracy to repress the colored races.
That likely is not the intent of the creator, nor how it will mostly be taken. A white person who really dislikes black people as a group would be unlikely to be interested in this game. I would guess that in fact black folk will be the top market.
These stereotypes are based on some actual truth on the ground, but get overgeneralized and exaggerated. That's how stereotypes generally work. They're insidious because they often have enough truth under them to make it easy to fall into unfairly painting whole bunches of people with a broad brush.
Ghettopoly could be taken as a satire of stereotypes. They're blowing them up. They're distilling and exagerrating black ghetto stereotypes to the point of absurdity.
Is anyone going to see this game, and then decide on that basis that this is how black folks really are? I doubt it. Was such even the intention of the creator? I doubt that too.
I would really dig a game of Cracker-opoly, with monster truck rallies and trailer park properties. It'd be a hoot. Doubtless it would be quite popular with the crackers. It would be a great follow-up to Ghettopoly- and he wouldn't get a bunch of whiny butts protesting their victimhood in response.
Ah, I see from his website that the creator of Ghettopoly is working on a game of "Redneckopoly"- and asking for suggestions. Go ahead, help him out.
Oh, and us country boys still dig Hee-Haw and The Beverly Hillbillies.
