Board Game Racism
Hi guys,
A bit of applied ethics for you.
I am a massive board game enthusiast and I was recently gifted a board game called "Archipelago" by a friend. Said friend rates it very highly and it seems to have interesting mechanics.
Unfortunately, upon closer inspection, I have found this game is a bit racist. A big part of the game is "settling" areas of the Caribbean and "handling" the unrest caused by the indigenous population. There is also a playing card called "slavery".
To be clear this theme is not meant to be educational - it is incidental. A theme the designers chose.
Obviously, I couldn't play this game in good conscience the way that it is.
But I was planning to, since the bare game mechanics are not inherently racist and actually quite interesting, censor the bits I don't like with my arts & crafts skills.
I could replace the black token representing native settlers with a red one to denote British settlers, and I could also replace the "slavery" card with a "piracy card", etc. etc.
What do you guys think? If I change the theme of the game would it be morally acceptable to play?
A bit of applied ethics for you.
I am a massive board game enthusiast and I was recently gifted a board game called "Archipelago" by a friend. Said friend rates it very highly and it seems to have interesting mechanics.
Unfortunately, upon closer inspection, I have found this game is a bit racist. A big part of the game is "settling" areas of the Caribbean and "handling" the unrest caused by the indigenous population. There is also a playing card called "slavery".
To be clear this theme is not meant to be educational - it is incidental. A theme the designers chose.
Obviously, I couldn't play this game in good conscience the way that it is.
But I was planning to, since the bare game mechanics are not inherently racist and actually quite interesting, censor the bits I don't like with my arts & crafts skills.
I could replace the black token representing native settlers with a red one to denote British settlers, and I could also replace the "slavery" card with a "piracy card", etc. etc.
What do you guys think? If I change the theme of the game would it be morally acceptable to play?
Comments (53)
Your question is whether it would be immoral to engage in an activity that was previously immoral but it has been purged of its immorality, right? I'd think it'd be fine. To hold otherwise would suggest there is something within the activity's essence that is inherently racist that cannot be cleansed regardless of effort.
Teaching the history (of European exploration), despite the countless ways it went horribly wrong, in an entertaining way isn't all that bad. In fact, this might be exactly what's needed in a history class. People would get a good handle on how the world, from the Americas to Australia, fell under European control. That said, it's quite insensitive to make a game that fails to give adequate consideration to the suffering that was a part of the historical events it simulates. :chin:
It's a mistake to impose one's modern day values on the past. This game does that by relating fictional game mechanics to real world history:
"Each player portrays an explorer and his team commissioned by a European nation to discover, colonize, and exploit islands."
Can't I be a refugee from centuries of European religious conflict - fleeing across the oceans to unknown lands, with a dream that men should be free to worship, or not, as they choose, and be free to think and speak as they see fit?
Quoting BigThoughtDropper
You're wrong about that.
"A balance must be found between expansionism and humanism, between commercial goals and respect for local values, between knowledge sharing and unbridled industrialization."
These dichotomies are heavily value laden; and anachronistically so, and far from being incidental, are typically slanted toward criticism of western civilisation. This is a criticism you seek to emphasise with your confected moral qualms.
I did consider that, but I do think it might be immoral if there were a game that was over the top racist (and not just politically correct) like if it involved a competitive venture to see how many slaves you could transport and whether you could get a good price for them. The same would be true if a game defined a winner based upon how efficiently they could eliminate a race. It's not just crass, but it's racist, and it makes light of devastating event, so that would make it as immoral as any racist expression.
Agree.
re: https://www.shutupandsitdown.com/videos/review-freedom-underground-railroad/
for what a educational board game should be.
I agree. To a certain extent, I think it's disrespectful to pretend that European colonization was cleaner than it really was. On the other hand, if I were black or American Indian, I would probably feel differently. Would @BigThoughtDropper be comfortable playing this game with people who's ancestors were slaves? I wouldn't be. Which means I wouldn't be comfortable playing this game at all.
I think that is just their PR. This game has gotten a lot of criticism. The PR doesn't quite match up with the "unrest" score that you have to keep low or risk losing the game. In other words, unless you crush the indigenous population you cannot win the game. Not sure if that fits "respect for local values".
However, on a broader note,
This depends on what kind of history we are engaging in. There are 3 types of history:
(1) empirical. We only wish to know the bare facts, e.g. a 500 page book on battle formations at Gettysburg.
(2) polemical. We wish to use history to make an argument about how things should be in the present.
(3) entertainment. We wish have fun without regard for (1) empirical, and, (2) polemical. However, the types of fun we can have are subject to the morality of our society.
So, I think you are saying this board game is (1), but I think it is (3).
Well, to be fair, even though I'm probably inviting strong criticism, back then people...didn't know any better...right? Yes, ignorantia juris non excusat but, at the same time,
[quote=Wikipedia]Until 2007, the California Penal Code Section 26 stated that "Idiots" were one of six types of people who are not capable of committing crimes[/quote].
There's something wrong in finding an ignoramus guilty, right?
I don't think we agree at all.
"A balance must be found between expansionism and humanism, between commercial goals and respect for local values..."
"Hunters herded the bison and drove them over the cliff, breaking their legs and rendering them immobile. Tribe members waiting below closed in with spears and bows to finish the kills. The Blackfoot People called the buffalo jumps "pishkun", which loosely translates as "deep blood kettle". This type of hunting was a communal event that occurred as early as 12,000 years ago and lasted until at least 1500, around the time of the introduction of horses."
What do you mean by cleaner?
No. I think it's 3 with a hidden 2 - entertainment with a polemic agenda you seem blissfully unaware of!
Maybe worth being nuanced even there. Take video games; they regularly involve obviously immoral activities, e.g. murder and other criminal behaviour, even torture and rape, all immoral because they involve inflicting unjustified harm on others with the degree of harm largely defining how immoral they are. This also applies to acts of racism. As fantasies though, the moral argument becomes more slippery. Surely, voluntarily placing yourself in the virtual position of someone committing a racist act does not necessarily make you a racist any more than placing yourself in the virtual position of a murderer makes you a murderer. Because racism denotes a despicable attitude as well as behaviour (covering prejudice and actual discrimination), the above distinction can seem blurry. But I reckon it holds. If it didn't, there would be some odd consequences.
Quoting Hanover
Jokes that make light of devastating events, we usually refer to as in bad taste rather than immoral though. So, this kind of segues into my original take.
EDIT: Having said that, so far as jokes propagate racism, I'd call the act of telling them immoral, just as I might condemn the designers of a racist board game or violent video game rather than the players.
A video game depicting killing of computer generated enemies is generally accepted (although some argue otherwise in that it leads to actual violence), but you could imagine the moral outrage if a game depicted the killing of Palestinians by Israelis. The morality is in the statement, which in a generic videogame is hard to decipher, but in other examples not.
And the slippery slope then asks about what about a video game where the object is pedophilia, rape, domestic violence and all sorts anti-social activity. I don't just see that as being in bad taste, but I do see a moral component there.
What if it depicted both sides doing this to each other? How would that be different from any war game?
Maybe it's a matter of degree. Like, if there was a game called "Concentration Camp Commander", or something like that, I mean, outrage would be absolutely justified. Again though, I'd direct it at the designers mostly. It's possible your average ignorant moron could play that just by virtue of being an ignorant moron.
Quoting Hanover
There are games like this. I suppose my general attitude to morality centers around the infliction of harm. In a way, the players are victims here and the virtual victims, by virtue of being virtual, cannot be.
A statement can be immoral due to its offensiveness. For example, if the Grand Imperial Wizard takes the stage and explains why his race is superior and why others are inferior, that is an immoral act. The victims are those within earshot as well as those whose life is impacted by the influence of the statements made on the stage.
Playing the videogame can be a statement. The victims are those who see those games at stores, see the glee in the eyes of those who play the games, and those whose lives are negatively impacted by the societal attitudes that are changed by the acceptance of such behavior.
None of this is to say that such statements should be illegal or prohibited, but free speech can be immoral. I accept a broader definition of statement than likely you do here.
Quoting Baden
Lack of intent is a defense to everything, including actually killing someone, so it could also be a defense to the virtual sport of online genocide if you truly didn't realize such things happen in real life. But should it be you, for example, who was playing that game, don't you think it'd be immoral?
I agree with this. This would be more analagous to the game designers. As I've said:
Quoting Baden
As for:
Quoting Hanover
Theoretically, yes. The devil is in the details though. I wouldn't want to argue that playing a video game can't be such a damaging statement, only that it doesn't necessarily have to be.
My position is probably best summed up here:
Quoting Baden
You can raplace "racist act" with your alternative of any immoral act and "racist" with its corresponding descriptor.
Do we agree on that much in principle?
It's weird to try to imagine putting myself in that position. I'd think I was a cunt. Not sure about immoral if I was playing alone.
EDIT: I mean if you asked me is it immoral to eat human faeces, it's almost the same feeling. It would be the mental equivalent of that.
"Necessarily" no. I agree with that. It's sort of like showing up at a Trump rally. You can properly vilify the speaker (analogous to the video game designer). That much is easy. I don't think you can absolve the attendee at the event either. I get the guy cheering along isn't as malicious as the speaker and as immoral as he is, but he does get some moral blame. I will also excuse some of the attendees, like the saps who go along with whatever they hear because they know no better, but, again, if they do know better, then moral blame goes to them.
Would you not go to the rally for moral reasons or do you just equate it to eating shit, just not your taste?
It's a little different if I'm actively partaking and influencing others. If I'm sat at home watching a Trump speech then that's just tasteless, like eating shit, yes. We probably more or less agree here.
The dilemma of whether one should look past the artist and only appreciate the art is an entirely personal decision. Many a POS writer, producer, director, painter, politician, etc. has created masterpieces. The owners of those masterpieces get to decide who gets to consider the piece. If the owner is the public then, at the very least, context should be provided.
1. If it's yours, do with it as you will;
2. If it belongs to another, you can boycott or not;
3. If it belongs to the public, there is a two-fold consideration:
a. Is it displayed for the art? If so, place the artist or the subject in context;
b. Is it displayed for what the art represents? Tear it down.
If a statue of Jefferson Davis, Hitler, Osama, et al, is displayed because the work itself is genius, then juxtapose the genius of the artist with the POS subject matter. If the subject matter is innocuous but a work of genius executed by an artist who was a POS, then juxtapose the genius with the artist. But if the statue is displayed in honor of the POS, tear it down.
But it's your game; do whatever you want. If you play with others, you could tell them, or not. Your call. But painting a Hammer and Sickle or a Star of David on Hitler in pink panties is perfectly fine.
In terms of (2) the specific game in question is not thematically anti-colonialism as I pointed out with the "unrest rule"- unless you think that it is pro-colonialism in the present day ... ?
Thinking more broadly: upon posting it did immediately strike me that (1), (2), (3) may have some overlap - thank you for pointing that out. A historical game I suppose can be entertaining and also polemical. I am very biased on this point because I do not like the two processes to mix.
Post scriptum: In the methodology of academic history, however, I think that the processes of (1), (2), (3) are always separate.
Yeah, l mean, Germany keeps all its extensive swastika-themed memorabilia in museums under lock and key. They don't leave that stuff out on the street and if they did - hell - it should be removed.
This leads me to think: would I redesign a Nazi board game? Hell no. That's one step too far :lol:
How about Lt. Aldo Raines did it in the basement with a Bowie Knife?
I haven't played it, but I read a little about it, and just the choice of era is polemic. It speaks to a wider anti-western left wing agenda, to single out the West as conquerors and slavers - which is not entirely untrue, but wasn't everybody until Western civilisation developed more enlightened ideals? It's bizarre that values developed by the West toward the end of the period, 1492 to 1797, are used against the West, to criticise its pre-history!
Had to Google that - and :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
Yes, that is a redesign we can all get behind
I will address both the narrow and broad issues in your comment.
On the narrower issue of this specific game - I think the designers, German, did not quite appreciate how colonialism is viewed in other countries - such as the USA and UK. This is possibly because the Nazi legacy of Germany far far overshadows its colonial legacy. Needless to say, such a theme would fall at the first hurdle in the UK or in the USA. So despite what is says on the box this game really glosses over some horrid history and is not "leftist" as you say.
The broader issue, I think, is the familiar argument that Western countries get too much stick for their expansionary foreign policy in the 19th century
"expansionary foreign policy", by the way, is a diplomatic phrase. The "leftists", as you name them, would prefer the term "ruthless exploitation".
We can argue until we are blue in the face about historicism and whether we should moralise about events that took place at a time when morals were entirely different to the present day.
What is incontrovertible is that the riches reaped by our ancestors -
(well, not mine - they were Polish and under the heel of the Russian Tsars for the entire 19th century. But I identify as British and thus feel subject to the proverbial "white guilt" over the British Empire)
- will echo far into the 21st century. Albeit that British colonies seem to have done better than others.
NB. notwithstanding the brutal methods employed by the British, ref: the Mau Mau, ref: second Boer war, ref: Bengal famine, ref: opium wars, ref: Amritsar, ad infinitum.
But take for example the tragic case of the Congo. Gutted, eviscerated, disembowelled by Belgium. Is it merely a coincidence that the Congo has been for many years a chronically war torn region?
ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_State
The legacy of the 19th century is with us today. Our wealth is built upon the backs of the world's poor.
At last, your values become clear. And the problem with your values is that they're poised between a truism, and being utterly false. They're false because by far the larger part of the wealth created by western civilisation is a consequence of the scientific revolution, than it is slave labour. Yet at the same time, what wealth isn't built upon exploitation of some kind? Even planting crops requires disturbing the natural order, and exploiting the fertility of the soil for "our greedy, selfish ends!" I don't condone the excesses of Empire, but the world is dynamic, and people have been moving about, conquering and exploiting each other for the entirety of human history. We wiped the Neanderthals out altogether. In terms of historic injustices - I'd start there!
Technology is the means and not the ends. Please see the below:
(apologies for using Wiki but Google Books never links correctly/ has the books I want)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_British_Empire
If you have an argument to make, I have no objection to you quoting wikipedia, and posting a link, but you have to explain what your argument is - and quote a relevant passage. This one liner and a link is unacceptable, and I won't be responding further. Thanks for your lack of effort!
Quoting counterpunch
Good grief, there's no need to be so bloody rude.
So it's not rude to point a giant spotlight at the origins of western civilisation, and criticise particularly and relentlessly in terms of modern day moral values - values that Western civilisation only latterly developed, and then when challenged on this, melt down and start listing real world colonial atrocities - like the rabid commie dog you are? I think that is rude - to all who have struggled to create civilisation from the brutality of a state of nature, and false to the far greater good that has been achieved.
I tend to agree that it doesn't make sense to single out Westerners for criticism. Slavery, for example, existed for many centuries in Ancient Egypt, and other parts of Africa, Asia and the Americas before it became widespread in the Roman Empire and its European successors.
If we condemn something we should condemn all perpetrators not just Europeans. So, it does look like there is a political and potentially racist agenda here.
No problemo!
BigPantsDropper needs to realise that slavery is what happens in absence of the philosophies, politics and economics of capitalism. It's the market mechanism that allows for the production and distribution of goods and services without overarching political control - thus allowing for personal and political freedom. Relative to slavery, the invisible hand is a miracle - and there's almost no-one pointing this out in face of an increasingly screechy - anti western, anti capitalist, politically correct, neo-marxist agenda.
My particular interest is sustainability - which may seem like a bit of a digression, but isn't. The left have dominated discussion of the climate and ecological crisis for decades, and have very successfully fed anti-capitalist assumptions into the collective consciousness via the green agenda - even while political correctness constructs authoritarian politics. The woke are sleep walking into a trap.
It's more or less like reading a story about an SS soldier's perspective and justifications, you don't do that to agree, but to broaden understanding and testing your own moral values.
If people won't dissect their own moral values, their ideas, and only shield themselves by ignoring everything around them that is in a collision course with those ideals, then how do you truly know yourself?
I told someone once that all every man ever wanted was for her to drop her pants. :lol:
I think there is little chance of him (or her) realizing that. But I agree that the left have been dominating discussion on climate and ecology and have been feeding anti-capitalist assumptions into the collective consciousness via the green and other agendas.
In fact, every single issue these days tends to serve as a stick to beat capitalism. Even racial equality movements are now openly campaigning against "capitalism", "patriarchy" and anything they see as representing western, i.e., white culture.
At the same time, the appalling crimes committed by tyrannical regimes in China or Africa and other places are totally overlooked or covered up and so are cultural elements involving FGM or the suppression of women's rights in non-western societies. They conveniently forget that slavery is still practiced by natives in Africa, Asia and elsewhere.
So, yes, it looks like the woke are digging their own grave (and everybody else's) like the Russian radicals who supported the revolution only to be liquidated by Lenin and Stalin after the event. I'm not sure if Lenin actually used the phrase but "useful idiots" seems like an apt description.
The question is whether the anti-capitalist, anti-western and anti-white left acts on its own or with the collaboration and support of rogue elements within the capitalist camp who share the left's agenda to monopolize financial, economic, and political power and abolish democracy.
Difficult post to respond to. With most people, I usually have much to disagree with!
The reason sustainability is such an important issue - politically, is that if the left were correct, capitalism must inevitably fail. And because the left have dominated the green agenda for decades, they wrote the book - convincing everyone of a limits to growth approach, that relates in turn to Malthusian pessimism.
Malthus wrote his Essay on Population in 1798. It was enormously influential, even while fundamentally mistaken. His premise was that because population growth is geometric: 2,4,8,16,32, etc - while agricultural land can only be created arithmetically: 1,2,3,4,5,6 etc, population must inevitably outstrip food supply and there will be mass starvation. He was proven utterly and outrageously wrong. We invented tractors and fertilizers, and food production easily outpaced population growth, even doing so with less agricultural labour.
Malthus didn't take account of the fact that human beings are inventive and productive problem solvers, less yet the role of science and technology. Nonetheless, we see this same conceptual framework in the seminal 1972 Limits To Growth (Club of Rome discussion paper) by Meadows, Meadows, Randers and Behrens.
"The Limits to Growth (LTG) is a 1972 report on the exponential economic and population growth with a finite supply of resources, studied by computer simulation."
This same idea of sustainability within finite means is the entire justification for the pay more/have less, carbon tax this/stop that, wind/solar approach to a battery powered future, accepted by left and right. Yet it's utterly and outrageously false.
The left have dominated the field so long, the right seem completely unaware of how false this limits to growth idea is, and are mired in climate change denial - and perhaps therefore, unable to examine the question of whether capitalism is sustainable. And as it turns out, capitalism is sustainable, so why allow the left to park the tanks on the lawn?
Scientifically and technologically, it's possible to sustain capitalism because - as a matter of physical fact, resources are a consequence of the energy available to create them, and the energy is available: right beneath our feet, a virtually limitless source of high grade, constant clean energy. Are there reasons some capitalists would not want to exploit this free energy resource?
No, because that would imply the operation of an illegitimate cartel! So clearly not! They just don't know any better than commit to wind and solar - which will cost an absolute fortune, barely take the edge of carbon emissions, last 25 years then cost an absolute fortune to replace, and always require a parallel fossil fuel generating capacity as back up!
I can see your point. However, personally, I would tend to be less sure.
True, capitalism is about free enterprise and plurality of business interests. But that is only the rule and every rule has exceptions. The great exception in capitalism is monopolism, the tendency to accumulate and concentrate capital and, along with it, financial, economic and political power. This is why Marx believed that capitalism will eventually bring about its own downfall.
However, the leaders of capitalism, the big industrial and financial interests, realized that in order to preserve their power they had to maintain the illusion of a free, capitalist society by allowing some plurality of business interests while dominating finance, economy and politics from behind the scenes. This has been described in detail in The Anglo-American Establishment by C Quigley
The same capitalist interests have also been behind the environment and other movements used by the left to undermine capitalism in an effort to give the impression that they are in favor of a more democratic society and sustainable economy.
I'm being less sure on purpose. I don't want to get tangled up in illuminati type conspiracy theories about the operations of capital, I don't even pretend to understand. Political philosophy is a very different branch of knowledge from high finance. I have no idea who's got all the dough IRL!
My principle concern is the viability of a sustainable future, and in my view, the only way it works out is with limitless amounts of clean energy from magma, to power carbon capture and storage, desalination and irrigation, and recycling - using hydrogen as a fuel and storage medium, and on that basis positively building a sustainable relationship with the natural world going forward.
Sustainability is not viable as increasingly authoritarian government imposing ever greater fuel poverty, to protect natural resources from the starving masses. That's the power mad, anti-capitalist future the left seem to want - and the window to avoid this terrible fate is closing fast, as Biden et al commit $6trn or something like that, to windmill building, (surely believing entirely that's the right thing to do, advised by a field dominated by left wing anti capitalist thought for decades.)
But if we create a sub-optimal technological infrastructure we will be locked into a sub-optimal future, and the politics and economics then unfolds toward economic, political and environmental catastrophe. It won't work! See Energy and Entropy - on page one of your physics textbooks! We need massively more energy to strike that balance between human welfare and environmental sustainability. Not less! Less energy is a disaster! By comparison, I don't care in the least who's got all the dough IRL!
I'm sure it is. However, I think it is rather difficult to imagine politics without finance. Indeed, one of political leaders' primary concern is how to finance their political programs and how to persuade the leaders of finance and industry to support their projects. And this is where politics and finance necessarily intersect or converge. But I agree that not everyone finds this a topic of interest.
One can only do so much. If I have shown that it's possible to secure a prosperous sustainable future by sustaining capitalism with limitless amounts of clean energy; accounting for its externalities - not by internalising them to the economy, but by internalising them within a bubble of clean energy from magma as large as our ambitions can make it, I trust people will make the right decisions. The only alternatives are horrendous. I do think this is the right move for our species - and that employing and sustaining the infrastructure of capitalism is the only realistic means of applying the necessary technology in short order, with minimal disruption.