Ghettopoly Holds Shameful Lessons for Business and Consumers

Directly or not, "people like us" help stereotypes persist, too

By S. D. Ikeda, Asian-American Village

October 14, 2003 - It’s sadly self-evident, but also sometimes bears reminding: ignorance, greed, hatefulness are equal opportunity blights on the many communities we inhabit. They lurk within us all.

I was most recently reminded of this by last week’s ‘Ghettopoly’ protests at a branch of Urban Outfitters in Philadelphia. As it happened, I downloaded the story while I was in transit to deliver a seminar on race imagery and multiculturalism in that city’s affluent Main Line suburbs. The story stood out immediately as my seminar was to include a study unit on stereotypes in books, games, toys, educational materials, and other children’s products from the 1800s to the present. Initially, reading about the controversy over this gangsta-inflected Monopoly knock-off, my interest was fairly academic. I felt the usual distaste for the creator’s campaign to make a quick buck from "recreational racism," but more disheartened for its mainstreaming by one of the most influential arbiters of youth culture with stores across the globe. Urban Outfitters had, after all, faced similar protests by APAs for its marketing of a grotesque "Chinaman" Halloween costume a few years back – a late Nineties precursor to last year’s disgraceful "Kung Fool" by Disguise Inc.

But then, as I read on to learn more about the game’s creator, my reaction transformed into something deeper and more personal: It was shame.

Double-Standard

It’s not fair and it’s not rational, but it is perhaps consistent with my Japanese roots. At any rate, discovering that Ghettopoly's creator was David Chang, an Asian American, seemed somehow to reflect shamefully on me, my family, and our community.

Yes, throughout my career I have always emphasized that "the Asian-American community" is far from monolithic. The diversity of our ethnic communities (not to mention our experiences as individuals) create more differences among us than common ground. However, I also believe the things we share are profound. Just some of these are the experiences of being visible, underrepresented minorities often positioned as a collective third "race community" between Black and White, and having been subject to race hostility, biased public policy, prejudicial social barriers, and dehumanizing stereotyping ourselves.

And with this belief, I sometimes catch myself clinging to a double-standard: I expect these experiences to inform the ways "we" treat and represent others. So, feeling uncomfortably identified with the Pennsylvania entrepreneur who created Ghettopoly, which represents pretty much every degrading urban racial stereotype under the sun, I had the sensation that in this case "we" failed.

Who’re You Calling "We"?

In part, my identification with Chang was due to the story’s coverage: Many of the news reports I saw explicitly listed the facts of Chang’s ethnicity and Taiwan birth. Juxtaposed with such headlines as "Black Leaders Outraged at Board Game," these details seemed to racialize the story’s players – as opposed to its subject – and thus place a weight of broader ethnic representation on Chang. It made him stand for something beyond his individual role exploiting stereotypes for fun and profit, in a way that most coverage of the ethnically-unspecified "Kung Fool" creator had not, for example.

Chang himself was complicit in promoting this angle, however, attempting to forestall criticism in the game’s press release. In this, he discusses his ethnic background, cites massage parlor Asian stereotypes in Ghettopoly, and even refers to his own "stereotypical" Asian immigrant parents. "The graphics on the board depict every race in the country and both genders," he observes, as if to suggest that mocking one’s self gives automatic permission to mock everyone else, too.

Most of us understand the mere fact that one set of stereotypes exists and persists does not and should make others any more palatable, but Chang claims that’s the whole point.

"[Ghettopoly] draws on stereotypes not as a means to degrade, but as a medium to bring together in laughter," he writes. "If we can’t laugh at ourselves and how we can each utilize the various stereotypes, then we’ll continue to live in blame and bitterness."

But Are We Laughing?

Like clothier Abercrombie & Fitch, comedienne Sarah Silverman and other recent protest-targets in popular culture, Chang professes the benign humor of stereotyping and utility of controversy, and claims a kind of ironic license to use stereotypes to highlight (and perhaps resist) stereotypes. Indeed, the game enthusiastically deploys and only barely exaggerates language, imagery, and a gangsta ethos ubiquitous in mainstream music, film, fashion, media and new media. In the section of the press release providing mock-interview quotables for journalists, Chang describes his "Market Research" as consisting of "watching MTV and studying the lyrics of rap and hip-hop music" and studying video games for "insight into the culture of the ghetto".

Viewed in its isolated context with Chang’s commentary, the whole "Ghettopoly project" could come across as something of an extended, deliberately provocative piece of performance art. The promotional copy explicitly announces Chang’s ironic intention and embrace of controversy, even as Abercrombie & Fitch less convincingly argued that its 2002 Oriental stereotype shirts intended to appeal to ironic young Asian American consumers because it may look racist but "we" know better.

The problem with this position is that it too frequently confuses the creators’ insensitivity with the audience’s ability to "get it". It equates protest with "political correctness," remedy with censorship, and profitability with vindication of offensive tactics. It blames those who are the butts of the offensive "joke" for being offended. In short, it too conveniently absolves the marketer – the "joke teller" – of accountability by emphasizing intention and sidestepping impact.

Ghettopoly’s stereotyped message is not exhibited in a downtown art gallery, academic forum, cultural sensitivity workshop, a comedy club, or even an adult novelty store. It is distributed out of its purported context and legitimized by the most mainstream of youth-targeted trend-hawkers. (The Ghettopoly site features a mocking Parental Advisory sticker and posits an intended audience of "playas" Ages 13 to adult.) Whatever Chang’s real intentions might be, the protests reflect a growing social insistence that Urban Outfitters and its ilk be held accountable for the impact on youth consumers of "jokes" that an increasingly diverse market finds unfunny. In response, the company yesterday announced that it had begun pulling the game from store shelves, at least in Philadelphia and other affected markets.

What’s Next?

In the very short term, the controversy has probably helped sales more than hurt. Some Urban Outfitters stores told reporters the game had sold out. Change's web site announced that Ghettopoly was on back-order through December. It also promoted upcoming games including "Redneckopoly," "Hoodopoly," and "HipHopopoly," which we can imagine would again be both controversial and popular.  For, the Ghettopoly case imparts a few hard-to-swallow truths, one being that offensive stereotypes can sell products exceedingly well, and that our youth positively swim in an ocean of them through our popular culture.

(Editor's Note: Although it now seems unlikely that these games will reach market. As of yesterday, the two e-commerce shops for both Ghettopoly and a "Ghetto Gearz" clothing line had been removed from the host servers, and the main Ghettopoly site was brought down today as this was being edited.)

Another valuable lesson, though, is that accelerated political and demographic shifts will demand real change in businesses much larger than one guy with a web site and crummy idea.  Regardless of their intentions, companies marketing culturally charged products in the same old biased, insensitive way will face increasingly formidable resistance, if not fatal punishment.  Thus, with Ghettopoly off the shelves, the judgment of Urban Outfitters' buyers remains in question.  And there is also something a little hypocritical, for example, about how vociferously Hasbro threatened to go after Chang on intellectual property grounds, even as it faces similar criticisms.  For example, Hasbro branded an ill-fated game based on Dr. Laura Shlessenger, and was recently pressured to strike racial epithets from its Official Scrabble Players Dictionary.

At the same time, though, we as individual and collective consumers are very much complicit in what and how we allow ourselves to be sold.   If we think A&F's stereotype tee shirts are "no big deal," then that's the deal we'll get.  Further, as more and more minority professionals and entrepreneurs become leading producers of mainstream cultural products, we face the challenge of putting all these lessons to work in what we produce.

Yes, I suppose it’s a form of stereotyping in itself to believe – or just to hope – that "people like us" will show more thoughtfulness and restraint before circulating racist stereotypes against others.   But then, that is condition inherent in promoting multiculturalism, diversity and "community consciousness": If we expect our countrymen to recognize, appreciate, tolerate or respect "difference" and a plurality of American cultural perspectives, do we not implicitly accept responsibility for doing the same ourselves?

If not, as David Chang learned the hard way, the consequences can be swift and punishing, and they should be.