Instead of playing pieces shaped like a top hat, a thimble and a shoe, there are a pimp, a prostitute, a crack cocaine rock, and an Uzi.
I want to be the UZI, 'kay?
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/6966698.htm
Ghettopoly is no game to outraged protesters
By Kathy Boccella
Inquirer Staff Writer
PETER TOBIA / Inquirer
Instead of Boardwalk and Park Place, there are Smitty's XXX Peep Show and Tyron's Gun Shop. Instead of playing pieces shaped like a top hat, a thimble and a shoe, there are a pimp, a prostitute, a crack cocaine rock, and an Uzi.
It is played like Monopoly, but the object of this twisted take on the family board game is "to become the richest playa through stealing, cheating and fencing stolen properties."
The game is Ghettopoly, which claims to satirize ghetto culture and gangsta-rap stereotypes. And in the last two weeks, since sales have expanded from the Web to the hip, Philadelphia-based retailer Urban Outfitters, it has been flying off shelves - and drawing protests.
In Philadelphia yesterday, scores of pickets gathered in front of Urban Outfitters' headquarters at 18th and Walnut Streets and its store at 1627 Walnut St. holding banners, one of which said, "Stop selling racist products."
"It's racist and insensitive," said Mark Harrell, a protest organizer. "We're asking that they remove the game." If they refuse, he said, he will call for a boycott of Urban Outfitters and its sister chain, Anthropologie.
Store executives would not meet with protesters or talk to reporters, a silence they have maintained during a week of controversy from Seattle to St. Petersburg. Critics say the company is profiting from a product that makes fun of poverty, disease, drug addiction, and other social problems in minority communities.
Calls to company president Richard Hayne, who started the young-adult chain in a West Philadelphia rowhouse in 1970, with the hippie-style Free Peoples' Store, were not returned. A receptionist said the company had no comment.
The game's 28-year-old creator, David T. Chang, said Ghettopoly is edgy, not racist.
Ghettopoly makes fun of many ethnic groups, he said, including Asians, the Irish, Hispanics, Italians and Jews. There's even a Chinese restaurant owner who sells dog - a jab at Chang's heritage as the son of a Taiwanese restaurateur.
But it's based largely on African American culture, he said, because "for me to put an Asian guy in a game called Ghettopoly would be a little off."
The $30 game has been sold online since April. Urban Outfitters, which has more than 50 stores in the United States, Canada and Britain, began selling it about two weeks ago, Chang said. The game also prompted a demonstration by a handful of people in Chicago.
"It's blowing way out of proportion. People are using it as a scapegoat," Chang said. "I thought people might get it for what it is, a satirical stereotyping of ghetto culture. Why take it seriously?"
Because, said J. Whyatt Mondesire, president of the Philadelphia NAACP, "images do count. It's disgusting. He's bastardized a family-oriented board game and used the worst stereotypes that have come to become associated with African Americans."
Mondesire also pointed a finger at hip-hop artists such as Ja Rule and 50 Cent, who glamorize the gangsta lifestyle. "There's a growing acceptance of ghetto-fabulous culture in the black community which is very dangerous," he said.
White youths also "think it's the cool thing to do," Mondesire said. "It's the dominant culture among kids."
The Rev. Robert P. Shine Sr., president of the Black Clergy of Philadelphia and Vicinity, criticized the game as "a corporate endorsement of the denigration of African Americans."
He said the game is belittling in the same way Little Black Sambo and blackface minstrels were, and urged Chang to stop making it.
Chang, who has plans for other games, including Redneckopoly, said protesters were hypocritical because rap stars invoked Asian stereotypes without protests. "They're saying because I'm Asian American I can't make a game like this," he said.
Chang, who lives in western Pennsylvania, has no firsthand knowledge of the ghetto. He and his family moved to the United States from Taiwan when he was 8. He went to a private high school and graduated from the University of Rochester in New York state with degrees in economics and psychology.
He got the idea for the game in the fall of 2001 while watching rappers on MTV, he said.
"I thought, why not make a board game that has an urban edge to it?" He did research by watching MTV, studying rap lyrics, and playing video games.
In Ghettopoly, there's a loan shark who gives out $200 for passing Steal$$$ "because the playa just robbed him." Along the way, players build slum properties and win bonus points for getting their whole neighborhood hooked on crack.
A former broker for a financial-services company, Chang said he had used about $50,000 of his own money to make and market the game. His break came when men's magazine Maxim featured Ghettopoly in May.
Chang said that he had gotten a cease-and-desist letter from Hasbro Inc., which owns the rights to Monopoly, but that he was not taking it seriously since there are "dozens of other Monopoly-like board games."
In a statement, Hasbro said: "We find this game to be reprehensible and a violation of our intellectual property rights. We have no record of ever being contacted by Mr. Chang and never gave him any approval to produce this game."
The controversy has boosted sales from five or six a day to 50 to 100, Chang said. His Web site says the games are back-ordered; some Urban Outfitters stores are sold out.
"There's been a huge demand," a saleswoman at the King of Prussia store said.
Just who's buying Ghettopoly? Chang said many of his customers are women, buying for husbands or boyfriends: "They think it's fresh and cool."
And Brian Boden, a salesman at an Urban Outfitters in Manhattan, said its stock had been wiped out almost overnight - by sales to employees.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I want to be the UZI, 'kay?
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/6966698.htm
Ghettopoly is no game to outraged protesters
By Kathy Boccella
Inquirer Staff Writer
PETER TOBIA / Inquirer
Instead of Boardwalk and Park Place, there are Smitty's XXX Peep Show and Tyron's Gun Shop. Instead of playing pieces shaped like a top hat, a thimble and a shoe, there are a pimp, a prostitute, a crack cocaine rock, and an Uzi.
It is played like Monopoly, but the object of this twisted take on the family board game is "to become the richest playa through stealing, cheating and fencing stolen properties."
The game is Ghettopoly, which claims to satirize ghetto culture and gangsta-rap stereotypes. And in the last two weeks, since sales have expanded from the Web to the hip, Philadelphia-based retailer Urban Outfitters, it has been flying off shelves - and drawing protests.
In Philadelphia yesterday, scores of pickets gathered in front of Urban Outfitters' headquarters at 18th and Walnut Streets and its store at 1627 Walnut St. holding banners, one of which said, "Stop selling racist products."
"It's racist and insensitive," said Mark Harrell, a protest organizer. "We're asking that they remove the game." If they refuse, he said, he will call for a boycott of Urban Outfitters and its sister chain, Anthropologie.
Store executives would not meet with protesters or talk to reporters, a silence they have maintained during a week of controversy from Seattle to St. Petersburg. Critics say the company is profiting from a product that makes fun of poverty, disease, drug addiction, and other social problems in minority communities.
Calls to company president Richard Hayne, who started the young-adult chain in a West Philadelphia rowhouse in 1970, with the hippie-style Free Peoples' Store, were not returned. A receptionist said the company had no comment.
The game's 28-year-old creator, David T. Chang, said Ghettopoly is edgy, not racist.
Ghettopoly makes fun of many ethnic groups, he said, including Asians, the Irish, Hispanics, Italians and Jews. There's even a Chinese restaurant owner who sells dog - a jab at Chang's heritage as the son of a Taiwanese restaurateur.
But it's based largely on African American culture, he said, because "for me to put an Asian guy in a game called Ghettopoly would be a little off."
The $30 game has been sold online since April. Urban Outfitters, which has more than 50 stores in the United States, Canada and Britain, began selling it about two weeks ago, Chang said. The game also prompted a demonstration by a handful of people in Chicago.
"It's blowing way out of proportion. People are using it as a scapegoat," Chang said. "I thought people might get it for what it is, a satirical stereotyping of ghetto culture. Why take it seriously?"
Because, said J. Whyatt Mondesire, president of the Philadelphia NAACP, "images do count. It's disgusting. He's bastardized a family-oriented board game and used the worst stereotypes that have come to become associated with African Americans."
Mondesire also pointed a finger at hip-hop artists such as Ja Rule and 50 Cent, who glamorize the gangsta lifestyle. "There's a growing acceptance of ghetto-fabulous culture in the black community which is very dangerous," he said.
White youths also "think it's the cool thing to do," Mondesire said. "It's the dominant culture among kids."
The Rev. Robert P. Shine Sr., president of the Black Clergy of Philadelphia and Vicinity, criticized the game as "a corporate endorsement of the denigration of African Americans."
He said the game is belittling in the same way Little Black Sambo and blackface minstrels were, and urged Chang to stop making it.
Chang, who has plans for other games, including Redneckopoly, said protesters were hypocritical because rap stars invoked Asian stereotypes without protests. "They're saying because I'm Asian American I can't make a game like this," he said.
Chang, who lives in western Pennsylvania, has no firsthand knowledge of the ghetto. He and his family moved to the United States from Taiwan when he was 8. He went to a private high school and graduated from the University of Rochester in New York state with degrees in economics and psychology.
He got the idea for the game in the fall of 2001 while watching rappers on MTV, he said.
"I thought, why not make a board game that has an urban edge to it?" He did research by watching MTV, studying rap lyrics, and playing video games.
In Ghettopoly, there's a loan shark who gives out $200 for passing Steal$$$ "because the playa just robbed him." Along the way, players build slum properties and win bonus points for getting their whole neighborhood hooked on crack.
A former broker for a financial-services company, Chang said he had used about $50,000 of his own money to make and market the game. His break came when men's magazine Maxim featured Ghettopoly in May.
Chang said that he had gotten a cease-and-desist letter from Hasbro Inc., which owns the rights to Monopoly, but that he was not taking it seriously since there are "dozens of other Monopoly-like board games."
In a statement, Hasbro said: "We find this game to be reprehensible and a violation of our intellectual property rights. We have no record of ever being contacted by Mr. Chang and never gave him any approval to produce this game."
The controversy has boosted sales from five or six a day to 50 to 100, Chang said. His Web site says the games are back-ordered; some Urban Outfitters stores are sold out.
"There's been a huge demand," a saleswoman at the King of Prussia store said.
Just who's buying Ghettopoly? Chang said many of his customers are women, buying for husbands or boyfriends: "They think it's fresh and cool."
And Brian Boden, a salesman at an Urban Outfitters in Manhattan, said its stock had been wiped out almost overnight - by sales to employees.
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