One of the things that first led me to paint in the diversity-inclusion (D-I) area was the stark contrast between the heartbreaking feelings of hearing express reports from Americans in a given demographic organization and indifferent research of the statistical population. -level knowledge that describes the organization as a whole. This is true for any kind of social context: in the place of paintings, talking about the highest rate of defection of women does not convey the kind of individual stories we have heard through the #metoo movement; In a city, statistics about the disproportionate black cop don’t start conveying the sensations we feel when we watch videos of George Floyd’s murder.
From education and housing to incarceration and wealth, demographic statistics fail to convey the astonishing mosaic of individual hisismos that make up these statistics together. This, in a way, should come as no surprise: statistical measures, through design, are intended to provide abstraction, reducing giant amounts of individual knowledge by a handful of numbers that transmit useful data about a population. In fact, the term “statistics” came here for the first time from the German philosopher and economist Gottfried Achenwall, who coined the word Statistik to describe the science of analyzing the demographic and demographic knowledge of the state, helping leaders make decisions without getting bogged down. down on the individual. Details.
The difficulty of linking individual reports with statistical knowledge is, in my opinion, one of the most demanding situations faced by identification professionals, which will have to cite statistics that speak to business leaders, but which will have to host individual anecdotes that speak. hearts. of those same leaders. I immersed myself in my current career when I saw the opportunity to apply PC simulations to highlight and quantify the link between individual workers’ reports and the overall functionality of a company.
Maybe that’s why I got so excited when, a few months ago, I was taken to Perry Clemons, author of Inequality-opoly: The Board Game of Structural Racism and Sexism in America. As you can guess by name, Inequality-opoly is encouraged through the well-known board game Monopoly, with players looking to accumulate wealth by buying, climbing and exchanging genuine goods. What makes Inequality-opoly unique is that each player is assigned an identity and, based on their identity, some players enjoy privileges, while others face obstacles to creating wealth.
For example, both once and once you exceed the “Start” space, the amount you collect depends on your race and gender, based on data from U.S. pay holes. And both one and both times a player lands in a “Life Event” box, he steals a card whose effect is also similar to the race and gender of both, one by one, all based on the statistics of the American Population. Life card comes with conditions such as interactions with the police, generational wealth movement or employment; When a card is stolen, both one and a player check their identity card to discover their express experience.
The concept of this game came here to Clemons when he attended diversity, equity and inclusion education, and discovered the difficulties facilitators face in demonstrating the effects of racial and gender discrimination in a way that can be attractive and personalized to everyone else. people in the room. As an educator, he learned that the most productive way to teach or anything else is to turn it into an interactive game. He made the decision to base the game on Monopoly, America’s favorite board game, but instead of meritocracy, Inequality-opoly shows the inequalities of being part of a marginalized organization seeking to gain wealth in the United States. After 4 years of research, progression and game testing, Clemons was able to raise capital through the kickstarter and Indiegogo crowdfunding platforms, and began promoting the game among the general public.
Interestingly, Clemons noted that the original edition of Monopoly was an imitation of The Landlord’s Game, an educational board game created in the 19th century through Lizzie Magie to show that monopolies lead to a destructive accumulation of wealth that occurs at the expense of others. A few decades later, Charles Darrow, known for inventing the game, teamed up with a political cartoonist to create Monopoly, an ingeniously rethinking edition of Magic’s game, but whose purpose of accumulating wealth is necessarily the opposite of what Magic was trying. to succeed and sold it to Parker Brothers. (I will pause, if only in parentheses, to emphasize the irony of a guy who achieves fame and wealth by copying the concept of woguy and earning credits for it.)
In creating the opolyus of inequality, Clemons follows in Magic’s footsteps, employing a similar concept to teach the public about the inequalities that characterize our society. “My hope for inequality-opoly is to satisfy your project to raise awareness and advance discourse on how structural racism and sexism are the accumulation and maintenance of wealth in America,” Clemons told me in a recent conversation.
Beyond economic inequality, Clemons hopes one day to start his own school business, harnessing the immense strength of school games to generate a positive social impact. As a component of his master plan, he recently created a bilingual school math game called Magic Number to help parents of elementary school students learn, practice and fundamental math concepts, skills, and operations in the age of distance learning.
When I played Inequality-opoly, I was deeply inspired by the way demographic statistics come to life, as each player reports the many tactics in which race and gfinisher have a dramatic and significant effect on the occasions of daily life. But even more impressive, and miserable, is the awareness of the inevitability of injustice in the final result of the game. It is the transparent link between cause and effect, in this case the link between systemic racism and sexism and individuals’ reports, that makes the policy of inequality such a harsh educational tool.
My paintings are based on the confidence that diversity and inclusion can generate the satisfaction of the painter at the same time as the performance of a company. My purpose is to revolutionize the road