Inequality-opoly : learn a structural racism board game? The idea for Inequality-opoly came when Perry attended diversity, equity, and inclusion trainings. During these trainings, Perry noticed the difficulties the facilitators faced in demonstrating the effect of racial and gender discrimination in a way that is engaging and personalized to all the people in the room. As an educator for over a decade, he knows the best way to teach or reinforce something is to make it a game. He thought that gamifying diversity training would make for deeper understanding and richer discussions. After 3 years of research, development, and playtesting, Inequality-opoly is now for sale thanks to a successful Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaign at www.inequalityopoly.com. Find more information at The Game of Structural Racism and Sexism in America.
Diversity And Inclusion advice for today : You can make better use of the office cafeteria or lounge area. These common areas for office people can be made available for small events and representations of different art and culture. Discussions on various topics appreciating diversity in the workplace encourage participants to ask questions and share feedback, inspiring others to speak up for their rights. Such opportunities can generate interesting and open conversations, which are true diversity and inclusion efforts.
Interestingly, Clemons pointed out that the original version of Monopoly was an imitation of The Landlord’s Game, an educational board game created at the end of the 19th century by Lizzie Magie for the purpose of showing that monopolies lead to a harmful accumulation of wealth that comes at the expense of others. A few decades later, Charles Darrow, who is typically credited for inventing the game, teamed up with a political cartoonist to create Monopoly – a skillfully redesigned version of Magie’s game, but whose wealth-accumulation objective is essentially the opposite of what Magie was trying to achieve – and sold it to Parker Brothers. (I will pause, if only parenthetically, to point out the irony of a man achieving fame and wealth by copying a woman’s idea and taking credit for it.)
The difficulty of connecting individual experiences with statistical data is, in my opinion, one of the main challenges faced by D&I practitioners, who need to cite statistics that speak to the minds of corporate leaders, but often must resort to individual anecdotes that speak to hearts of those same leaders. I dove into my current career when I saw an opportunity to apply computer simulations to evince and quantify the link between the experiences of individual employees and the overall performance of a company.
Systemic racism and sexism created disparities in wealth and income for Black women. Wealth and income are two components of economic well-being. Income is a flow of money that comes in from employment, social security, or other sources, yet wealth consists of assets (e.g., homes, cash, businesses, vehicles) minus debt (e.g., credit cards, student loans, mortgages, medical debt). Wealth is critical. In its absence, families have difficulty managing financial emergencies, passing money down to the next generation and participating in activities that can build even more wealth like purchasing a home or starting a business. Research shows the racial wealth gap is even larger than the income gap. See even more details on The Game of Structural Racism and Sexism in America.