Racism - The Game
The New York Historical Society is exhibiting a collection of Victorian era board games. The web site has some appealing samples, but leaves out the shocking ones. While you can check the web for a well-dressed bull and bear shearing a sheep in "The Great Wall Street Game," you have to hike up to the museum to see the sensational stuff in person. There was one called "Cats on the Wall" with this explainer: "Since alley cats were considered pests, few blinked an eye at the way street kids used them for target practice."

The worst are grouped in a collection called "Back to Square One: Racist Imagery in Victorian Board Games." Among the children's games are "Jim Crow Ten Pins" c. 1900, "Game of the Watermelon Patch," c. 1896, "The Darktown Fancy Ball," 1894 and a disturbing puzzle game, circa 1875, called "Chopped up Niggers."

The museum is in no way glamorizing these points of view, but rather documenting "how clichéd images of African-Americans were an accepted element of 19th-century visual culture, unfortunately reinforcing and perpetuating racist views."
- posted by Amy @ 5/17/2002 01:35:00 PM