I may have to pay off after all

I've had a standing reward of 40gg for anybody that could get JC Lawrence to admit that he was wrong. About anything.

He's just used the word "negro" in a post over on the other popular boardgaming web site.

I'm probably still ok, because he would actually have to admit he made a mistake, but I think the risk just advanced from "snowball's chance in hell" to "cold day in hell."

Sag.

Give us a link.

Makes sense. The twerp writes like he's a 19th century philosophy professor. He probably believes in eugenics and "white man's burden" just because it's "academic".

www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/370650/page/1

Second from the bottom.

Michael -- that made me laugh out loud, well done.

He probably carries this around with him




Tangential side note: Annals of Eugenics was where much of the foundational theory of statistics was published. If it wasn't for gambling, drinking, war, and eugenics are knowledge of statistics would be set back 150 years.

The thought of hearing nerdy suburban white guys discussing anything to do about ethnicity makes me sick. You're either going to get the doe-eyed, World Music fan-style "all cultures are beautiful and I am an enlightned white man" response or the "I just don't get the brown people" one.

Board gamers are overwhelmingly, disgustingly white. There were a few instances where I'm pretty sure that putting on an Eric B. and Rakim record in the store ran off some tubby white dudes who were already uneasy about leaving their whitebread suburban compounds of whiteness.

I was so happy at AGF when we started to get a big following of African American gamers...it made the place much more diverse, inclusive, and less freaking white. And I'll be damned if there weren't some customers who eyed them suspiciously or talked to them in a condescending way, assuming they could never understand board games or something.

I thought it was kind of cute how he said that over on TOS, he reminds me of my grandmother.
(May she rest in piece)

Further into her alzheimers + being ancient as hell she'd say cute little things like

"That Oprah is pretty smart for a negro"
("Gram they call them african americans now"
" I know where they're from!" )

or everytime somebody had a child out of wedlock (of any race!)

"Sounds like there's a nigger in the woodpile"
(" Gram the baby's father is a white guy"
" Why doesn't he marry her?" )

Maybe clearclaw is 105?

I was so happy at AGF when we started to get a big following of African American gamers...it made the place much more diverse, inclusive, and less freaking white. And I'll be damned if there weren't some customers who eyed them suspiciously or talked to them in a condescending way, assuming they could never understand board games or something.

It is interesting you bring this up because my brother attended the Atlanta Game fest one year and I asked if if it was all white. He said it was.

He also said that some black guys approached him and said,

"What are you guys doing in there? gambling?"

Yeah, boardgaming is a very white activity. My current regular group includes a south asian dude and I also gamed a lot with a black friend, until he fell into the World of Warcraft void. There was another asian guy who sometimes played with us, but he was a friend of a friend who disappeared after getting married. My old gaming group back in Indy included a close friend who is black, and he's coming up for a visit this spring, in part to try out some of the newer games in my collection.

Regarding the word "negro"... I don't know what to think. My black girlfriend (technically half-Kenyan/half-Irish, and all-American) finds the word "negro" to be slightly offensive in a condescending way, but I'm old enough to remember when that was the right term to use to avoid offense. "African-american" was safe some years back, but after an influx of Somali and Ethiopian immigrants to the Twin Cities, there are now people who object to the term because of the "-american" part. (With that attitude, I encourage them to move to some other country, like Canada.) So I sometimes use the term "african-american" unless I have doubts, in which I fall back on "black." I must be doing something right, because my girlfriend and I are still happy together after more than five years as a couple.

Shellhead wrote:

There was another asian guy who sometimes played with us, but he was a friend of a friend who disappeared after getting married.

A phenomenon that transcends race.

Michael Barnes wrote:

The thought of hearing nerdy suburban white guys discussing anything to do about ethnicity makes me sick. You're either going to get the doe-eyed, World Music fan-style "all cultures are beautiful and I am an enlightned white man" response or the "I just don't get the brown people" one.

Board gamers are overwhelmingly, disgustingly white. There were a few instances where I'm pretty sure that putting on an Eric B. and Rakim record in the store ran off some tubby white dudes who were already uneasy about leaving their whitebread suburban compounds of whiteness.

I was so happy at AGF when we started to get a big following of African American gamers...it made the place much more diverse, inclusive, and less freaking white. And I'll be damned if there weren't some customers who eyed them suspiciously or talked to them in a condescending way, assuming they could never understand board games or something.

We also had a diverse crowd over at Gamer's Matrix. One of the best times I've had was gaming with a black guy who we hooked into Warhammer 40k. He had Tau, I had Imp Guard. We roped him in just by letting him play and answering his questions.

Fortunately, we never had an instance where the regulars acted condescendingly to outsiders of any stripe. Too bad, though. Just like AGF, GM went the way of the dodo after Katrina.

Death and Taxis wrote:

Shellhead wrote:

There was another asian guy who sometimes played with us, but he was a friend of a friend who disappeared after getting married.

A phenomenon that transcends race.

Yeah, I've seen it happen before... I always laugh and tell people that the wife killed him for the insurance money.

The black guy that I used to game with here in the Twin Cities is actually kind of a local gaming legend. He did massive amounts of all forms of gaming, including RPGs, AT, Euros, CCGs, and even LARPs. Five years ago, he was playing in six different tabletop RPGs plus one LARP. I used to kid him about GenCon being a waste of time, that he was losing ten hours of potential gaming time during the drive.

He was also one of the very best CCG players locally, competitive in every game that he got into: Magic, Jyhad, Shadowfist and even L5R. He was still winning regularly at Jyhad a few months ago until WoW consumed all of his free time. It's a shame, he was really fun to play with... picture that nutty Jubal Early bounty hunter from the last episode of Firefly, wacky non-sequiturs mixed in with a devastating tactical instinct.

Negro? Really Clearclaw?

Gary Sax wrote:

Negro? Really Clearclaw?

It's like, he just got off the phone with President Truman? I think he's my age and it's just such a bizarre choice of word.

Sag.