Systemic Racism as a Game of Monopoly

To understand systemic racism, let’s recall the board game Monopoly. We’ll play a game, you and I, but we’ll start it a little differently. You’ll start off with $200 and already owning Baltic (the cheapest property) with a house on it. I’ll start with $1000, and I’ll already own half of the properties on the board, most of them with houses and hotels. Every time I pass “Go”, I collect $200. Whenever you pass “Go”, you collect $130. If I land directly on “Go”, nothing special happens, but if you land on “Go”, you go to jail. If you land on “Free Parking”, you also go to jail (because your car doesn’t fit the profile of the neighborhood). When we land on a “Chance” square, we draw a Chance card. But the Chance cards are divided into black Chance cards and white Chance cards. I draw from the white Chance cards, which mostly comprise good things like getting a bonus or a windfall inheritance. You draw from the black Chance cards, which mostly comprise bad things like fees, fines, and “Go To Jail”. You’ll go to jail a lot. I’ll never go to jail. But we both will roll the same dice, go around the same board, and follow the same rules, and we both have a possibility of winning. That’s fair, right? Ready to play?