Playing the game of race: Hunter Cutting tries out a new metaphor for understanding the rules and systems of racial inequality.

The definition of race and racism is a hot point in media debate, and for good reason. Establishing the definition is key to controlling the terms of debate. At the same time, placing race and racism into a clear context for public consumption is no easy task. The role of race is often invisible in public debate, the meaning of racial equality is distorted, and racism is usually understood as a matter of individual attitudes, not a system of rules. When race is spotlighted, it is often confused with ethnicity (religion, cultural traditions, language, country of origin, etc.) as well as with phenotype (skin color, facial features, hair texture, etc.).

Clearly defining race and racism is a necessary communications task for racial justice advocates. It requires both a thorough understanding of the nature of race and an elegant script for talking about it.

Many people see race as something you inherit--it's in your genes. From this perspective, race is a matter of biology, even if it is only skin-deep. The race-is-biology perspective dominates media debate. Even racial justice advocates with a different perspective speak about race as if it were biological, using common terms such as "mixed race" and "descendants." Of course, some of this framework is grounded in an understanding of the positives associated with shared culture, history and geography and the ways that this shared "experience" as well as oppression have forged common ties.

A New Metaphor

Rather than understanding or speaking about race only as biology, it is useful for advocates also to talk about race as a label, a description that gets assigned to someone after they are born (when the world can see them), not when they are conceived.

This can be a tough transition to make. For most people, the label they have been assigned is nearly permanent, and it determines much of their fate in the world. In the U.S., for example, the odds of getting ahead are a lot better if you are labeled white. When your racial label limits or cripples your reach in the world, your racial identity can seem to define who you are as much as your genes.

To cross this bridge, racial justice advocates should consider discarding the race-is-biology metaphor and develop new metaphors for understanding and debating racism. For example, it can be powerful to use the metaphors "life is a game" and "race is a label."

Players in the game of life can play the game as if life were a puzzle to be solved by searching together for all the missing pieces. Much more commonly, however, players play the game as if life were a contest, a board game with winners and losers.

In the board game version, when each player arrives at the table he or she is assigned a different racial label (such as white or black). Labels are assigned on the basis of skin color, ethnicity, hair type, facial features, language, accent, and more.

Racial labels are assigned according to different rules in different countries. Most countries generally use the same set of criteria: skin color, accent, etc., but in each country these criteria are applied in different ways. |n the U.S., for example, if you have one recent African ancestor it does not matter how many of your recent ancestors were Caucasian; you are almost always assigned the label "black," according to the infamous one-drop rule. Meanwhile, a player with a Spanish accent who is assigned the Latino label in the U.S. might be considered white in South America because of the color of her skin and her European ancestry.

Different countries even have different and unique racial categories that don't exist in other countries (e.g., mestizo in South America, criollo in Mexico). However, just as music and movies from the U.S. have taken over much of the world, so too have U.S. racial categories, which are increasingly adopted overseas.

Racist Rules

In the racism game, racism takes on several forms. The life-is-a-game metaphor highlights the systemic nature of racism based in a set of rules, not just individual attitudes. Sometimes the rules are such that they slow down players with certain labels while Fast-tracking others. Sometimes the banker cheats to help himself. Sometimes the board has different and more difficult paths for certain players. Sometimes one player will refuse to cooperate with others, changing the game into a contest where a player gets ahead by putting others behind.

In the U.S., for example, racial justice advocates chase red-lining banks and corrupt mortgage brokers. The alcohol industry preys on communities of color by marketing unusually potent products and saturating neighborhoods of color with liquor stores. And white audiences often oppose racial justice initiatives.

The rules are extremely complex. Sometimes the rules are formal: laws, codes, and regulations. Sometimes the rules are informal: social customs, traditions, practices, and attitudes. In the U.S., many of the explicitly racist laws and regulations have been eliminated but many of the implicit and informal rules of racism are as potent as ever.

The combination of informal, implicit racism and the legacy of more explicit racism can combine to create a dramatic Catch-22 for people of color. Each rule in the game may appear to be well intentioned on its own, but when rules are combined they pave the road to hell. For instance, in the U.S., players labeled "people of color" often start off in a neighborhood without good schools, part of the racist legacy of racial segregation and poverty that endures in the U.S. The rules say you can't get into a good school unless your family can buy into a wealthy neighborhood where property taxes and affluent parents pour resources into the schools. But no player can afford to buy into a wealthy neighborhood unless the members of their family have good jobs. Such jobs usually require a good education from a good school. And the Catch-22 for people of color starts all over again.

The material impact of racism is particularly powerful when the players in the game of life operate with a vision of a game that has winners and losers, i.e., a game that can only be won when others lose. This win-lose conception of the game of life divides white players from people of color. The win-lose frame implies that players of color can advance in the game of life only at the expense of white players. Employers regularly discriminate against people of color in hiring and promotion. Landlords informally enforce racial segregation among their apartment buildings. And white audiences blinded by the win-lose perspective cannot see how they could be uplifted by reforming the rules that unfairly privilege them.

Win-Win Racial Justice

Going beyond confronting racism to promoting a vision of racial justice requires looking past the "win-lose" frame of racism and developing a "win-win" vision wherein all players move forward by helping each other. Getting broad audiences to commit to a vision of racial justice requires scripting new metaphors that call upon familiar examples of mutual success. Games and group endeavors such as jigsaw puzzles, orchestras, jazz combos, barn raisings, and square dancing are well-known social activities where everyone succeeds only by working together. Advocates can call upon these activities and others to construct new metaphors for life and for racial justice.

The life-is-a-game and race-is-a-label metaphors are powerful and elegant tools for racial justice advocates. These metaphors can be teased out in many different settings, and they talk about race in terms that are internally consistent. The metaphors are easy to understand; concepts like rules, players, and pieces are familiar. Most importantly, these metaphors highlight an understanding of race and racial justice that offers mainstream audiences insight not promoted by the race-is-biology metaphor. Metaphors built upon games and social activities in which all the players win by working together offer all audiences a deeper understanding of their self-interest in ending racism and are tools for constructing a powerful vision of racial justice.