The owners of the beloved board game Scrabble have banned a long list of words players are no longer allowed to use, prompting furious debate.
The banned list includes words considered to be racial or ethnic slurs, including “n*****”, “Shiksha (a derogatory Jewish term), “Paki”, and “Fenian” (an Irish republican).
The word “bitch” is allowed because it can refer to a female dog.
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The word f****t is also allowed to remain because the word also means a bundle of sticks.
Scrabble is owned by two companies, Hasbro (in North America) and Mattel (in the rest of the world, including Australia.)
More than 200 dictionary words have been removed from the Scrabble lexicon in the past year or so.
There is no definitive list of banned words, but online Scrabble websites allow players to type in a word to see if it can be used.
Mixed response
While many have applauded the removal of the use of racist slurs, some prominent members of the global Scrabble players’ organisation have complained, saying any word still listed in a dictionary should be used.
British author Darryl Francis resigned from the World English-Language Scrabble Player’s Association, saying Mattel had “forced” changes on the game.
“We looked at some of the social unrest that’s going on globally,” Mattel’s global head of games said.
“I’ve heard the argument that these are just words, but we believe they have meaning.”
In Australia, some racially offensive words used to denigrate Indigenous Australians do not seem to have been removed from the list.
Indigenous activist Stephen Hagan has submitted a complaint against Mattel to the Australian Human Rights Organisation in an attempt to get a number of offensive words removed.
"‘I’ve heard the argument that these are just words, but we believe they have meaning.’"
Last year the North American Scrabble Players Association (NASPA) announced it would be removing slurs and other offensive words from its tournaments.
The group decided to remove the slurs after conducting a poll of its members that received more than a thousand passionate responses, NASPA CEO John Chew said in a statement.
Chew said that they decided to remove the words so that the game would be more inclusive.
“How can we in this day tell prospective members that they can only play with us if they accept that offensive slurs have no meaning when played on a board?”, Chew said in the statement.
“Some members threatened to leave the association if a single word were removed; others threatened to leave the association if any offensive words remained.
“There were a lot of good and bad arguments on both sides.”
More inclusive
Chew said he loves Scrabble because it brings all kinds of different people together, but said they need to do more to be more inclusive.
“As people have said across the spectrum of responses, removing slurs is the very least that we can do to make our association more inclusive,” he said.
UK player David Webb said the changes had been made to pacify the requests of “middle-class white people.”
“Its actions are seen by many as virtue-signalling, making a token gesture or ‘woke’,” he said.
“Imposing American values on the world is pretty obnoxious.”
- with CNN
