New Card Game Questions What It Means to Be Black

By Kenrya Rankin Mar 09, 2017

What does being Black mean to you? A new game aims to make players grapple with that question.

In Trading Races, players are dealt a hand of five cards that feature images of people who are Black—or who profess some measure of "Blackness." To win books, they must “out Black” their competitors by convincing them that they tossed the Blackest card on the table. It’s like Spades, except Harriet Tubman is the Big Joker.

As creator Kenyatta Forbes writes on the game’s Kickstarter page, the game rests on the “malleability of race,” where players are forced to talk through their assumptions about what it means to be Black. Rosa Parks, Huey P. Newton, Omarosa Manigault, Kanye West and Rachel Dolezal are all included in the deck, which is available for a $25 pledge. The campaign ends March 12. Watch a video about it below.