s01e13 - The Disparity Trap

Game developer Christian Telesmar, creator of 'Disparity Trap', joins Amy, Kevin, and Don Griffin, Jr. in a crossover episode with "My Racist Friend" to discuss Christian's board game about the game of real life. Christian explains the origins of the game, and Amy highlights two new RCT concepts: Desire for More and Strategies of Disconnection.

Christian Telesmar will provide the keynote presentation on Friday, September 6 as part of the upcoming 2024 Relational Summit on Playful Connection. Don will be on a panel playing Disparity Trap during that session.

Some resources mentioned in this episode:

Disparity Trap board game https://disparitytrap.net/ 

"Disparity Trap Board Game" (Kickstarter video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOC8PB1aMS0 

Share the Flame consulting https://www.shareflame.com/ist-of-an-ism 

My Racist Friend (podcast) https://bloomingtoncc.podbean.com/ 

2024 Relational Summit https://www.bloomingtoncenterforconnection.org/2024-relational-summit/ 

 

Cadre is a podcast that explores concepts from Relational-Cultural Theory (RCT), a psychological theory that started with Jean Baker Miller, and grew through collaboration and connection in places like the Stone Center at Wellesley College. RCT is built on the idea that people grow through and towards relationships, and that those relationships shape and are shaped by the cultures we co-create. Culture often creates challenges to connection through inequity and hierarchies.

Each year, the Bloomington Center for Connection selects a guiding theme for monthly small-group discussions of RCT concepts. 

Christian Telesmar attended college at the University of Washington (UW) with the intent of pursuing medical school but fell in love with theatre and knew that’s where he was meant to be. After graduating from the University of Washington’s Master of Fine Arts (MFA) Acting program, he relocated to Los Angeles, California, where he resides today. His performance work includes appearances on FOX’s Bones, 9-1-1: Lone Star, and The Young and the Restless. While in Los Angeles, Christian earned his Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Purdue University Global and holds a Qualified Administrator license for the Intercultural Development Inventory® (IDI) from IDI, LLC. He is excited to be fusing his many passions, combining his love of art, business, and education in the Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion space with his board game, Disparity Trap.

Donald Griffin Jr. is a Bloomington native, former Deputy Mayor for Bloomington, and a real estate broker, proudly serving his community for the past three decades. Since opening Griffin Realty in 2003, Don's dedication to excellence has helped to guide his company to be among the top producers in Indiana with nearly a half billion in individual lifetime sales.

Amy Makice is the founder of Bloomington Center for Connection and a licensed psychotherapist based in Bloomington, Indiana. Amy offers individual therapy and parent support for people in the Bloomington area, workshops for parents and caregivers, and training on Relational Cultural theory.

Kevin Makice is a user experience designer and enthusiastic gamer who has been steeping in RCT for three decades.

Theme music created by Vlad Gluschenko ("Positive Thinking" and "Serpantine") and downloaded from Soundcloud through Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.

https://soundcloud.com/vgl9/positive-thinking  https://soundcloud.com/vgl9/serpantine 
Disparity Trap with Christian Telesmar.

Christian (00:21):
My name is Christian Telesmar.
I'm originally from the Northwest, Portland, Oregon, then
went to the University of Washington, Seattle, and that's
where I did pre med and microbiology for four years.
And then on my last year, I decided to change my
whole plan and stay for a fifth year and do drama.
And my parents, you can imagine were ecstatic about that.

Amy (00:38):
I bet.

Christian (00:39):
And so I, I was gonna take the MCATs.
I had everything.
I took a six month Kaplan course, all of it, and I just
stopped it, just full, stopped it, and just switched gears.
It, it was, I'm, I'm abbreviating.
It was a.
Four year battle of a lot of questions about who I
wanted to be, what is art, what is creativity, what
is a passion, what is hobbies, what are careers.
And in my mind, it felt like I was growing up in

(01:01):
a household and in a community where passions are
hobbies and hobbies are what you do on the side.
That's what you have time outside of
your career and careers are what pay.
And so you need to focus on.
Something that pays you money.
So that's why I didn't connect my desire for creativity and
storytelling as a full time job or as a career opportunity.
And so I stayed a fifth year, did my major in drama and one

(01:23):
year, two years after graduating undergrad, I went back to the
university of Washington, and I got my master's in acting in 2017
when I finished my MBA, I went straight into entrepreneurship.
And around that same time, around 2019,
this idea for the board game came to me.
The person who was speaking was a white man who just didn't

(01:44):
understand why people, especially those of color, couldn't
just pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, so to speak,
or they couldn't just make it work like he could do it.
Why can't someone else do it.
And I had so many answers for him, but it wasn't my
conversation so I got the chance to still observe and listen.
It was someone else who was talking to him.
And I thought, I wonder if this guy.

(02:05):
had like a Freaky Friday or whatever, you can snap
your fingers, like, but you're in somebody else's body.
I wonder how his life would have turned out.
I wonder, I wasn't judging him in that sense, like he couldn't do it.
I was just wondering, I wonder if he would
be as successful in his mind as he is today.
I had a dream about playing Monopoly, and in the game Monopoly,
all the dice rolls were correlated to real life statistics

(02:28):
of my probability of winning that property, or getting that
property, or the chances of me actually buying that property.
And I was like, that is a and I played the whole game
with somebody like that, and I was like, that's so
cool, and I woke up Thinking I might've saw a commercial
somewhere, like some like flash of advertising.
And then I started Googling it because I thought maybe, you
know, Hasbro jumped on that and no, I don't think they did.
They definitely would not put no money into that.

(02:49):
So I was like, that would just be a cool idea for a game.
And from that moment, I just started thinking
about what is a way to make that happen.
So I just started collecting statistics, jail conviction,
statistics, statistics in education, statistics in
business, just statistics all around that were based off
of, you know, Research journals or independent studies.
I literally did that for a couple of

(03:11):
years, almost two to three years straight.
I was just collecting statistics and then COVID hit.
I had nothing to do, like a lot of people.
Either you had too many things or you had nothing.
And for me, it hit both because in performing arts, everything shut
down because nobody was acting, nobody was doing, shooting anything.
When I turned off, closed my laptop, it was the
first time I didn't have something creative to do.

(03:31):
It was the first time I didn't have something to work
on, to go to, to do something with performing arts.
And I think my body and subconscious just knew
this was the time to look into that game again and
just seeing what I could do to make this happen.
I wanted to do something different.
And I made that, and that was fine, but it was getting complex,
and the rules were kind of ... I'm honestly not a big board gamer.

(03:52):
My life journeys have shifted in so many drastic ways, and
you're like, where did that come from, if you knew me beforehand?
So I had to learn a lot about board games.
My roommate, thank God, is a huge board gamer,
has a ton of board games in the living room.
So we played a lot of board games, and I realized that
I kind of wanted to go more to the conventional route.
I kind of wanted to lean on games that were
familiar with, like, Monopoly or the Game of Life.

(04:12):
And your goal is just to get through it.
And each level of the board is like a tier, a financial
tier, almost like a economic class or a tax bracket.
If you want to think of it that way.
I feel like this has to be a game where it's one
you, you have to play in someone else's shoes.
So basically I had to get statistics about a lot of different groups.
I had to get statistics on different ethnic groups,
racial groups, and then allow that to be a path

(04:36):
for everyone to choose which one best fits them.
But you can imagine with statistics and so many different
racial groups, it got really complicated really quick.
And that's when the biggest part of the
story is when I brought in my mother's work.
So my mother, Dr.
Deborah Jenkins, her research and experience
is based in multicultural development.
Early childhood development and psychology, She's currently the

(04:57):
dean of psychology at the community college back in my hometown,
Clark College, and she has had a business consulting business
for about 20 years now where she, you know, helps people with
a whole array of things from title nines to literally going in
when there's a racial or a traumatic instance at an institution
or college, and basically sit with every single student.

(05:19):
Come up with a plan for the university and a, and its next steps
and try to help people heal and, and recover from those traumas.
And she has a theory.
Her paradigm is called IST of an ISM.
There is a systemically dominant group and a systemically
non-dominant group in every system of oppression.
With gender, there's a dominant group and a non-dominant.

(05:39):
Men are the dominant group.
Women and trans and non binary are non-dominant.
In America, whites are dominant.
And then people of color are non-dominant.
She mentioned it to me, she was like, you know, maybe
you can lean on thinking about, you know, my paradigm
to help you with the complexities of the races.
And I was like, no one knows what non-dominant, dominant means.

(06:00):
I kind of shut her down.
I was like, nobody knows.
That's too long to say.
Systemically non-dominant just is a lot of, a lot of words.
It's gonna, this game has to be, has to be simple and easy.
And so after a while of me just hitting the wall, I
was like, let me just play test it with her words.
And so I play tested it with a group and everybody was like, I was
like, do you know what these words mean before I even defined them?
They were like, yeah, it's systemically non-dominant.
I mean, it's kind of just, it's intuitive for them.

(06:22):
like, oh, okay.
Okay, so it's a little more intuitive than I thought.
I'm just like too close to it because I know my mom.
So let me just try to lean towards it
and it really opened up the game so much.
And so basically now there's two identities
you play, two positions we call them.
There's a non-dominant and there's a dominant.
The statistics is all correlated to those and you'll pull a card

(06:43):
and the card will have both a non-dominant role and a not and
a dominant role and based on who you are you will roll that.
That range and your goal is to hit within the range to succeed.
And the ranges are just, there's a disparity between the
ranges and that's where the disparity comes in to the game.
You're kind of going through the board.
And every time you hit an end of a tier, you're like trying to get
a job, then you're trying to buy a house, then you're trying to

(07:04):
start a business, then you're trying to like jump into real estate.
I chose real estate as the last thing,
because I wanted something that was like.
Big investment energy.
I mean, a lot of people want to lean towards their own net worth.
How do you grow your net worth, your stocks and investment?
Those are two big ones.
It's still, I did do a stock version.
The stocks got too complicated, so I just pared it down.
So like, there's been a lot of versions of this

(07:25):
and all the way through those pieces, there's
board game spaces like tax space and justice space.
And if you land on those spaces, you pull a justice
card or a tax card correspondingly and play that.
And so a tax card, you, the more you have, the more you pay in
taxes, so to speak, unless you have, you get maybe some return.
So that's kind of an advantage or help to those who
are really having struggling, trying to go through.

(07:47):
But when it comes to the justice, it just says as officer strolls
by and you kind of roll the dice to see if you get stopped.
and arrested and if you're convicted and sentenced
and that could lead to as much as you paying.
more, or like skipping a turn because you're in jail so to speak
throughout this you're earning privilege It's kind of like currency.
It's acquired.
It's earned.

(08:07):
It's given.
It's bestowed.
It's inherited It's all these things it's transactional so you
not only just can win by going beating the first one around
the board but you can have a What's called a collaborative
win, a cooperative win by helping everyone get to a certain
stage of the game before a single person gets to the end.
And therefore everybody wins.
Decide how do you want to play the game, this game of

(08:28):
life, so to speak, do you want to play by yourself and
just fight for your own, or do you want to help others
try and succeed and get to, you know, a certain stage in
life and that's where the privilege tokens play in part.
Cause you can either use your privilege to help others, or you
can hoard your privilege for yourself and use it to help yourself.

Amy (08:44):
Hmm.

Christian (08:45):
That's kind of how the game kind of developed over time.
It just like each piece came in little by
little to help kind of formulate an experience.
And the best part about it is watching everyone play.
Usually, we have people play a different position than their
own, and surprisingly, you'll see people of color playing the
position of the dominant group, and their behaviors are things

(09:05):
that we see, and maybe a lot of people complain about seeing in
the dominant group in terms of not considering the non-dominants.
And they're like, checking themselves.
They're like, oh man, I really don't want to help
this person right now because I'm doing so good.
And like, I really could use this privilege for
myself, but I know what it's like being non-dominant.
I know what it's like needing help, same for the exchange, those who
are in a dominant in their life are playing this in a non-dominant

(09:27):
position and getting very frustrated, which for a game is not
always the best experience you want to give people in a board game,
it's frustration, there's a reason for that, it's an educational
board game for that reason, and that's to have them go through
the frustration of being like, oh wait, I'm trying, I'm doing my
best, I'm using my brain that I think is set to succeed if I pulled
myself up in the bootstraps, but unfortunately there's so many other

(09:48):
factors, That play into my success that is not just all in my hands.
And that's kind of a lesson I really wanted people to understand.
It's not just about them.
It's about the system.
This institution that we're in is really
having a huge impact on individual successes.
And if we work together to combat the institution,
rather than an individual combating an institution,
then maybe we can fix that institution.

(10:08):
And so the biggest part of it that I like about
this game is that you can vote to change the rules.
And that's ultimately a big key to the game.
You can actually use your privilege and vote and remove the
disparities on specific cards as you go along if you want to.
Or you can just leave the world as it is.
Leave the institution as it is.
But it's your choice if you want to use your
privilege to help make things better for everyone.
Or make, you can actually use your privilege to make things harder.

(10:29):
You can change the vote.
If somebody passed the vote to make it easier, if
somebody wants to be a, Oh, I hope I can say butthole,

Amy (10:36):
Yeah

Don (10:37):
I curse all the time

Christian (10:38):
they can reverse the vote.
They can use their privilege to reverse that vote.
It may get harder.
It's kind of like how we see in society with policies and legislation
just going back and forth, helping and hurting, helping and hurting.
So there's a lot of dynamics to the game.
You can imagine it gets complex, but the basic version
is really just trying to get across the board and
using your privilege either for yourself or others.

Amy (10:58):
Mm-hmm

Don (10:58):
What do you think your demographics
of the people who purchased the game are?

Christian (11:03):
It immediately was clear who the
demographic was after the first pre orders.
And like I did a Kickstarter to actually
fund, raise most of the money, teachers.
And mothers.
And mainly women between the ages of 30 and 55.

Don (11:17):
Of color or mostly Caucasian?

Christian (11:20):
Can't tell you because I don't know, I just have names.
I would say from the comments I've seen,
it was probably like 65, 35, white women.

Don (11:29):
Okay.
The people of color that you have, when you don't
have that privilege, which piece would I pick?
I, I would not wanna play my own life.
You understand what Im saying?

Christian (11:41):
No, I tell you not to in the rules.
I'm like, don't do that.
Don't do that twice,
. Don: Because I don't wanna, I don't wanna go home crying, you know?
So I think
Don't double down.
Don't double down on that.

Don (11:50):
Yeah.
I think that's probably why you have so many of us.
Picking the, the, you know, saying, Hey, if
I had the privilege, what would I do with it?
You know?

Christian (11:58):
Yeah.
And the rules tell you that the rules say
play an identity different from your own.
So you could do a random thing where you randomly
pull an identity card and find out, you know,
a position card and find out where you are.
We encourage you just to, cause it's not going to be a secret.
Once you start playing, everyone knows who's who.
We encourage you just to pick the one
that's, that you don't identify with.
So that you couldn't live in someone else's shoes.

(12:19):
Even if you were a person of color, you can live
in a dominant position and see what it's like.
And, and that was one of the best things is that it helped
so many people of color that I did play testing would say,
wow, I never thought of it as this way of how easy it is
to just move forward and think about yours, your little
box, you know, because you're in a dominant position.
You're not really concerned about others and things are

(12:40):
coming to you much more easily that you are able to.
move quickly and you just with the flow, it's like, it's
not even intentional that they're trying not to help.
It's just that everyone has their own problems.
Everyone has their own life.
People of color have privileges too.
And so that's why the game makes sure everyone has privileges.
It's just the disparity is significant enough that it
actually leads to a difference in the pace of the game.

(13:02):
And that's kind of how we feel.
Like, I feel like life is, you know, everyone has privilege.
I have privilege, you know, dominance is not just black or white.
So to speak, it's like, there's a
lot, it's a lot of intersectionality.

Amy (13:12):
So the idea that people grow through and toward connection
and that things get in the way and our culture in particular.
And I mean, that's what your game is, is capturing right there
is like the systemic forces that keep us from having authentic
connections or from helping each other or like all of these things.

Christian (13:30):
Yeah.

Amy (13:30):
And so the two like main concepts that we had
picked out for this last cadre were desire for more.
That's one of the five good things.
So when Jean Baker Miller started talking about these ideas,
she described a mutually growth fostering relationship.
You know, you could notice it by its five good things

(13:51):
zest, like a sense of delicious energy, empowerment to take
action or to create increased worth, increased clarity.
And a desire for more.
So like, if you have a relationship that makes you shut off and not
wanting more connection, then it's probably not growth fostering.

(14:13):
Right?

Christian (14:13):
Mmm.
I've seen one person so upset they left the table.
They had to step away from the table
mid game and just like, take a breather.

Amy (14:21):
Wow.
Yeah.
Uh,

Christian (14:22):
they're, they lived their life in a dominant group.
And they were really frustrated with the non-dominant experience.

Amy (14:28):
It's hard to do that for one night.

Don (14:30):
Did they believe it?
That's the question.
They did believe it then?

Christian (14:35):
They genuinely believed it.
And I think it was the, this was the journey
that I really I'm glad I was there to help.
And I got a chance to watch it, and I got to help.
At least guide them through that experience.
So they're getting frustrated.
And they put it on the game at first.
Like, not like the game rules, but just
like, I'm trying to do this and I can't.
And they just did this and, so they just needed their time, right?
And as they took a breath and they came

(14:55):
back, they could breathe, they came back.
And they already started doing the work.
They're like, Okay, I'm really realizing that I Am not enjoying this
because I was so frustrated with me not getting what I expected out
of the out of my experience Like I knew I could do good with this.
I knew what the rules were I knew how to play the game and
still it wasn't giving me what I thought I wanted and I got

(15:17):
really frustrated And then I I had to add this because he was
in a place where he was at peace with it He understood it.
He was ready to go back in, you know, what's so interesting
about this experience It's not something you didn't do
anything wrong But I want you to also acknowledge that
because you you're not living a non-dominant life in
real world And you were only doing it in a board game.
You had the advantage and the privilege to get up and walk away back

(15:39):
into your dominance and escape the non-dominance experience for a bit.
That was a privilege you got to live.
You get to do that anytime you want.
You get a chance to literally walk out of the uncomfortable situations
and go find some comfort when a lot of non-dominant groups do not.

Don (15:57):
I like that.
Uh, you were kind of like the dungeon master.
Yeah.
In that scene.

Christian (16:02):
D& D, yeah.

Don (16:03):
Yeah, no, and so
I'm wondering if it does make more sense to really get in there
and have real conversations, if it does make sense to have someone
that can facilitate that, as opposed to just folks just playing it.
Getting upset

Christian (16:19):
the way he played it.
I think it was a justice card.
It was something heavy.
It was a hard experience and there is a point
where you get like a three strikes rule.
If you like failing justice card three times,
it's almost like you go straight to jail.
It's rare to happen, but it can get frustrating to get hurdles
and you're hoping the other players will actually help you.
That's kind of the point of the game is that

(16:39):
the other players could just watch this happen.
And you're like, dang, fourth time.
No one's gonna help me?
No one's gonna like use their, There's such thing called a power
token in the advanced game where you can use your power to just
literally dismiss cards or like block cards and their actions.
And that's like having something of a position of power because
power is different from privilege, which is different from influence.
So I was kind of hoping, trying to hope that people

(17:01):
wants is of these different ways that you can use your
power when you have it or your influence when you have
it or your privilege when you have it to help others.
Like people know people who could help somebody.
That's an influence that you have.
And you just, you, you, do you, how often
do you use that to help someone else?
So I do this with the, with companies.
I do workshops, DEI workshops with companies,

(17:22):
the virtual version of the board game.
We basically do no more than five employees per room.
And so I have co facilitators who will jump into
breakout rooms and we all do it simultaneously.
And then we come back together for a full, you know, recap.
Kevin, you were in my, were you in my group?

Kevin (17:37):
Yes.
What you were saying, because I've also played the board
game that has the justice, and I can speak to that being
a really ... It was something that really set you back.
And gave you so much disadvantage that it was demoralizing
as to whether you were going to be able to advance.
And even though we didn't play with that, with the simpler

(17:59):
rules, you know, the number of times I tried just to get an
education, and then when you fail, you go back to the beginning.
And even with people helping out, You know, you still
are needing to roll, and the rolls don't always go well.
So it, it, it really was a sort of a visceral experience that in

(18:21):
a game was really, really powerful to connect it with your life.
You know, the game said that I couldn't do this thing, and
remembering that I did go to school, it was really a well
done experience, and I enjoyed doing that with other people.

Christian (18:35):
And I hope people get those reactions.
I hope not like the full negative experience, but
a full cycle of, okay, this doesn't feel good.
Why doesn't this feel good?
What would this be happening in the education out of it?
I hope people don't leave frustrated
and just upset with the game in life.
You know, I don't want that.
I want people to see that the opportunity to learn from that
body, that full versatile body experience that some have

(18:59):
because it's happening to others and In some ways, we all have
experienced it in just different facets, you know, we all can
tell, we all can speak up a time, maybe we were a child, maybe
we were, we just didn't have the power or the influence or
the strength or the advantage to do something we wanted to do.

Amy (19:17):
The last card, the second.
I mean, there are only two, so the second one's the last,
but, but I, because I think this one fits a lot into the
parts of us that can't get racism, like the refusing to
like really understand it or to try to muck around in
it, as well as like why we might hoard privilege too.
I love that.

(19:37):
Phrase, the hoarding privilege, the, and
they're called strategies of disconnection.
And they're also called strategies of survival.
And it's basically patterns of behavior that people
use to protect themselves from vulnerability that
could come with a deeper, more authentic connection.
So like, people pleasing, or conflict avoidance,

(19:59):
or someone who seeks out conflict really quickly
so that they know when it's going to happen.
When you were talking about your friend playing the game, and
stepping out and then coming back in, I just kept thinking
how, how really cool it was to hear someone like, fully
experience their strategies of disconnection around this.

(20:20):
And be able to like connect with you enough to push through it.
I think that's really amazing.

Christian (20:29):
Yeah, I, I agree.
The reason why I really leaned on the.
systemic and statistics part of this board game, instead
of making it very personal, like, you know, somebody walks
over and calls you the N word, like instead of making it so
anecdotal, I wanted it to be based in systems and institutions.

(20:49):
People on the surface are more likely to agree to say,
yeah, saying the N word in someone's face is wrong.
Like that's not really dispute, but a lot of
people dispute if there's an institutional impact.
Or at least how much that impact is.
I wanted to show people and educate people how
much research has shown the institution impacts.
I wanted to educate on that.

(21:09):
This is because the disconnect.
Because people detach from wanting to accept those facts.
It's easy to dismiss anecdotal things.
It's like, oh, that was your experience.
My experience has been why.
You kind of said like, you know, there's a
tokenism, there's a version of that, you know.
Oh, I have a Black friend.
So obviously it can't be racist.
It's like, okay, so you have a wife doesn't mean you can't be sexist.
Like it just, some people just don't get that just

(21:31):
because, you know, somebody doesn't mean that you are
automatically absolved of some kind of experience.
I wanted to prevent people one from thinking, oh, this is anecdotal.
So I can dismiss it.
I also wanted to prevent people engaging into, into attack
and pointing at somebody across the table from them,
because it's not about the person across the table from you.
That the reason why we have this

(21:52):
institution, it's a history of things.
And we all could come together.
We're all actually playing this game together.
So we're already started.
Working on the same path, so to speak, even if we didn't
know it, we all actually are on the same path right now.
And we could actually join forces and make this better.
We don't have to attack each other or run from the system.

(22:13):
We can actually work together to beat it.
And the whole goal of this game, it doesn't say it
anywhere in the rules, but the game, the point of
the game is to beat the game, not beat each other.

Amy (22:21):
Yeah.

Christian (22:21):
And
so the people who play each other, I think in my way, no matter
if you win or lose by playing each other, you lose in my mind.
The only way you truly win this game
is if everyone plays to beat the game.

Amy (22:32):
It, when we play with things, then it's, it's lower
stakes and it allows us to, you know, try on things that we
can't try on otherwise, or to allow those parts of ourselves
that don't usually get a voice to explore some stuff.

Christian (22:47):
Yeah

Amy (22:47):
And I'm curious if you have any concerns
about making this into a game somehow.
Letting people off the hook or

Christian (22:57):
Minimizing the experience for people.
That's, that's always been on my mind from the very beginning.
I think that's one of the reasons why I didn't jump into
it right away, but I really had to find a place to peace,
to let go that everyone's experience is going to be
different and I can't control every experience, but I had
to really come with peace when I, if I ever had somebody
say they took the game and they're like, I don't get it.

(23:18):
You know, they walk away and they're like, I don't get it.
I don't get what this means.
I don't know why it's important.
I can't, I can't take it personally.
You know, they had their own place.
They had their own path.
They'll learn eventually down their own path.
And maybe this wasn't the path for them to learn.

Amy (23:32):
It feels like there's different flavors
of work on anti-oppression, and some of them
are designed to help people feel better.

Christian (23:40):
Mm, feel comfortable.

Amy (23:42):
Yeah.

Christian (23:42):
They want people to stay comfortable while they
learn about anti-racism, and that's not always possible.
That's the hurdle with this game, too, is
that I've had people be like, This is not fun.
They're like, I don't want to play this again, because, I It was
hard, it was depressing, or like, I got more negative experience
than positive because I played the non-dominant position.

(24:03):
And I was like, well, you learned something, and you
learned what it's like in someone else's shoes, and
you might not want to come back and do that again.
But again, I kind of say, I'm like, well, people live that every day.
Some people don't want to step outside
in non-dominant shoes, but they have to.

Amy (24:18):
Yeah,

Don (24:18):
that's life, isn't it?

Christian (24:20):
It's life.

Don (24:21):
Yeah, we're all in it together, and some
of us are enjoying it, and some of us are not.

Christian (24:26):
Yeah.

Don (24:26):
Same damn world.

Christian (24:27):
This might be biased, I love this game so much,
and I could probably play it with anybody, whoever wants to
play with me, any day, any time, but every experience is new.
That's also what's new.

Amy (24:34):
Oh, that's wonderful, yeah.

Christian (24:35):
Because it depends on who's playing it.
Like, I've learned so much about society by just
watching people I've never met before play this game.
Yeah.
They're a giver, they're givers.
So I mean, if they're a dominant, they'd be a giver.
If they're non-dominant, I've seen non-dominant give up everything
they had, all the privilege they have, to another non-dominant person.
I've seen one non-dominant person give
their privilege to a dominant person.

(24:56):
To help them succeed because they didn't you know, not every role
is going to be a success for dominance either You know, so they were
like here here's some privilege for a re roll and i'm like in my mind
I'm, like you need that hold on to your privilege because you don't
have much non-dominant person But she really just wanted to help.
It's so interesting to see how humanity works.

Amy (25:14):
Yeah,

Don (25:14):
man.
This has been fun

Christian (25:16):
It's great to meet you both.
I'm excited to jump back in and play this with you down the road.

Amy (25:21):
Thank you so much.

Kevin (25:31):
This episode of Cadre is a production of the Bloomington
Center for Connection, an organization using relational
cultural theory to promote social change through connection.
This conversation between Christian Telesmar, Don Griffin
Jr., Kevin Makice, and Amy Makice, LCSW, took place on
July 29th, 2024, online and in Bloomington, Indiana.
And was edited for this podcast by Kevin Makice theme

(25:54):
music, lovingly sampled from positive thinking and
serpentine by Vlad Kalushenko follow Bloomington center for
connection on Facebook and other social media platforms.