{"id":995,"date":"2014-12-08T12:16:23","date_gmt":"2014-12-08T17:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/?p=995"},"modified":"2014-12-08T12:16:23","modified_gmt":"2014-12-08T17:16:23","slug":"how-homogeneity-happens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/2014\/12\/08\/how-homogeneity-happens\/","title":{"rendered":"How Homogeneity Happens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So today a friend drew my attention to <a href=\"http:\/\/ncase.me\/polygons\/\" target=\"_blank\">this little game of Polygons<\/a>. It&#8217;s cute. There are happy squares and triangles. And apathetic squares and triangles. And sad squares and triangles.<\/p>\n<p>And the point is to teach us about how our &#8220;natural&#8221; inclination to hang out with people like us produces segregation. Because a triangle surrounded by squares isn&#8217;t happy, nor is a square surrounded by triangles happy. And the &#8220;easiest&#8221; way to make everybody happy appears to be to make all the squares and triangles sit next to each other.<\/p>\n<p>But history &#8211; and Jim Crow &#8211; should have taught us that isn&#8217;t really a good solution. Because segregation by race, gender, creed, or sexuality never actually accomplishes the fallacy of separate-but-equal.<\/p>\n<p>The game doesn&#8217;t tell us whether the triangles or the squares will end up being institutionally oppressed or whether they live in a happy geometric land where they can be separate but equal, but it does show us how we tend to congregate like with like &#8211; and how easily and simply that produces factionalism, in-groups and out-groups. Even just in terms of where we choose to live without ever really thinking about it.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s worth thinking about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So today a friend drew my attention to this little game of Polygons. It&#8217;s cute. There are happy squares and triangles. And apathetic squares and triangles. And sad squares and triangles. And the point is to teach us about how &#8230; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/2014\/12\/08\/how-homogeneity-happens\/\">Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1710,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9140,9130,9148,9154],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-classroom-games","category-game-criticism","category-games-as-art","category-social-justice"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6XN03-g3","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1710"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/995\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/playing-at-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}