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Chalk up another victory in the battle against racism. Hasbro has officially banned all slurs and offensive racial terms from Scrabble.
While the company can’t control which words people play at home, it can do it at Scrabble tournaments. So, with the cooperation of the North American Scrabble Players Association, that’s exactly what it’s done, Hasbro announced Wednesday. "I thought to myself, 'Why haven’t we done this already?'" says Scrabble Players CEO John Chew.
“I have felt for a long time that there are some words in our lexicon that we hang onto in the mistaken belief that our spelling them with tiles on a board strips them of their power to cause harm," Chew said.
“It is not hard to unlearn 238 words (including inflections), none of which are high-probability, and all of which have offensive meanings that are easy to remember."
Some fans of the games we're just as shocked this was ever allowed in the first place.
Actually, the association tried to do it in 2009, but the idea was dropped when members couldn’t agree on whether words like “poo” and “fart” were offensive.
Hasbro isn't stopping at just Scrabble. A spokesperson for Hasbro told The New York Times a change would be made on a broader scale “to make clear that slurs are not permissible in any form of the game.”
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