Unfairness good---Losing a monopoly on power in debate is good---your ballot serves as a teachable moment.

Undergraduate students often enter our classrooms convinced that the battles of the Civil Rights Era solved the issue of race in America. They are generally unacquainted with the long history of race in the United States and almost universally underestimate the structural forces which carry racial disparities into their new century. As sociologists and teachers, it is our responsibility to tell that story and explain those forces. Our new challenge is: How do we teach students the extent of racism in America when, from their point of view, the problem of the color-line has been solved? One option is to use a game. Sociologists have used games or simulations to spark the sociological imagination (Dorn, 1989; Jessup, 2001; Fisher 2008), to stimulate critical thinking (Pence 2009), and to introduce social stratification (Ender, 2004; Waldner & Kinney, 1999). When students from relatively privileged backgrounds “experience” a temporary bout of unfairness in a simulated game, it creates the opportunity to change their perspective (Coghlan & Huggins, 2004; Haddad & Lieberman, 2002). The injustice of the situation, if directly connected to broader theory, can lessen a student’s social distance from marginalized groups. A game may help a student to understand some of the previously inexplicable attitudes and behaviors of actors on either side of a power rela- tionship. Also, as this paper demonstrates, a properly constructed simulation can give the student a sense of the structural nature and lasting legacy of racial discrimination—a fuller sense of the “history and biography” of race in the United States (Mills, 1959). The great advantage of a game is that it is a completely controlled environment—there are no unexplained variables. In fairness to all the players, all rules are explicitly stated at the outset of game play and apply to all players equally (Waldner & Kinney, 1999). Ordinarily, in a competitive game this assumption of fairness supports an ideology of individualism. However, a pedagogical game is concerned with learning, not winning. In order to disentangle a complicated issue, the instructor may purposefully introduce inequality into an otherwise “just” world. Again, because all rules are explicit (even unfair ones), the problem exists in the game without confounding effects. This simplification allows students to easily focus on the nature and development of the problem. By extension, it is hoped that the game encourages students to reassess similar problems in the real world. Use of Pedagogical Games Dorn (1989) identifies multiple criteria for games or simulations to be effective in the classroom as pedagogical tools. He argues the games must: reflect reality; motivate students through "experience"; develop awareness of personal values through moral and ethical implications of the game; connect abstract concepts with concrete experiences; create a shared experience from which the students can draw; offer a form of debriefing to both address emotional issues and to connect theory to experiences. In the technique I describe below, I try to incorporate these ideas with Straus’ (1986) emphasis on simplicity for in-class games. In teaching and learning, the goal of simulation is the “experience” itself. Jessup (2001) argues that simulation should be the “experiential anchor for the elaboration of conceptual tools” (p.108). Therefore, this game is created to offer a chance for relatively privileged students to experience the unfairness of structural inequality. After temporary exposure to an analog of racial discrimination, students with no prior familiarity of racial discrimination will have a deeper understanding of the effects of racism on many levels. Pedagogical games are used to challenge our assumptions about how the world works (Waldner & Kinney, 1999). For example, the basic assumption of competitive games is fairness. This assumes that the world is fair (i.e., a meritocracy) and that individual effort or talent is the main factor in success (i.e., an ideology of individualism akin to Ross’ (1977) fundamental attribution error). In competitive games therefore, groups are treated equally and the best players win. But a pedagogical game may challenge the assumption of fairness directly by having structural inequality built into the game. The experience of a good player losing an unfair game creates cognitive dissonance—that cognitive dissonance is our teaching moment. I assume that students as game players can easily identify games that are “unfair” based on unequal outcomes for equivalent behavior. As a peda gogical tool, I want it to be relatively easy for them to spot the explicit rules which cause the inequality.