Thread by @rebeccafalcon18, Hey fellow white crossword constructors! As you do the anti-racist work you [...]

Hey fellow white crossword constructors! As you do the anti-racist work you should be doing - have you been adding to your word lists? Updating how you clue answers?

It's been a while since I've done a crossword thread, but I've written a lot about the lack of diversity in puzzles with a focus on sexism and it seems long past time to discuss racism in puzzles.

There are more important things that have to be done to rectify the damage of our incredibly racist world- but crossword puzzles, like so many art forms, have been devaluing Black people by ignoring them.

Racism in the crossword world shows up in many ways. We see the blatant use of racist terms alarmingly often and an overwhelmingly white pool of constructors getting published by overwhelmingly white editors. Black voices in this world are especially underrepresented.

While these are important issues that must be addressed - I want to bring up the overwhelmingly white content of puzzles.

We are told that the answers in a puzzle should be general knowledge and relevant - most puzzles today are saying that which is relevant is white.

Before going further - just a note that I am white and I'm not sitting here thinking putting Black names into a grid is going to solve racism. This thread is for other white constructors and editors - take a look at your word lists and grids and clues - there's work to be done

Also worth noting that I focused on #nytxw and current editorship as they have the most solvers, and thanks to xwordinfo the easiest database to search - but this problem exists in many outlets

This thread started when I became curious about how DAVIS has been clued - again this is the Times under the current editor

Jefferson DAVIS 3/15
Nancy DAVIS Reagan 3/15

Sammy DAVIS Jr 1/15
Gen. Benjamin DAVIS 1/15

Angela DAVIS 0/15
Viola DAVIS 0/15

Now I'm not saying anyone in particular is racist, but if as recently as 2016 Jefferson Davis was deemed more relevant and worthy of attention in a puzzle than ANGELA DAVIS there's a problem. Worth noting that DAVIS has not been clued for a Black person since 2001.

After seeing signs at protests, I searched AUDRE LORDE.

AUDRE has never appeared in a NYT puzzle - or any other that I can find.

I don't see this as a letter problem because change any one letter in AUDRE and you get plenty of hits - ANDRE/AUTRE/AUDIE/AUDRA

Now I understand that not everyone learns about Audre Lorde and that maybe recent protest signs were their first experience of her - so let's break down someone who everyone - even in the whitest public schools - learns about:

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR

Here's how many times any part of MLK's name has been clued for him:

MARTIN 0/6
LUTHER 1/5
KING 2/26 (and not since '94)

You might be thinking, that since KING is a common noun, this is simply a preference of common nouns to proper ones. So I figured I'd check against a white person with a common noun name - and I thought of Bill GATES

Number of times GATES has been clued for Bill? 10/25

I did not go out of my way to find examples - these were people who popped into my head - there are endless examples of this. And it isn't just names - cluing and spelling could have it's own separate thread.

But let's take durag/dorag.

As Sandra E. Garcia put it in this article https://nyti.ms/2GgeRzj

"Merriam-Webster renders it as “do-rag,” observing that it is a rag used to protect a hairdo. On the other hand, anyone who has ever worn a durag spells it durag."

In the puzzle:
DORAG 21
DURAG 0

The Durag, Explained

It’s spelled durag. The end.

https://nyti.ms/2GgeRzj

Beyond the specific examples, I decided to look at numbers, to make sure this wasn't just me inventing a problem. So I looked at every puzzle in the Times June 1 - 25 of this year.

I made a list of all names in the puzzles based on how they were clued. Of the 164 names, 37 were people of color, 20 of which were Black. 127 names were of white people. The average number of white people in a puzzle: 5.08. Average number of Black people in a puzzle: 0.8.

There were no Black people as answers in 11 of the 25 puzzles I looked at. 6 puzzles had no people of color at all.

Can you guess how many puzzles had no white people? 0

This thread could be much longer - and include so much more than just what appears in the grid - because much like the sexism discussion, racism exists in every single level from themes, to answers, to clues, to constructors and editors - it's pervasive.

But names in the grid are important - going back to the idea of relevancy. If you publish puzzle after puzzle excluding Black people you are making the statement that they are unimportant or irrelevant. You are saying that their lives and accomplishments do not matter.

This exclusion, when coupled with the abundance of white people - including really terrible ones - emphasizes the priorities of the same racist system that sees the state-sanctioned murder of Black people, among other horrific discriminatory practices.

Crosswords are not alone in this - discrimination happens across industries - and not just against Black people. You'll notice that while there were 20 Black people there were only 17 of any other race- combined. Really every single marginalized group is ignored.

The goal has to be to stop treating men who are straight, cis, wealthy, christian, & white as if they are the ideal and stop treating as less than anyone who falls outside of that.

Every industry, every art, every state is failing that.

Latest Threads Unrolled: