They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies That Raised Us

by Prachi Gupta

When the British colonized India, they co-opted this ancient game into Snakes and Ladders and stripped it of its spiritual mission, modifying it to teach what Against Meritocracy author Jo Littler calls “Christian-capitalist moral instruction.” In the British game, ascension no longer meant enlightenment; instead, it signified rising to affluence through punctuality, perseverance, and opportunism. One had to overcome obstacles such as robbery, poverty, and illness, casting one’s inability to produce capital as badness. The game later reached America, where the Milton Bradley Company named it Chutes and Ladders to adapt it for children. The board-game characters remained white until 1974, when Black children were told that they, too, now had a chance to climb the ladder to attain wealth and fame. It was around this time that America advertised itself as a place where people like us could advance, unencumbered. In the forgotten history of this influential board game, I recognize the arc of my own obscured cultural past. I see a deep self-knowledge abandoned and forgotten, replaced with a story that asserts the power of the very people who ensured our history’s erasure, then marketed it back to us as our truth.