A seemingly harmless dice game landed a Brooklyn midwife in hot water following her attempt to organize a game night.
Ellen Christy shared a post on her social media about organizing a monthly “Bunco Club” activity in her neighborhood, which quickly led to a storm of backlash online.
Netizens accused the 30-year-old of disrespecting the Black community and appropriating Black culture.
“The colonizers be colonizing,” commented one social media user.
Ellen Christy’s attempt to organize a dice game night backfired as she was labeled a “colonizer”
Image credits: Ellen Christy / Facebook
The 30-year-old shared a Facebook post in the Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn Community Facebook group.
In the post, she expressed that she was looking for women in the community “to join a Bunco Club,” organized by her every month at her apartment.
Ellen also shared a selfie with a group of five other women sitting on the floor, seemingly from one of those dice game nights.
Notably, every woman in the picture appeared to be white, with no person of color present.
“Hi all – seeking women living in Bedford-Stuyvesant to join a Bunco Club!” Christy, who is white, wrote in the post. “Bunco is a game of rolling dice (think Yahtzee!), no skills required.”
The 30-year-old Jamaica Hospital midwife created the “Bunco Club” to “connect” with women in her community
Image credits: Ellen Christy / Facebook
Image credits: Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn Community / Facebook
“I started this group to connect other women living in Bedstuy.”
She concluded her message by revealing the exact details, including the date and time of the monthly activity.
“We meet monthly to hang out and play. This month’s meeting is Saturday, September 27th at 7PM.”
Bed-Stuy, the community where the hospital worker organized her game night, is predominantly Black and is home to the largest number of Black residents in New York City.
Image credits: Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn Community / Facebook
Given the lack of diversity in her picture, people called the post offensive and accused her of gentrification.
As a result of the mounting backlash, Ellen deleted the post from the group.
“Yikes. Gentrifiers and their defenders coming out of the woodworks…” expressed one user in disapproval of Christy’s post.
Ellen was accused of disrespecting the Black community and appropriating Black culture
Image credits: Google Docs
Image credits: Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn Community / Facebook
Historically, dice games have been around since at least 3,000 BCE, with credible evidence found in places like Greece, Rome, Egypt, and China.
Christy’s Bunco dice game traces its roots to 19th-century England, where it was known as the “eight-dice game.”
It was originally started as a gambling and swindling game and was first imported to San Francisco in 1855. After the Civil War, the game evolved into a popular recreational activity.
Referring to a dice game called Cee-Lo, which is more historically associated with Black neighborhoods like Bed-Stuy, many social media users criticized Ellen for colonial behavior.
“Y’all playing gentrified cee lo?!”
Cee-Lo, a popular Chinese variation of Bunco, was brought to America by Chinese-American laborers and flourished most in Harlem, another Black neighborhood in New York, during the 1970s and 1980s.
Due to mounting backlash and criticism, Christy deleted her original post about the Bed-Stuy game night
Image credits: Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn Community / Facebook
Image credits: Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn Community / Facebook
While the post was quickly removed following online criticism, one member of the group shared a screenshot on September 20.
Calling out Christy’s decision to delete the post, the user Janessa Wilson wrote, “deleting your post, and all of the labor that we did to educate, is colonial violence. so that tracks.”
Netizens were not happy, with many expressing their displeasure over the lack of diversity in the original post.
One user commented, “What non-white person in their right mind would feel safe joining that?!”
Another wrote, “No black or brown members and there is a solicitation for ‘members’ in this Bed Stuy Community Group?”
“Colonizer Cee-Lo Club,” a third expressed.
Image credits: Ellen Christy / Facebook
However, some users defended Ellen, questioning how a simple dice game could be equated with colonial behavior.
“Only in Brooklyn could a dice game become a geopolitical crisis,” wrote one dissenting user.
“The racists in Bed Stuy don’t want white people around them, and they feel comfortable saying it out loud.”
Bunco was originally created as a gambling dice game in England before transforming into a popular recreational activity
Image credits: Amazon
One social media user even drew a parallel to the infamous homicide of a 40-year-old woman named Tamla Horsford, who was mysteriously found deceased after attending a slumber party in Georgia.
Tamla was a Black woman, and the party was organized in 2018 by a white family, leaving her as the only person of color there.
Despite autopsy results revealing abrasions on her body and suspicions of foul play, in 2019, Major Joe Perkins of the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office closed the case due to a lack of evidence.
Image credits: Lea Böhm / Unsplash
Image credits: 11alive / Instagram
The user Senora Hassan wrote, “My mind IMMEDIATELY went to the story of the African American woman who mysteriously d**d while attending a slumber party with her all white friend group… Sometimes you have to read the room…”
Christy has not posted anything in the group since the controversy, nor has she addressed it on her other social media accounts.
“It went from Bed-Stuy do or die to concern over a woman’s Bunco club,” wrote one social media user
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