Arcade cowboy game removed as offensive to Native Americans
AN ARCADE has agreed to remove a “cowboys and Indians” game after a woman visiting the seaside town Weston-super-mare complained that it was “extremely racist”.
Unlike the popular children’s playground game, the arcade attraction offered no opportunity to play as a Native American.
Players sit on a plastic horse firing at caricatures of topless, tiptoeing “Indians” in leggings and moccasins with feathered headbands.
Emily Crossing, 30, wrote to officials at the Grand Pier in Weston-supermare, Somerset, after seeing the retro arcade game during a visit.
The adult social care worker from Oxford said that she told them the game was “outdated” and “extremely racist”.
Ms Crossing said she received a response arguing that the game was a “legacy piece”, that nobody else had complained and that it was up to parents to decide if children should play it.
However, when contacted this week a spokesman said that the game had been removed.
Ms Crossing said: “It’s clearly racist. It’s absolutely shocking.
“Mum and I both just had our mouths open when we first saw it – we were in absolute shock. I can’t believe the managers have no idea about cultural appropriation.
“This is 2022 – that game is racist whether you choose to play it or not. It’s outdated and extremely shocking,” she added.
She initially contacted the company running the arcade on May 29, and again a month later after receiving no reply. Ms Crossing then received the response which, she says, claimed it was a legacy item that survived from when the company bought the pier.
However, at some point between July 12 and 21, the game was removed.
Amother has complained that an arcade game of Cowboys and Indians on the grand pier at Weston-super-mare was racist. One can see her point. The object for a child sitting on a toy horse was to shoot Indians (Native Americans as we have learnt to call them) as they popped up. It was an old arcade installation, but we don’t let children play other games of genocide. Yet this was not how children organised games of Cowboys and Indians when they were still allowed to play with cap-guns in the open air. In those days they were just as likely to take on the role of Indians, ambushing the cowboys and shooting arrows (hopefully fitted with rubber suckers) at them. Now even to don a feather headdress to be a Cherokee brings charges of cultural appropriation for something that was only meant as appreciation.