Although it has been almost 70 years since the Brown v. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, the segregation index studied by Stanford and USC reveals that “racial/ethnic and economic school segregation between schools, within the same school districts, has also increased over the past three decades in large districts” (Ann Owens). Between 1991 and 2020, White-Asian segregation doubled, White-Black segregation increased by 35%, and White-Hispanic segregation also increased among large school districts. Our game Pickle was inspired by the problems Latin Americans and undocumented
immigrants face in the US and specifically, California. California is the most segregated state for Latinos, where 58% of Latinos attend intensely segregated schools. A typical Latino student attends a school with only around 15% white classmates. “In the context of institutional forms of discrimination, more than three in ten Latinos report having personally experienced discrimination because they are Latino when it comes to applying for jobs (33%), being paid equally or considered for promotion (32%), or when trying to rent a room or apartment or buy a house (31%)” (Todd Datz, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health).  These unsettling findings underscore the urgent need for effective interventions that address the complex challenges posed by racial and ethnic segregation, as well as the systemic discrimination that perpetuates such disparities.