56: You Got Your Race In My Videogame

theCardinal

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Ignorance is bliss and we as gamers like to ignore issues of race in games so that we might blissfully enjoy the game itself, free of such concerns.
 

Lara Crigger

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Jul 11, 2006
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TheMonkeysAteMySoul said:
longest run on sentence ever
I'd be curious to read some of your sources for that information. Could you cite a study that claims black people specifically have faster reflexes than white people and thus require more food? Or that 'asian' eyes are better at keeping particulates out of the cornea? Seems like that information would be readily available if true, but I've never heard any of that before.
 

shihku7

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Yadam,

I looked up the Wilson book on Amazon.com. It was published in 1980. Are you sure it's as relevant as you think it is, 26 years later? 26 years ago, 30% of black males weren't in jail, going to jail, or have been in jail. 26 years ago, I don't think 25% of Ivy League students were of Chinese background. 26 years ago, there were a lot more liberals in America than there are now, and our welfare system was much larger. Things have changed quite a bit, because society has changed quite a bit.
 

FunkyJ

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I think one of the main reasons why race isn't brought up in video game analysis too musch is because it's yet another tool people like Jack Thompson and all the US Senators who are introducing legislation against games can use against us.

They already attack our hobby for violence and sex, when it's absolutely the same as in other medium, so adding race into the equation just complicates it further.

And you can't tell me that the race problem has been solved in other media. Movies and television still don't deal with Asian people very well, and let's not begin to talk about Muslims. Anyone who watches MTV will have a very twisted view of who black women are. Racial profiling is becoming increasingly prevelant on TV and in newspapers.

Until race is addressed and criticised and recognised in the more popular media, why should it be any different in the world of gaming?
 

Pat M.

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FunkyJ said:
I think one of the main reasons why race isn't brought up in video game analysis too musch is because it's yet another tool people like Jack Thompson and all the US Senators who are introducing legislation against games can use against us.

They already attack our hobby for violence and sex, when it's absolutely the same as in other medium, so adding race into the equation just complicates it further.

And you can't tell me that the race problem has been solved in other media. Movies and television still don't deal with Asian people very well, and let's not begin to talk about Muslims. Anyone who watches MTV will have a very twisted view of who black women are. Racial profiling is becoming increasingly prevelant on TV and in newspapers.

Until race is addressed and criticised and recognised in the more popular media, why should it be any different in the world of gaming?
I'm not so sure about that. The ability of a medium to handle provocative themes like race, class, and sexuality are an indicator of a maturing medium.@I wouldn't say that the "the race problem has been solved" in film, but we trust that film can handle themes like race. Sure, a game that handles sex, violence, and race immaturely would be held up as an example of bad video games, but a game that can begin an insightful conversation about race would, on the other hand, certainly build the medium's credit as a legitimate forum for artistic expression - and thus, protected speech.
 

Yadam Siegfried

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Jul 12, 2006
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shihku7 said:
Yadam,

I looked up the Wilson book on Amazon.com. It was published in 1980. Are you sure it's as relevant as you think it is, 26 years later? 26 years ago, 30% of black males weren't in jail, going to jail, or have been in jail. 26 years ago, I don't think 25% of Ivy League students were of Chinese background. 26 years ago, there were a lot more liberals in America than there are now, and our welfare system was much larger. Things have changed quite a bit, because society has changed quite a bit.
Okaaaaay, try: Where We Stand: Class Matters by bell hooks.
 

Yadam Siegfried

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bob_arctor said:
Um. You haven't been to the UK then have you? Clueless rich white guy is one of the national stereotypes.

Sorry I just posted that while my mind was on it. I am about to print the rest of the responses, can't stand reading them all on a CRT monitor.

So the guy on CSS was actually being serious? I thought it was a joke. Some black guy just being himself? I guess it is kind of funny, as it's hard to take someone who says "c-walk" seriously. But that's not to do with race specifically; more to do with culture, as a lot of white kids talk like that as well. I think black people who are not part of that culture would find it funny as well.
Bob- I was taking a sociological look at the in-game aspects of WoW, and you came back with a broad generalization about the income levels of people playing the game and how fast their internet connection was. That has nothing to do with what anyone was talking about in this thread. I said there could be a generalization made about their lesiure time, but that has nothing to do with income level.
 

Yadam Siegfried

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Pat M. said:
FunkyJ said:
I think one of the main reasons why race isn't brought up in video game analysis too musch is because it's yet another tool people like Jack Thompson and all the US Senators who are introducing legislation against games can use against us.

They already attack our hobby for violence and sex, when it's absolutely the same as in other medium, so adding race into the equation just complicates it further.

And you can't tell me that the race problem has been solved in other media. Movies and television still don't deal with Asian people very well, and let's not begin to talk about Muslims. Anyone who watches MTV will have a very twisted view of who black women are. Racial profiling is becoming increasingly prevelant on TV and in newspapers.

Until race is addressed and criticised and recognised in the more popular media, why should it be any different in the world of gaming?
I'm not so sure about that. The ability of a medium to handle provocative themes like race, class, and sexuality are an indicator of a maturing medium.@I wouldn't say that the "the race problem has been solved" in film, but we trust that film can handle themes like race. Sure, a game that handles sex, violence, and race immaturely would be held up as an example of bad video games, but a game that can begin an insightful conversation about race would, on the other hand, certainly build the medium's credit as a legitimate forum for artistic expression - and thus, protected speech.
I have to agree with Pat here, and I also have to point out that racial profiling is decreasingly prevelant on TV and in movies. Look at the Mind of Mencia. That show is built on stereotypes and racially charged jokes. Yet when I look at the studio audience, I see people of every ethnicity laughing at it. I don't think you would have seen anything like that 30-40 years ago.
 

Russ Pitts

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May 1, 2006
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I'd be very careful about judging the state of race relations (or anything really) based on something you see on a TV show. Even the studio audiences are hand-picked by producers with agendas. If I were to attempt to judge the current state of race relations in the US based on TV, I'd probably have a pretty rosy poicture of where we all stand these days. But I live in the South, and all I have to do is go outside and walk around a bit to know that's not true.
 

Pat M.

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Jul 11, 2006
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fun fact: carlos mencia isn't really mexican.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_of_Mencia
 

Yadam Siegfried

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Jul 12, 2006
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Fletcher said:
I'd be very careful about judging the state of race relations (or anything really) based on something you see on a TV show. Even the studio audiences are hand-picked by producers with agendas. If I were to attempt to judge the current state of race relations in the US based on TV, I'd probably have a pretty rosy poicture of where we all stand these days. But I live in the South, and all I have to do is go outside and walk around a bit to know that's not true.
I'd be very careful about judging the state of race relations based on your personal experience.
 

Russ Pitts

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May 1, 2006
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Yadam Siegfried said:
I'd be very careful about judging the state of race relations based on your personal experience.
I would agree. I believe we all carry an inherent bias which colors our perceptions of any situation. My point with television, however, is that the bias is intentionally manufactured by parties with their own agendas, which makes it much more dangerous. Why is the audience multi-cultural? Well, it's possible that someone picked a random sample of humanity, and that random sample just happened to be of mixed race. Having worked in television, however, I can assure you that it probably didn't go down that way.
 

Pat M.

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Jul 11, 2006
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Yadam Siegfried said:
Pat M. said:
fun fact: carlos mencia isn't really mexican.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_of_Mencia
Misleading. He is 1/2 Mexican.
Oops, that was my bad. Though I'm skeptical of his stage name change. If you've ever seen his material, it seems largely forced and...well...bad. But the talent of Mr. Holness is kind of a side topic.

By the way, I accidentally clicked "report" instead of "quote" on Yad's post. Heh.

Keep them comments coming!
 

Pat M.

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Yadam Siegfried said:
Okaaaaay, try: Where We Stand: Class Matters by bell hooks.
From the Amazon.com Editorial Reviews said:
From Library Journal
This incisive examination of class is rooted in cultural critic hooks's (All About Love) personal experience, political commitment, and social theory, which links gender, race, and class. Starting with her working-class childhood, the author illustrates how everyday interactions reproduce class hierarchy while simultaneously denying its existence. Because she sustains an unflinching gaze on both her own personal motivations and on persistent social structures, hooks provides a valuable framework for discussing such difficult and unexplored areas as greed, the quest to live simply, the ruling-class co-optation of youth through popular culture, and real estate speculation as an instrument of racism. Although the reading level and the price are both steep, this title is highly recommended for most public libraries and academic social science collections.DPaula R. Dempsey, DePaul Univ. Lib., Chicago
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
I think it's funny that you bring bell hooks into a discussion where you're trying to establish that class is MORE IMPORTANT than race. No one here, I think, disagrees with the title of the work you're referring to - that is, that "Class Matters" - but I don't think that her thesis, from what I can tell from the book summaries and editorial reviews, as well as bell hooks' history as a highly race-related artist and academic, quite coincides with your point. Rather, it looks like hooks is bringing in the perspective of class to illuminate how it reinforces racism, rather than contend that it's somehow more important that race, which was your claim from the beginning.
 

shihku7

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Aug 2, 2006
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To me, Mind of Mencia and the Chappele Show indicate one thing: people want to make fun of people's race, but they feel too guilty to let a white person do it. So, they hire a Mexican or black person to do it instead.

There's a huge (mostly white, middle class) market out there for racist humor, and Mencia and Chappele fill it. Dave Chappele cancelled his own show after seeing it as too racist, from what I gathered from the TIME article on him.

Racist humor is very indicative of how much race still matters in our society.
1) There's not a single popular white comedian who has a show as racist as the Chappele/Mencia shows. Why not?

2) These racist shows can't pick on any particular race, but must spread it out for some bizarre measure of "fairness". Imagine if Mencia's show was entirely about making fun of black people, and didn't make fun of any other group. Ever. Such a show would never be created, and yet we're supposed to believe that racial humor is OK. If it's so OK, why are there so many self-imposed limits on it?