Expert Says Blaming Videogames for Violence is Racist

[ServebotFrank]

Racism? Really? I mean I'm dead set against blaming video games for things, but do we really need to go there?

Well I guess he's trying to say (I'm just guessing what he means so don't crucify me) is that people are deploying their racist little views by blaming video games on everything. Much how in the past people would just carelessly blame blacks for crimes. By finding a scapegoat different from others is what he means by "racist."

 

[lewiswhitling]

don't think i've ever heard any thing so ridiculous as what this person is saying... being racist is the act of making assumptions about how people behave, on the basis of a strand of genetics that has nothing to do with behaviour. It has nothing to do with prejudice about video games.

The reason people dont raise the issue of video games in crap areas of town is simply that the actual cause of violent behaviour is far more obvious to the casual observer - i.e. drugs, poverty etc.

When talking about affluent areas that are suddenly beset by a mass shooting, people don't have these ready explanations, and so will look towards other seemingly plausible causes - like the fact that they didnt attend church regularly, or played computer games, or listened to a certain kind of music, or were of a particular religion. Their reasons for making these connections comes from a lack of understand of the thing in question - ignorant, but def not racist.

 

[KirbyKrackle]

That's a lot of words.

Please tell me at what points you feel I distorted your argument, and I will explain my reasoning for anything you find objectionable. However, I cannot address a blanket accusation that covers multiple lengthy posts. Sorry.

"Out of 10 kids who shoot up a school, let's say 3 of them own a console." Where did you get this statistic from? I'm sure you didn't just make it up, after all. And tell me, where are you getting the statistics for your "News organizations don't place videogames to blame because these kids don't have video game consoles"? I mean, since you believe in well-founded arguments, obviously not out of your butt, right? I would just like to advise you that you seem to be using an out-of-date source. According to Pew, "Fully 99% of boys and 94% of girls report playing video games" and "86% of teens play on a console like the Xbox, PlayStation, or Wii" and that's from 2008. I'd be curious to know what source you're using for your statistics because it's not reflecting reality.

"Me saying that lower class people are more poorer than middle class people is not classist. That's common fucking sense." Oh don't worry, that's not why I think you're classist. It's the part where you say things like "'Good Middle Class White people' don't do that thing, because they generally are living in the middle class" and "Crime forms in poor areas" that make me think you're classist. You tend to take a very deterministic, essentialist, and reductive tone when discussing class, and you tend to make a lot of assumptions.

"Now if 73% of Americans are white, how much more often are you going to see them shoot up a school? If 12% are Black, how often are you going to see them shoot up a school?" I'm not sure what you're trying to argue here. Also, your little history lesson is all for naught if there are shootings that occur in inner city areas of other countries where segregation never took place. And there are. There really doesn't seem to be a link between segregation and school shootings. I mean, it's a nice hypothesis and all, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't seem to accurately reflect the evidence.

I'm sorry, but I still believe that Ferguson is correct when he mentions that when a white person commits an act of mass violence, such as a school shooting, people are more likely to cast about for a scapegoat while if a member of a minority group does it, people are far more likely to dismiss the act as something that minorities do because they're minorities, and that, yes, this attitude is racist.

 

[Rack]

The reason people dont raise the issue of video games in crap areas of town is simply that the actual cause of violent behaviour is far more obvious to the casual observer - i.e. drugs, poverty etc.

That's where I went with this too, are there any examples of a white kid in a depressed area doing something like this and the press going "videogames"?

 

[Atheist.]

Racism? Really? We're going there?

That is stupid.

A clinical psychologist doesn't know the difference between racism and prejudice? Sigh.

Did either of you even read the post?

"I know it's a little controversial to say but there's a certain type of racism in place with these killings," he told Forbes. "When shootings happen in an inner city in minority-populated schools, videogames are never brought up. But when these things happen in white majority schools and in the suburbs, people start to freak out and videogames are inevitably blamed. I think that there's a certain element of racism or ignorance here."

Reading the original post... usually a good idea.

Indeed I did. I never said the person didn't have valid points, rather that he/she didn't use proper wording. The post is racist in itself. Assuming that minority populated schools take up the majority of shootings because of race, is racist. The reason this happens is not related to race, it is related to poverty levels in a given area. The psychologist is wrong. People look for easy justifications. In a poverty struck region, it's easy for people to blame it on something so simple. When you go to a "perfect" family/community, you have to find something more abstract to attack. If anything it's reverse racism. It gives the non-minorities a scapegoat.

 

[punipunipyo]

Guns don't kill people, people don't kill people, sneakers do!~

 

[Strazdas]

i wouldnt go as far as call it racism, however seeing as the specialist is from america, and knowing that soon coughing in public is going to become racistic there since pretty much everything else already is he can get away with that.
other than that he makes good point. its just the usual though. they blamed music, television, movies, now they blame games. there was even times when Christians blamed books for source of evil. see how that turned out. (Islam still does though, probably the only religion denying people the right to read what they want)

 

[Pyramid Head]

I agree with what is said here, but i have a question:

Where in Modern Warfare 2 were you taught how to make bombs? Didn't the Oslo killer use the old Timmothy McVeigh bomb?

 

[Richardplex]

From reading the valid points from both sides of the argument about whether or not it is racist, I'm going to continue being comfy on my fence and say that while it can be justified as racism, a better and more correct turn would be double standard. But I've literally only just heard of the word(s), and wikipedia'd them, so the probability of me misinterpretting double standard is pretty significant, but from how I understand it, it is double standard that correctly describes what he is describing.

I agree with what is said here, but i have a question:

Where in Modern Warfare 2 were you taught how to make bombs? Didn't the Oslo killer use the old Timmothy McVeigh bomb?

I believe the training was for the shooting, not the bombing. Learning to shoot and crouch and quick scope and noob tube and commando-tac-knife and all that jazz.

 

[Kargathia]

I'm sorry, but I still believe that Ferguson is correct when he mentions that when a white person commits an act of mass violence, such as a school shooting, people are more likely to cast about for a scapegoat while if a member of a minority group does it, people are far more likely to dismiss the act as something that minorities do because they're minorities, and that, yes, this attitude is racist.

Isn't it exactly the same thing in the end? It just appears that when picking scapegoats being black and poor is preferred to playing videogames.

It's both good ol' bigotry - but I'm not entirely sure you can call it racist when for once the bigots don't have the opportunity to vent their racism.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

There certainly is a double standard in the media. When an Arabic person perpetrates an act of terrorism, everyone jumps on Islam's tits. When a white person commits a violent act of similar magnitude, they immediately attack video games. I guess they'd rather demonize games than Christian Conservativism.

Probably because if they attacked the Christian faith then there would be massive protesting plus Christianity has been around for ages much longer than video games and i'm pretty sure they know it's easy to attack us because they know we won't have world wide mass protests like the Christian religion would.

Captcha: Donkey's Years.

 

[likalaruku]

All this time, I never knew video games were a race.

Video games are like action/horror movies, guns & religion; only deadly in the hands of the ignorant & the insane, which unfortunately there is an abundance of.

 

[Balvale]

The article makes assumptions. He MAY have been had specific cases if he listed them, but as it stands he's just made blanket statements.

"Basically, when a white kid murders people, people think: "it must be video games because middle-class white kids couldn't possibly murder people like those dirty black kids."

But when someone of another race does it, no one cares. No one blames gang violence in Detroit on video games. Even if the kids in the gang DO play video games, the explanation is clear: they did it because they're not white."


That's a mighty big assumption you're making there. And, granted, if you heard someone using those specific words in the latter two sentences, they would be racist. As it stands you've created a hypothetical state of affairs. You could give examples of your point and they would only be true to those examples.

Here's an article that states video games may be more influential on black children than white. If the blanket statements were true, I probably would not have found it.

http://jcpes.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/video-games-and-children-of-color-there-is-more-than-one-compelling-interest-at-stake/

I see no racism here.

 

[DeathWyrmNexus]

You hear that, Fox? You're racist!

Seriously though, how does that make any logical sense? He says himself 95 percent of boys have played violent videogames, and I'm pretty sure that would be regardless of color of skin or country of origin, so someone explain to me how this makes sense in his mind....

A brown person commits a terrorist act, it is religion. A white dude does it... It is video games.

It is a different standard of blame for different tones of skin, despite that video games are overarching to the point where it is abnormal to not play them, not the inverse.

I see the point
"Assumed" Reasons for shooting by race
Middle Eastern = "Terrorism
African American ="Gang/Drug Related"
Caucasian = "Video Games"
Japanese = "Whaling" or "Bad sushi"


Orc = "Griefing noob Gnome mage"

Or this... Fucking Gnomes, messing up the neighborhood. However, Middle Eastern should read Islam instead of terrorism since terrorism is what they are doing not the reason.

 

[Pyramid Head]

From reading the valid points from both sides of the argument about whether or not it is racist, I'm going to continue being comfy on my fence and say that while it can be justified as racism, a better and more correct turn would be double standard. But I've literally only just heard of the word(s), and wikipedia'd them, so the probability of me misinterpretting double standard is pretty significant, but from how I understand it, it is double standard that correctly describes what he is describing.

I agree with what is said here, but i have a question:

Where in Modern Warfare 2 were you taught how to make bombs? Didn't the Oslo killer use the old Timmothy McVeigh bomb?

I believe the training was for the shooting, not the bombing. Learning to shoot and crouch and quick scope and noob tube and commando-tac-knife and all that jazz.

If all of his training was based on video games, then how did he learn to reload? Video games never show the characters ejecting the spent clip, they always just reload like the magazine vanished into the fucking ether.

 

[Richardplex]

From reading the valid points from both sides of the argument about whether or not it is racist, I'm going to continue being comfy on my fence and say that while it can be justified as racism, a better and more correct turn would be double standard. But I've literally only just heard of the word(s), and wikipedia'd them, so the probability of me misinterpretting double standard is pretty significant, but from how I understand it, it is double standard that correctly describes what he is describing.

I agree with what is said here, but i have a question:

Where in Modern Warfare 2 were you taught how to make bombs? Didn't the Oslo killer use the old Timmothy McVeigh bomb?

I believe the training was for the shooting, not the bombing. Learning to shoot and crouch and quick scope and noob tube and commando-tac-knife and all that jazz.

If all of his training was based on video games, then how did he learn to reload? Video games never show the characters ejecting the spent clip, they always just reload like the magazine vanished into the fucking ether.

They do actually, it's just difficult to see if you don't know what your looking for. They press a button that releases the clip, and it just drops onto the floor. Don't ask how the ammo in that magazine gets added to your remaining bullets though.

 

[Tdc2182]

Please tell me at what points you feel I distorted your argument, and I will explain my reasoning for anything you find objectionable. However, I cannot address a blanket accusation that covers multiple lengthy posts. Sorry.

Alright then.

Ah, so it's not racist to ignore shootings in schools that aren't predominantly white because minority students are violent gang members with psychological problems so it's to be expected and of course white people are automatically more peaceful and mentally well-adjusted, especially if they're middle class. And these unfounded claims of yours are not racist (and classist). I see. Have fun with that.

Because I never said that school shootings were ignored in innercity schools. I said that the motives are nearly always clear.
I have also explained why this is so on multiple occasions. I said that these kids were more likely to be involved in gang activity. I said a "lesson about psychology", and then proceeded to state how people with poorer living standards are going to most likely be forced into worse situations then people with better living situations. Obviously.
Middleclass people are more often then not going to have more peaceful situations, especially when they are living in predominantly peaceful suburbs as opposed to poor neighborhoods in innercity places, which are often very bad areas. Them being white has nothing to do with it. You threw that one in there yourself.

Now I have explained this to you multiple times. Stop asking.

"Out of 10 kids who shoot up a school, let's say 3 of them own a console." Where did you get this statistic from? I'm sure you didn't just make it up, after all. And tell me, where are you getting the statistics for your "News organizations don't place videogames to blame because these kids don't have video game consoles"?

Because you are assuming that every single child in the world owns a videogame console. Contrary to popular belief, This is not true.

There was nothing stating how many kids have a console, just percentage of people who own one including adults.

So I settled with 3 out of 10 kids. Seems a fair enough number.

I mean, since you believe in well-founded arguments, obviously not out of your butt, right? I would just like to advise you that you seem to be using an out-of-date source. According to Pew, "Fully 99% of boys and 94% of girls report playing video games" and "86% of teens play on a console like the Xbox, PlayStation, or Wii" and that's from 2008. I'd be curious to know what source you're using for your statistics because it's not reflecting reality.

That is saying from kids who have played on consoles, not own one. Not to mention that the Wii outsells the PS3 and Xbox combined nearly 3 to 1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3

Very much doubt that they'd try to say Wii gaming makes people violent.

"Me saying that lower class people are more poorer than middle class people is not classist. That's common fucking sense." Oh don't worry, that's not why I think you're classist. It's the part where you say things like "'Good Middle Class White people' don't do that thing, because they generally are living in the middle class" and "Crime forms in poor areas" that make me think you're classist. You tend to take a very deterministic, essentialist, and reductive tone when discussing class, and you tend to make a lot of assumptions.

If you keep trying to play me off as racist/prejudiced/classist, whatever, this conversation is over. It's very much getting on my nerves.

I have explained to you Multiple times the reasoning behind why I am saying this, and how I was talking about innercity lower class kids primarily tend to be more culturally diverse. That was the point of the little segregation talk.

It really just seems to me like you are picking out peices of my argument and ignoring the rest of what I have said. I'm saying things that are purely common sense, yet you expect me to back everything up? No, it is on you to provide me with counter information.

"Now if 73% of Americans are white, how much more often are you going to see them shoot up a school? If 12% are Black, how often are you going to see them shoot up a school?" I'm not sure what you're trying to argue here. Also, your little history lesson is all for naught if there are shootings that occur in inner city areas of other countries where segregation never took place. And there are. There really doesn't seem to be a link between segregation and school shootings. I mean, it's a nice hypothesis and all, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't seem to accurately reflect the evidence.

Then show me instances of shootings from other countries involving a minority that haven't been blamed on videogames.

Keep in mind that many of these areas (Italy comes to mind) aren't heavily videogame oriented. Americans make up the majority of on-line gaming along with Japan.

And I see more reports coming in from Japan about videogames being linked to violence more than any other country. Are you telling me they are ignored too?

I'm sorry, but I still believe that Ferguson is correct when he mentions that when a white person commits an act of mass violence, such as a school shooting, people are more likely to cast about for a scapegoat while if a member of a minority group does it, people are far more likely to dismiss the act as something that minorities do because they're minorities, and that, yes, this attitude is racist.

Well, no shit that attitude is racist. I'm just saying that that doesn't happen, and it's wishful thinking to think that all these idiot newscasters are all just deep down racists.

My argument has been this entire time that White people simply outnumber every other race in this country (America). You are no doubt going to see more white kids committing acts of violence.

Kids of different races shooting up schools? I looked through the internet a good while and only found one story of an African American kids shooting up a school. 3 people were hurt, no one was killed.

That's a 30 second segment on the nightime news, nothing more.

Feel free to show me instances of minority kids shooting up schools if you don't believe me.

Seeing how you were the one who brought up innercity shootings, I merely informed you that more organized crime forms in innercity places, leading the motives to be clear.

Now, see if you can counter this without calling me a racist.

 

[renegade7]

You say that these things are random and unstoppable.

FALSE! FALSE! FALSE!

Incidents like this DO NOT happen in a vacuum. These are disturbed individuals who have spent a great deal of time disturbed and will have shown warning signs. It's just that oftentimes, people seem to be unable or unwilling to read the signs and take appropriate action.

 

[Tiscolfo]

Racism? Really? We're going there?

That is stupid.

TL;DR for you?