Suggestions for Talking About Race and Video Games

by Pat M., originally published at Token Minorities

I spent the last few days away from this blog, commenting occasionally and picking a few fights on Internet forums. What makes me far, far more upset than the actual RE5 trailer is the systematic dismissal of this kind of conversation across the ‘net. The best conversation I’ve managed to find on this topic was actually in the Select Button forums, though even they’re prone to a decent amount of idiocy. Even after all this time, reading pages and pages of ignorant garbage makes me feel angry. I suppose that’s a good thing, after all – that I’m not jaded, and that this stuff still motivates me – but it always feels kind of pointless to be angry on a forum. So I thought I’d spend a few days duking it out and see what I came away with, in the hopes that I could come up with a set of general guidelines for race-and-video-game discussions. A long overdue FAQ, if you will, for people to refer to when race issues crop up in generally unprepared communities.

Step 1: Be Open To Discussion

The vast majority of the material people have written in regards to the Resident Evil 5 debacle have been repressive in nature:

“This is stupid.” “You’re seeing things that don’t exist.” “Talking about things like this only makes race issues more prevalent.”

These types of responses are, frankly, immature and counterproductive. Where else in life do we routinely say, “if you ignore it, it’ll go away”? Certainly I can say that, as a person of color, if it were so easy to simply ignore race, I would have done so a long time ago if I had thought that it would make the racial problems go away. But we cannot ignore it. “Ignoring race” is really something only white people get to do – an element of “white privilege”.

CubaLibre at the SB forums posted (in the context of the RE5 discussion) a very succinct and readable explanation of the flaws in the “colorblind” way of thinking, which tends to be at the heart of any attempts to quell discussion:

The problem with this blithe wishful-thinking approach of fighting racism is that no actual fighting is happening. In fact, theoretically it is no different from saying that if we ignore it, it will go away. I’ll admit as much as the next guy that specific, person-to-person racism is, in the modern world, properly stigmatized and marginalized. No pudge-bearing, bull-chested Birmingham city officials are rising out of their swivel chairs and boldly announcing “We ain’t gon let no niggers go to our schools.” People who do say such things are reviled approximately as much as pedophile cannibal rapists. Which, perhaps, is actually overdoing it, but compared to say Jim Crow, I say bravo.

But then, no one is accusing Capcom of subscribing to the Klan newsletter.

Here are the two problems with your/the colorblind theory:

A. The minor problem is, this kind of act-racism (as opposed to rule-racism, my own little coinage as sort of the inverse of the relative kinds of utilitarianism) isn’t actually dead. Neo-Nazis still exist. The Klan still exists. You cannot defeat extremist marginal social elements by resting on the status quo. It needs active combat. When you see something racist, you have to point it out and say “Hey, that’s racist – even if you don’t mean it that way.” Otherwise those extremist marginal social elements slowly gain footholds until they are not marginal any more.

B. The major problem is, it totally and completely ignores the phenomenon of institutional racism, which is far more subtle and insidious, and in fact thrives on exactly that kind of complacency. The reason there’s so many black inmates isn’t because individual cops and judges hate black people and just send them to prison more often. It’s a vicious cycle of anger, disempowerment and retribution that on its face is rational each step of the way. This is the major counterargument to all those “hey it’s Japan they don’t know anything about black people” claim. Well – of course they don’t. They’re an almost totally racially homogenous society. Which is exactly why they’re so saturated with institutional racism (and, let it be said, not a little bit of personal, “real” racism, as well). And exactly why this imagery flew past Capcom Japan (probably over the kicking and screaming objections of the terrified Capcom USA, as someone pointed out above).

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