Sticks And Stones
by Guest Contributor Yu Zun Kang, originally published at No More Lives
There are many feelings that rise up when I think back to the first racial slur that was directed at me—but none of them, strangely, are malicious or sad. At the time, my family and I lived in a mid-sized town in the northwest region of Germany, near the Netherlands border. Even though we didn’t live in a metropolitan area, my first grade class represented the changing racial demographic in the German workforce and society: there was the Korean kid (me), the half-Turkish kid, and one of my best friends whose parents immigrated from Portugal to open an ice cream store. Like those kids, almost all my friends were Germans—my best friend lived three blocks from me above the bicycle business that had been passed down in his family for generations; and my first girlfriend came from a tight-knit German family that had a big backyard for all the messenger pigeons they raised.
The slur the kid used actually had a catchy rhyme, one that I heard occasionally wherever I went while we lived in Germany:
Ching Chang Chong Chinese
Eierkopf und Kase
(rough Translation of the last line: Egg-shaped head and cheese-colored skin)
I don’t think the slur had an immediate effect on me. As a child, you react from the gut. Insults are insults—there is no sociological or racial theory that a child can conduct in his or her head to yell injustice. But why didn’t I say anything at the time? Here was the problem: how do you make fun of someone who bases the normal and ideal off his or her features? How do you, as the stranger looking around and seeing that you are the anomaly, take away his power to define you in those terms? How do you mock “perfection?” How can someone not feel powerless in that kind of situation?
I tell this story to make a point—words are never merely words. These ordinary words, “egg” and ”cheese,” are meaningless and powerless until you give them meaning and context. If you come from a position of power or a position of majority, then you have the power to define a word. And if you have the power to define a word, then you have the power to define the person at whom it is directed. Through that word, you can own and control the other person’s identity.
In a measured and thoughtful response to the Scribblenauts “sambo” controversy, Ian Bogost, while expressing his disapproval behind the use of a word loaded with a history of degrading and institutionalized racism, asks his readers to consider the game’s purpose: that “Scribblenauts is a game about what words mean and do when mustered in particular situations.” More importantly, he asks “what if this is the experience? What if messy quandaries about the ambiguity of “sambo” is precisely the sort of thing that Scribblenauts was meant to bring us?”
Subsequent interviews convinced me that this was an honest mistake. Regardless, the discussion, like all discussions concerning race, can get defensive and hostile. That’s why I liked the way Bogost’s question rose above the heated emotions, and calmed and shifted the issue so that readers could consider the overall theoretical intent of the game. However, as great as that sounds, I want to remind Ian that there is a real person at the end of that question. To quote Olliemoon, “[we] don’t exist for your personal intellectual growth.” I am a person, Ian, and not a question to be parsed.
I think this controversy, and the discussion leading out of it, is analogous to the recent Game Critics discussion on race and gender in games. Physical representation of race and gender, again, deal with the identical power dynamic. Once again, there is a vocal segment of the gaming world that isn’t willing to consider the implications. That is unfortunate, because until there is a genuine understanding of this kind of power dynamic, we are not going to see a proper, sincere, and respectful mainstream representation of minorities.
All gamers must understand that the industry’s ability to shape their perception of gender and race is pervasive and ubiquitous, especially when a gamer lacks a personal relationship with someone who is different from him or her.
When I moved from Germany to Korea at the age of nine, one of my favorite activities was going to the movies. In the 90’s, the theaters used to put large, hand-painted, kitschy billboards of the films on top of the theater. When you bought a ticket, you had to sit in the assigned seat—a policy to deal with overcrowding and sneak-ins.
Theaters mostly played American movies. Again, when I wasn’t seeing African Americans on the screen, the times they appeared they were either homeless, criminals, loud-mouthed comedians, or athletic superstars. Living in a racially homogeneous country like South Korea, where we have no interaction with African Americans, those films were the only source we had into the African American life in America. I still remember when an African American soldier walked into a record store and everything became very quite as people whispered and moved away from him, or the time when my African American tutor from the U.S. State Department left our house and got mobbed by a bunch of kids asking him if he could dunk. I don’t think there was anything inherently racist in that—that is simply ALL we knew.
When we moved to North Carolina, my anxiety over interacting with the African American students amplified when one of them was shot and killed at his home. Add to the mix the three African American bullies who made my life hell for not speaking English very well, and everything I learned from the movies went from perception to fact.
It wasn’t until a Nigerian kid in my neighborhood became my friend, and took me to his friend’s house in a trailer park, that I got see him and his friends as people apart from those distorted representations I watched as a child. I still remember when he bought the PlayStation and we sat in his room, playing Resident Evil without a memory card. As we huddled in the dark, screaming and laughing in unison as the dog jumped through the window, there was nothing but the glow of the screen, the whir of the disc, and the opening sounds of doors.
As long as we have gamers dismissing this power dynamic it won’t matter how many minority or female characters make it into a game. What you developers say, and do, and show makes a difference. What you do shapes perception, and you have the power to define how we are perceived. Remember that.
Suggested Reading
If you are at all interested in reading some new and exciting voices in the game blogging world, and are interested in exploring this topic, you should follow these excellent writers who have written extensively on the topic:
Latoya Peterson
Racial Inclusiveness in Gaming Offers pragmatic suggestions to developers on how to make games more racially inclusive.
Denial and Delusion – Why Public Conversations About Race Fail Before They Begin
Pat Miller
Well Said: A Response to Chili Con Carnage
Alex Raymond
Mass Effect: First Impressions
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
Versai wrote:
“I don’t think there was anything inherently racist in that—that is simply ALL we knew.”
I’ve heard other people of color say this–that their view of African Americans was impacted by American movies and media. I understand this…but at the same time, I always wonder… Didn’t American movies/media also show “your” group in a stereotypical light? Didn’t that bother you? If the representation of your own group was skewed, why was it so easy to believe that what you saw about “others” reflected reality?
Posted 06 Oct 2009 at 9:53 am ¶
Chris Lepine wrote:
Very dangerous topic, and I’ll try to express myself in a thoughtful manner..
As a person of mixed race, I can appreciate the argument being made here, particularly because I’ve faced similar kinds of situations growing up as a ‘half-breed’ aboriginal kid in a white town which I won’t beleaguer you with.
The constitutive race-language argument is an old one – that by transforming language you transform people’s perception of racial stereotypes. And there is plenty of sense in it – a child’s world is defined by the images they perceive, and many of those images are structured by the kind of language they are evoked in. (I’m using the word ‘image’ very broadly here).
But, the language argument obscures over something very important. In all perceptive acts, even for kids, the *person* makes a contribution to what they see or feel – the language or image never wholly dominates them. Words never ‘just mean one thing’ in particular – that’s why they can be transformed, used in different contexts, interpreted differently, and re-appropriated. Taking ownership of a word, an image, or a kind of language personally is a way around the kind of direct social determination that happens when kids (adults) are faced with what seem to be “obvious” racial slurs or images.
What I’m haphazardly trying to say is that there is still plenty of room for the kinds of poetic experiences that seem to come out of nowhere, despite all odds, despite deeply ingrained racism; racism – despite its awful reality – sets up a space in which something poetic and beautiful can happen between goofy kids. Friendship. Re-defining words. Re-interpreting dead images. They bring new life to dead culture.
I’m not black, nor American, and the word “sambo” has no meaning in my culture. It’s not a point of cultural meaning, and I can’t take offense on behalf of everyone at the end of a racial gun. But I question the value of removing words out of the common vocabulary on the basis of offence alone, when they words describe something already lurking in the closet of my culture. Racism is not swept away just by eliminating nasty words in a dictionary; words occasion our poetic being in the world and the chance for renewal.
Posted 06 Oct 2009 at 10:44 am ¶
Azizi wrote:
Thank you for your thought provoking article. I’d like to focus on the taunt that you wrote about in this article.
I’m an African American community folklorist whose primary interest is English language children’s playground rhymes. I’m presently engaged in a study of examples of those rhymes, mostly gleaned from Internet blogs and websites. As a result of my study, I have found that there are numerous examples of negative racialized children’s rhymes which have been chanted for generations and are still being chanted. Some of these examples are very similar to the one given in this article. In addition, there are some “new” versions of old rhymes that now include references to race, and which reflect racial tensions (usually between Black children and White children). An widely known example of this is the “Down Down Baby” rhymes.
What surprised me in my study was that there appears to be more examples of offensive rhymes on the Internet that target Chinese and other Asians than there are such rhymes that target Black people. Actually, to date, I’ve only found one rhyme that refers to Asian people that is NOT offensive (a version of “Not Last Night But The Night Before” which includes the lines “Chinese dancer turn around/touch the ground/do the split”)…
For the record, it’s not just White people who post taunts ridiculing Chinese and other Asian people. I have found examples of African Americans who also posts such examples. What disturbs me the most is that many times these posters -regardless of race/ethnicity- seem to be oblivious to the fact that these rhymes are racist and hurtful. Usually a person will post an offensive racialized rhyme and no one else on that discussion thread will comment about it.
It’s not just that these types of rhymes reflect & reinforce racism and ethnocentrism. One reason why some of them appear to be fondly remembered is that their words are accompanied by sexually suggestive actions and children like feeling risque and naughty when chanting them.
There has been some progress made in recognizing that certain words don’t belong in children’s rhymes. “Eenie Meenie Miney Mo” is a prime example of this. That is not to say that there aren’t any children’s rhymes that include the “n” word. There are. However, many children have grown up not even knowing that that pejorative word was ‘originally’ part of that “Eenie Meenie Miney Mo” rhyme. This suggests to me that if people had the will to make it explicitly known to childen, youth, and adults that offensive racial & ethnic children’s rhymes are unacceptable, there would be an eventually reduction in the number of those types of rhymes.
At the very least, eventually adults might be not be so oblivious to the hurt these rhymes give when they share their rose colored nostalgic memories about their childhood on Internet blogs.
Posted 06 Oct 2009 at 1:52 pm ¶
Kendra wrote:
@Azizi:
Actually, that version of “Not Last Night But The Night Before” seems to end negatively as well, depending on how you interpret the last line:
“Chinese dancers do the splits, (jumper doing the commands after each)
Chinese dancers do the kicks,
Chinese dances turn around,
Chinese dancers touch the ground,
Chinese dancers get out of town, (run out of rope, end of turn)”
http://www.gameskidsplay.net/jump_rope_ryhmes/jump_not_last_night.htm
Historically, Chinese have actually be forced out of towns in states like California. So, if the last line is taken literally it would make sense to me. But then it could just mean “end of turn.”
Posted 06 Oct 2009 at 4:03 pm ¶
Azizi wrote:
Yes, Kendra, I thought of that too. But compared to other children’s playground rhymes that refer to Chinese and compared to “family songs” like “The Crazy Baldheaded Chinese”, at least “Not Last Night But The Night Before” is open to neutral interpretation.
None of the other English children’s rhymes & songs that I’ve found to date are.
Posted 06 Oct 2009 at 4:21 pm ¶
Azizi wrote:
Clarification:
None of the other English children’s rhymes & songs that refer to Chinese and other Asians that I’ve found to date are.
Posted 06 Oct 2009 at 4:35 pm ¶
Yu Zun Kang wrote:
Thank you for all your thoughtful and perceptive comments. I’ll try my best to address your questions and comments.
@Versai: I frequently get asked that question, and that question is always asked with the assumption that there were any depictions of Asians / Asian Americans in the imported Hollywood films and T.V. shows while I lived in Korea circa ‘88-’94. And the answer is, there weren’t. As an Asian American, and as someone who grew up in East Asia, I can attest to the general belief within the communities that Hollywood and Asians are mutually exclusive categories. If you wanted to see people who looked like you on the screen, then you went to any of the big Hong Kong releases. And if you flip that scenario, if you’re a talented Korean kid who wants to become a rapper, then you have to go to Korea (e.g. Drunken Tiger).
Personally, I’m still getting over the fact that not only is John Cho on a major network show (not to mention the awesome Sandra Oh), but that he also plays an FBI agent who happens to be Asian American.
@Chris: I would never advocate the euthanization of a word. That, to me, is a band-aid solution. I think we both agree that we must change within to make our motions true, and that that process involves looking at the underlying attitude that leads people to the kind of racist appropriation of words I addressed. My article is an attempt to articulate that point through the SCRIBBLENAUTS controversy—that part of the recognition and reconciliation process involves examining and understanding that power dynamic at play.
I’m curious about your second paragraph. What are these “poetic experiences that seem to come out of nowhere, despite all odds, despite deeply ingrained racism”? How does that occur? And what is “the dead culture” that these activities are meant to resurrect?
@Azizi: Very cool, and by that I mean depressing and illuminating.
Posted 06 Oct 2009 at 7:26 pm ¶
Chris Lepine wrote:
@Yu Zun Kang,
Those “poetic” experiences (and by poetic I mean ‘new’) are the kind in which racism sets up barriers between people that should lead to automatic fear or hatred, and instead deep friendships and camaraderie come from them. My closest friend as a child was black, and he was the only black kid in the entire town. The whole town believed that they were “strange” because they were American and ‘outsiders’ to the town, yet had a wonderful friendship that exceeded all kinds of cultural boundaries that should have been between us, yet weren’t. In those situations, I think, dead cultural stereotypes are upended and re-interpreted. That’s not to say this is common, but I at least want to keep the door open for those kinds of experiences.
Thanks for the reply!
Posted 07 Oct 2009 at 2:52 am ¶
Restructure! wrote:
Yes, it’s still racist. This former KKK member obviously knew nothing about African Americans, which is why he was racist, but the fact that it was all he knew is irrelevant to whether or not he was racist.
Posted 07 Oct 2009 at 9:14 am ¶
n wrote:
“I still remember when an African American soldier walked into a record store and everything became very quite as people whispered and moved away from him, or the time when my African American tutor from the U.S. State Department left our house and got mobbed by a bunch of kids asking him if he could dunk. I don’t think there was anything inherently racist in that—that is simply ALL we knew.”
Perhaps not racist, but definitely a sign of race based prejudice.
“I didn’t mean to be racist when I shot him. He came running across the street toward me, but the only black men I have ever seen were on tv and either athletes or criminals. Since he didn’t have a ball in his hand….”
Same concept, different outcome.
Perhaps there are cultural differences or I just had a very interesting childhood and was a particularly openminded child, but I would have never assumed that a person in real life would behave a certain way based on what I saw on a screen. When I hear these stories it amazes me because I truly cannot relate.
Perhaps the children who did this were not racist, but it makes me wonder what the enviroment was like in general if children had not been taught that tv and movies are not indicative of real life actual people and cultures.
Posted 07 Oct 2009 at 10:37 am ¶