Step to the back of the bus, or that old saying; can’t sit here it’s for White people only.
There’s that old enemy of ours rearing its head up again; Racism. And just when we thought it was getting better along it comes to show us how wrong we were.
With all that the world has gone through starting back in the day of Abraham Lincoln and the fight for freedom for African-American, then up to Women’s rights, etc and now it seems like we are stepping back in time. Especially after 9/11 bombings, the war going on at this moment in time, prejudice and stereotyping, along with its friend Racism is back in play. It seems like the video games out there are getting worse by the moment, with all the bad guys being either of the Asian, black or even now Middle Eastern/Arabic persuasion.
I notice that a lot of the articles that I read had a lot in common with what their opinions were in regards to Video games and Racism. In Critical race Theory on Wikipedia, seems like it was a response to come critical legal studies. And the connections between racial discriminations and stereotyping, and has been applied to looking into race/racism in aspects of social science, civil rights, and the legal court proceedings that result from it. And in Pacificcitizen.org; In Video games the Bad Guys Come in All Shades of Stereotypes. More like Bad Guys of Color, because it seems like most Bad Guys are not “White”.
Some have been known to try and say that these forms of games are entertainment, although if that is so, then it’s really sad that they had to resort to this level. Because all it does is feed on the fear of people, especially those who are already pre-disposed to being narrow minded and prejudice to begin with.
According to the article; Video games raise concerns over racism by David Becker from CNET News (, The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) had issued a report on Tuesday warning of computer games that espouse racist violence. The article mention such games as; “Ethnic Cleansing” a computer game that was being sold by Resistance Records, a small underground label that specializes in bands spouting racist and Nazi messages. This game besides offensive racial stereotyping (you had to walk through urban streets and subways, attacking African-American, Hispanic and Jewish characters), the games also included repeated racist images and audio content.
Games such as these can piggyback onto something that is very legitimate and popular and pervert it. It could cause even the most non-racist person to start thinking those racist thoughts. Things like this can cause Paranoia and Discrimination to rise even higher than it has been in the past. Because it causes people to assume that all African-Americans are drug users, gang-bangers, Asians as the drug dealers, and even using Women as cyber-bimbos.
With all of this going on it’s like taking a step back in time. While it seems like games of any kind (video etc) involves some sort of artificial conflict, because it seems like it wouldn’t be a game without it, they need to do what they can to make a great game without it causing racism/stereotyping of any sort.
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I think that racism is just one of those things that will never really disappear. It's pretty obvious that it still lingers around every corner from people being stereotypical about a race of people. I think it's horrible that racism is being portrayed in games and the fact that The effect that it could have on young kids can be catastrophic especially since violence is already an important ingredient in today's games.
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