Racial Issues Alleged In GTA San Andreas, Other Games

Thanks to the New York Times (free reg. req.) for its article exploring possible racial stereotyping inherent in many videogames. The article alleges: "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas... underscores what some critics consider a disturbing trend: popular video games that play on racial stereotypes, including images of black youths committing and reveling in violent street crime." Partially, though not wholly related to a recently discussed article on 'street' videogames, it's also argued: "The issue, critics say, is not that the games' representation of racial and ethnic minorities is as blatantly threatening as the sort found at hate sites on the Web, where players are asked to gun down virtual black or Jewish characters. Rather, the racial and ethnic depictions and story lines are more subtle, and therefore, some say, more insidious."

Comments

slightly offtopic, but not...

[kisrael]

Today's Slate featured piece was by a black woman lawyer called Racist Like Me...it raises some interesting points about how the accusation of racism tends to be a conversation- (and thought-) stopper, and how as a culture we should probably be more engaged in this kind of discussion.

Re:USofAns

[PainKilleR-CE]

I'm going to take things out of order a bit, because the points are somewhat separated...

How can I be a bigot? Whatever your race is, I certainly can feel related. Many Brazilians are in the same condition as I am, maybe I am more conscious (having done some extensive genealogic research) of my multi-ethnicity. When filling forms with "race/ethnicity", I usually seek for the "all of the above" option... :-)

What appalled me in your link was the fact that this woman *is* in fact intermarried with a white guy and she fears and have nightmares with black folks. This is a sign IMHO that *she* has serious problems.

The whole point of the piece was that people need to remember that racism isn't just a white problem, or homophobia isn't just a heterosexual problem, it's something that everyone needs to address. Additionally, just because you're black (or in your personal case, multi-ethnic) doesn't make you immune to being racist.

But USofAns, more than European people, apparently segregate much more deeply, by race, by religion, etc. They don't seem to intermarry as commonly as down here.

I really couldn't say, because I have never been to Europe. However, I would say that in the US the line seems to be much more along class lines than racial lines. Unfortunately, class and racial lines have a tendency to coincide to a large degree in the US. If you find that you're in a city in the US and the locals are primarily black or latino, there's a good chance that you're in an area where people make less money, and therefore in a lower-class neighborhood. If most of the people are white, you simply have to look at the size and maintenance of the homes to determine the class of the neighborhood, because there are white neighborhoods at all levels of the "class struggle".

From my own experience, having lived both in California and Virginia (the latter having been the capital of the Confederacy), racial mixing (both in families and in neighborhoods) is actually more common in the south, where integration was actually forced into being in the last century, than in the west, where people generally don't consider segregation to be an issue (it's not that they believe segregation is ok, they simply don't believe, and many probably wouldn't, they'd have a problem if black or latino people moved into their neighborhoods). The lines are still drawn primarily by how much money you make on the west coast as they are in the south, but no one forced people to integrate along racial lines in California, therefore most of them never did.

I grew up in a primarily white neighborhood in southern California, middle class (probably upper middle class now that housing prices have sky-rocketed), where the most common minority was latino, at roughly 5% (the white population being roughly 87%). When I moved to Virginia, sharing a place with a co-worker, we were literally the only white people on our block, and I'll admit that initially it made me nervous. However, I have to add that it wasn't just the fact that most of the people living around me were black that made me nervous, but it was also the fact that I could not possibly have found a place in southern California that was that cheap to live in without qualifying for government assistance (which is to say, living in welfare housing projects). This made me believe that I was living in what was probably a bad part of town, somewhere you might have to keep your car alarmed and possibly not leave your home unoccupied for too long, should someone decide to break in and either trash the place or steal all of your stuff.

As I continued to live there, though, I realized that I was actually living in a lower-middle-class neighborhood and that housing was simply significantly cheaper anywhere in the state than it was in California. The people living around me primarily had jobs in similar areas (not computers, but working for similar companies; despite working as a software developer there are very few people tha

Re:Whatever.

[fullmetal55]

now now, there are black people in the NHL, to name just a few Grant Fuhr (Goalie - Edmonton Oilers during their dynasty years in the 80s) Freddie Braithwaite (Goalie - Edmonton Oilers, St Louis Blues, and others) Mike Grier (forward) Anson Carter (forward) Jarome Iginla (forward) and many more whos names escape me at this point.