The White World of Online Gaming: Explicit "White Flight" from the "Black Undertow"

Second Life: Where the justification for "White Flight" is explicit

We have finally realized that “white flight” isn’t something that Black people like. Sure, Black people get control over the city where white people no longer desire to live, but a few years into Black rule that city inevitably collapses under the colossal weight of Black inertia.

Just as the sun rises, Black people will follow the “white flight” wherever it travels and, inexorably, “white flight” will transpire again in a vain attempt to flee the problems caused by our greatest strength. Cheap land outside major cities and cheap gasoline made the short-term strategy a smart, quick investment for the betterment of ones family, though the long-term ramifications of fleeing major metropolitan areas should be obvious.

The first suburbs that popped-up around major cities were once pristine, but all succumb to the “Black Undertow” effect. Just look at Atlanta’s suburbs for an example of this, as “white flight” and the subsequent “Black Undertow” effect has left Clayton County, DeKalb County, and – soon – Fayette County as undesirable locations to raise a family.

A thriving city can survive with a population that is less than 10 percent Black. Once it goes over 10 percent Black however, “white flight” is going to occur soon and the “Black Undertow” will enable a slow metamorphosis completely changing that once thriving city into… a small-scale version of Detroit.

Black people will eventually flee from their Frankenstein creation, Disingenuous White Liberals serving as the deceptive Igor in the process.

So, yes, we’ll discuss “white flight” at length, though at later date.

But first, a story from the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference that was held in the incredibly Stuff White People Like (SWPL) city of Austin. What is SXSW?:

The South by Southwest® (SXSW®) Conferences & Festivals offer the unique convergence of original music, independent films, and emerging technologies. Fostering creative and professional growth alike, SXSW is the premier destination for discovery.

It’s basically an attempt at replicating the exclusive TED Conference for white hipsters unlucky enough to be invited to that conference.

At the SXSW conference in Austin, a panel discussion dealt with racism in online gaming. In the real world, “white flight” from deteriorating cities and counties (consult the “Black Undertow” effect) transpires just as frequently as people living in the virtual world of online gaming enjoy a computerized world free of Black people:

At the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas (March 11-20), the intersection of online identity and racism was explored in a panel called "E-Race: Avatars, Anonymity and the Virtualization of Identity." Jeff Yang, who writes the "Asian Pop" column for the San Francisco Chronicle, organized and opened the panel, remarking that we are at the dawn of a new era.

Racial identity is becoming more malleable than ever before, as mixed-race and minority populations are steadily increasing and changing the American demographic. At the same time, our online selves are becoming larger reflections of who we are in the real world -- but why is that occurring? Yang asked Wagner James Au -- an expert on the virtual avatar community Second Life, and the pioneer of digital racial studies -- and Lisa Nakamura, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to reflect on the changing nature of online racial identity.

The panel set out to explore a key theme: "What does the ability to hide or disguise identity mean in particular for the experience of race -- and racism -- online?" Counter to common assumptions, the ability to camouflage one's race online doesn't equal liberation from racism. In fact, since the default person online is assumed to be white and male, revealing yourself to be racially different often prompts other users to lash out.

Jenny McCarthy, Yes; Serena Williams, No

Au, the author of the blog New World Notes, said that in Second Life, "you can design your stereotypes from the bottom up." Users select every part of their bodies -- from hair, skin and eye color to lip shape and shade. However, with that selection comes a heavy serving of assumptions and stereotypes…

Au also noted that many African-American Second Life players often practice virtual skin lightening. While many Second Life players have the ability to look completely like or unlike their real-world selves, many black players find the racism and discrimination too much to deal with in both the online and offline worlds. Therefore, these players try to strike a color compromise: Au explained that some African-American users will choose a skin that looks more "Latino" -- still identifiably brown, but lighter-skinned -- in an attempt to lessen the discrimination.

Nakamura repeatedly framed the cost of racism online in terms of how it harms those who attempt to participate. She brought up the example of how Quinton Jackson, a mixed martial arts fighter in real life who quit playing the game Halo 2 online because of the excessive racist chatter over the game's voice channels, which players use to talk to one another. She talked about how users are discouraged from choosing darker avatars by game companies (who rarely create more than one or two darker-skinned avatars from which to choose) as well as other players (some of whom use the anonymity of the Internet to indulge their inner racist).

Nakamura points out, "Race doesn't happen because of biology; it happens because of culture." Race (and racism) is something that develops when our culture rewards the persecution of a smaller group. Unfortunately, it seems that as our lives move more and more into the digital world, we are migrating more and more of the racism in our culture along with us.

Sorry Nakamura, race does happen because of biology. Black women cannot give birth to a white or Asian individual. And Lord help the intrepid Black person who dares practice cultural shunning (thereby racial shaming) through “Acting White.”

The virtual world of online gaming offers an explicit example of a real-world where implicit thought dictates white people’s actions, most notably “white flight.”

It would seem that in the virtual world where anonymity allows a freedom that the real-world can’t replicate, the one common unifier among online gaming enthusiasts is their disdain for Black people.

“White flight” into a virtual reality where implicit thoughts are given an explicit platform is a hilarious reminder of the primary motivation for what drives white people to flee the “Brown Undertow” in the first place.

In a scholarly study of video game characters, The virtual census: representations of gender, race and age in video games it becomes obvious that the gaming population prefers to play with characters of white variety:

When primary roles are considered, all groups appear less often except for whites, who appear more often than overall. White characters account for 84.95 percent of all primary characters, black 9.67 percent, biracial 3.69 percent and Asian 1.69 percent. Hispanics and Native Americans did not appear as a primary character in any game, they existed solely as secondary characters.

The overrepresentation of Black people in football and basketball video games might reflect an example of Black masculinity that isn’t as positive as originally believed. Outside of these games, no one cares about Black characters.

 “White flight” through traversing the virtual world of online gaming thanks to anonymous avatar representation allows an ominous looking glass into the true motivation for “white flight” in the real world.  

A reprieve from reality is what the Internet truly offers, a realm where unfettered criticism of Black Run America (BRA) is found in almost every corner.

#78. Black Zombies

It has been said that “when hell is full, the dead will walk the earth.” One people and one nation deserve credit for delivering a frightening genre full of suspense, chills and gruesome images of undead carnage: Haitians.

The idea of reanimated corpses – the “living undead” – finds origins in the same land where Houngan’s are reported to have taken an oath back in 1791. Pat Robertson has come under fire for inane remarks connecting this oath to the geological disaster that has befallen Haiti, completely neglecting the nightmarish existence Haitian’s lived in prior to the earthquake.

Regardless, Haiti and the Black people who live there must be shown plenty of gratitude for they bestowed the world with the idea of the zombie:

The origin of the concept of zombiism stems from Haitian Voodoo culture. The word zombie--in Haitian it is "zombi"--means "spirit of the dead." Voodoo folklore contends that Bokors, Voodoo priests that were concerned with the study and application of black magic, posessed the ability to ressurrect the deceased through the administration of coup padre--coup padre is a powder that is issued orally, the primary ingredient of which is tetrodoxin, the deadly substance of the notoriously poisonous fou-fou, or "porcupine fish." According to lengend, "a zombi(e) is someone who has annoyed his or her family and community to the degree that they can no longer stand to live with this person. They respond by hiring a Bokor..to turn them into a zombi(e)." (Keegan, www.flmnh.ufl.edu)

Once they had been issued the coup padre, the subjects being prepared for their descent into zombidom would appear to die insofar as their heart rate would slow to a near stop, their breathing patterns would be greatly subdued and their body temperature would significantly decrease. The public, thinking that the person was dead, would bury him/ her as if they were a corpse. They would then be exhumed, still alive, by the Bokor and, although their physicality remained intact, their memory would be erased and they would be transformed into mindless drones. "Though still living, they remain under the Bokor's power until the Bokor dies." (Keegan, www.flmnh.ufl.edu)"

Black people in Haiti (Haiti is almost 100 percent Black and has been since the people slaughtered European’s in the 1790s) have been to known to be practitioners of voodoo and combine mysticism and magic to restore life to the dead, thus turning them into zombies:

“According to the tenets of Vodou, a dead person can be revived by a bokor, or sorcerer. Zombies remain under the control of the bokor since they have no will of their own. "Zombi" is also another name of the Vodou snake lwa Damballah Wedo, of Niger-Congo origin; it is akin to the Kikongo word nzambi, which means "god". There also exists within the West African Vodun tradition the zombi astral, which is a part of the human soul that is captured by a bokor and used to enhance the bokor's power. The zombi astral is typically kept inside a bottle which the bokor can sell to clients for luck, healing or business success. It is believed that after a time God will take the soul back and so the zombi is a temporary spiritual entity.^[2]

In 1937, while researching folklore in Haiti, Zora Neale Hurston encountered the case of a woman who appeared in a village, and a family claimed she was Felicia Felix-Mentor, a relative who had died and been buried in 1907 at the age of 29. Hurston pursued rumors that the affected persons were given powerful psychoactive drug, but she was unable to locate individuals willing to offer much information.”

From a biological standpoint, Haitians who practice voodoo and the art of zombiism, have an ally in Wade Davis as he has done extensive research in Haitian voodoo and penned numerous volumes on the subject. In Passage of Darkness: the Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie and Serpent and the Rainbow, Davis discusses the uses of certain chemical compounds to create hallucinogens and neurotoxins capable of inducing the effects of death only to allow the “zombie” to awake later.

The botanical secrets and the chemical compound formulas that create zombies are known only by the Haitian Voodoo priests, but the mysterious origins behind zombies haven’t dissuaded others from inventing their own.

George Romero of “The Night of the Living Dead” fame is credited with inventing the modern-zombie in the United States, but he owes much to the 1930s film “White Zombie”, which was appropriately set in Haiti.

We have discussed the historical nature of zombies, as the idea originated in Haiti and there, witch-doctors practiced (and still do) a form of Black magic that “can” reanimate corpses.

In the United States however, zombies take on a much different connotation, for we view them as the true undead brought back to life, consuming as much live human flesh in the process, thereby spreading the zombie virus further. Zombies - in America - are a plague that must be eradicated.

Romero, who has made a fine living directing zombie films, cast a Black person as the main protagonist in his first zombie film “Night of the Living Dead” and has since positively shown Black people in that films many sequels, most notably in the late 1970s “Dawn of the Dead.”

It is obvious to all Black people, that Romero knows the true history of zombies, and thus, must do everything in his power to remove the mystical Black magic origins of voodoo/zombies from his films and showcase Black people operating in a highly functional manner.

There is an unwritten rule in Hollywood that Romero deemed necessary when discussing zombies, for no mentioning of Haiti and Black people’s predilection and fascination with the undead can occur in film or video game.

Resident Evil 5 is a video game – it has sold more than five million copies worldwide since its release - that dares to buck the Romero Law of Zombie films, for its storyline focuses on something Black people find abhorring. Remember, that law states black people as zombies aren’t allowed, for the historical connection between the two makes them synonymous.

Remember, Black people don’t want historical accurate portrayals of them entering the general public’s mind and in an interview with N'Gai Croal of Newsweek, on the Resident Evil video game, that fact was made clear:

"It (Resident Evil 5) depicts a white protagonist going into an apparently poverty-stricken village (the location is unspecified) and killing throngs of black zombified men and women (see the trailer yourself).

Croal's first reaction to the trailer was, "Wow, clearly no one black worked on this game." He explained his thoughts on the trailer and how he would have preferred Capcom to treat it:

"It's like when you engage that kind of imagery you have to be careful with it. It would be like saying you were going to do some sort of zombie movie that appeared to be set in Europe in the 1940's with skinny, emaciated, Hasidic-looking people. If you put up that imagery people would be saying, 'Are you crazy?' Well, that's what this stuff looks like. This imagery has a history. It has a history and you can't pretend otherwise. That imagery still has a history that has to be engaged, that has to be understood. ... If you're going to engage imagery that has that potential, the onus is on the creator to be aware of that because there will be repercussions in the marketplace."

There was stuff like even before the point in the trailer where the crowd turned into zombies. There sort of being, in sort of post-modern parlance, they're sort of "othered." They're hidden in shadows, you can barely see their eyes, and the perspective of the trailer is not even someone who's coming to help the people. It's like they're all dangerous; they all need to be killed. It's not even like one cute African -- or Haitian or Caribbean -- child could be saved.

They're all dangerous men, women and children. They all have to be killed. And given the history, given the not so distant post-colonial history, you would say to yourself, why would you uncritically put up those images? It's not as simple as saying, "Oh, they shot Spanish zombies in 'Resident Evil 4,' and now 'black zombies and that's why people are getting upset." The imagery is not the same. It doesn't carry the same history, it doesn't carry the same weight. I don't know how to explain it more clearly than that.”

One thing is true from the statement above: Black people didn't work on that video game, or many others.

One note on the Romero Law of Zombie films: there was a deviation from this rule in “Land of the Dead”, one of the recent zombie pictures that depicts motor-skills and intelligence in zombies. The smartest zombie is of course a Black person.

Remember, Black people can’t be zombies, because the historical link between Haiti, Black people, zombies and human sacrifice is too real to be included in fiction.

Stuff Black People Don’t Like includes Black Zombies, for history shows us that the mere idea of zombies originates from Haiti and Black people and yet depicting Black people as zombies might resonate negatively with people who recall this historic fact.

We have Haiti and Black people to thank for zombies, but Black people don’t like anyone pointing out this fact out.

#271. Designing Video Games

What are people doing nowadays to occupy their precious time? Well, enough people are cumulatively playing video games to warrant its inclusion as a 5th television network:

"Americans as a whole spend more time playing video games than they do watching the CW television network. And video games -- the real “5th Network” -- may even be closing in on NBC.

According to the data derived from Nielsen’s National People Meter in Q4 2008, usage of console video games (defined as systems connected to users' TVs) accounted for 64 billion minutes in December."

Were Shakespeare alive today, his famous speech from Macbeth might sum up the world that video gamers live in:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing." — Macbeth

Don't laugh though. Video games represent a massive cottage industry for those in the game, as sales in 2007 were more than $17 billion dollars. So the virtual games being played might be even more meaningless than the life Macbeth was talking about, but they amount to a whole lot of money for the companies designing, distributing and selling the games:

"This holiday season's biggest entertainment blockbuster likely will be a sequel to a popular franchise, with jarring depictions of war and an intricate story of good versus evil. It could easily rake in more than last year's record $155 million opening weekend for "The Dark Knight."

But this blockbuster is not a movie.

It is "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2," a video game that Activision Blizzard Inc. is releasing Tuesday. Fans worldwide are expected to spend at least half a billion dollars on the game in the first week.

That would at least match last year's "Grand Theft Auto IV," which was the most successful video game release in history and might have been the top entertainment launch ever."

Well, Call of Duty did $310 million in business its first day out - comparable to major movie openings - shattering every record in the video game industry and proving that this multi-billion dollar industry is just beginning to reach its potential, for it is no brief candle flickering in the wind.

Yet, the video game industry is need of a thorough SBPDL fact-checking exercise, so this week we will look at this multi-billion dollar industry and how Black people embrace this form of entertainment. Let's take a look at a weird Nielsen Entertainment study done on emerging trends in video games and consumers:

"Women, Hispanics and African-Americans are an underserved and emerging market for interactive entertainment;

While Caucasians report spending the most money per month on DVDs,African-Americans and Hispanics report spending more money per month on games and mobile services.

"While this reinforces the industry's traditional targeting towards these groups, women between the ages of 18 to 24 show relatively high entertainment expenditure and time availability, suggesting there are opportunities for publishers to target this consumer," said Emily Della Maggiora, Vice President of Nielsen Interactive Entertainment.

"African American and Hispanic gamers appear to be a potentially lucrative (and currently under-served) consumer target for publishers as these gamers are spending more money to purchasegames and more time to play them compared to total gamers, in general."

Wait, so what is Nielsen saying? Black people consume vast amounts of video games, but could still consume more and more, thereby further enriching the developers and video game companies?

Wait... Black people purchase video games at a greater rate than their white counterparts, yet the video game companies aren't doing enough to actively engage that community? It gets better though, as a study was conducted (tomorrow's entry) that states Black people are vastly underrepresented in video games:

"Imagine a world in which 85 percent of the people are male and 80 percent are white. A world in which women and members of other races are a token presence, with most assuming passive, subsidiary roles.

In "The Virtual Census," a paper just published in the journal New Media & Society, a group of researchers led by Dmitri Williams of the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communication analyzed an array of best-selling video games and the characters who populate them. They found that, compared to the demographic makeup of both the gaming community and the nation as a whole, whites and males are strikingly overrepresented in this hugely popular entertainment medium.

The researchers considered the most likely explanation for these findings is a combination of developer demographics (a 2005 survey found 88 percent of game developers are males) and "perceived ideas about game players among marketers" (who tend to think of game players as young white men).

"From a business and marketing viewpoint, game developers (appear to) be missing substantial opportunities for making games for different audiences," they write. "Women, at 38 percent of game players but only 15 percent of characters, are the most underserved. Latinos, who play more per day than whites and form 12.5 percent of the population, are only 2 percent of characters."

What business and marketing opportunities are developers missing, when the video game industry is swimming in cash right now? Black people love to buy video games and play them with the same religious fervor that other races do, regardless of Mario's race.

However, the ability to close the racial learning gap has been identified by Williams - who conducted this study - where he postulated this intoxicating hypothesis:

"Latino children play more video games than white children. And they're really not able to play themselves," Williams said. "For identity formation, that's a problem. And for generating interest in technology, it may place underrepresented groups behind the curve.

"Ironically, they may even be less likely to become game makers themselves, helping to perpetuate the cycle. Many have suggested that games function as crucial gatekeepers for interest in science, technology, engineering and math."

Virtual racism is to blame for minorities poor ability at math, technology and the hard sciences, for playing as white characters, such as the plumbing brother duo Mario and Luigi leaves Black people at a loss for conquering Euclidean Geometry and the Pythagorean Theorem or even basic algebra.

The primary problem for Black people is the complete lack of a designing voice they give in the video games conception from start to finish:

"A 2005 video game industry demographics survey by the International Game Developers Association found that only 2% of game developers across all disciplines are black. Contrast that with the national demographics of the countries that participated in the survey (Australia, Canada, United States, and United Kingdom) who have a combined 9% black population (aggregated from each country's population and demographics data on Wikipedia)."

So wait... less than two percent of video game designers are Black people, and yet it was Black people whose ancestors had their knowledge and wisdom stolen by the Greeks and passed off as their own?

Now, the same people who built the Pyramids are incapable of designing video games to entertain the masses? What happened to all that brain power? Worse, having so few Black designers ensures that video game characters are all white people - yet as the numbers will show, Black people play video games more than white people - and that Black characters (outside of sports games) will be few and far between:

"If Blacks and Latinos are always portrayed as the villains, or as the victims who get killed often and easily, that is code for powerlessness," said Kansas State University psychologist John Murray, who's studied violence and stereotypes in the media for the past 30 years. "These image persist because too few minorities are in the industry. Roughly 80% of video game programmers are white... Some in the industry believe race in games is a serious issue that has been ignored for too long. The video industry claims that educated, young white males create games for other educated, young white males and not minorities.

Regardless, games are an expressive medium. They are an art form, just like movies, theater and literature. We're seeing, to a large extent, that the games that are being designed unconsciously include the biases, opinions and reflections of their creators. And obviously, whites see Blacks and Latinos as criminals and gradually that's how our children see themselves and behave according.

A 2006 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed that Black youths between 8 and 18 years old played video and computer games roughly 90 minutes a day - almost 30 minutes more than white youths. And Latinos play about 10 minutes more per day than whites."

Of course Black people don't commit any crime. That is just a figment of white peoples incredible imagination - since white people design all the video games, they must have vivid imaginations - and has nothing to do with reality...

Insightful interviews with video game designers who also happen to be Black people can be found here.

Black people are missing out on a billion dollar industry, for though they consume video games with the love of a Lotus-Eater, for some reason this hasn't translated into a pipeline for gainful employment in the video game designing industry.

Thus, Stuff Black People Don't Like includes designing video games, as Black people will part with their money for the chance at living vicariously through the eyes of Link, Mario and other video game characters, but to design these games is still uncharted terrain for Black people.

Yet another barrier that must be brought down, for life may signify nothing, but it must signify Black people portrayed properly.