we have gone backwards. People get complacent; more importantly, they get tired of thinking about issues, and so they let stuff creep back in. If i had a nickel for every person--blacks, as well as whites in many cases--who tells me "get over it. that was in the past. don't try to see racism in every little thing". Also, we have to remember that in areas of mass entertainment like the video game world, you have a lot of focus on young white males who just want to have fun and escape reality. And in wanting to get wild in those virtual worlds, they sometimes seem to act like prisoners escaped from a jail who want to make up for all the restrictions on their lives. The "jail", I guess are certain societal mores against senseless violence, abuse of women, racial sensitivity, etc. I think Martin and Astro among others, have more than once commented on how young white males can be so full of sexist, violent, and racist talk on message boards dealing with everything from anime to comi cs to scifi. They really seem to revel in releasing their baser sides, and i think games like that help them do it.
That's one reason I believe in collecting and preserving the very racist material that we're discussing. We have to remember that it was--and still--exists, that it holds sway over people. How else can we hope to fight it? -------------- Original message -------------- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] In a message dated 12/4/07 11:45:32 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > agreed. well, frankly, many white people still don't get it. They see these > are harmless things, or don't see any racism at all (like the light-skinned > Arab in the posts who's offended that someone criticizes the Caucasian > Aladdin). Or, if they do finally see the racism, they have that "it was in > the > past. let it go" attitude. And there's there's the black person who wrote the > long post saying the images aren't damaging to young black kids as long as we > don't *tell* the kids that the images are racist. WTF is that about??? > I don't know but it's the sign of the times. Something simular is happening on the video game side in the form of the preview of the upcomming Resident Evil 4 video game. A lot of vidio game 'fans' are up in arms at those who see something wrong with a white guy mowing down scores of black zombies in a african village and not call it racist. Maybe it's just me but I'm starting to think we've gone a few step backwards in race relations in the past seven years. -GTW ************************************** Check out AOL's list of 2007's hottest products. (http://money.aol.com/special/hot-products-2007?NCID=aoltop00030000000001) [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
