Man, our culture doesn't get racism... (Gaming)

by MrPadraig08 , Steel City, Thursday, August 15, 2013, 08:56 (4117 days ago) @ davidfuchs

The part about her thinking the game itself is racist sticks out to me as the common thing many people do which is avoid even the slightest appearance of racism rather than everyone learning to distinguish real racism. Talking about race and talking about individuals is not in itself racist. If a person of any race is a bad person is someone out there going to call that person racist for portraying their race as bad?

That's why I tend to hate political correctness, because it feels like an attempt to paper over our problems rather than confront them. Easier to be safe and never say anything that could possibly be construed as bad, right? The entire blog is full of stuff like this and seeing it come from a white woman does give me that sense of this person being terribly uncomfortable at a personal level.

I know that I've got Indian-killing, slave-owning ancestors in my family tree, and I don't fault them too much for their actions, nor do I feel that guilty about it myself. What matters is what we do in the present to right past wrongs. Overreacting to a video game is focusing on the wrong idea of what the problem is.

I hear ya, for a long time I mentally denied my ancestors could've been responsible for these types of things (and for the most part I'm off the hook, Irish immigrating into Canada then Boston and Italians that moved to Chicago in the 1930's), but when I met my great Uncle who I aptly call Colonel Sanders (white boss hogg suit and everything), it was hard to mentally deny that part of my family was deeply entrenched in the south and most likely owned slaves. I don't feel bad about it, certainly nothing I ever did or would do.

Righting the present and certainly the future is our duty, but it's difficult for me to understand how prevalent the use of past symbols and events to mean somekind of mantra.

I live in PA, a northern territory, I have seen more confederate flags in the field than in every history class I've ever taken. I don't really understand it as a symbol. It really can't be all racially based, there has to be something about government and freedom in there. But, I don't see people trying to take back swastikas from the 1940's (even if it meant something before in asian cultures.)

Something to think about.