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Can Video Games Fight White Supremacy?

Can Video Games Fight White Supremacy?

White supremacism, the idea that white people are inherently superior to others and therefore deserve to lead, has come out of the shadows in North America. This philosophy is both morally repugnant and completely unsupported by science, and is something that many of us are determined to work against. But why am I talking about it here on Cheat Code Central? Because while white supremacism may be primarily about power, politics, and economics, it is supported (sometimes purposefully, sometimes not) by our entertainment. When the things we read, watch, and play center white people and position them as the smartest, most capable, and most important heroes in the world, it subtly supports the notion that whiteness is superior. In some ways, these imaginary characters are more effective ambassadors for white supremacism than the actual people who openly support the ideology.

There are many ways that games can help fight white supremacism by showing us worlds that more accurately reflect the beautiful diversity of the human race. Socially progressive game critics like myself tend to focus on trying to bring in more protagonists of color, and certainly that’s important. Heroes like Faith from Mirror’s Edge and Marcus from Watch Dogs 2 aren’t just good for the groups they represent; they’re good for white people simply by existing and showing people of color at the center of a story. But there’s more that all games can do to change our point of view and show the world more like it really is.

No matter the skin color of a game’s protagonist, we need to see game worlds populated by people of many different skin colors and ethnicities. This is especially true if your setting is a modern North American city, but it’s also true for games in less urban and even historical settings. Very few societies have ever been all-white. People from Africa and the Middle East have traveled to and settled in Europe throughout history. Yes, that means that the Assassin’s Creed 2 trilogy could have and should have featured a lot more people of African descent . Having a truly diverse society in your game also makes it easier to avoid tokenism and present a greater variety of characters within non-white ethnic groups. It helps prevent problems like annoying your audience by once again killing off the one character of color – they are tired of fictionally sacrificing themselves for our white asses. Most importantly, it stops the twisted white supremacist mirror funhouse in which we believe history to be whiter than it was because that’s how we’ve seen it in entertainment.

Another thing games can do to combat white supremacism is to drop the tired old trope of the white savior. We’ve all played a game that takes place outside Europe or North America yet features a white American or European protagonist. Why is that? Because the developers couldn’t think of writing a story set in South America and starring a South American hero? Because cowardly publishers didn’t believe people would buy a game unless it had a white dude on the cover? Or is it just an echo of that old, super-racist philosophy of the “white man’s burden?” I don’t care if it’s a military or a spy story – every country has a military and spies are more effective when they actually blend in with the local population. There just aren’t enough excuses to justify the white savior trope anymore. Let’s kill it.

Can Video Games Fight White Supremacy?

Our fantasy worlds need a little color, too. This is a big area in which creators can fight against common bullshit like “white-skinned races are good and dark-skinned races are bad.” And seriously, if you’re going to have a race of evil elves that live far beneath the surface of the earth, it only makes sense that their skin would be so white it practically glows. Let some lovely brown-skinned elves live on the surface and do typical elf things like sewing gossamer gowns and mastering archery. Why does it make more sense to North American fantasy artists that elves would have blue or green skin than brown skin, anyway? Plus, it would do us all good to have more fantasy titles based off anything besides Medieval Europe (which wasn’t all-white anyway). There’s an entire world of fascinating legend and folklore to explore, game developers. Go do it.

The fight against racism and bigotry is a long haul, and it requires those of us who are white to change the way we think about a lot of things. One of those is the overwhelmingly white-centric stories we tell in entertainment like gaming. Game companies need to hire more ethnically diverse storytellers, stop creating games in “foreign” lands that star white European / American heroes, and be willing to show the world as it really is, not as we tend to think of it due to being surrounded by fictional whiteness. It might not seem like anything big, but it’s one of the many small steps we can take to keep white supremacism at bay. And gamers, particularly white gamers, can help by demanding and supporting games that make the effort. It’s often a sign that the developers have paid attention to storytelling and done their research, anyway!

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