Whiteness and Colour-blindness in Gaming

After the lecture on Tuesday on the topic of Race, Nationalism and Representation, I found myself recalling some terms that I had previously researched. These include the phenomenon in all types of media texts of Colour-blindness, Whiteness and The Magical Negro.

Colour-blindness is the term used for the situation where the colour of someone’s skin is not seen to be an issue; it is not seen to be a factor of relevance in discussion. On paper, this is the perfect ideology of an era 'post-racism'. However, the drawback of this is that minority have little power to stand up against the white majority. If the white majority acts in a way that is seemingly racially motivated, and if there is backlash, the white majority puts the blame back onto the minority group for ‘seeing what isn’t there’. In a multicultural society, it would be seen as politically incorrect to point out someone’s stereotype based on their culture or nationality. In pointing out that we are seeing the person as simply an individual, their stereotypes are still being acknowledged. Here we see, in games such as Unchartered, that you are a white male and you must casually kill all of these non-white guys, don’t worry, it’s TOTALLY not racist because they are bad and we are basing this assumption on their character and not the colour of their skin!!
But why, then, have they all been chosen to possess the same pigment?
John Walker’s interview with Far Cry 3’s writer Jeffrey Yohalem is one example of such colour-blindness. Yolahem seems to think his work is progressive and that this is sufficient means to dismiss all claims of lazy racism.

“The end of this story is very blatantly a subversion of any kinds of racist stereotypes. What I feel like what’s happened is to explain this story you need more than a soundbite, and I feel like a lot of people just glancingly looked at the thing and then got upset. They didn’t actually explore the whole game.” – Jeffrey Yolahem
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/12/19/far-cry-3s-jeffrey-yohalem-on-racism-torture-and-satire/

So here it is the fault of the politically aware people being racist. Hmmm. The creator’s aren’t racist, it’s YOU!

On top of this, whiteness is a social construction which can only exist in the presence of non-whiteness. The white majority refuses to see itself as a racial group and as a result the non-white group is ‘othered’. This applies to the example given in class of the selection of European looking humans or some ‘other’ monster creature in World of Warcraft. Having agency in a game with discriminatory undertones means that the player has to fit within the set rules and must choose to which ‘cybertype’ they will adhere. Even in games such as The Sims, whiteness of your character is the default and to choose a different option is to differentiate yourself from the ‘norm’.

The phenomenon known as the ‘Magical Negro’, as mentioned in class, is something that cannot be unseen. While easily pervading many modern texts (for example The Hunger Games or Constantine), it is clearly exploitative of the assumption that a non-white character will drop everything to come to the aid of the white protagonist with their ‘spiritual’ knowledge. Again with Far Cry 3, the attempt at subverting this stereotype flops as the ‘magical tattooing’ does nothing to address this obsession with ‘natives’ and their ‘otherness’.

Race and representation in gaming is going to continue to be a controversial arena as long as these cybertypes and stereotypes still exist. Ignorance is no excuse for discrimination.

-Sophie McGuinness