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Chopchica does post-mortem.
I've sat and thought about if I wanted to say anything, if I had anything different to say. But it all boils down to what she said - there under a bright and shiny and seemingly careless surface, is racism. And for me, the name change feels like something very small - good, but small. Because I don't believe the game's moderators and players realized or learned anything.
I think they walked away from this huffy and upset at having their racist and insensitive actions called out.
I think they walked away from this talking about those whiny Jews and Jew lovers.
I think they walked away from this thinking about how the Jews want to own the Holocuast.
I think they walked away from this with any little knowledge they had about homosexuals, the physically and mentally handicaped and blacks who were also in the camps - completely drummed out of their heads with words like cunt and bitches and sheep.
I think they walked away from this thinking that it was just bad timing to have promoted the game so close to Holocaust Remembrance Day.
For hours they watched people comment; upset and outraged and hurt and disgusted. They watched human beings say 'This is wrong! Please stop being so wrong!' and all they could think about was their sense of entitlement and that if someone brings up a point that hurt their feelings there should be cock sucking and petting and pampering to make them feel better and THAT would be what prompted them to change anything at all. As if racial sensitivity was some kind of trade.
For hours they ignored the very simple, plain and easily understood fact that intent does not matter when someone is hurt.
I think behind locked posts some of them will still refer to the game, or the game's timeline point as The Night of Breaking Glass.
I think marieantoinette is not the only individual who thinks the Holocaust was 'something in the past that should not be dwelled on'. I think she is not the only one who is like to believe the same for slavery. If the Holocaust was 'Oh my gosh 70' years ago, then Slavery being centuries away is what she'll focus on. Never mind that Jim Crow Laws and Segregation are only forty years away.
The fact that after so many commented, someone could come to my journal to ask me just why I was upset...
It boggles the mind.
I am reminded of all the times, in other conversations where things went pretty much the exact same way - someone brings up "But I went to Japan and they reverse discriminated against me!!" As if a country filled with people who lost a war, and who suffered terrible tragedies like Hiroshima and Nagasaki actually have the power to do anything but make an individual feel uncomfortable. And even then, within the culture, it would have to be an individual who felt above following the norms of the society they were visiting.
I bring this up because all this defensiveness and spitting swear words and back up determination to stay in the wrong, seems to come from feeling guilt and having discomfort.
Guilt & Discomfort.
Those are the reasons the pain and suffering, the humiliation and anger of formerly and still currently oppressed peoples are to be ignored.
Guilt & Discomfort.
To admit that you were careless, thoughtless and insensitive is to face guilt and discomfort. I don't believe that all racism is based completely on this, but I do believe that a goodly part of the racism that infects individuals who want to claim that they're good people - comes from guilt and discomfort.
And energy.
They'd have to learn something. They're angry at having to learn something. They're angry at having to spend time and energy learning something. And rather than be angry at their ancestors who treated various groups of people as if they were less than nothing - it's easier to be angry at the descendents of those groups for bringing things up. As if racism were not a cancer that when ignored continues to consume society, multiplying cell by cell, thought by thought, invading and possessing.
I am well aware that there are individuals behind the journals that were involved in this. And I'm left thinking of those individuals that spoke, and the ones who let a few doing the speaking for them. And I'm left KNOWING they're not at all nice or good people. They want things easy. They want anything that isn't easy to just go away and leave them alone. If they don't think about living in an Apartheid State then it isn't true. Cause America is great! America's #1 and how dare you insinuate, how dare you accuse its children of not being perfect.
____
For the moderators of ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif)
asylum_promo, I do not wish to have any further communications from Keieeeye. Her concept of PR clean up is seriously lacking.
For ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
prairiecrow A better term for what went on would be imbroglio and not wank. Racism and anti-semitism are not the same as shipping wars and who's the best NuWho Companion. But it's just a suggestion from someone "childish and impulsive".
For ardath_rekha While I do not believe in your apology, I am grateful that you took the time to apologise and risked doing so on the journal of someone who was and is incredibly upset by what happened. I have unscreened the apology on my post but I also point people here to where you posted the apology to anyone still tracking things.
To anyone wishing they could comment or start/continue conversation in my journal - I'm sorry, but I cannot handle conversation right now. I am still far too incredibly angry and upset. Chopchica has comments open - if you have an LJ you can go there.
ETA: I am not exempting the British Isles, or Europe from containing idiots and assholes and a strong sense of superiority.
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| 2008-02-27 20:56 |
| They're In My Games, Invading My Peace |
| Public |
 sleepy, pissed, thinky |
| #race issues: gaming |
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Race race everywhere.
Although when Yahtzee cries 'wtf? a game for white supremacists??'. You know that game is effed up. Cause he defended The Resident Evil 5 Trailer. (Wait to the end, after the Heavenly Swords stuff - 3:31).
More and more I'm thinking of having a tag 'fandom: race'.
Another journal would just be too complicated. Yes? Maybe just a tag. With a nice link on the side to 'If you're still on livejournal and want to keep your pressure down copy this ban_set list'.
In which case peasant_ would still be in the running to be temporarily the top of the list.
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ifinst27.exe was the effing Uninstall???????????
And now the extra spyware stuff I put on my computer last night, won't let it reinstall (so I could even uninstall it -wtf?)
I'm cranky. I'm cranky for a whole lot of reasons. I'm cranky cause it looks as if that above mentioned exe file was the uninstall for SEAL ONLINE. I'm cranky because I'm having to reinstall the game in order to have uninstall capabilities and take the damn thing off. I'm cranky because I want to uninstall the game, because there is a minimum of technical support - I couldn't even use their contact us text field - it wouldn't send - I had to email to find out what the heck the suspicious file was and not one ever got back to me. And there's no mention in their guide to installation that this is the uninstall file, it loads separately onto the C drive, blah blah blah.
I'm cranky because I enjoy the option of having the game windowed. I like the bright colours. I like the fighting motion and how the text fields are framed for interaction with NPCs. I like the music. I like the concept of crafting, even if I really don't understand it and just wanted to name the character Harley - cause BIG ASS MALLET. But I'm crankyh because I can't make anyone brown.
It's a game of preset hair combinations and that's it. No change in skin colour or eye colour. Even Fairyland let me make a brown elf (and a brown human and a brown dwarf!)
Looking for information on various MMORPG forums I stumbled across someone asking if one particular game (I forget which) let you shade character's brown. If it didn't this person wasn't interested in playing. And there were several replies about how racist that was and how he should be all about the game and not bring that stuff into their fun place.
And I found myself thinking - nah, that's honest. After being surrounded by white people all the live long day, if you want to have a brown character to play with why not?
It made me think about the hue and cry that would come out if a really cool game was released and all the default templates for characters were brown or darker brown, or dark as night black. But you could
buy some pale pigmentation and blonde hair at the cash shop. Oh wouldn't there be fretting and cries of racism, reverse racism, all sorts o shit.
So I'm admitting now that I like being able to play brown characters. Truthfully I like playing mutts like myself - as in when you go past bi-racial cause your parents were bi-racial and their parents etc, you're a mutt. You're multi-racial, you're mixed. I've got straight haired, green eyed cousins, I've got aunts with buttery pale skin. I've got relatives that look like the head maintence guy in this 'apt of lies' - he's got light brown-golden skin and green eyes.
Anyway, SEAL ONLINE, all chubby faced white kids roaming around.
4:01pm (Reinstall was successful. Uninstall was successful) So now to ponder if I want to reinstall at all. I like the thought of evil bunny bad guys and I like the bright colours. I just... I want not to feel so claustrophobic when I play a game though. I don't know if it'd have mattered to me -as much- in the past. But boy does it matter now.
PS: I tried to uninstall first time 'round because there was an error that wasn't letting the game launch.
4:11pm:
They call it a REGGAE HAIRSTYLE.
Oh HELLS no that shit's getting permanently taken off my computer. Not only is it wrong to call it Reggae and not dreads or locks,but on a purely white face? As a fucking TREND OF FASHION?!!!
Fuck you Seal Online. Fuck. You.
4:!8pm And on closer inspection of the pic itself. I can see
braids. Oh us crazy whacky black people with the things in our hair.
More buggering up the ass with a scissors SEAL ONLINE. All for you.
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A reply to http://community.livejournal.com/gamers_of_color/5315.html#comments
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I'm confused as I read the discussion. He used the n-word. It was historically accurate. In fact it was beyond historically accurate because the whole supernatural aspect is supposed to be unbelievable and in the situation as set up, the most obvious answer would be a slave revolt, a bigger fear than strange boogeymen.
I'm not sure how I feel about the use of the n-word. It's difficult to tell, because I'm still feeling as if his group reacted badly to him to bringing up 'icky racism' in their all white fantasy. They wanted the south and hoop skirts, swampland and the confederate army, they wanted a plantation full of dead white people and living black people but they didn't want to address or even have hinted the obvious racism of the time? It seems like a case of white washing everything, no pun intended.
Or maybe I'm just personally fed up with people wanting to play games in harsh times while making the cause of said harsh times invisible.
Pause: I've had ten minutes since I started writing this and I realize while I am offended at the word I am not offended at the sensibility. If he'd said negro or slave or 'a black man/woman' I wouldn't have blinked. I wonder now if people object because they think/feel it's an excuse to say something inappropriate.
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incredibly upset
contemplative