Racial Oppression through Implicit Bias
All texts inherently contain ideology, and ideology has the ability to condition our subconscious minds into certain modes of conscious thought. In fact, I would perhaps argue that implicit ideas incorporated in the narrative during the development of video games, such as omitting the voices and representation of certain subgroups of people, makes a far bigger difference than explicit ideas, even outright bigotry. The reason is that we consciously can reject these ideas on a face-value, but what occurs beneath our conscious minds is much more vulnerable, and thus perpetuates ideologies on a societal level that keep groups minoritized. Many groups can be minoritized, from women to LGBTQ+ individuals to the mentally ill, but what I plan on discussing is race.
Race is a topic which does not allow words to be minced. White people may find it difficult to talk sensitively about these issues, as they do not occupy spaces in which they can speak from experience. A hot issue currently is the matter of defining race as a biological truth or a social construct. I plan to play it relatively safe by discussing matters of representation instead, though I must clarify that when I mention the word race, I mention it only as a way of placing people in different sociohistorical contexts. That being said, the representation of race carries many implicit meanings. White developers tackle this issue in different ways; sometimes they will try to handle characters that occupy different spaces with tact and respect, but many will omit them altogether. This can be out of internal bias or protection from criticism, but the effect is damaging.
Many people from other racial identities have worked to alleviate the industry’s bias by taking matters into their own hands. Sometimes people can work within the confines of a white-produced game to take back the game and represent themselves, such as the community that modifies the Sims to include custom content of a larger variety of skin tones, Afro-textured hair, and other features. Communities like this are crucial, as they allow minoritized groups to find beauty and pride in physical features that are pushed out of sight. Another way that minoritized racial identities can alleviate issues of representation is by using their creative force to tell their own stories, especially in a society in which their stories are not told. In her article “Video games encourage Indigenous cultural expression,” Elizabeth LaPensee says “It is important for game developers not to ignore the historical fact that Indigenous people have often been denied the power, status and authority to tell their own stories… It is a vital act of self-determination for us to be the ones determining how our people are portrayed and our stories are told” (p. 17). Elizabeth is making the point that minoritized people must be involved in order to prevent their erasure and make sure their representations are authentic to lived experiences and history.
When white people do aspire to include racial minorities, things can get touchy: It is easy to reduce non-lived experiences to stereotypes or leave these characters on the sidelines, but I believe the industry is making progress that wouldn’t have been seen years ago. Still there is a ways to go; if white is the default, the normative characteristic, then it stands to reason that other shades are non-normative, or somehow deviant. This shows in the amount of effort that creators are willing to extend depending both on societal perceptions of normativity and how closely a character can fit their lived experience. In the article “Black Skin Is Still a Radical Concept in Video Games,” the authors Yussef Cole and Tanya DePass claim “Yet for those games that allow you to choose your own skin color — and the still rarer batch which explicitly feature protagonists of color — so many fail to give proper consideration to what should happen once your character’s shade happens to fall on the darker side of the spectrum. Limits in technical scope are often trotted out as an excuse, but as with film, game technology is inextricable from its cultural foundations” (p. 5). This article makes clear that while mechanical aspects of game creation make it difficult for white and black characters to “work” aesthetically in the same light, game developers do not put in the effort to make black characters (if there are any) shine in the same way their white characters do.
Though there have been many more attempts to include racially minorities in games, as there have been with other stigmatized groups such as women, trans and non-binary people, non-heterosexuals, and the mentally ill, the fight is far from over. This shows in how many developers are willing to push other characters to the sidelines, or reduce them to stereotypes. Black bodies are still either exoticized, animalized, or made into a menace in some games in which they do appear. Asian, Native American, and other individuals do not get much better treatment; the texts make clear, on an implicit basis, that these groups are the “Other” and the non-normative, mysterious and mystical if not an overt threat. While games as a whole have gotten better with the explicit tones that their works give off concerning stigmatized groups, there is much more going on beneath the surface, and regardless of whether this is a conscious effort to uphold societal norms or a genuine omission out of ignorance, implicit texts must be held to the same standards of criticism or praise. In that, it is a good change for these social minorities to have the freedom to tell their own stories, and let representation work through lived experience instead of an outsider’s perspective, which may be more or less well-meaning and understanding of the complex matrix of domination that pervades all aspects of our lives. Even then, developers of games who include non-white people are accused of “SJW” favoritism and “pushing an agenda.” So perhaps there is a bigger conflict ahead that is the root of why games are still marketed solely to the same socially powerful group that has held their claim over culture for centuries.
