Race- Privilege, Relations, Racism, etc.

Yeahh. There are valid reasons to not like this that aren't just "how dare videogames depict real issues"

Ugh. Worst pagetopper. Read the previous page.

edited 4th Aug '16 1:39:47 PM by MrAHR

From what I've heard, the main problem isn't as much "depicting real conflict" as it is "depicting fictional conflict by invoking parallels to real conflict, but then not taking a stand on the fictional conflict ('moral ambiguity', 'leave it for the audience to decide', etc), which can come across as a Broken Aesop". See also: Bioshock Infinite.

edited 4th Aug '16 3:49:06 PM by Blueeyedrat

I thought that one was pretty clear: Paul Ryan sincerely believed in an impractical ideal which he ended up betraying, while Atlas pretended to believe something altruistic for his own benefit. It's a cautionary tale about the madness of pushing forward ideas while ignoring human nature, especially one's own, instead of working with it.

No that was the first Bioshock which is mostly about how Objectivists are selfish reality denying fuckasses.

Infinite was different.

Oh, yeah, sorry. That one is about bigoted white-nationalist fanatics being crazy. I thought it was pretty blatant. Then of course there's The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized, but that's hardly race specific: the underclass in that game just happened to be black.

Stupid evil racists are the easiest villains ever. Zero effort.

(Cross-posting from the Deus Ex thread.)

Jim Sterling, fearless soul that he is, has taken the plunge and written a piece on the whole sorry affair.

This is basically the issue. (Incidentally, claiming that people are just angry because a video game is trying to talk about social issues is a massive strawman.) Their use of the BLM slogan seems a lot more appropriative than respectful - as well as incredibly insensitive to the massive adversity that BLM is currently facing in real life. "You know that slogan that you're trying to use to raise awareness about the police violence and the murder of black people? The slogan that's already been dragged through the mud, mocked, parodied, and twisted against itself in bizarre attempts at rebuttals? I bet if we used that in our game, everybody would think we were really edgy."

Add in their already poor history of representation of black people (as Mousa attests), and I have a hard time understanding how anybody could not see this as a terrible idea.

Once again: let's not strawman this. The backlash isn't about them trying to use human augmentation and transhumanism as an allegory for real-life bigotry. The backlash is about them doing it in what is, by initial appearances, a cheap, shallow, and ultimately disrespectful way. It's fine to go the Fantastic Racism route (I'd prefer we talk about actual racism, but it ain't my story) - but in so doing, you saddle yourself with real responsibility. Responsibility to portray the issues you're handling with respect and tact, being mindful of the struggles that actual people are facing.

Deus Ex absolutely has the right to explore sensitive issues, but it has the obligation to be respectful of the way those issues affect people in real life. By all means use the racism allegories if they want to, that's their right as creators. But the "Black Lives Matter" slogan was not created to be hijacked by sci-fi writers. BLM is not a relic of history, or even recent memory. BLM is going on right now. 156 black people have been killed by police officers in the eight months of this year alone (and Christ, it'll be probably be more by the time I've finished this post).

Yes, I would consider that disrespectful, because it's the exact same situation. And is there any situation where I would find it acceptable? Well, I would give it a pass if the story was being written by actual black people with ties to BLM, rather than a bunch of privileged non-black people who are, at best, making a deeply misguided attempt at allyship, and at worse appropriating an incredibly meaningful phrase without bothering to check how the people that phrase refers to feel about it.

I'm not really that qualified to weigh in on the situation too much given that I'm not that familiar with the Deus Ex franchise, but from what I gather, most of this could have been avoided if early in development, had just contacted a writer from the movement or from the black community in general and been like "Hey, we want to tackle some pretty lofty social issues in our game. Would it be disrepectful if we used a slogan similar to yours and if so do you have any suggestions on how we could avoid shooting ourselves in the foot?". I like to think people from the community would welcomed the opportunity to have some sort of input.

edited 4th Aug '16 4:24:06 PM by wehrmacht

Sure.

But I wouldn't call Mafia III respectful. That story reads like a Blaxploitation movie.

I'm curuious as to how everyone is suddenly so sure that all the development staff of Deus Ex are white, that seems like a massive assumption built upon people's own racial bias'.

Now claiming that the slogan just happens to be the same is total bullshit and completely undermines any social commentary point being made, the company are idiots. However I'm not gonna jump on the "anyone who makes stupid social commentary must belong to a specific racial group" wagon, that just feels like a bad idea to me.

Their staff picture circa 2009◊

That's pretty white (well white and Asian) I will admit, but it's also one staff picture (not everybody turns up for those), seven years old and in no way indicates who had what creative input into the game. They might have only a few black people but have them all in important storytelling positon's, or they might have a bunch and have them all in coding and art. I've no idea and it feels like a very hasty judgment to make based on one picture.

Isn't one of the lead designers of the new Deus Ex actually black? I remember this coming up when people were complaining about "Mechanical Apartheid".

A former designer was a black Frenchman named Gilles Matouba (according to the Other Wiki), and he was one of the ones who came up with "mechanical apartheid". Of course, him being French easily could mean he would have no first-hand understanding of actual apartheid.

Unless he has an Algerian background.

Precisely.

Plus, France has no formal Apartheid, but it does have its ghettos, on an epic scale.

I haven't seen anyone in this thread assume that they're all white. I do know for a fact that at least one of the lead creative-types, Andre Vu, is Asian.

I find it a bit strange that Americans are apparently claiming ownership over the term "Apartheid", it's a term for what happened in South Africa, Americans don't get to apropriate it then get angry when a French person apropriates it from the same source.

The nationality of a person is only relevant for the term Apartied in the context of if they're South African or non South African.

No you just called them all "a bunch of privileged non-black people". Well actually before that you said " if actual black people", which implies that you don't consider certain types of black people legitimate in their blackness.

edited 4th Aug '16 6:42:27 PM by Silasw

I think you might be reading too much into that, that's not really how I read that post.

I do understand that it's not wise to assume that only white people can be clueless about race relations, but I didn't necessarily see someone implying that.

Have any south africans weighed in on this whole thing?

edited 4th Aug '16 6:48:44 PM by wehrmacht

I mean, non-black does not equal white. I'm not black. I ain't white either. I was fully aware there were POC involved in the project when I made the post.

And I phrased that other sentence poorly. When I said "actual black people," what I meant was simply "black people." I wasn't trying to invalidate anybody's identity.

The phrase would be just as bad (if not worse) if it was "if actual white people".

As for South Africans, I believe we do have one in OTC who actually grew up under Apartheid, if she's reading at the moment though I've no idea.

Fair enough, if it was poor phrasing then it was just that, poor praising.

I get what you mean about Po C not meaning black, as I said in my comment on the picture, they seem to have a large Asian presence amongst the staff, but that's not much help dealing with black issues.

edited 4th Aug '16 6:52:39 PM by Silasw

Yeah, I do apologize for my poor phrasing there. I don't want to be one of those jerks who says someone isn't an "actual" something. I was just saying that hypothetically, I would be okay with the BLM phrase being used if it was being written by black people who were involved in the movement. Because, frankly, it's their movement.

And sadly, a large Asian presence doesn't mean much when it comes to black people's issues when you consider how endemic anti-blackness can be among Asian people.

Hell even ignoring anti-blackness in the Asian community there's simply the basic issue of trying to write about an issue that is not your own. It can be done but it's tough, it'd be the same if it was a black writer writing about Asian-American issues.

Now I wouldn't say that to use the phrase someone has to be part of BLM, but if you're going down that road you need a good understanding of the movement and the issue, which the "oh no we didn't appropriate anything, we just happened to pick the same kind of phrase" bullshit clearly shows they don't have.

edited 4th Aug '16 7:17:26 PM by Silasw

Just to get my lingo up to speed, anti-blackness means "non-white racism towards blacks ", correct?

Absolutely. It's a very thorny issue. I don't believe it should be off-limits, but at the same time, you need to be very aware of when you're stepping outside your lane. If there's one piece of advice I could give, it's don't assume you're already equipped to do it. Whatever conceptions you think you have, even if they're generally correct, you're still not going to be familiar with the nuances of somebody else's experience.

For example, I do not feel the least bit qualified to try to write a story about the experiences of, say, a trans person, or an autistic person, or a Muslim, or yes, a black person. I'm not saying it would be impossible for me to write a story that just happened to be about one of those people (although I would still need to do serious research and consultation beforehand) - but when it comes to a narrative that tries to actually explore their experiences? This is me staying in my lane and knowing when I'm not remotely qualified to attempt something.

And sure, maybe saying that they have to be an active member of BLM is overstating things - but still, this is the kind of thing I would only be likely to accept from a black activist of some sort. Someone who is a member of the affected community, and has an established history of talking about these issues in an intelligent and productive way. Not a AAA video game company that has a number of fairly reprehensible black characters in the past, who only latched on to this phrase in a desperate bid for relevancy.

I generally hear it used as a general term for racism against black people, not just anti-black racism that comes from other PoC (although there's certainly plenty of that).

edited 4th Aug '16 7:25:00 PM by RBluefish

@11588 and 11589 Algerians are seldom black. Black people in France usually have ancestry from south of the Sahara, whether directly or with a stop in the Antilles. The point about ghettoes still stands.