ATTENTION ANYONE COMPARING GAMERGATE TO RACISM.


Please allow me to introduce myself. I'm a man of wealth and taste.

Actually, Let me be specific. I'm a BLACK man, with a wealth OF taste. Kinda have to be. I write about games for a living. So yes, I'm also a gamer. And I've also been around for a long long year. Maybe not when Jesus Christ had his moment of doubt and pain, but I was around when "gamer" meant marginalized child of varying age whose entirety of existence was in dark caves, mumbling about rad graphics, at the expense of personal hygiene and human interaction.

Basically, to most adults, we were all Gollum. To quite a few, we still are.

And I should know, because I *was* that gamer at specific points in my life.

But, good news: It got better. What do you know, the internet was right. Thanks, Dan Savage.

Actually, it got better because when I figured out I WANTED human interaction and to see what life was like outside of my front door, I cleaned up, lost a truckload of weight (a bunch of which I've gained back, but, half is muscle, and such is life), started dating,saw more of the country, moved out of my mom's, got married, met loads of new friends, had new experiences, got divorced, dated a LOT more, and on and on and on. Occasionally, I'm still that awkward fat gamer kid, because I got news for you, if you've been that once, that kid doesn't go away, he just kinda shrinks away, until he decides to pop out at the worst possible moment for maximum lulz. But for the most part, yeah. I'm happy, well-adjusted, and a god damn adult. Who just so happens to play a LOT of games.

Before all of that, I was black. I was black through all of it. I'm black now. I will die a black man.

This is not something I chose. This is not something a shower and a shave will allow me to shrug off, nor would I ever want to. My mother and father were black people. Their genetic committees agreed, they locked that down. I'm black for life. I'm proud to be black. Hell, most days, it's not even something I think about. It's a fact of life so ubiquitous that I could be standing in an empty field buck naked, for whatever reason that might be, and still have to deal with the fact that I'm a BLACK naked man. If someone were to come along randomly and call me on that, or call the police, they're not going to say a naked GAMER is standing in the middle of a field. Hell, even after I TOLD them I play video games, this would not be the identity that defines me to others. The fact that I have dark brown skin does not get overridden by the fact that I can beat Battletoads. This does NOT "get better." I can't try to be less black.

That's all kind of a preamble. Let me clue you in about what it's like to have your identity, your experiences marginalized.

I've told this first story to a couple folks online during the whole GamerGate thing, but, bears repeating. So, couple months back, me and a couple dozen journalists got to go check out COD: Advanced Warfare's multiplayer in San Francisco. And we're talking heavy hitters here: in front of me are 3 dudes from Gamespot (before I started writing there), I would run into folks from Kotaku, 1up, and a bunch of other major outlets along the way. Gamers would know these folks on sight. It's taking a while to get set up, so a bunch of us are lined up outside the building, just hanging out, waiting, on our phones, etc. To a casual observer, we could be waiting to get into the nerdiest club imaginable, or Radiohead could be playing some secret show, who knows. So naturally, a few folks pass by wondering what the line's for. In particular, two very well-to-do ladies caked in makeup and jewelry come by and ask what we're waiting for. We answer: We're seeing the new Call of Duty. Their response: "Oh, video games! How adorable!" they titter. They traipse off. All of us kinda stare at each other incredulously for a few seconds. All our collective experience, skill, reduced to zero in a heartbeat. For the briefest second, we all felt like shit. Then promptly remembered we all get to write about it professionally, and games are fun as fuck, we get to do something fun as fuck for a profession, did one of these (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOyCyoYLjto), and went back to bitching about Watch Dogs.

Meanwhile, wanna know what its like when someone victimizes you for being black? Google "black man shot". Google "Sweet Brown racism". Google "Charles Ramsey". Google "Trayvon Martin". And I don't mean this rhetorically. Really look over this shit. Take it in. Absorb it.

It's worth noting that any white entitled gamer can walk outside in the twilight hours in an Assassins Creed hoodie, and not have to quietly consider if they should have the hood up because THEY MIGHT GET STOPPED, ARRESTED, OR KILLED.

It's worth noting that people had to march in the streets, fight, and die just for the right to eat lunch wherever they wanted. Gamers have fought and died trying to beat Ruby Weapon in Final Fantasy VII, and nobody was trying to break your skull with a nightstick while it happened.

It's worth noting that to this day, the US Government keeps close tabs on anybody even remotely associated with the Civil Rights Movement in the 60s. Not because they issued death threats, or threatened to rape someone, or because they stole private documents. Just for being black and daring to say they'd like to continue being black wherever they wanted. And before someone tries bringing the Black Panthers into this, keep in mind, the Panthers were formed, at least at the beginning, as a reactionary measure for Black people to arm and defend themselves against being beaten, harassed, or shot. A lot of black people were shot, beaten, lynched, dragged behind pickup trucks, spit on, stepped on, fucked with to the point where some black people said they'd had enough, and learned how to fire a gun. Famously, this is the shit that Malcolm X said wasn't violence, but intelligence.

It's worth noting that saying "'gamer', as an identity, is dead" does not have the same connotation as saying "'Black', as an identity, is dead". No, kids, that's not what anyone has ever, would ever said. What HAS been debated to death over the course of 40 years is whether nigger/nigga, as a word, as an identity, as even a source for disempowerment against actual racism, is dead. We even tried to symbolically kill that fucker like it was Dracula's curse (http://www.naacp.org/press/entry/the--n--word-is-laid-to-rest-by-the-naacp), with the same degree of ineffectiveness.

Now, would you kindly, in the Bioshock sense, look back over anything Leigh Alexander said in the last month, look at anything insulting someone's said about gamers as a group, look at every angry tweet telling gamers to go fuck themselves in the last month. You have no risk here. You have nothing to prove to humanity at large besides being a decent human being who actually wants to share a fun medium with other human beings. Your personhood is not at question, unless you do or say something that does the exact same thing to others, like, say, women and those who stand up for them. There is no Stormfront.org for people who hate gamers. There is nothing comparing your genetic personhood to something subhuman. My rights have never been violated because I play video games. They are CONSTANTLY at risk because I'm black. And you do not get to make that comparison when someone says something mean about gamers. Ever. Not for this.

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