Latest / Black Box Theory Podcast / Why Black Communities Get Different Treatment in Games
Transcript
- Thomas: I think the the issue is for one, the game only shows black people. When you actually look at the gang map of Chicago, if you really want to just focus on gang culture, it's not only black people that are involved in gang activity. There are plenty of other communities that are involved in gang or illegal business or whatever you want to call it. so I think just targeting black people. Is bad. Targeting anyone, like even making a game like this, is bad. And I know people bring up the argument of GTA, mafia, like other games like that, but it's how they're representing the people. When you play GTA, it includes every race, you know, it includes everybody. It's not targeting a specific community. And it actually has a story. It actually has a plot. It actually has things that go on. It's like you're watching a movie, but playing it. And when you look at mafia, it's the same thing. Like like literally, I'm looking at an Instagram comment of a clip. I'll show you guys a clip in a second of a popular streamer reacting to the game. But someone literally says, Ain't see no one complained when they used Italians and so on for the mafia games, laughing emoji, laughing emoji, laughing emoji, B so Fr, which for people who may not know what that means, is for real. and it's like Well, yeah, no one's gonna say that about the mafia because think about how they they show people, like how do they show black crime organizations like BMF, whatever? If you well, I'm not gonna I'm not saying BMF is a crime organization. That's not my business. I I'm just somebody reading off the internet. But versus how they show the mafia. They show the mafia as Italian dudes with suits, handling business, having having businesses who just might kill a person here and there over respect or whatever the case. Black people, they show no organization. You think about all the black movies, you think about Weinstein productions and how they showed black people in the movies back in the 90s and 2000s. Everything's focused on us killing each other and and all these things that aren't true. And anyone who actually grew up in the hood or who knows people from the hood or hood adjacent, this stuff is not that common. Like I've seen people, I'm not gonna say it's not that common. It's heavily dependent on where you live, but I've seen people online talking about, I've grew up in a black neighborhood. It was just like that. No, it's not. You did not grow up in a black neighborhood, you grew up in a ghetto or you grew up in a in an ignorant place which is not limited to black people. The connecting that line to black people makes literally no sense. as there are plenty of white people who will tell you they grew up in bad areas where these things happen. Hispanic people, Latin American people, they could tell you they grew up in areas where these things happen. So this being a whole black thing is is clearly targeted.