Five Posts About Real Racism in Virtual Worlds

We once thought that virtual worlds would help diminish racism, since people inside them would be judged by the behavior of their avatars, not the color of their skin. Sad to say, the exact opposite is the case: Hiding behind an anonymous avatar, many racists act even more racist, while many people of color, targeted by a wide array of explicit or implicit prejudice, feel pressured to disguise their real life race. This Martin Luther King Jr. Day, here's some classic posts to help contemplate that reality -- and contemplate ways we can all be better:

The Skin You're In

She spent three months in the skin of a black woman. Some of her friends shied away, she believes. Then there were the "guys that thought I was an easy lay, for lack of a better term. It scared me honestly, some of the assumptions made. Especially here where everything [in avatar appearance] is changeable with a click. I lost a couple of what I thought were good friends [who] stopped IMing and chatting. They were polite to a fault when I showed up, but [it] was weird. You know how you interact and something changes and no one tells you. Some were subtle, some weren't." She laughs without mirth, recalling how some friends would ask her questions such as, "'[L]ike, when you going back to being you?'"

Black Second Life User Shares Real & Virtual Experiences With the Confederate Battle Flag

"I wish people knew how much it hurt to see the flag on TV and in places which are supposed to represent everyone in a fair manner, like court houses. I have been to places in Second Life which had the flag up. We always knew what it meant. That we and others with our color are not wanted around that area. It is like putting up a 'Caucasian only' sign. I have a lot of bad memories with that flag. Like walking past homes of people who have them proudly displayed in front of their homes...

"Strange Fruit" Reborn as Second Life Machinima

He recounts a time when he agreed to meet with someone about a machinima project, but before he saw Fall's photo in the First Life tab in his avatar profile. When he arrived for the meeting, Fall remembers, "him and the cast were just immediately quiet. No one spoke to me directly. And when they started talking on voice, I heard many Southern accents. I figured, 'Here we go, kinda.'" One of the cast members started telling racially tinged jokes. "After that I just left." Rysan Fall acknowledges that the behavior may have been coincidental. "But sometimes... you know."

Lack of Avatar Racial Diversity in an MMO Makes Black Users More Likely to Create White Avatars & Hide Their Real Race, Academic Study Suggests

Lee gathered 56 study participants — half identifying as white and half identifying as black. She then had them read a fabricated magazine story titled “Meet the Coolest ‘Second Life’ Residents.” The eight “Second Life” avatars profiled in the story were either all white, in the low-diversity scenario, or an equal mix of white, black, Hispanic and Asian, in the high-diversity scenario. She then had them perform two tasks: Create and customize their own virtual avatars, and rate their willingness to reveal their real racial identity through the appearance of their virtual avatar. She found that black participants reported less willingness in the low-diversity scenario, and that they also created whiter avatars, as judged by objective raters.

MMO Takes Choice of Avatar Race Away from Players, Provoking Racism... and Frontier Justice Against Racists

Largely, said [lead developer Garry] Newman, the change has been received favorably, but it hasn't been without its growing pains. Some people have protested the fact that they suddenly sport skin colors that aren't theirs. There's also been a definite uptick in overtly racist language: "It makes me wish I'd set up some analytics to record how many times the N-word was used before and after the update," Newman said. "It was used quite a bit from what I've seen."

Please discuss in Comments!

Comments

[Pussycat Catnap]

Actually had somebody with the Confederate flag on a recent flickr image of theirs try to friend me the other day. A German by the profile image I gather - which surprised me that a German of all people would be willing to promote a virulently racist flag.

My own observation this Martin Luther King Jr day:
https://catnapkitty.wordpress.com/2016/01/18/changes-over-the-years-journeying-through-myself/

I am forever baffled that Linden Lab does not ban that flag. The place with it:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/40847626@N06/14983701217/
Can still be found in SL, and in fact often shows up as the top promoted image in search.

That all said my own normal interactions in SL have had a lot less racism over the past year or two. After disengaging from a few people on the 'SL feeds' and official forums, and after leaving the SLU forum community - SL got a lot better for me.

I did see nazi flags all over SL a few months back during a grief attack, but it was not aimed at me - it was near grid wide:
https://my.secondlife.com/pussycat.catnap/snapshots/566c74a0128cc975a1000001
(A day after post, I didn't post the actual attack).

To some degree racists are inavoidable, but in SL, they are more avoidable than in RL, even though the percentage of them is also notably higher than in my part of the RL world.

As a San Francisco native I have the fortune of being from a place where most of the white people were not racist. San Francisco Bay Area Caucasians are more like Europeans - mostly nice, just a few bad apples, easy to overcome initial barriers even across class lines, let alone race.

But I did spend a number of years in a few other places... and had rough enough experiences to grow up in fear of any whites that didn't have European accents... That 'gut reaction' still hits sometimes as it was formed in early childhood, but I'm old enough to move past it once I get past the first few seconds with someone.

And SL takes in people from all sorts of places, so it doesn't always have the nice 'bubble of multiculturalism' that we have in the Bay Area.

My thought for being better is to just move past the people who are living in hate as if they were ghosts. Embrace the people who embrace diversity. As I said above, my experiences with SL and racism have gotten a lot better since I just stop engaging in certain places / crowds.

I will however, lament that avatar choices for non-Caucasians seems to be thinning again. Several places that used to sell a wide range of skin tones have pulled down many of their non-Caucasian options. Likewise my choices in dreadlock or braided hair have been getting thinner:
https://my.secondlife.com/pussycat.catnap/snapshots/569bf865f8a1ec47f7000001
- I'm not sure what is driving this. It is not just 'SL contracting' because its very specific to certain tonal ranges and hair styles. It seems to just be very unfortunate timing.