On page 96 of the Russworm and Blackmon piece, it is argued that if black women had the rights and respect that they deserved, then everyone would be free because they are the more marginalized race (black and white) and the more marginalized gender (women and men). This claim came from the seventies, so it makes sense that it is a little outdated. Obviously there are more races and genders than just those to which they were alluding, and there are also other social problems that happen; classism, ableism, homophobia, to list a few. However, they were right in that if the most marginalized people receive the love and support that they deserve (not that there is ONE most marginalized group, rather the idea of it), almost every societal issue would be solved due to the complex interlinking system of intersectionality.
This, honestly, doesn’t give me a ton of hope based on past experiences. I appreciate that this has been laid out and shown for us to read and receive, but most people won’t be able to change their tendencies, beliefs, and actions quickly enough for the deletion of societal problems to occur. I know that nothing will ever be perfect, and I’m not trying to be a pessimist. I also recognize that I’m just sitting here complaining instead of working to inspire change or anything. So, sorry for that. Reading this just reminded me of playing FIFA. They had this story mode in fifa a few years back and the main character, Alex Hunter, was black (his mentor was white, of course). Literally nothing was wrong with the game and everybody liked the story, but EA Sports received backlash from this game just for making the main character black. In addition, a few years later FIFA added women’s international teams to the game. The teams were not fun to play with, and not easy to access, so nobody played as female teams in the few game modes in which they were available. I bring these things up to say this worldwide community had such a tough time accepting very calm and passive changes to their perception of a video game that, while there was a lot of love, there was still a lot of hate. This massive corporation could not have taken the incorporation of marginalized peoples any slower, and still, there was backlash. Things like this are what make me think, how long will it really take for significant change to happen.
Monday, November 14, 2022
Blog Post 8 - Walkup
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I think your anecdote about FIFA is really interesting, because I see a lot of this type of behavior around sports video games. I am a big fan of the NBA 2K video game series, and one of the things that they've done in the past couple of years is add the WNBA to the playable teams you can choose. This received scrutiny and really wasn't taken seriously by many of the other people that I know who play the game, and a lot of male players mocked the game's decision to add this league. Like FIFA, one of the main issues was that you couldn't really do much with the WNBA teams, you could only really do tournaments with them. Still, people gave their opinions that they shouldn't be there at all, it was kind of toxic, and felt very male dominated.
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