GTA: San Andracist

I know, with every fiber of my being that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is a game which capitalizes on racist stereotypes and images.

And yet, people ask me to justify my belief all the time. And I have a hard time putting into words this profound understanding of blaxploitation that I have.

And they always think they've somehow won an argument against me. "Ha! He admits that the other games had bad stereotypes of italian americans, I've somehow won this argument against him!" they proclaim. I barely have energy to argue any further. If somebody says, "how is this game racist? how does it use racist iconography?" I just have to shake my head. How does it not, I wonder.
How is it that people seem to think that the last 100 years worth of subtle prejudice against Italian Americans is anywhere near the institution of american racism based on the construct of whiteness and blackness? I get flustered, and don't feel like going through visual sociology and cultural studies and african american image in the media 101 for these people -- fucking educated, self-proclaimed liberal people, just because they're priviliged enough to be blissfully unaware of the dynamic of racism (this privilige IS in fact an indirect form of racism). I don't feel like bringing in a bibliography chronicalling the evolution of the black image from the big black bucks in Birth of a Nation to the big black bucks in G-Unit to the big black bucks in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

I hate to waste time arguing with somebody why the very appropriation and glorification of the South Central mythos as a style, or genre within which suburban white kids across the country can fanticize themselves into is a result of racist white privilige.

Usually the best I can do is to point out that in videogames, black people only appear as sports figures, rappers, or gangsta ass niggas.
Which doesn't seem to phase people, because those are the exact same roles they play in MAGAZINES, TV, MOVIES, MUSIC. HELLO, THE FUCKING MEDIA IS FUCKING A FUCKER, PEOPLE. KRS-ONE said, "now we got white kids calling themselves nigga" and that was before they could become VIRTUAL niggaz in the nigganet.

What the fuck?

Why do I have to have this discussion every goddamned day?