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'Racist Undertones' in Anti-Games Fears
>> From next-gen.biz:
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A leading sociologist says videogames have become the scapegoat for violent acts perpetrated by white middle-class criminals, pointing out that crimes committed by African Americans are rarely blamed on games.
Writing in the American Sociological Association's journal Contexts, USC's Karen Sternheimer says, "Blaming video games means that the [criminals] were set aside from other violent youth, frequently poor males of color. The video game explanation constructs the white, middle-class shooters as victims of the power of video games, rather than as fully culpable criminals. When boys from "good" neighborhoods are violent, they seem to be created by video games rather than by their social circumstances. White, middle-class killers retain their status as children easily influenced by a game, victims of an allegedly dangerous product. African-American boys,
She tears into the many studies that have been published on video game violence in recent years, "The biggest problem with media-effects research is that it attempts to decontextualize violence. Poverty, neighborhood instability, unemployment, and even family violence fall by the wayside. Ironically, even mental illness tends to be overlooked in this psychologically oriented research."
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Full Story: next-gen.biz
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