Racial Stereotypes in Video Games

Summary of “Playing with Prejudice”
In “Playing with Prejudice: The Prevalence and Consequences of Racial Stereotypes in Video Games” by Burgess, Dill, Stermer, Burgess and Brown, the issue of racial stereotypes in gaming is discussed. The researchers state that by examining video games, they “were interested in whether Whites would be more likely to be portrayed as engaged in socially sanctioned violence compared to minorities” (Burgess et al. 293). Socially sanctioned violence would be violence conducted by military, trained combatants, for example, as opposed to non-sanctioned violence such as street violence and crime conducted by criminals. The researchers were also interested in seeing how racial groups were presented in games, whether minorities were predominantly presented as either criminals or as athletes and the manner in which white video game characters were presented. The findings of Burgess et al. showed that video games do in fact reinforce a racial stereotype of crime and violence mainly being perpetrated by minorities rather than by whites and that black characters are typically presented as being more athletic or focused on athletics as opposed to being technologically or intellectually-inclined. Racial stereotyping presents a danger for young players because it risks racist perspectives and beliefs becoming dominant in the collective consciousness of the upcoming generation.
The reason that the video game stereotype is important, according to Burgess et al., is that video games are now one of the most popular forms of media in the world. The video game alone makes well north of $20 billion per year while children between the ages of 8 and 17 regularly play the games (Burgess et al.). This dominance in the market place leads to a dominance in the socio-political values inculcated in the young people playing these games. The bigger the video game industry gets, the more impact it has on the socio-political and socio-cultural level.
The stereotypes children see in video games are projected by a variety of genres—from sports games to task-oriented games to role player action games—and the stereotypically racist themes within these genres risk being perpetuated in life as a result. Such is the theoretical importance of the study, according to the researchers, who state that “repeated exposure to a particular portrayal of a group teaches that this cultural view is a relevant schema for processing members of that particular group” (Burgess et al. 292). The danger, therefore, is that young children who are exposed to games wherein characters and story lines perpetuate racist types will embrace the underlying ideas associated with such stereotyping and view racial groups as either technologically-inclined and smart or as animalistic and violently criminal.
The researchers found, moreover, that negative stereotype associations were behaviorally developed by young people after playing video games—even if the games themselves did not lead to overt racist expressions among players (Burgess et al.). In short, the effect of racism in video games is subtle but tangible. Burgess et al. state that “an unconscious process is at work, which is consistent with Devine’s (1998) research on implicit stereotyping” (307)—a process that results perceptions of racial groups changing without the players even realizing an explicit change.
In the study by Burgess et al., both observational and experimental data was obtained to provide evidence for their conclusions. The findings showed that the video game industry does project negative racial stereotypes. These stereotypes do impact the perceptions of children, which means that the collective consciousness of the next generation is being informed by the manner in which video games depict minorities and the contextualized associations surrounding them.


Works Cited
Burgess, Melinda CR, et al. “Playing with prejudice: The prevalence and consequences
of racial stereotypes in video games.” Media Psychology 14.3 (2011): 289-311.