Black Lives Matter charges Pokemon Go with Racism!Privileged White People Run Blue Eyed Avatars Through Their Neighborhoods, Knowing the Police Won't Shoot
Leaders of the Black Lives Matter Movement have charged Pokemon Go, Nintendo's new hit game app, with inherent racism.
There are two respects in which Pokemon Go is regarded as racist by those in the know in the BLM movement. The first respect, is that it's much safer to play Pokemon Go, which requires you to walk around your own neighborhood; if you're white and living in your own neighborhood.
The second respect in which Pokemon Go is racist is that you can set yourself up as a white Avatar, hunting down and collecting--or shooting--the black monsters in your own neighborhood.
http://www.smobserved.com/story/2016/07/11/news/black-lives-matter-charges-pokemon-go-with-racism/1596.html
"Warning: Pokémon Go is a death sentence if you’re a black man," Omari Akil argued in an essay at Medium over the weekend.
It’s a startling, even extreme-sounding claim. How could a virally popular smartphone game featuring adorable Japanese cartoon characters possibly endanger the lives of black men?
But Akil’s explanation makes a lot of sense, and it is incredibly sobering. Akil says he rushed to download the game and try it out but quickly realized that its "augmented reality" interface also replicates the systemic racial inequalities of our regular, un-augmented reality:
I spent less than 20 minutes outside. Five of those minutes were spent enjoying the game. One of those minutes I spent trying to look as pleasant and nonthreatening as possible as I walked past a somewhat visibly disturbed white woman on her way to the bus stop. I spent the other 14 minutes being distracted from the game by thoughts of the countless Black Men who have had the police called on them because they looked "suspicious" or wondering what a second amendment exercising individual might do if I walked past their window a 3rd or 4th time in search of a Jigglypuff.
Akil’s logic is simple: Black men are stopped more often by police for unusual or suspicious behavior. More police stops means a greater risk of violent interactions, and black men are disproportionately killed by police. Pokémon Go causes people to do unusual things in public spaces. Therefore, Pokémon Go poses a real risk to black men in America.
