You would think that in the 21st century racism would be a thing of the past—if only we lived in a perfect world.
In the picture to the left, you can see an excerpt from an online video game, Border Patrol, where the goal is to shoot as many Mexicans trying to cross over the border into the United States as you can. As mentioned in a blog from Sociological Images, your main targets are drug dealers, Mexican nationals and pregnant women, referred to as “breeders.” The game insinuates that pregnant Mexicans cross the border and run to the welfare office as depicted in the sign. Every person that you miss gives you negative points, and at the end of the game, you are give tally of how many “wetbacks” you shot.
It is unbelievable that in the 21st century we are seeing video games portraying this type of violence and racism. What type of message are we sending to the youth of America?
Even worse is that there are people who actually enjoy playing, including government officials like former Georgia Councilman John Dowdy. According to Kotaku, after playing the game and passing a racist email around his office, Dowdy was forced to resign.
Looking at the racist comments that players have made and the fact that someone would even create a game like this indicates that we are a long way from equality in the United States.
By Angela Donadic, Policy and Advocacy Fellow
This is ridiculous.
This is extremely offensive. I’m not Mexican and I originally came to the US to study, so I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s like to cross the border and experience that level of discrimination, but I still find this extremely offensive, hateful and overall really stupid. Whoever thought of this obviously has a unilateral and very narrow vision of the world.
It makes me really angry that you can see things like this, and then when you go to work or hand out with your friends (who happen to be very privileged, i.e. white males) they turn around and tell you that “everything is fine in the USA, there’s no racism or sexism or any other -ism, everyone has the same chance of making it, it’s an individual’s problem if they don’t…” and that is bullcrap.
Anyway, thanks for sharing. The first step to solving a social issue is to bring things like these to the surface and create discomfort to those who deny racism and sexism and classism, etc.