1. Rhetorical Incoherence at Play:
How White Computer Game
Players Write and Talk About
Race
Bryan-Mitchell Young
PhD Candidate Indiana University
popularculturegaming.com
@jccalhoun

3. Message board posts responding to the pic
(it is important to note that only a few of the 58
posts in this thread reference race)
“Anyone notice a key thing to
that picture? 1 token black
guy in all of the LAN.”

4. “Uh oh. Is he gonna die?”
Even though this comment is a joke about
racism
– It still highlights racial tensions in USA culture
– Portrays the man as passive victim
After this there were 2-3 more joking posts
about the lack of racial diversity at the event.

5. “And damn, do any of you guys ever get
any sun? Nevermind, I already know the
answer to that question.”
Previous statements about the lack of racial minorities
received joking comments.
This comment did not:
“To be fair, it's only just recently gotten
warm enough to be outside for any
real length of time.”

6. White Gamers Talking about Race
“and as far as the minorities
go, I don’t know exactly what –
I mean, you know, other
people play games too. I mean
everyone plays games, but…”

7. Me: So the LAN parties are mostly
made up of White people. We are
in Indiana so that shouldn't be
surprising. But do you have any
idea why they are so White?

8. 7 second pause

9. Sphinx: what do you mean by
that?

10. Me: Well I've looked at the
demographics of either Bloomington or
just IU in general and you think there
would be. [2 second pause] If it would be
reflective, if it would be the same as the
make-up of IU Bloomington there would
be a larger presence of people who
weren't White. African-Americans. Things
like that and there there's not. Any idea
why there isn't?

11. Sphinx: I would say that is just mostly
because of [2 second pause] where [1
second pause] we are located. I [1 second
pause] guess I never really thought about it
too much. And it might be. I've never been
to like a big con or anything like Blizcon or
anything like that so I can't speak to that. [5
second pause] I would say the majority
reason is because it is Indiana so. I don't
know. [1 second pause] I couldn't I can't give
you a really good answer for that.

12. When I asked, “Why are most of the
people at the LAN parties White?” the
answers I received were:
• Incorrectly stating it was because there weren’t many
racial minorities in the area
• Economic explanations
• Cultural explanations
• What they have in common is that they are
all about the lack of racial minorities not
about the (over)abundance of Whites

13. Commonality Between Writing and
Talking about Race
Discomfort.
Even though the the written comments use
humor and the spoken ones use incoherence
they are both signs of discomfort and different
ways of dealing with it.

14. Cycle of Fear and Silence
1. Well-intentioned Whites don’t talk about race
partially because they “don’t want to sound
racist.”
2. Therefore they don’t have experience talking
about race.
3. So when they do talk about race they are
frequently inarticulate, naïve, or unsophisticated
and therefore more likely to say something that
can be interpreted as racist.
4. So they become more afraid of sounding racist

15. Conclusion
In White, Dyer argues that although it seems
as if White people do not talk about
Whites, the reality is that most of the
time, “White people speak about nothing
but White people, it's just that [they] couch
it in terms of 'people' in general.”
I argue that conversely when White
people actually do talk about race they
talk about anything but White people.