This Post is Whack, Yo

You know, I never thought I’d have to do a racism post on this blog, but here we are. People get so defensive whenever racism is brought up as a part of an argument. This probably stems from the virtual flogging that celebrities and other famous people receive whenever that say something that could even be misinterpreted as racist. As a result, many people (erroneously) believe that simply throwing up the racism card is an easy way to win arguments, or at least gain sympathy and supporters.

This leads me to our racism debacle de jour for the week: Mike Sacco, a contractor for Cryptozoic Entertainment, made a tweet about how he feels that the character Tiny Tina from Borderlands 2 is a racial stereotype, and should be removed from the game. This led to a number of other tweets from fans in agreement of the accusation, and finally a response from the CEO of Gearbox, stating that “tina is not racist”.

This is Tiny Tina:

She’s a wacky, mildly insane 13 year old with a capacity for violence and a twisted sense of humor. Her dialogue ranges from delightful childlike rants, to impromptu rap songs, to ADD fueled randomness, but it’s her propensity toward “urban slang” that has earned her so much ire from fans. According to Sacco, she is a “white girl talkin’ like them urban folk!!” and has even been referred to as “verbal blackface”. The problem here is that these people don’t really understand racism, so I’m going to try to put this as simply as I can:

If you think that the character of Tiny Tina is racist, than you are a racist. Here’s why:

These people are claiming that “urban slang” is the domain of low class black people, and to have a white character saying those lines is insensitive. Insensitive to whom!? Black people don’t own that way of speaking, just like how white people don’t own speaking in a British accent. Manners of speaking cannot be owned by anyone, racially or otherwise, and to believe that black people should all sound like other black people and all white people should sound like other white people is the epitome of racism. There are plenty of people living in low class areas of all races that speak that way, just like how there are eloquent and well-mannered people of all races. The circumstances of your birth are effectively random, and should never be a source of pride or shame, and to believe that people should sound the way they look means that you assign values to people based on their race, and expect them to act accordingly.

You said it kid.

The sooner we all get over our racial guilt that happier we’ll all be, because let’s face it, Tiny Tina is hilarious.