the thing that bothers me most about when white people try to confront racism in television, film, literature, etc. is that they always depict their own uneducated misguided version of reality

a reality in which poc are still mainly depicted as subhuman (submissive, subservient, on the losing side) because that is “historically accurate,” where we have minor speaking roles in the story of our own liberation

this reality doesn’t restore poc autonomy or agency, and reclaiming our own autonomy, our own agency–becoming emotionally, spiritually, mentally, socially, and economically empowered enough to dictate our own lives and fates without interference from white people–is at the core of our struggle against racism

this white anti-racist historical reality just perpetuates the belief that we have never been capable of fighting for ourselves, that white people have always saved us, that in every story (even ones about us) we are just left or right of center but never center. this reality doesn’t present the complexity and richness of poc existence in spite of historical bondage. it still puts the power of interpretation in white peoples’ hands, and seriously the number one thing that keeps fueling white racism is their ignorance and their general inability to interpret anything regarding race correctly

sure, jim crow existed in 1912, black folk were being lynched in 1912

but none of the history “lesson” in bioshock infinite teaches about the intense civil rights struggle black people were already embroiled in in the early 20th century, the sugar spot where booker t. washington, w.e.b. dubois, and marcus garvey converged, the organizations formed that were dedicated to our struggle, the movements in art, literature, music, and dance that were in their nascency, the enlisted soldiers who were rebelling, the every day people who were screaming ENOUGH

you think because you throw in daisy fitzroy as the leader of the vox populi (and then subsequently kill her in one plotline so you can make some statement about reverse racism and crazy violent blacks going off the deep end or something, idek) that you’ve covered the scope of black resistance, that you’ve captured the spirit of civil rights struggle (even though you nested it within an ineffectual and just as evil as everybody else popular humanist resistance because it would probably be reverse racist to allow black people to have our own movement, which is, as i said, what happened in actual reality)

seriously? you make racism against blacks germaine to the plot of your storyline, but you don’t even do any research to find out what else blacks were up to in 1912, and then you bury our ACTUAL struggle against racism in a hippie dippy “we’re all human” resistance movement turned sour. seriously?

do you know why you did this? because the black people in this storyline aren’t fucking people. they’re props. literally. they are props. and that’s what i find so fucking offensive about bioshock infinite, is that it makes black people props in a storyline in which white people get to revise white history through all kinds of fanciful sci fi wizardry in order to make themselves feel better while STILL excluding and marginalizing black people, and we’re supposed to be happy about it. okay. thank you. thank you so much for being so concerned about faithfully depicting black life in 1912 in a floating white supremacist city in the clouds in which people can travel between space and time that you forgot to depict any other aspect of historical reality or even to give the black people in the game fucking brains

no, actually what you did is create a whole fantasy 1912 in which you relegated blacks to symbolically representing the demon of overt historical white racism because that is the only demon white people are willing to fight (because it’s already obsolete, so there’s no real challenge there), forget how you just fucking perpetuated racism with your stupid fucking game



white people present this reality to the exclusion and marginalization of all other realities, and then they give themselves a pat on the back for kind of thinking about racism for like a couple of days, and then they turn viciously defensive when poc confront their stupid inane inaccurate version of reality, even though the fact that poc feel excluded and marginalized by it should be the only fucking evidence white people need to understand that they fucked up

I MEAN COME THE FUCK ON

the truth is bioshock infinite is just goddamn inadequate. it’s an insult to my people. it reduces my people to passive victims in a white narrative. fuck you if you think this is realistic or historically accurate. you’re a goddamn koolaid drinking fucking ignorant ass fucking fool if you honestly think the only thing my people knew how to do was get tied up and sip white fuckery with their pinkies in the air all damn day long