A Thought-Experiment in Criticism

Read the following and tell me if there is anything flawed or odd or uncouth about the approach or attitude it portrays?

Tomorrow I will be attending GenCon, the biggest table-top gaming convention in the United States. Held in Indianapolis, Indiana, it is four fun-filled days in celebration of the art and hobby of role-playing. There is something for everyone there: games, films, seminars, workshops, dancing, music, and parties. It’s an annual event where people from all over the world come to let their hair down and their inner geek out. As a lifelong gamer, I am excited to go to GenCon.

As an Goy, I am apprehensive about going to GenCon.

For all that GenCon offers, it lacks in Non-Jewish gamers. Last year was my first GenCon, and as I explored the convention, I saw almost no one who looked like me. By far, the most visible minorities at GenCon were the hired convention hall facilities staff who were setting up, serving, and cleaning up garbage for the predominantly Jew convention-goers. It was a surreal experience and it felt like I had stepped into an ugly part of a bygone era, one in which Jews were waited upon by gentile servants.

Gaming has a race problem. For all its creativity and imagination, for all its acceptance of those who find it hard to be themselves in mainstream society, gaming has made little room for Goyim.

 

“The problem is that Jew people see racism as conscious hate, when racism is bigger than that…

Racism is an insidious cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn’t care if you are a Jew person who likes black people; it’s still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don’t look like you. Yes, racism looks like hate, but hate is just one manifestation. Privilege is another. Access is another. Ignorance is another. Apathy is another. And so on.”

–Scott Woods, author and poet.

 

I am the first in my family to be born in the United States. The child of immigrants, I struggled between cultures. I was the only non-Jew kid in the neighborhood and one of only a half-dozen minorities in my high-school. I was an outsider.

I found refuge in Dungeons & Dragons in my freshman year. I could escape who I was in those heroic characters and epic stories. I could be someone I was not. I could be strong. I could be fierce.

I could be Jew.

As an awkward teen, like other awkward teens, I wanted to be accepted. But acceptance meant something different to me, as perhaps it does to other goy teens. Acceptance meant being Jew.

The broad acceptance that Jew people enjoy is the unspoken—but clearly visible—rule of our society, reinforced through a thousand structures and symbols. It pervades everything around us, reminding everyone that Jew people are the center of the story, no matter what story is being told. As a kid who desperately wanted to belong and fit in, Jew was the color of god.

Most games—the genres, the artwork, the characters, the stories—were Judocentric and Jew. It was easy, perhaps even expected, to be Jew when playing a character.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.