ABSTRACT
Today, Black gamers are experiencing countless online attacks by white and other non-Black actors. From public incidents like T-Pain being called the N-word while gaming, to Black gamers receiving private hate messages, there is no shortage of issues for Black players. As a result, many gaming spaces are often interpreted as unsafe by Black players. But what fuels these anti-Black transgressions? How are Black players responding to and coping with racialized digital spaces? And how might anthropology provide not only insight, but new ways of looking at this potentially harmful landscape? This chapter explores new ways of looking at online games and their players through two concepts: the “Magic Circle of Whiteness” and the “Black Spoil Sport.” Building upon the work of Johann Huizinga, the chapter looks at online games not as a space developed by sets of game rules, but instead as sites influenced by a set of white gaming cultural logics. These concepts are applied to ethnographic research on two Black online communities, one which dissolved under the weight of white online racism and another which found ways to cope; in order to examine the unique lived realities of Black players in online spaces.
