Why does race matter in SL?

Well, why does gender matter in SL? The thing is, although SL allows us to imagine ourselves as dragons or robots or flying mounds of spaghetti, most of us choose to tool around in human forms--idealized and often hyper-sexualized forms, but nonetheless human ones. And not all human beings (in fact very few of us) are blond and blue-eyed. Some of you may be asking, well, why make a big deal of racial difference in SL? My interest in writing about African American and African Diasporic presence in SL is two-fold: as noted in my initial post, I want to highlight the contributions that black people make as creative forces in SL, as builders and designers, as event hosts and as entrepreneurs, who cater to black consumers like themselves. The fact that these activities exist and succeed in SL help to make this virtual world a welcoming and appealing environment for residents of African descent who want to socialize and collaborate with others of similar background, and it also helps us to make SL a culturally diverse and truly international place. My second interest in exploring African Diasporic and African American presence in SL is to examine how black culture is being represented and experienced in SL. Yes, this does mean that I am interested in asking about the existence of racism in SL, and examining how and why certain incidents of intolerance occur. Many of us come to SL to be able to embody our ideal selves--a version of ourselves that is physically perfect, but one that is also fully and profoundly expressive emotionally, artistically, and even intellectually--and while many of us also imagine that this ideal self is easily accepting of cultural differences, gender differences, language differences, political differences, the fact is that actually negotiating such differences in the variety of social spaces and situations that exist in SL is not always easy. Misunderstandings can result; confrontations do occur, and acceptance and tolerance does not always happen. Certainly, full inclusion of differences cannot exist if we pretend that racism and sexism has not been imported into SL along with the various human appearances and attitudes we give our avatars, or if we fail to acknowledge that some of the ways in which a mainstream, white middle-class heterosexual English-speaking social space has been brought into SL as the *normal* environment in which we participate in SL, and other varieties of experience are thus marginalized. For myself, as an African American female academic who studies and teaches about race, class and gender in American culture, it is extremely necessary to question the social dynamics that exist in SL in light of these issues. I feel it is also my responsibility as a resident to endorse and protect the grand possibilities of reaching for that ideal world where intolerance and hatred (racial and otherwise) does not exist. It might very well do some good for those of us who are English speakers, for example, to actually learn to communicate in Arabic or German or French or Japanese rather than relying on the often awkward Babbler for translations or always expecting others to be able to speak English. It might be enlightening for those who gender-switch or race-switch in their Second Lives to take some of their developing sensibilities of how the other half is treated sometimes back into their First Lives, and become a bit more aware of what prejudice and discrimination really mean.