KEY PUBLICATIONS
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BLACK GAMER'S REFUGE: FINDING COMMUNITY WITHIN THE MAGIC CIRCLE OF WHITENESS
September 2022
Today, Black gamers are experiencing countless online attacks by white and 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. 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? In this upcoming chapter for The Routledge Companion to Media Anthropology, I explore new ways of looking at online games and their players through two concepts I term the Magic Circle of Whiteness and the Black Spoil Sport.
ESPORTS AND THE COLOR LINE:
LABOR, SKILL AND THE EXCLUSION OF BLACK PLAYERS
This article focuses on the exclusion of Black players from PC esports through constructed forms of skill and labor. While esports is one of the fastest-growing industries in America, it remains an overwhelmingly white and Asian space and industry. This piece explores the "absence" of Black players from PC esports by examining profit, labor, and Blackness.
January 2020
WHY GAMERS SHOULD READ BLACK AUTHORS
September 2020
This short piece explores my personal experiences of gaming and researching during a global pandemic and the massive Black Lives Matter protest in 2020. It explores moments where politics and games could not be neatly separated. And, in doing so I argue that all gamers would benefit from engaging with Black writing and scholarship as Blackness remains a key aspect in gaming.
May 2019
This short piece investigates the controversy around popular Black Mortal Kombat character Jax, and how fans reacted when he went back in time to prevent slavery. While this piece does engage with the outrage of Jax's actions, it also asks what is there to be gained by a video game studio so easily wiping away a history of slavery, and what it would mean in the current day.