WEBVTT 00:12.740 --> 00:15.320 What comes to mind when someone says the 00:15.320 --> 00:16.180 word gamer? 00:16.980 --> 00:19.800 If you don't play video games, your connotations 00:19.800 --> 00:22.520 with gamers are probably not very positive. 00:23.160 --> 00:26.520 In our current popular imagination, the gamer is 00:26.520 --> 00:30.440 a white, adolescent, cis, heterosexual male who is 00:30.440 --> 00:33.220 often violently protective of the space he deems 00:33.220 --> 00:34.200 his culture. 00:35.060 --> 00:37.560 There are many nuances to this popular image 00:37.560 --> 00:39.200 of the gamer, and the image is far 00:39.200 --> 00:41.660 from an accurate description for the entirety of 00:41.660 --> 00:45.220 gaming culture considering people of all identities play 00:45.220 --> 00:45.980 video games. 00:46.520 --> 00:49.760 Games are not monolithic, yet this controlling image 00:49.760 --> 00:52.980 of the hateful gamer is so pervasive because 00:52.980 --> 00:55.160 there is a vocal subset of gamers who 00:55.160 --> 00:59.160 are incredibly toxic, especially as it relates to 00:59.160 --> 01:00.420 identity politics. 01:00.940 --> 01:04.260 Seemingly any time a video game developer simply 01:04.260 --> 01:07.560 acknowledges a non-white person, or a queer 01:07.560 --> 01:10.540 person, or a woman who isn't airbrushed to 01:10.540 --> 01:13.400 non-existence, there is a subset of self 01:13.400 --> 01:17.220 -proclaimed gamers who express vitriolic outrage at the 01:17.220 --> 01:20.260 mere presence of anyone or anything that does 01:20.260 --> 01:22.880 not fit into their extremely limited viewpoint. 01:23.520 --> 01:25.880 Indeed, there are people who base their entire 01:25.880 --> 01:28.600 personality around yelling about a game or a 01:28.600 --> 01:31.460 storyline that can be classified as woke or 01:31.460 --> 01:35.960 SJW, and the satirical subreddit r/gaming 01:35.960 --> 01:39.380 circlejerk is nearly entirely dedicated to making fun 01:39.380 --> 01:42.120 of gamer rage at the mere existence of 01:42.120 --> 01:44.340 a non-white male video game protagonist. 01:45.180 --> 01:47.400 For those of us in gaming communities, this 01:47.400 --> 01:50.660 backlash sometimes feels foundational to the culture. 01:51.140 --> 01:54.980 In her 2020 monograph, Gamer Trouble, Amanda Phillips 01:54.980 --> 01:58.100 "situates antifeminist backlash as part of the 01:58.100 --> 02:01.400 gamer's distrust of 'expert' knowledge about video games, 02:01.720 --> 02:04.160 which has its roots in the censorship campaigns in 02:04.160 --> 02:07.100 the 1990s and 2000s and the figure of 02:07.100 --> 02:09.720 the 'mean mommy,' another version of the angry 02:09.720 --> 02:12.060 feminist who lurks in the shadows of anxiety 02:12.060 --> 02:14.820 about restricted access to video games." 02:15.340 --> 02:18.420 While anti-feminism is certainly a central motivator 02:18.420 --> 02:21.300 of the angry gamer, whiteness has been an 02:21.300 --> 02:25.060 equally powerful motivator in the exclusionary popular culture 02:25.060 --> 02:25.780 of gaming. 02:26.280 --> 02:29.040 In her 2014 monograph, Gaming at the Edge, 02:29.240 --> 02:33.200 Adrienne Shaw notably frames gaming culture as "particularly 02:33.200 --> 02:36.780 masculine, heterosexual, and white," and she points out 02:36.780 --> 02:39.260 video games are "the least progressive form of 02:39.260 --> 02:42.280 media representation, despite being one of the newest 02:42.280 --> 02:43.400 mediated forms." 02:43.800 --> 02:46.320 Now it's important to note that Shaw's critiques 02:46.320 --> 02:49.500 apply principally to AAA video games, which are 02:49.500 --> 02:51.700 the games that are released by large publishers 02:51.700 --> 02:54.840 with multi-million dollar budgets and typically have 02:54.840 --> 02:58.280 teams of hundreds to thousands of developers, designers, 02:58.620 --> 02:59.620 artists, and writers. 02:59.620 --> 03:02.320 Indie games have a much longer history of 03:02.320 --> 03:04.740 diversity within both the game space and the 03:04.740 --> 03:08.220 production team behind the games, though that doesn't 03:08.220 --> 03:10.600 mean they are immune from these same issues. 03:11.040 --> 03:16.240 However, representation within AAA games is so suspiciously 03:16.240 --> 03:19.080 monolithic that there is a famous meme for 03:19.080 --> 03:21.400 the average video game protagonist. 03:22.100 --> 03:24.520 Major video games have frankly not done a 03:24.520 --> 03:26.800 very good job when it comes to diverse 03:26.800 --> 03:30.320 racial representation, particularly of Black characters. 03:30.900 --> 03:33.360 Of course, there are always exceptions, and there 03:33.360 --> 03:35.240 have been Black characters in video games since 03:35.240 --> 03:37.680 at least the 1980s, but the fact of 03:37.680 --> 03:40.500 the matter is that most early representations of 03:40.500 --> 03:42.840 Black people in major games were either in 03:42.840 --> 03:45.860 sports games or were simply the rare exception 03:45.860 --> 03:46.760 to the rule. 03:47.440 --> 03:50.180 Thankfully, there's a recent rise in Black video 03:50.180 --> 03:53.240 game protagonists in narrative-driven games like Deathloop, 03:53.380 --> 03:56.960 Miles Morales, and Alan Wake 2, yet these 03:56.960 --> 03:59.760 characters still pale in comparison to their white 03:59.760 --> 04:00.840 male counterparts. 04:01.300 --> 04:03.880 And the racial issues in games go beyond 04:03.880 --> 04:06.420 protagonist in narrative-driven experiences. 04:07.120 --> 04:11.300 Action RPGs with character customization screens are notoriously 04:11.300 --> 04:14.000 problematic when viewed through a critical race studies 04:14.000 --> 04:14.540 lens. 04:14.740 --> 04:17.880 Research shows that white characters are typically the 04:17.880 --> 04:20.800 default option in character creation screens even in 04:20.800 --> 04:23.900 fantasy games with mythical creatures and mythical options. 04:24.260 --> 04:27.120 And the coded representation of Black or textured 04:27.120 --> 04:30.160 hair is so bad that comedy group 04:30.160 --> 04:32.840 RDCWorld1 released a sketch about bad Black 04:32.840 --> 04:34.480 hair options in 2022. 04:35.300 --> 04:39.040 Several YouTubers have published YouTube essays examining the 04:39.040 --> 04:42.520 phenomenon, such as Kinda Funny Games, Veridis 04:42.520 --> 04:45.280 Joe, and Joshua Rios for Polygon. 04:45.280 --> 04:49.020 In 2013, Austin Walker described a similar issue 04:49.020 --> 04:51.940 in relation to Animal Crossing: New Leaf, writing, 04:52.220 --> 04:54.680 "The question of race seems to have never 04:54.680 --> 04:56.580 been brought up to begin with, and that 04:56.580 --> 04:57.760 has its own problems. 04:58.320 --> 05:01.620 Privilege works by naturalizing one position, or one 05:01.620 --> 05:03.160 set or style of positions. 05:03.680 --> 05:05.900 It isn't as simple as valuing that position 05:05.900 --> 05:06.660 over others: 05:07.000 --> 05:09.260 even that would acknowledge a field of differences. 05:09.940 --> 05:11.800 To work in a system of privilege is 05:11.800 --> 05:13.840 to start all projects from a set of 05:13.840 --> 05:16.020 premises that are believed to be inviolable. 05:16.720 --> 05:19.120 You don't get more pale in New Leaf, 05:19.180 --> 05:20.540 you only get darker. 05:20.900 --> 05:22.920 The natural position is whiteness." 05:23.780 --> 05:26.120 This is the practice of much of the 05:26.120 --> 05:28.980 game industry, and in game studies, Kishonna L. 05:29.100 --> 05:31.320 Gray has drawn our attention to the importance 05:31.320 --> 05:34.660 of intersectional analysis in game studies to properly 05:34.660 --> 05:37.980 contend with the racial works of video games. 05:38.460 --> 05:41.740 There are many contributing factors for the homogeneity 05:41.740 --> 05:45.400 of video game characters, including the historic homogeneity 05:45.400 --> 05:49.020 of video game producers, the alleged market expectations 05:49.020 --> 05:53.180 of a presumed white adolescent boy audience, and 05:53.180 --> 05:57.100 fear over backlash for insensitive or downright problematic 05:57.100 --> 06:00.880 characterizations of historically and presently marginalized voices in 06:00.880 --> 06:01.340 games. 06:01.660 --> 06:04.400 Aaron Trammell has called attention to the connections 06:04.400 --> 06:07.180 between the current video game culture and the 06:07.180 --> 06:09.400 earlier hobby game culture of the mid- to 06:09.400 --> 06:12.460 late 20th century, and his 2023 text The 06:12.460 --> 06:14.640 Privilege of Play tells the story of a 06:14.640 --> 06:17.660 culture of geeky white masculinity in hobby gaming 06:17.660 --> 06:21.440 by contextualizing these often exclusionary spaces where the 06:21.440 --> 06:25.000 community's suburban mindset was a holdover from segregationist 06:25.000 --> 06:26.640 policy and white flight. 06:27.080 --> 06:29.940 Given the game industry's historic embeddedness into a 06:29.940 --> 06:32.900 particular brand of suburban whiteness, it is perhaps 06:32.900 --> 06:36.120 unsurprising that the discourse around race among the 06:36.120 --> 06:39.720 dominant gaming community is often abysmal. 06:40.180 --> 06:43.740 Yet despite the relative marginalization of Black characters 06:43.740 --> 06:46.340 in large AAA video games, there is still 06:46.340 --> 06:49.940 a horde of gamers who insist on deriding 06:49.940 --> 06:52.400 any non-white existence in games. 06:52.800 --> 06:55.880 It is frustrating and leads to a horrible 06:55.880 --> 06:58.780 popular perception of gamers and the gaming community. 06:59.040 --> 07:01.780 But as satisfying as it would be to 07:01.780 --> 07:05.860 correct the loudly wrong, I actually don't want 07:05.860 --> 07:08.160 to focus on them today, or any of 07:08.160 --> 07:11.660 the alt-right rooted backlash against POC existence 07:11.660 --> 07:12.560 in video games. 07:13.260 --> 07:15.920 Instead, I want to focus in on the 07:15.920 --> 07:17.440 to-be-fair people. 07:18.040 --> 07:21.120 These folks usually appear as devil's advocate for 07:21.120 --> 07:23.960 the backlash, and begin spouting this rhetoric about 07:23.960 --> 07:26.740 video games that are nominally set in or 07:26.740 --> 07:29.800 inspired by the medieval or early modern periods. 07:30.300 --> 07:33.280 This mentality is even seen amongst certain game 07:33.280 --> 07:36.580 developers, like Naoki Yoshida, producer of Final Fantasy, 07:36.820 --> 07:38.980 who said the game design concept of Final 07:38.980 --> 07:43.640 Fantasy XVI "always heavily featured medieval Europe, incorporating 07:43.640 --> 07:47.480 historical, cultural, political, and anthropological standards that were 07:47.480 --> 07:48.900 prevalent at this time." 07:49.040 --> 07:51.920 And he claims the incorporation of non-white 07:51.920 --> 07:55.580 characters would disrupt "the narrative boundaries" of the 07:55.580 --> 07:55.940 game. 07:56.300 --> 07:58.800 Whew, okay, let's put aside for a second 07:58.800 --> 08:01.120 that the Final Fantasy series takes place in 08:01.120 --> 08:03.160 a made-up world, where you swing physically 08:03.160 --> 08:05.840 impossible-to-carry giant swords and ride what 08:05.840 --> 08:08.300 can only be described as a mythical ostrich, 08:08.860 --> 08:11.080 and let us instead focus on the fact 08:11.080 --> 08:14.020 that Yoshida's claim is historically inaccurate. 08:14.340 --> 08:17.020 Indeed, all of these claims about an all 08:17.020 --> 08:20.100 -white early modern and medieval period are rooted 08:20.100 --> 08:23.340 in a designed misconception around Europe's past. 08:23.680 --> 08:26.620 There is an abundance of scholarship that indicates, 08:26.800 --> 08:28.880 beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Black 08:28.880 --> 08:31.460 people have been present in Europe for centuries, 08:31.900 --> 08:34.559 and long before the transatlantic slave trade brought 08:34.559 --> 08:36.400 this presence to wider understanding. 08:37.039 --> 08:38.659 There is a wealth of art from the 08:38.659 --> 08:41.260 period that depicts Black people, as well as 08:41.260 --> 08:44.520 numerous primary source documents that confirm the Black 08:44.520 --> 08:47.280 presence in medieval and early modern Europe. 08:47.760 --> 08:49.800 The same is true for other people of 08:49.800 --> 08:51.820 color in Europe during these periods. 08:52.560 --> 08:55.940 So why do so many gamers incorrectly assume 08:55.940 --> 08:58.080 that there were no Black people or Africans 08:58.080 --> 09:00.760 in England during the medieval and early modern 09:00.760 --> 09:01.140 period? 09:01.400 --> 09:03.120 Well, that is what we're going to look 09:03.120 --> 09:05.920 at today, by discussing the African presence in 09:05.920 --> 09:08.780 Europe during the medieval and early modern periods, 09:09.060 --> 09:11.160 then exploring how this myth of an all 09:11.160 --> 09:14.480 -white European past developed, and how it influences 09:14.480 --> 09:16.300 our video games today. 09:16.920 --> 09:20.020 Europe was never an all-white space. 09:20.580 --> 09:21.980 Shocking, I know. 09:22.350 --> 09:26.760 But scholars like Kim F. Hall, Imtiaz Habib, Dorothy 09:26.760 --> 09:30.300 Kim, and Ania Loomba have labored against considerable 09:30.300 --> 09:33.940 institutional pushback to show the continued Black presence 09:33.940 --> 09:36.660 in Europe during the medieval and early modern 09:36.660 --> 09:38.220 periods through today. 09:38.820 --> 09:41.460 In his seminal 2008 book, Black Lives in 09:41.460 --> 09:44.420 the Archive, Imtiaz Habib looked at the archives 09:44.420 --> 09:47.060 of medieval England and acknowledged that scholars of 09:47.060 --> 09:49.180 the period had to "deal with uncertain knowledge 09:49.180 --> 09:50.940 about the actual numbers of black people" in 09:50.940 --> 09:53.980 England during this era because the historical record 09:53.980 --> 09:56.260 of this presence was extremely obscured. 09:56.900 --> 09:59.020 Among scholars of the medieval era, it was 09:59.020 --> 10:01.340 long assumed that a "tiny population" of Black 10:01.340 --> 10:03.160 people were in England at this time. 10:03.760 --> 10:07.480 However, Habib meticulously searched through the archive and 10:07.480 --> 10:12.080 discovered "obscure, truncated, and largely inaccessible documentary records, 10:12.300 --> 10:15.000 which are only now becoming fully available," which 10:15.000 --> 10:17.680 "paint a very different picture about the size 10:17.680 --> 10:21.000 and continuity and historical seriousness of the black 10:21.000 --> 10:23.540 presence in England in the 16th and 17th 10:23.540 --> 10:26.920 centuries, well before the English black population became 10:26.920 --> 10:29.120 known through the transatlantic slave trade." 10:29.580 --> 10:33.340 Government documents, personal letters, and church records all 10:33.340 --> 10:36.680 reveal that the Black presence was undoubtedly present 10:36.680 --> 10:40.220 in medieval England, a presence that continued well 10:40.220 --> 10:41.700 into the early modern period. 10:42.270 --> 10:44.960 In Things of Darkness, Economies of Race and 10:44.960 --> 10:48.040 Gender in Early Modern England, the scholar Kim 10:48.040 --> 10:48.200 F. 10:48.420 --> 10:51.440 Hall looks at numerous allusions and references to 10:51.440 --> 10:55.120 Africans, "Ethiopes," and Blackness in early modern text 10:55.120 --> 10:57.600 and images and takes them at face value 10:57.600 --> 11:00.100 by considering them as racial references. 11:01.060 --> 11:03.960 Most previous early modern scholars had reduced these 11:03.960 --> 11:07.880 allusions of Blackness to moralizing or beauty commentary 11:07.880 --> 11:10.640 rather than actual references to Black and African 11:10.640 --> 11:14.840 peoples, removing racial categorization from their scholarly consideration 11:14.840 --> 11:15.640 entirely. 11:16.160 --> 11:20.780 Huh, I'm starting to wonder if unreliable interpretations 11:20.780 --> 11:24.100 of early modern scholarship might have contributed to 11:24.100 --> 11:26.660 our collective idea of the all-white European 11:26.660 --> 11:27.320 past. 11:27.520 --> 11:29.120 But I digress. 11:29.600 --> 11:32.380 For Hall, the English in the early modern 11:32.380 --> 11:36.540 period began structuring their collective subjectivity in relation 11:36.540 --> 11:40.140 to and opposition to Africa and Africans. 11:40.540 --> 11:42.980 And she writes, "Dark and light, rather than 11:42.980 --> 11:46.640 being mere indications of Elizabethan beauty standards or 11:46.640 --> 11:49.740 markers of moral categories, became in the early 11:49.740 --> 11:52.320 modern period the conduit through which the English 11:52.320 --> 11:54.900 began to formulate their notion of self and 11:54.900 --> 11:58.140 other so well known in Anglo-American racial 11:58.140 --> 11:58.760 discourses." 11:59.120 --> 12:01.080 While Hall goes on to point out "that 12:01.080 --> 12:03.640 there is no extant first-hand account from 12:03.640 --> 12:07.400 the black Tudor population," subsequent scholarship, like Miranda 12:07.400 --> 12:11.000 Kaufman's Black Tudors, the Untold Story, details the 12:11.000 --> 12:13.740 lives of various Black individuals during the early 12:13.740 --> 12:16.980 modern period by piecing together different documents from 12:16.980 --> 12:17.560 the archive. 12:18.280 --> 12:21.460 In other words, there was undeniably an African 12:21.460 --> 12:23.680 presence in early modern England. 12:24.400 --> 12:27.300 But this racial framing is not isolated to 12:27.300 --> 12:28.320 England alone. 12:28.320 --> 12:32.900 Hans Werner Debrunner’s 1979 historical study, Presence 12:32.900 --> 12:36.880 and Prestige: Africans in Europe, details exchanges between 12:36.880 --> 12:40.100 Africans and various European nations, such as Spain, 12:40.540 --> 12:45.540 Italy, and Germany between 1450 and 1650, and 12:45.540 --> 12:47.780 throughout the period of transatlantic slavery. 12:48.480 --> 12:51.440 More recent scholars have explored similar African presences 12:51.440 --> 12:53.900 in the Netherlands during the early modern period 12:53.900 --> 12:55.880 and Spain during the medieval period. 12:56.030 --> 12:59.220 This racial diversity even made its way into 12:59.220 --> 13:00.800 cultural works from these periods. 13:01.560 --> 13:03.160 For example, Pamela A. 13:03.260 --> 13:06.440 Patton details how race was depicted across medieval 13:06.440 --> 13:07.520 European art. 13:08.040 --> 13:11.840 Ania Loomba similarly shows how race thinking influenced 13:11.840 --> 13:16.560 the plays of William Shakespeare, persuasively suggesting "Shakespeare's 13:16.560 --> 13:19.700 plays have been an extraordinarily powerful medium between 13:19.700 --> 13:23.820 generations and cultures, a conduit for transmitting and 13:23.820 --> 13:26.680 shaping ideas about colonialism, and race." 13:26.900 --> 13:30.400 I have barely scratched the surface on scholarship 13:30.400 --> 13:33.060 that definitively shows that there was a Black 13:33.060 --> 13:35.760 and African presence in England and Europe during 13:35.760 --> 13:37.880 the medieval and early modern periods. 13:38.380 --> 13:41.840 These scholarly approaches are widely accepted among scholars 13:41.840 --> 13:44.820 of these periods today, and works by scholars 13:44.820 --> 13:49.080 like Eric Martone, David Northrup, Dorothy Kim, and 13:49.080 --> 13:52.440 Geraldine Heng all detail the presence of Africans 13:52.440 --> 13:54.760 and other people of color in medieval and 13:54.760 --> 13:57.400 early modern Europe, as well as the rising 13:57.400 --> 14:01.120 techniques of racialization developed during these periods. 14:01.780 --> 14:03.580 If you want to delve further into this 14:03.580 --> 14:06.640 history from public historians, I recommend the now 14:06.640 --> 14:10.080 -defunct-but-still-live Medieval POC Tumblr page 14:10.080 --> 14:13.480 and the Public Medievalist website for many, many 14:13.480 --> 14:16.240 more examples in an open-access avenue. 14:16.580 --> 14:20.420 Despite the actual history, the consistent myth of 14:20.420 --> 14:22.660 an all-white European past remains. 14:23.620 --> 14:24.000 Why? 14:25.120 --> 14:27.780 There are many potential answers, but a central 14:27.780 --> 14:30.900 reason is the codification of Anglo-Saxon studies 14:30.900 --> 14:33.840 in the academy and the subsequent embrace of 14:33.840 --> 14:36.460 all things medieval by white supremacists. 14:36.780 --> 14:40.120 The term Anglo-Saxon has historically been used 14:40.120 --> 14:42.940 to describe any Germanic people who arrived in 14:42.940 --> 14:45.600 modern-day England and Wales during the Norman 14:45.600 --> 14:46.360 Conquest. 14:47.040 --> 14:50.220 Anglo-Saxon studies emerged as the chosen moniker 14:50.220 --> 14:52.780 for the study of medieval Europe, and this 14:52.780 --> 14:56.820 idea of an Anglo-Saxon people eventually developed 14:56.820 --> 15:00.160 into a nebulous identifier for any white person 15:00.160 --> 15:02.840 who believes they are descended from Western Europe. 15:03.360 --> 15:05.920 And white supremacist groups throughout the 20th and 15:05.920 --> 15:09.380 21st centuries have latched onto the Anglo-Saxon 15:09.380 --> 15:12.200 myth to attest to the so-called cultural 15:12.200 --> 15:14.960 and racial superiority of white people. 15:15.340 --> 15:19.720 Yet, the Anglo-Saxon myth is exactly that—a 15:19.720 --> 15:20.180 myth. 15:20.480 --> 15:23.240 It was created by white folks to imagine 15:23.240 --> 15:25.540 that they were connected to some mythic past 15:25.540 --> 15:27.120 of great white men. 15:27.800 --> 15:32.160 Medieval studies scholar Mary Rambaran-Olm writes, "Rather 15:32.160 --> 15:35.360 than accurately portray the early English people as 15:35.360 --> 15:39.280 separate tribes, most notably Angles, Saxons and Jutes, 15:39.680 --> 15:42.400 that migrated to the British Isle, the Anglo 15:42.400 --> 15:45.000 -Saxon myth links white people with an imagined 15:45.000 --> 15:47.420 heritage based on indigeneity to Britain." 15:47.960 --> 15:51.880 In reality, the term Anglo-Saxon was rarely 15:51.880 --> 15:54.300 used by people in England during the medieval 15:54.300 --> 15:57.120 period as they found identification elsewhere. 15:57.840 --> 16:00.520 Instead, it was academics in the 18th and 16:00.520 --> 16:03.120 19th centuries who began using the term Anglo 16:03.120 --> 16:05.740 -Saxon to refer to an entire region and 16:05.740 --> 16:09.200 period that was ethnically and racially and religiously 16:09.200 --> 16:09.540 diverse. 16:10.540 --> 16:12.500 I wonder why that is. 16:13.010 --> 16:16.060 Could it be, perhaps, that these scholars had 16:16.060 --> 16:18.980 a personal investment in making medieval Europe white 16:18.980 --> 16:22.480 to correspond to 18th and 19th century racial 16:22.480 --> 16:22.980 hierarchy? 16:23.800 --> 16:25.800 But while we can only speculate about the 16:25.800 --> 16:28.700 intentions of these scholars whitewashing the past, we 16:28.700 --> 16:31.440 can see the very real ramifications of their 16:31.440 --> 16:32.360 works today. 16:32.560 --> 16:35.300 Many white supremacist groups have latched onto the 16:35.300 --> 16:38.140 Anglo-Saxon myth and violently lash out at 16:38.140 --> 16:40.420 anyone who tries to correct their lies with 16:40.420 --> 16:41.300 a historical record. 16:41.300 --> 16:44.160 The myth of an all-white European past 16:44.160 --> 16:47.460 is ahistorical, but has been given credence by 16:47.460 --> 16:50.360 a scholarly apparatus that is complicit in the 16:50.360 --> 16:53.540 white supremacist fantasy of an all-white medieval 16:53.540 --> 16:54.820 and early modern Europe. 16:55.680 --> 16:58.340 This history was brought to broader public attention 16:58.340 --> 17:01.720 in 2017 with the deadly Unite the Right 17:01.720 --> 17:03.180 riot in Charlottesville. 17:04.040 --> 17:06.440 While I won't show their images here, many 17:06.440 --> 17:09.060 of these white supremacists were wearing medieval or 17:09.060 --> 17:12.260 early modern-style clothing or armor because they 17:12.260 --> 17:14.680 were invested in the idea of medieval Europe 17:14.680 --> 17:17.599 as a homogeneously white space that they might 17:17.599 --> 17:20.980 return to—an idea that scholarship about the medieval 17:20.980 --> 17:23.599 period played a pivotal role in crafting. 17:24.700 --> 17:28.180 During the aftermath of Charlottesville, scholar Dorothy Kim 17:28.180 --> 17:31.980 argued, "Today, medievalists have to understand that the 17:31.980 --> 17:34.100 public and our students will see us as 17:34.100 --> 17:37.980 potential white supremacists or white supremacist sympathizers because 17:37.980 --> 17:39.280 we are medievalists." 17:40.020 --> 17:42.160 And how disappointing is that? 17:42.660 --> 17:45.700 The failure of scholarship to acknowledge the presence 17:45.700 --> 17:48.320 of any non-white people in medieval Europe 17:48.320 --> 17:51.200 has given credence to a white supremacist lie. 17:51.560 --> 17:54.400 The problems with the Anglo-Saxon myth don't 17:54.400 --> 17:56.500 stop at medievalism and white supremacy. 17:57.380 --> 18:00.260 Maya Mackrandilal points out that the anti-Blackness 18:00.260 --> 18:02.360 of medieval history is part of a larger 18:02.360 --> 18:04.920 history of the construction of whiteness, and she 18:04.920 --> 18:08.440 writes, "The connections drawn here between the Confederacy, 18:08.680 --> 18:12.680 Christianity, Anglo-Saxon heritage, the Roman Empire, and 18:12.680 --> 18:14.820 ancient Greece are not accidental. 18:15.360 --> 18:17.380 They are part of a larger mythology of 18:17.380 --> 18:20.060 whiteness that has been carefully constructed for centuries 18:20.060 --> 18:22.960 and is intimately linked to the foundation of 18:22.960 --> 18:26.380 the United States, with neoclassical art serving as 18:26.380 --> 18:27.100 its propaganda." 18:27.940 --> 18:31.200 Importantly, so-called white people have not always 18:31.200 --> 18:31.880 been white. 18:32.160 --> 18:34.060 Take a look at the Irish, the Italians, 18:34.280 --> 18:36.320 the Greeks, the Poles, the Swedes, and virtually 18:36.320 --> 18:38.800 anyone from Eastern Europe who migrated to the 18:38.800 --> 18:39.560 United States. 18:40.060 --> 18:42.760 White is a racial category about power that, 18:43.140 --> 18:45.760 like all other racial categories, has no relation 18:45.760 --> 18:46.460 to biology. 18:46.920 --> 18:49.860 There is no logical coherence to racial categorization 18:49.860 --> 18:51.780 because race isn't a real thing. 18:52.320 --> 18:54.400 And unlike groups that have been historically oppressed 18:54.400 --> 18:57.940 or marginalized, so-called white people have largely 18:57.940 --> 19:00.500 not sought to create communal belonging with other 19:00.500 --> 19:00.820 whites. 19:01.260 --> 19:03.940 Instead, whiteness has been far more about exclusion 19:03.940 --> 19:07.160 and determining who has access to various privileged 19:07.160 --> 19:07.820 spaces. 19:08.260 --> 19:09.820 This is not to say that people who 19:09.820 --> 19:11.500 are white do not have any culture. 19:11.740 --> 19:12.300 They do. 19:12.760 --> 19:15.780 However, whiteness as a social category has historically 19:15.780 --> 19:18.600 been about creating a narrative of power—who has 19:18.600 --> 19:20.260 it and who is oppressed by it. 19:20.560 --> 19:22.900 We return to Kim F. Hall, who looks to 19:22.900 --> 19:25.200 the early modern period and creates an argument 19:25.200 --> 19:28.160 for "a poetics of color in which whiteness 19:28.160 --> 19:30.560 is a valued goal, where whiteness is as 19:30.560 --> 19:32.400 much about a desire for a stable linguistic 19:32.400 --> 19:35.460 order as it is about physical beauty." 19:35.860 --> 19:38.500 In other words, Hall points out that early 19:38.500 --> 19:42.560 modern English subjects recognized the instability of whiteness 19:42.560 --> 19:45.740 and tried to transform whiteness into something cohesive. 19:46.560 --> 19:49.120 In turn, scholarship of the medieval and early 19:49.120 --> 19:52.100 modern periods have similarly sought to give stability 19:52.100 --> 19:55.400 and thus credence to the myth of whiteness. 19:55.740 --> 19:58.620 Thankfully, there has been considerable pushback to Anglo 19:58.620 --> 20:01.600 -Saxon studies, and many medievalists have rejected the 20:01.600 --> 20:04.520 moniker Anglo-Saxon altogether to call attention to 20:04.520 --> 20:07.220 its mythic foundations and white supremacist present. 20:07.820 --> 20:09.780 Many of the scholars I have discussed today 20:09.780 --> 20:11.780 have been at the forefront of a revolution 20:11.780 --> 20:15.460 in medieval and early modern studies, but alas, 20:15.580 --> 20:18.280 the persistence of the Anglo-Saxon myth largely 20:18.280 --> 20:20.060 remains with us in the form of popular 20:20.060 --> 20:23.220 culture representations of the medieval and early modern 20:23.220 --> 20:23.700 periods. 20:24.400 --> 20:27.240 There is no shortage of books, movies, games, 20:27.360 --> 20:29.860 and even music set in medieval and early 20:29.860 --> 20:32.120 modern Europe, and for most of our history, 20:32.340 --> 20:33.960 you are unlikely to find a person of 20:33.960 --> 20:36.880 color in any contemporary text set in that 20:36.880 --> 20:41.040 era, especially if it purports to be historically 20:41.040 --> 20:41.760 accurate. 20:42.120 --> 20:45.800 These popular culture representations are creating a fictitious 20:45.800 --> 20:48.520 archive of the medieval and early modern periods 20:48.520 --> 20:51.240 that suggest it was an all-white time 20:51.240 --> 20:51.900 in Europe. 20:52.480 --> 20:55.340 The Anglo-Saxon myth was particularly impactful for 20:55.340 --> 20:57.260 J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings 20:57.260 --> 21:00.520 and other Middle-Earth-set texts, which has 21:00.520 --> 21:03.500 in turn inspired the entirety of the medieval 21:03.500 --> 21:04.520 fantasy genre. 21:05.100 --> 21:07.940 Further, Dungeons and Dragons, the most pivotal and 21:07.940 --> 21:11.260 influential tabletop role-playing game, was deeply inspired 21:11.260 --> 21:13.960 by Tolkien's worlds, and the game largely imports 21:13.960 --> 21:18.380 his troubling racial worldview, thus ensuring a continued 21:18.380 --> 21:22.280 incorporation of the Anglo-Saxon myth across literature, 21:22.740 --> 21:24.000 film, and games. 21:24.540 --> 21:26.840 Which brings us back to video games. 21:27.280 --> 21:30.700 While there are exceptions, many video games set 21:30.700 --> 21:33.120 in or inspired by the early modern period 21:33.120 --> 21:36.100 and medieval period continue to propagate the racial 21:36.100 --> 21:38.120 myth that history refutes. 21:38.720 --> 21:41.820 Some of these games feature almost 100% 21:41.820 --> 21:44.580 white human characters, like most of the Total 21:44.580 --> 21:47.740 War games, Knights of the Temple, Shadow of 21:47.740 --> 21:51.820 Mordor, The Witcher series, and Kingdom Come Deliverance. 21:52.340 --> 21:55.160 When Kingdom Come Deliverance was released in 2018, 21:55.640 --> 21:59.000 the Czech-developed game swiftly received criticism among 21:59.000 --> 22:01.460 certain sects of the game's media because of 22:01.460 --> 22:04.400 its all-white representation of medieval central Europe. 22:05.180 --> 22:08.060 The game's director, Daniel Vávra, responded with the 22:08.060 --> 22:10.280 tweet, "Would you please explain to me what's 22:10.280 --> 22:11.720 racist about telling the truth? 22:11.960 --> 22:13.960 There were no black people in medieval Bohemia. 22:14.420 --> 22:14.640 Period." 22:15.060 --> 22:17.020 Well, I guess that might be true. 22:17.260 --> 22:18.080 Oh wait. 22:25.330 --> 22:26.610 Thanks, MedievalPOC. 22:27.710 --> 22:30.590 Unlike Vávra, most of the developers of these 22:30.590 --> 22:33.770 other games never publicly commented on the homogeneity 22:33.770 --> 22:36.410 of their characters, but these games too were 22:36.410 --> 22:38.810 defended by their fans because they are going 22:38.810 --> 22:42.650 for some semblance of historical accuracy, a notion 22:42.650 --> 22:45.030 that Helen Young points out has been "used 22:45.030 --> 22:47.950 to justify excluding people of color from, or 22:47.950 --> 22:51.790 to criticize their inclusion in, medievalist fantasy settings" 22:51.790 --> 22:53.690 in a variety of mediums. 22:54.930 --> 22:58.550 In many video games, the historical authenticity defense 22:58.550 --> 23:00.890 is used as an alibi for an all 23:00.890 --> 23:04.030 -white medieval Europe, even though that alibi is 23:04.030 --> 23:05.070 based on a lie. 23:05.470 --> 23:08.310 Not all medieval or early modern set video 23:08.310 --> 23:12.170 games approach diversity with pure avoidance, and indeed, 23:12.370 --> 23:15.090 having a high fantasy game with zero non 23:15.090 --> 23:17.970 -white characters is increasingly rare as games like 23:17.970 --> 23:20.950 Skyrim have included entire factions of non-white 23:20.950 --> 23:24.510 populations, while recent fantasy RPGs that clearly take 23:24.510 --> 23:26.830 inspiration from the medieval and early modern eras 23:26.830 --> 23:30.350 like Diablo 4 and Baldur’s Gate 3 feature 23:30.350 --> 23:32.750 a wide variety of characters of color. 23:32.970 --> 23:34.870 But there are two important things to note 23:34.870 --> 23:37.430 here that we can focalize through Bethesda's much 23:37.430 --> 23:39.430 -loved 2011 game, Skyrim. 23:40.050 --> 23:43.010 One, games like Skyrim are not going for 23:43.010 --> 23:46.490 historical accuracy within their experience, so the developers 23:46.490 --> 23:49.830 and fans recognize that this argument doesn't really 23:49.830 --> 23:50.630 hold sway. 23:51.330 --> 23:54.950 And two, games like Skyrim do retain a 23:54.950 --> 23:57.550 lot of the troubling racial ideology that informs 23:57.550 --> 24:00.490 the high fantasy genre, which Mark S. Hines points 24:00.490 --> 24:02.350 out in his essay "'An Affront to My 24:02.350 --> 24:04.950 People': Excising the Other from the Fantasy of 24:04.950 --> 24:05.330 Skyrim." 24:06.010 --> 24:08.190 Hines points out that the orcish races in 24:08.190 --> 24:11.790 Skyrim invoke racial essentialism that centers whiteness and 24:11.790 --> 24:14.650 perpetuates Blackness as othered, and other games that 24:14.650 --> 24:17.590 center Tolkien-esque orcs, like Middle-earth: Shadow 24:17.590 --> 24:20.330 of War, rely on a similar visual code. 24:20.770 --> 24:24.470 These examples reveal that diversifying medieval and early 24:24.470 --> 24:27.530 modern set games can only be truly successful 24:27.530 --> 24:31.590 if the game industry simultaneously refuses the white 24:31.590 --> 24:35.270 supremacist racial ideology that has continued to inform 24:35.270 --> 24:37.630 so much of the high fantasy genre. 24:38.070 --> 24:40.290 Let's close with a case study of some 24:40.290 --> 24:43.090 recent popular hack-and-slash games, For Honor 24:43.090 --> 24:44.630 and the Chivalry series. 24:45.190 --> 24:47.890 For Honor is a 2017 medieval fantasy game 24:47.890 --> 24:49.750 that invites the player to take on the 24:49.750 --> 24:52.270 role of a different warrior within different historical 24:52.270 --> 24:55.970 factions, like the Iron Legion, the Warborn, the 24:55.970 --> 24:57.630 Dawn Empire, and the Wu Lin. 24:58.110 --> 25:00.330 The game allows players to change their playable 25:00.330 --> 25:01.570 character's skin tone. 25:01.570 --> 25:04.550 There was little controversy around these customization options 25:04.550 --> 25:08.190 precisely because the game is inherently fantastical and 25:08.190 --> 25:10.670 not even approximating historical accuracy. 25:11.410 --> 25:13.970 The Chivalry series has a slightly different arc, 25:14.110 --> 25:14.950 but a telling one. 25:15.330 --> 25:18.190 The 2012 game, Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, is a 25:18.190 --> 25:20.070 multiplayer hack-and-slash game where you play 25:20.070 --> 25:22.210 as a medieval knight battling other knights in 25:22.210 --> 25:22.950 medieval Europe. 25:23.390 --> 25:26.530 The game has minor character customization that allows 25:26.530 --> 25:29.110 the player to choose between four different playable 25:29.110 --> 25:32.770 classes that have different options, but notably the 25:32.770 --> 25:34.950 only options are to play as a white 25:34.950 --> 25:36.250 European-looking man. 25:36.870 --> 25:39.110 At the request of the player base, the 25:39.110 --> 25:43.410 2021 sequel, Chivalry 2, enabled new customization options 25:43.410 --> 25:45.390 that allowed players to choose non-white skin 25:45.390 --> 25:47.710 tones or even change the gender of their 25:47.710 --> 25:48.470 playable character. 25:49.250 --> 25:51.850 There was the predictable minor backlash, but the 25:51.850 --> 25:54.530 way this backlash was defended is really telling 25:54.530 --> 25:57.570 about the continual prevalence of the historical accuracy 25:57.570 --> 25:59.590 argument among gaming communities. 26:00.190 --> 26:03.070 Most people on social media and gaming websites 26:03.070 --> 26:05.430 defended the choice to make an inclusive character 26:05.430 --> 26:08.830 customization screen in Chivalry 2 because the game 26:08.830 --> 26:11.010 isn't trying to be historically accurate. 26:11.670 --> 26:15.010 The to-be-fair argument still stands, and 26:15.010 --> 26:17.910 the argument about diversity in medieval fantasy games 26:17.910 --> 26:21.510 transforms into something else about realism and historical 26:21.510 --> 26:22.170 accuracy. 26:22.170 --> 26:25.610 All the while, the Anglo-Saxon myth and 26:25.610 --> 26:28.630 how it informs our video games goes fundamentally 26:29.630 --> 26:30.310 unchallenged. 26:30.390 --> 26:33.350 Perhaps the continual lack of Black representation in 26:33.350 --> 26:35.750 medieval or early modern video games should be 26:35.750 --> 26:38.990 unsurprising, considering that Dungeons and Dragons and Tolkien 26:38.990 --> 26:42.470 remain central touchstones for contemporary video games, and 26:42.470 --> 26:44.850 our scholarship of early modern and medieval eras 26:44.850 --> 26:48.010 have historically upheld the white Anglo-Saxon myth. 26:48.010 --> 26:50.810 Or perhaps the whiteness of medieval video games 26:50.810 --> 26:53.270 reflects the overwhelming whiteness of the game industry 26:53.270 --> 26:55.890 in general, a whiteness that is both demographic 26:55.890 --> 26:57.010 and ideological. 26:57.990 --> 27:00.410 Yet we should still hold our games and 27:00.410 --> 27:03.550 game developers accountable for their blind adherence to 27:03.550 --> 27:05.470 the debunked Anglo-Saxon myth. 27:06.070 --> 27:08.750 I'm not saying to harass developers or cancel 27:08.750 --> 27:11.490 the games or burn our copies à la 27:11.490 --> 27:13.770 some conservative who's mad at Bud Light or 27:13.770 --> 27:15.950 some other culture war touchstone. 27:16.570 --> 27:19.970 Instead, gamers should ask games to do better 27:19.970 --> 27:23.430 when it comes to racial representation, especially if 27:23.430 --> 27:25.250 these games are set in or inspired by 27:25.250 --> 27:26.990 medieval or early modern Europe. 27:27.390 --> 27:31.150 It's particularly important for us to unapologetically critique 27:31.150 --> 27:32.630 our most beloved games. 27:33.310 --> 27:36.490 Listen, I love FromSoftware. Dark Souls is 27:36.490 --> 27:38.990 my favorite game of all time, Bloodborne and 27:38.990 --> 27:41.810 Sekiro are masterpieces, and I have put hundreds 27:41.810 --> 27:44.110 of hours into Elden Ring, and I've even 27:44.110 --> 27:45.070 played King's Field. 27:45.990 --> 27:49.070 However, the fact that even Elden Ring, a 27:49.070 --> 27:52.590 game released in 2022, has substandard textured hair 27:52.590 --> 27:55.110 options for Black characters, and that there are 27:55.110 --> 27:58.270 maybe five Black NPCs across the entire Souls 27:58.270 --> 28:03.270 -like series, is incredibly disappointing and historically inaccurate. 28:03.930 --> 28:05.790 And don't give me any of the nonsense 28:05.790 --> 28:08.310 that FromSoftware is a Japanese developer and 28:08.310 --> 28:11.330 should be immune from this racial critique because, 28:11.550 --> 28:13.690 guess what, there were Black people in Japan 28:13.690 --> 28:14.790 throughout history too. 28:15.630 --> 28:18.710 If games want to be historically accurate, they 28:18.710 --> 28:21.250 will include a racially diverse set of characters 28:21.250 --> 28:24.890 that properly acknowledges the diversity of medieval or 28:24.890 --> 28:25.890 early modern Europe. 28:26.550 --> 28:28.690 And we should all be committed to stop 28:28.690 --> 28:31.670 perpetrating a white supremacist myth about an all 28:31.670 --> 28:34.610 -white European past in our culture and our 28:34.610 --> 28:35.050 games. 28:35.810 --> 28:39.110 We demand better from our games, and next 28:39.110 --> 28:41.770 time some to-be-fair gamer says a 28:41.770 --> 28:44.390 game set in or inspired by the medieval 28:44.390 --> 28:47.210 or early modern period shouldn't have non-white 28:47.210 --> 28:49.870 people in it, let them know that they 28:49.870 --> 28:50.490 are wrong. 28:51.050 --> 28:52.430 The history says so.