June | 2015 | JelaniGreenidge.com

To Whom It May Concern,*

Ladies and gentlemen, the Confederate flag, a symbol of southern pride and heritage for generations, is under attack.

Because of one isolated incident with a mentally ill young man who just happened to be seen with the flag several days before gunning down nine African-Americans at a random church, suddenly everyone wants to pile on and act like the flag is some sort of magic talisman of hate that can instantly turn our children into racist, homicidal maniacs, rather than the piece of historical lore that it is.

As a result, there is a lot of talk, not only of removing the flag from the South Carolina capitol building, but of banning it altogether.

This, to me, is unacceptable. Rather than seeking to ban the Confederate flag, we need to be doing more to protect it.

#GamesSoWhite.

If you don’t play video games, this hashtag probably hasn’t crossed your social media feed… or if it has, you may not understand what it means or why it exists. Such is the challenge of any kind of hashtag activism — it’s difficult to have meaningful exchanges when limited to 140 characters or less.

Consequently, there is a lot of miscommunication, misunderstanding and misinformation going on with #GamesSoWhite, much like what happened with the incredibly controversial #GamerGate controversy from 2014. Unlike GamerGate, which many video game enthusiasts used as a rallying cry to marshall support toward protecting their turf, #GamesSoWhite has become a target of many of those same gamers, who are doing their best to discredit, disprove or shout down the ideas behind the hashtag.

Monthly Archives: June 2015

A Modest Proposal to Protect the Confederate Flag

Why #GamesSoWhite Is A Problem (And What You Can Do About It)