I was one of the librarian volunteers working regular reference desk shifts at Info Island in Second Life* when the Virginia Tech mass shooting happened on April 16th, 2007, when an undergraduate student at the university shot and killed 32 people and wounded 17 others with two semi-automatic pistols. It remains the deadliest school shooting in the history of the United States, and was also the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in U.S. history, until it was surpassed nine years later by the Orlando gay nightclub shooting.
Within days, a makeshift memorial was erected next to our reference desk, which was visited by hundreds of avatars, who left flowers and teddy bears, and lit virtual candles. Here is an image I took at the time, with the Info Island reference desk in the foreground, and the memorial wall in the background, with pictures of the 32 people who lost their lives that day.
Standing in front of the Virginia Tech memorial on the first day
After a week, the area next to the reference desk was a literal sea of flowers and candles. I loaded up my angel avatar and flew over the scene:
The owners of Info Island set up cubes (which you can see in this picture at bottom right) so people could sit and meditate. Some people stayed for hours, crying and chatting with each other. It was all incredibly moving, and I learned for the first time that expressions of grief and outrage in virtual worlds are no less powerful than in real life.
Virtual worlds such as Second Life have always been home to memorials and monuments to inform and educate people about episodes of terrorism, crime, and injustice. And so it is with the current Black Lives Matter Movement.
Today, I paid a visit to an art installation and educational exhibit intended to inform, educate, and raise awareness of the racism faced by Black people in America. The imposing Ministry of Truth building from George Orwell’s dystopian science fiction novel 1984 sits opposite a recreation of a Nazi concentration camp.
Inside the concentration camp is an exhibit of paintings done by David Olère, who was a Polish-born French painter and sculptor best known for his explicit drawings and paintings based on his experiences as a Jewish Sonderkommando inmate at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II:
Scattered throughout are paintings by Bansky, and deliberately provocative quotes, sculptures, and images, drawing parallels between humanity’s history of racism and fascism, and speculative fiction such as Orwell’s 1984, with what is happening here and now in Donald Trump’s America:
(Here are sources for the Donald Trump quote on the wall in the picture above: Politico, USA Today, CNN).
The Black Lives Matter memorial is just around the corner from the Ministry of Truth and the concentration camp (here is the exact SLURL of the memorial wall; you will arrive at a common spawn point on the sim, just follow the large white signs with the arrows to locate the spot).
A number of Second Life vendors have donated free items, which you can pick up here at the Black Lives Matter memorial. Here my avatar is wearing a Black Lives Matter hoodie from BUNK and a BLM baseball cap by Snapz:
The hoodies come in four different styles, and fit classic avatars as well as Maitreya Lara, Belleza (Venus – Isis – Freya), Slink (Hourglass – Physique), Adam, Aesthetic, TMP/Classic, Exmachina Davide, Signature Gianni, Belleza Jake, and male Slink mesh bodies. The baseball cap comes in one size, but you can click on it to adjust it to fit any head. There are also shirts by Mossu, Blueberry, and Nerdy Princess to fit a variety of male, female, and children’s mesh avatar bodies, as well as some wall hangings and other items for your home.
At a time when mass demonstrations carry the very real risk of becoming infected with the novel coronavirus and developing COVID-19, virtual worlds provide a valuable space where we can gather safely and protest against the injustice, police brutality, and racism currently taking place in America and around the world.
Social Injustice Has No Place in the Physical or Virtual World
Like many of you, we are feeling a combination of horror and outrage over the history of racism against Black lives. What we continue to witness is deeply disturbing and demanding of immediate social change.
The killing of George Floyd seen on video around the world is only one in a long and unacceptable series of violent and racist attacks and discriminatory behavior directed against people of color.
We stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, all victims of systemic oppression and violence, and with Black communities across the U.S., the globe, and the virtual world in condemning racism and any and all actions that promote division.
How can you help? This weekend, you can participate in the Stand for Justice fundraising effort dedicated to raising funds for Black Lives Matter, Black Visions Collective, Campaign Zero, the National Police Accountability Project, and a Split Bail Fund benefiting 38+ bail funds nationwide. We also highly encourage you to sign petitions, text, call, or donate to show your support, acceptance, tolerance, inclusion, and equal opportunity for all.
Now is the time for us to come together as a community and to stand up for what is right, just, and decent. We hope that you will stand with us in our fight for a better world and in recognition that Black Lives Matter today and every day.
—The Linden Lab Team
*For a short history of the rise and fall of libraries in Second Life, please see this blogpost.
The problem is that white people see racism as conscious hate, when racism is bigger than that. Racism is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites at other people’s expense, whether whites know/like it or not. Racism is an insidious cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn’t care if you are a white person who likes black people; it’s still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don’t look like you.
Yes, racism looks like hate, but hate is just one manifestation. Privilege is another. Access is another. Ignorance is another. Apathy is another. And so on. So while I agree with people who say no one is born racist, it remains a powerful system that we’re immediately born into. It’s like being born into air: you take it in as soon as you breathe.
It’s not a cold that you can get over. There is no anti-racist certification class. It’s a set of socioeconomic traps and cultural values that are fired up every time we interact with the world. It is a thing you have to keep scooping out of the boat of your life to keep from drowning in it. I know it’s hard work, but it’s the price you pay for owning everything.
—Scott Woods, African-American poet and blogger (source)
I have been avoiding the news, because I was afraid it would depress me even more than I already am, but I had a severe case of insomnia last night, and I woke up at 2:00 a.m., unable to fall back asleep.
I blogged a few items that were on my to-do list, then I lay down on the sofa and opened up the Apple News app on my iPhone and read all the latest news, about the outpouring of anger and outrage in many cities across America, about injustice and police brutality. About a President who had peaceful protesters tear-gassed and shot at with rubber bullets, so that he could pose with a Bible as a prop, in front a church for a photo op. Rev. Michael Cohen reported in Maclean’s, Canada’s national newsmagazine:
If there is one thing we have discovered to our cost about Donald Trump it’s that he can always surprise us. Not with delight at his eloquence or empathy, or some desire for harmony and decorum, but in horror at some new presidential depth.
And as the sun set over the capital of the United States, the most powerful man in the world had the police fire rubber bullets at non-violent protestors so that he could walk from his news conference in the Rose Garden of the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church. He stood in front of this historic church, renowned for its commitment to social justice, held a Bible and posed ostentatiously for the cameras.
Just yards away, young people who had been demonstrating against racist violence and the murder of George Floyd wept with tears produced by tear gas and by frustration. Yet Donald Trump, supremely indifferent and even mocking, held high a text that roars love, peace, and justice.
This was blasphemy. In the most authentic and repugnant sense, it was blasphemy.
The president held up a Bible and posed for photos at the front entrance with Attorney General Bill Barr, Defence Secretary Mark Esper and other administration officials, all of them white.
He did not go inside the church, instead returning to the White House without further mention of Floyd or the protests.
“We have a great country,” Trump said as he posed for photos. “Greatest country in the world.”
…
Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, who oversees the Episcopal Diocese of Washington that includes St. Johns [Episcopal Church], issued a statement that called the combination of Trump’s photo op and the actions of police “antithetical to the teachings of Jesus and everything that our church stands for.”
“I am outraged,” she said.
“The President did not pray when he came to St. Johns; nor did he acknowledge the agony and sacred worth of people of color in our nation who rightfully demand an end to 400 years of system[atic] racism and white supremacy in our country.”
“In no way do we support the President’s incendiary response to a wounded, grieving nation,” Budde added. Instead, she aligned herself and her diocese “with those seeking justice for the death of George Floyd.”
All this crisis and chaos makes me want to escape even further into the safe, comfortable confines of my social VR platforms like Sansar, and virtual worlds like Second Life. In Second Life, Sansar, and on so many other metaverse platforms, it is so easy to create an avatar that looks absolutely nothing like yourself. You can be anybody—even a Black/African-Canadian person. And, from time to time, I have been.
Yes, I full well realize that some people have a problem with me, a White person, creating a Black avatar, considering it offensive and calling it “racial appropriation”. Wagner James Au of the blog New World Notes addressed the topic in a 2017 blogpost. But I still wanted to explore what it meant, in some small way, to be perceived by other avatars as a Black woman or man, to walk a virtual mile in somebody else’s shoes, and view the virtual world through somebody else’s eyes. Many, if not most, of the avatars in Second Life do not correspond to real-life identities (a notion that probably would shock someone unfamiliar with SL culture). And in absolutely no way was it intended to be disrespectful.
But my admittedly very infrequent experiences as a Black avatar in Second Life, or elsewhere in the metaverse (e.g. Sansar), DO NOT FOR ONE MOMENT equate with the reality of the pervasive racism that so many Black people face in America and, yes, in Canada too. We are not immune from racism here in Canada, as much as we like to think we Canadians are more liberal, open-minded, and welcoming than our American cousins. (In particular, our country’s predominantly White settler culture still has to come to terms with its truly shameful, centuries-long history of racism against its Indigenous population. But that is the subject for another blogpost.)
Second Life and Sansar and many other metaverse platforms are often overwhelmingly White/Caucasian, markedly more so than real life. Stop for a minute and ask yourself why that would be. Is it because real-life Black people pick a White avatar just to see what it was like to be a different race, as I did?
Or is it because they wanted to avoid standing out, in much the same way as many people who identify as female in real life choose a male avatar to avoid being hit on and treated as sexual objects by sexist, misogynistic, Neanderthal men? (My main Second Life avatar happens to be female. My years of personal experiences as Vanity Fair at Frank’s Jazz Club and various other popular music spots in Second Life have provided me with a highly insightful perspective on the kind of badgering which some women have to put up with, in a way that would have been impossible in real life as a man!)
According to a study by Jong-Eun Roselyn Lee at Ohio State University, Discovery Magazine reports, a lack of avatar racial diversity in an MMO impels black users to create white avatars. Lee’s study was conducted in Second Life, but seems generally applicable to MMOs in general where it’s possible for usres to designate their race:
“Lee gathered 56 study participants — half identifying as white and half identifying as black. She then had them read a fabricated magazine story titled “Meet the Coolest ‘Second Life’ Residents.” The eight Second Life avatars profiled in the story were either all white, in the low-diversity scenario, or an equal mix of white, black, Hispanic and Asian, in the high-diversity scenario. She then had them perform two tasks: Create and customize their own virtual avatars, and rate their willingness to reveal their real racial identity through the appearance of their virtual avatar. She found that black participants reported less willingness in the low-diversity scenario, and that they also created whiter avatars, as judged by objective raters. By comparison, white study participants were largely unaffected by either the high-diversity or low-diversity scenarios.”
In other words, when the “cool avatars” are presented to be all white, black users tend to choose white avatars for themselves, while keeping quiet about their real race. This academic study matches the anecdotal reports we’ve been writing about on this blog, beginning in 2006 with “The Skin You’re In“, in which a white user experienced prejudice after she started using a black avatar. (An experiment another white user tried last year.) African-American users like Eboni Khan have told me about this phenomenon from their own perspective too:
“You don’t find many African-American people being dark online. Which is funny, because there are plenty of dark black people in real life. I came from [another online world], and I was one of the few chocolate avies. Most were caramel. They blamed it on clothes being designed more for caramel [skinned avatars]. But that’s a cop-out. I think it speaks to larger issues with race and skin tone. But you can’t preach to people online who only want to get virtual ass. So I keep my observations to myself.”
Race and racism is a very touchy subject, both in real life and virtual life. And I am being extra careful here, mindful of my White perspective, not to cause offense (but if I have done so anyway, I apologize). And I do not, by any stretch of the imagination, consider myself an expert on the topic.
But I do think that on the various metaverse platforms on the ever-evolving marketplace (which I do consider myself somewhat of an expert on), people have an unparalleled opportunity to interact with each other, and communicate with each other, without any bias as to your race (unless the person you are talking to chooses to self-disclose their identity as a person of colour).
I have had wonderful, wide-ranging conversations with people—and made many online friends—without any idea of what that person looks like. So I would think that social VR platforms and virtual worlds could have a potentially useful application in combatting racism in all the forms outlined in Scott Woods’ quote up top: not only overt hate against Black people, but also White privilege, access, ignorance, and apathy.
But equity, diversity, and inclusion in virtual worlds is not guaranteed; people (and their avatar representations) have to work, and they have to work hard, at creating the more just world they want to see, both in real life and in virtual life. Current news events are a stark reminder that we cannot just declare ourselves non-racist; we have to be actively anti-racist. And we need to bring that mindset into the virtual worlds we inhabit, as well.
You can start by educating yourself on the issues, as I intend to do. Journalist Katie Couric has compiled a detailed list of anti-racism resources to help you get started.
An image from this week’s global protests (source)
Like many of you, we are feeling a combination of horror and outrage over the history of racism against Black lives. What we continue to witness is deeply disturbing and demanding of immediate social change.
The killing of George Floyd seen on video around the world is only one in a long and unacceptable series of violent and racist attacks and discriminatory behavior directed against people of color.
We stand in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, all victims of systemic oppression and violence, and with Black communities across the U.S., the globe, and the virtual world in condemning racism and any and all actions that promote division.
