So, I haven’t cared for Overwatch in a long ass time. I got the game, played my fair share of matches and moved on. In fact, I’ll literally forget about the game until a new character gets announced. So as per usual, Overwatch has once again revealed their newest character called Sigma, an astrophysicist who goes mad while studying black holes. I looked at the character, watched his bio & thought he was cool! So like any normal human being, I decided to check the responses for this new addition to the roster and see what people are saying, and frankly, it’s disturbing and disappointing.
Literally, the first tweet that I saw about Sigma was the fact that they were mad at Blizzard for not adding a black woman character and didn’t want another “boring white male” in the game. Now, admittedly, this isn’t the first time I’ve noticed this type of behavior from the Overwatch community or in gaming community in general, but it is something that’s more often than not been a behavior that’s growing and shockingly becoming the norm. In fact the same thing happened when a previous character, Ashe was revealed. People took to Blizzard to convey their disgust with Ashe for not being the black woman character that they wanted, despite the fact that the game already has two black women, Pharah & Ana in the game.
This toxic and discriminative behavior towards anything white, male or both has been steadily growing within gaming culture and not only are many journalist or media outlets are not condemning it, but instead sometimes they would support or even encourage this behavior. When I saw the amount of responses that complained about this, while simultaneously berating white male characters as if they’re the epitome of evil, I was disgusting and called it for what it was, racist. This is NOT how to create a healthy discussion for diversity and inclusion. In fact, it does the opposite. The strive to be on the right side of history has steered some of these advocates into a highway of intolerance and hatred, the very which they claim to fight against.
I mean don’t take my word for it, all you have to do is go to the official twitter account of Overwatch and the first response of the reveal tweet for Sigma will show you what I’m talking about. There is no such thing as reverse racism or that minorities can’t be racist. Racism is Racism! To me, if you are one that complains about racists remarks but then go and make them towards others, you are a fool in my eyes. Be better, for a better tomorrow!
