Waiting on a Zerg Rush That I Think Won’t Come
Saying that South Korea is an “interesting” nation sort of implies that other nations are somehow not interesting. It does, however, have at least one quality that is unique among nations: their national sport is a video game.
That game is StarCraft, and its recent succesor, StarCraft 2. Let me be clear on what I mean. S. Koreans play StarCraft the way Americans play baseball, europeans play soccer, and Indians play Cricket. There are Korean versions of ESPN, and they do show proffesional StarCraft players strutting their virtual stuff, p0wning opponents and blitzing with Zerg units.
It’s a game that I’m also rather fond of.
Because of the unique relationship between this country and this game, it offers an interesting window into how racism is expressed. Not racism of South Koreans- a topic I know nothing about. Rather, the racism of North Americans in general. When I say” racism”, I can be understood to mean bigoted or privilaged language generally. So: let’s see some examples!
“StarCraft is the national sport of South Korea.” Racist because: it’s not! To the extent that a nebulous concept like” national sport” can be quantified, this one is and can be.
“Koreans are good at StarCraft for cultural reason X” Racist because: possibly not! Well. Saying Koreans are “good” is probably racist. But saying play it more than other nations (on a per capita basiss) is demonstrably true. And there are probably cultural reasons for it. A story that explains why this is true without falling into racist cliche would be fascinating to read.
“Person X is Korean, therefore they love StarCraft”. Racist because: it ascribes national characteristics to an individual, therefore denying that person of individual agency.
“Person X is pretty good at StarCraft. They must be Korean!” Racist because: same problem as above.
“Have you seen how quickly (Korean) person X can move a mouse while playing StarCraft? This is because Koreans are evolved to click mice fast.” Racist because: humans were not genetically isolated from one another long enough to begin to speciate. Claiming otherwise is a tool racists use to create false differences between individuals.
That’s it for me. Leave your favorite cliche in the comments. Ill tell you why its racist.
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