FlowrenSick
Member
https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle...-my-son-on-fortnite/ar-BB1g106m?ocid=msedgntp
"What I love most about being a Black father is also what I love about being a Black male educator for Baltimore City Public Schools: discovering teachable moments in the face of adversity. But what I am particularly fearful of in that same duality is Black children's inattentiveness to racism in all its ugly forms. And that alone is not fair. Especially when Black children, more than any other demographic, are currently battling the most trauma associated with a global health crisis as well as threats to their humanity, from police brutality to a slew of other modern racial injustices.
Sadly, racism doesn't surprise me anymore. This is nothing new. And I think I speak for every Black man when I say I am tired, to the point where I'm reluctant to watch another video of yet another Black body robbed of its life. And let's not mention the protests that follow; I'm definitely not marching in the streets with the hope of convincing lawmakers, who will never understand the trauma of my Blackness, that my Blackness matters. This what troubles me most and makes me feel hopeless on so many levels — the inability to protect your children, let alone yourself, from unforeseen racism. Police brutality this day. Being Public Enemy #1 to a health pandemic the next. And, as I learned on a recent Friday evening over dinner with my six-year-old son Waylon, there's even racism on Fortnite. Yes, there are actual little kids who are racist on Fortnite.
Fortnite, bruh. Fortnite.
"Daddy, why don't white people like Black people?" Waylon blurted out between chugging his carton of Yoo-Hoo and wolfing down skinny slices of cheese pizza.
"No really Daddy, 'cause Eden told me that. He's my friend on Fortnite. Bro is not an opp either, he really lit, he has all the Travis Scott skins," Waylon ranted. He kept rambling for the next five minutes or so.
"Sh*t," I discreetly mumbled under my breath, attempting to remember if I enabled the parental controls and age settings on his Nintendo Switch. I did. I always do. But here we are.
"Sh*t," a second, louder, curse slipped out when I realized my son is an actual Travis Scott fan. My G.O.A.T. Top 5, dead or alive, rank in this order: Jay- Z, Nas, Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole and Lil Wayne. I can't believe my son idolizes Travis Scott. Where did I go wrong?
Fortnite is a wildly popular free third-person shooter video game. For internet babies like Waylon, Generation Alpha — kids born after 2012 — mastering the internet and related technology like Fortnite is their rite of passage. These tech-savvy children navigate technology that makes them far more advanced than children of my era. Artificial Intelligence, facial recognition, and VR stand no chance with an Internet Baby. Once they get the hang of it, it's a wrap. What Fortnite offers to these highly advanced yet still impressionable children and teens is it allows them to bond with other children of different races and cultures while hooking them on the same poisonous pop culture we're all exposed to, all via video game play.
In Fortnite, a player in survival mode gathers resources, weapons and tools to create bridges and forts as a means of survival. Sorta like The Simms times Final Fantasy on steroids, and the 100-player Battle Royale is similar to a last man standing match in pro wrestling. It has a colorful cartoon scheme that is constantly updated with celebrity skins, trending themes and music. It's addictive, and no wonder — for internet babies, Fortnite is like their Instagram newsfeed.
"Oh really," I replied. "Is that right." I stole a pizza crust off his plate and tried to keep my cool. I wished I could see Eden — and his father.
"Yeah, Eden is so cool. He wins Battle Royale mode all time," Waylon said.
"Well, what made Eden say that to you?"
"Well, OK, Daddy. Eden said he's white and that his daddy taught him that white people don't like Black people. And one more thing, Daddy, did you know Donald Trump was the president? Eden told me that also," Waylon went on and on.
And instantly our living room became a boxing ring and I was Mike Tyson, the young or old version, in a twelve-round heavyweight bout. Or Malcolm X peeking through my window with the chopper. Because that's what racism does to Black fathers. It impels you to want to fight. And it doesn't matter against who.
The thing that kills me about racists is how they forget that they too are traumatized. That burden I imagine is heavy. Because to wake up every day and choose hate seems quite exhausting. Denial then becomes the only relief of that exhaustion, a shield or immunity in some way. So when I say I'm tired of racism, I actually mean it; racists will never address their racist actions until they address the hate they have for themselves. And that's what racist white people are unwilling to do. I have enough personal trauma as a Black man; addressing a racist's privilege and personal trauma is not on my agenda.
"Remember what I taught you about being a Black man in America last summer? What does that make you?" I asked Waylon. "A target!" my son replied.
"Eden's father is a bad person and is the reason why Eden says things he doesn't understand," I said. "I don't want you playing with Eden anymore because I don't ever want anyone to treat you unfairly. Do you understand?"
"Aww man, how can I win in Battle Royale now, Daddy?"
"And besides, Eden's dad is a traumatized racist," I said . "Repeat after me: trau-ma-tized."
Passive aggressive racism may be the most dangerous racism of them all. It's the type of racism Eden's dad taught him, which then caused Eden to proclaim it ignorantly on Fortnite.
I was not surprised that ignorant, racist language made its way to my child via Fortnite. The places where racism rears its head do not and probably won't ever surprise me. We live in a world where cowardice uses technology to amplify its voice. The problem was not even that a young white child repeated what he had heard, because as angry as I should have been at Eden, I could never be angry at a child because I'm wise enough to know that a child's ignorance — and in this case, his racism — is not his own, no more than it was his parents' when they were children. Racism is a taught trait, just like any other life skill. But if anything, my problem with what my son told me is that it made me feel what I felt when I witnessed the unrest of 2020 and all its modern injustices, from the public slayings of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, to the insurgency and unrest that occurred at the U.S. Capitol in January. I felt hopeless.
What I always come back to with racism is what I attempt to teach Waylon with every life lesson, which is also what torments and baffles me most in my pursuit in addressing the effects of racial trauma in my life. The country we call home is anti-Black male. Anti-Black-maleness, if it were classified as a mental disorder, is what Eden's father is suffering from. It's a disorder of blindness. It induces racist white men to believe that their masculinity and all its mischief triumphs any other male of different culture or hue. It's hereditary if untreated, too, passed along through the impressionable minds of that racist white man's children, resulting in them spreading the same hate. My grandmother used to say that a young Black boy in America is born with two strikes against him and those strikes are being Black and being a Black boy; Black manhood and all that its masculinity encompasses deems us a target, and disposable.
America's unresolved trauma is located in how it attempts to shatter the egos of young Black boys, thus continuing a generation of unhealed racism. I recall Toni Morrison's iconic 1993 interview with PBS's Charlie Rose, when she was asked her views on the problem with whiteness and the effects of racism on white identity:
What Morrison was hinting at is ultimately what I think we forget in the moral condemnation of racism: The racist's denial to confront his or her racism is a form of personal trauma. And I imagine trauma for the racist is just as layered as the one who is the target of that racism, experienced as a deeply distressing or disturbing experience that overwhelms their thoughts, emotions and/or body. Trauma affects how we feel, behave, learn and interact with others. I used to think trauma only mauled the inflicted, but it's just as damaging to the one imposing. It is trauma that Eden's dad deflected upon his own son, his own flesh and blood, by telling him that white people don't like Black people. His personal trauma, the trauma I imagine he is oblivious to because it apparently continues unchecked, is now the trauma of his son, and if unresolved will be the trauma of a whole network of young Fortnite players.""People who practice racism are bereft, there is something distorted about the psyche."
"The racist white person doesn't understand that they are also a race, it's also constructed, it's also made."
"If you take your race away, and there you are, all strung out. And all you got is your little self, and what is that? What are you without racism? Are you any good? Are you still strong? Are you still smart? Do you still like yourself? I mean, these are the questions."
