Well shucks, I thank you. And for what it is worth, you’re pretty great yourself. I hope you’ll have a great day.
Why is this thread a thing still. All it has managed to do is attract racism and obscene debates
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You too bruh. You too. Daps him up
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That’s pretty much what it is. And it’s not like we stopped learning about white history during February anyway.
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Ayyy it seems we aren’t the only ones who knows the score and the game too. Salute and much respect to you for being woke, and knowing the game is chess and not checkers.
This whole debate is purposely missing the point, I can’t believe I read most of it.
They are asking for a black female hero. You can adjust your collegiate cap and read way too far into it, or use simple logic and accept the request for what it is. They want a hero that represents some combination of stereotypical aesthetics for a traditional black person, ie sub Saharan, ie Doomfist.
Stronger jaw/chin
Broader nose
Thicker lips
Darker skin
Tight curly hair
Thicker/stronger build (thicc, anyone?)
Pick a few, then a person can very easily go ‘eyyy, cool black chick, right on’, without launching into a huge academic debate over ethnicity vs race vs nationality, etc.
I know most of you understood the OP request, which makes it obnoxious that you’re choosing to ignore it so you can flex your brain at each other.
FWIW, I am generally against ‘quota’ requests like this, but the thread has gotten so off track I’m on board with the request.
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I have been a gamer since I could hold a controller, quite literally. I love video games so much, I did volunteer work for free for an international corporation for a couple of years and have written guides for new players that still get hits.
I support representation.
You don’t speak for gamers. You speak for yourself.
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By that logic Doomfist isn’t black either then.
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That’s not my point. Humans are all the same. How does that make me the bad guy for thinking we’re all equal?
Huh, humans are not all the same. We all have distinctive features. That doesn’t mean that one race is better than another but we are different.
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We all have the same genes, just different alleles. There is more genetic diversity between members of the same race than between different races.
No, but it is racist to treat white people and minorities different for the same behavior. If it is OKAY to prefer white people, and they aren’t worthy of derision then it should be okay with you for minorities to want and ask for the same thing. If you think it’s okay for white people to want to be represented, but not okay for black people to be represented, then that is racism.
Because you have moved beyond a visual preference in your game and instead are treating white and black people different.
I am not saying that you are doing that or are racist. But I am just talking hypothetically.
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My dude
have you seen the OP? The Kotaku citations? This was the inevitable outcome from the start. Especially on this forum.
Ah another “me me me”…the whole discussion reminds me on LGBT requests that won’t stop to spam until they get what they want…and resort to spamming and harassing other again to get even more attention.
Newsflash, OW does not have characters that represent every player’s nationality/ethnicity/gender and what not (that is what MMORPGs are for)… not because some white evil man is sitting at Blizz and thinking how to discriminate certain group but simply because resources and possibilities are limited.
I am sure OW will be there for another couple years and we will get more characters. Calm down folks.
For my part, i wish there was some russian female character that wasn’t a 2.5m big mountain of muscles… since 99% of russian woman are not like this and Zarya is just a hollywood stereotype. Someone like Lyudmila Pavlichenko (small woman and great sniper) would be cool actually. But chances that such hero will be added are small. I frankly don’t care enough so i don’t throw a huge tantrum about it because at the end it is just a shooter game, few pixels and nothing more. I play this game for gameplay/pvp etc. not for ethnicity/gender/whatever of some virtual character - once again, MMORPG offer way more in that area.
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B-b-but… Zarya wants to hug me like big Siberian bear. 
This is all anecdotal. You can’t make an argument that holds any real water using anecdotes. How is anyone meant to take you as a reliable source of information? How can anyone make any further investigations without you filtering it through your ideology first? They can’t. You could be entirely making it up. Nobody who knows how to debate as an adult uses them so if you aspire to be an intelligent adult I suggest you stop too. Tbh all of your posts come off as immature, condescending, are poorly written and are absolutely littered with strawmen. You argue from emotion, bias and deceit rather than objective reasoning. If you’re to grow as a human being I suggest you fix those things.
For argument sake though if your family do have such light skin tone and straight hair it is likely that they are mixed race to some capacity and further it’s likely they either straighten their hair or get a weave. Either statements might not be true but it is likely. They’re still black but likely they might be something more genetically. You’ve already stated that you yourself are mixed race. In terms of structuring the argument though let’s go further though and say your family either aren’t mixed race or don’t straighten/weave their hair. These characteristics you describe are as a result of some evolutionary change perhaps, however unlikely that it. It still doesn’t matter because that clearly isn’t the norm amongst predominantly black people. Black and mixed race people almost universally do not have jet black straight hair unlike Arabs. Arab and black facial and body characteristics are also notably different. You can find examples of virtually any obscure thing. What is relevant to this discussion on inclusion and representation is what is the norm. The Overwatch team are hardly going to try to represent rare occurrences of people. Try not to get triggered by me talking about your family. Control yourself and think about the point I’m making. Im making no value judgement on yours or anyone elses race.
I think it’s also important to address your inability to separate nationality, race and culture.
The easy one is nationality. If you were born or naturalised into a country, that is what defines you as “Egyptian” or “American”. You can be any race or creed, it doesn’t matter. Most countries have a population dominated by only one race (think Japan for an extreme example of a homogeneous country) and fewer countries have two or more numerically significant numbers of different races living together. Your race doesn’t define your nationality nor vice versa. There is also the consideration though that there is an expectation that people from a certain country will look and sound a certain way and be of a certain race. It’s in our collective popular consciousness and it only makes sense for Blizzard to largely stick to most of these expectations so as to be inclusive of the largest number of people around the world.
Race can be thought of in terms of both physical characteristics and genetic ancestry and how they naturally intermingle. If your ancestors are of a race, chances are you will look like them. When people from different races have children both of these defining factors merge in different but still in most individuals typically predictable ways and they become decendents of both ancestries. They are in a sense both of their races. This isn’t hard. White people have wavy to straight hair, light skin etc. Black people vary from very dark skin to lighter tones, flatter rounded noses, fuller lips, typically larger glutes and have afro-style tightly curled hair. Arabs have straight black hair, olive skin, pointier noses and thinner lips than black people etc etc. Different races are also more or less predisposed to different illnesses which is a big reason why you shouldn’t just cast aside a real persons true ancestry. A person of solely black ancestry normally does not have straight black hair and normally neither does a mixed race person of black and another race. The hair becomes less curly but not straight. There will always be outliers of course but these are not typical and so should not be argued as such or indeed as a reason to throw out the whole idea of race just because it doesnt all neatly fit. That’s not to mention all of the rest of the physical characteristics I listed. Look at Ana and Pharah and you see two women that fit a genetically Arab/middle eastern profile, definitely not black and unlikely mixed race.
Finally, and I feel this is an area you particularly struggle with, there can be strong interactions between culture and race and that can warp your true sense of what you are biologically and ancestrally. You yourself talk about identifying as black but not whatever your other race is (lets assume white for ease of argument). You are of course black but also white. A reason you might identify so strongly with one side of your ancestry is likely to do with afro-american black culture (I read elsewhere you said you were American so I’m not overly assuming your cultural background). There is a strong link between certain events in history, origins of musical genres, and normative customs among other things that are rightly (and sometimes wrongly or unethically) associated with being black in the USA. You also were likely raised in part by people who were genetically, ancestrally and culturally black so that is all wrapped up in what makes you identify strongly as black. You are right to do so. You are also wrong to solely see yourself as black. There is this strange thing sometimes with mixed race people to only identify as one side of their parentage which is objectively incorrect. Understandable and in other circumstances not a big problem but nonetheless factually incorrect. If you’re mixed race, at the very least genetically and ancestrally you are not just black. It’s also likely culturally you’re not solely black due to maybe being raised by a parent and grandparents of your other race as well as living in a predominantly white country. You are black and you aren’t black. You are (white?) and you aren’t (white?). That must be hard to live with sometimes because some people are ignorant racists and I sympathise. I however make no value judgements on yours or anyone elses mixed ancestry and simply want people to be honest with the truth when talking about the subject of race. Just because you were raised predominantly culturally black doesn’t mean you are only black. You are both to varying degrees.
People are people and it’s how they treat each other that matters at the end of the day. Let’s not pretend however that people aren’t the races they were born or in the case of Ana and Pharah, clearly meant to depict. I wouldn’t care to talk about this subject normally but it’s wrong for you to try to appropriate two characters away from the people they are meant to represent. Given the shallow information we’ve been given i.e. their appearance , names and nationality we can determine they A: look far more like typical Arab/middle eastern women than they do black B: their names are of mediterranean or Arab origin and C: while their nationality doesn’t define their race it does give us clues as to what is likely. It is far more likely that they are meant to represent Arab women given the racial demographic of Egypt and our popular consciousness of Egyptian people than it is they both happen to be very rare occurences of mixed race people who are both olive skinned , facially and physically Middle Eastern AND even more rare, have naturally straight black hair. Your argument verges on the absolute absurd it is so unlikely.
Stop strawmanning people and acting like you’re the victim of racists. No one is making any value judgements on race we are merely stating factual differences between them and thus the likelyhood of Ana and Pharah being a member of one or the other which you brought up. It’s exactly you’re immature reaction as to why people find it so difficult to have any sort of reasonable discussion when it remotely touches on race. If you’re too offended by the idea of someone disagreeing with you or pointing out a fact like races are physically, genetically and ancestrally different maybe you should retire from public life altogether. You seem to be too much of a snowflake to function in the real world.
P.S.
Races likely came about sometime around when humans left Africa. Everyone isn’t black. Everyone is human. Races exist (scientifically speaking).
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on that point i have to contradict reitanna
russian grandmas actually do give crushing hugs, so Blizz did something right…kind of
Do I have to come back and start shooting this stuff down again?
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Topic: We need Black female heros!
Everyone with common sense: Ana & Pharaha? They’re from Egypt which is in Africa. They’re both black but they’re what we like to call… Light skinned.
Except that makes no sense. Being from Africa doesn’t mean you are a black person. It makes it likely but not certain. There are areas of the continent where there are significant numbers of non-black ethnic groups. Egypt is one such place. Ana and Pharah are Arab/Middle Eastern with an Arab last name.
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