Virtual redlining and digital ghettos: The forced creation of ‘hush harbors’ in digital gaming communities

• In Event: Videogames and (Digital) Cultures of Knowledge

Abstract

This paper explores how Black users deploy cultural rhetorics in digital gaming communities, likening these practices to “hush harbors.” Hush harbors were official and unofficial meeting places where enslaved and free African Americans could share culture, beliefs, rhetoric, and knowledge (Nunley 2004). With the toxic technocultures currently pervading digital gaming, many users of color have been forced to self-segregate and isolate themselves. This ethnographic project explores how the Black gaming community resists the public sphere in digital spaces, exploring how spatiality has mediated African American rhetorical practices as physical and discursive segregation have mediated African American life online.

Presenter

• Kishonna Leah Gray, University of Illinois at Chicago