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In a post called “A Black Gamer Speaks” at Econlog, Bryan Caplan asks: why don’t more people of color play Dungeons & Dragons or other role playing games? This very, very serious issue was addressed by “Rob,” an African-American gamer on the Hero game system bulletin board (click here):

IMHO, the reasons we don’t play is:
1. We don’t want to be a geek or an outsider. It is a social death sentence. The peer group is incredibly important. And so is a hard appearance.

2. When I started gaming, there wasn’t any black iconic characters, fantasy literature, major black characters in comics or sci-fi. There wasn’t much, if anything, representing us.

3. Usually you are introduced to the hooby by a friend or family member. Since you didn’t have a black friend playing, odds are you weren’t going to play.

Rob also discussed the “acting nerd” penalty among black youth:

The black kids in my neighborhood resented me because I was singled out for special treatment. I would get to the local school and go into a special area with the rest of the “gifted” kids to await the bus that would take me to my actual school. And since I was the only black kid on that bus, I would hang around and socialize with the white kids there. This got me labeled as a sellout and token and all the other demeaning labels. Some of the neighborhood kids’ parents stopped inviting me to parties and gatherings, because my mom was supposedly “making us white”. To make things worse, because of the busing situation, my friends lived several miles away, so seeing them on a regular basis was not going to happen.

Of course, it wasn’t all fun & games for Rob:

But the flip side is also mixed. While dealing with other non-black gamers, I have had to endure casual racism, stereotyping, and gross underestimations of my intelligence. But I love the hobby, so I continued.

But Rob persisted because of a strong self-image and family support. He is now a totally committed nerd. Later in the thread, cyst13 asked: “When you play human characters, do you specify that the PC is of your own race?” As a confirmed openly nerdy man who has GM’ed in a multicultural situations, I say that all PC’s are the default ethnicity for the game setting (e.g., white for medieval inspired games, or black for African themes), but players are given the option to specify different cultural options. I also give players previously existing characters with interesting backgrounds to stretch their imaginations.

Update: Weird Al fans should click here for the video “White and Nerdy.”