"Blaming Video Games for Violence is Racist," Says Psychologist

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I read a similar title to the one above when looking at the source for this particular story, and like many of you, I was ready for some crazy old guy making nonsense correlations between games and other unrelated things (like most of us are used to by now).�I wasn't expecting anything that actually made a little bit sense.

Looks like I was wrong. In an interview with Forbes, clinical psychologist Christopher Ferguson had this to say about the recent Norway shootings, and blaming video games for violence.�

I know it?s a little controversial to say, but there?s a certain type of racism in place with these killings. When shootings happen in an inner city in minority-populated schools, video games are never brought up. But when these things happen in white majority schools and in the suburbs, people start to freak out and video games are inevitably blamed. I think that there?s a certain element of racism or ignorance here.�

Christopher Ferguson

Ferguson went on to say:

Scientifically, the idea that video game violence, movie, or television violence contributes to mass homicides is pretty much a debunked idea that has no real basis to it...I think certainly the Supreme Court case�helped, especially since they were so clear in pointing out that current research was not able to support that line of reasoning.

No one likes it whenever someone plays the race card, but I surprisingly find this making sense�to me. It's surprising no one else has ever brought this up.�

What say you? Do you think there is a degree of truth to these claims? Let us know in the comments!

Source: Forbes Magazine, via GameInformer

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