Psychologist Says Blaming Games For Violence Is Racist

Video games have a history of being associated with mass shootings and other violent acts, most famously with the Columbine shooters' affinity for Doom. More recently, it was revealed that Anders Behring Breivik, the man behind the Oslo, Noway, massacre, apparently used games as both training aids and as an excuse to isolate himself during the massacre's planning stages. A clinical psychologist at Texas A&M not only dismisses attempts to blame video games for these events, but says that these kinds of correlations could be considered racist.

In an interview with Forbes, clinical psychologist Christopher Ferguson outlines his thoughts. “I know it’s a little controversial to say, but there’s a certain type of racism in place with these killings,” he says. “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.”

“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,” he says later in the interview. “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.”

It's certainly a provocative statement, and injecting the sensitive issue of race is almost sure to derail the conversation. That notwithstanding, do you think he has a point?

Thanks for the tip, Kyle!