What if I told you that i saw a game that involved a character that had dark skin with big red lips and was wearing only a grass skirt? What if I told that he also had a bone through his nose and the goal of the game was to out run a rhino? What year would you think these images from? Perhaps the turn of the century, perhaps early 40’s or 50’s.

Well folks you’d be wrong those images where from the year 2007 and the place those images were seen was on a banner ad on MYSPACE!

There’s more than one - in another, a similar character stands opposite a gorilla, with the goal of the game to push a coconut out of a tree.

If the ad were on a smaller site perhaps I could manage to be less concerned. But this site has captured the imagination of millions of people around the world and whether consciously or not they influence the perception of those people depicted. I know that these are concerns of myspace as indicated by their very detailed process of screening and the ability to report if some one is lewd, crass, offensive or otherwise insensitive. So imagine my shock when I didn’t get so much as a “we’ll look into it’ and got pretty much the same reaction when I sent the complaint to other sites whom I thought could help make my point.

The silence was deafening. Was I crazy?

I feel in our efforts as a country to see past race we deny ourselves the ability to actually heal from something we still suffer from. Kind of like taking a medication that only buffers the symptoms, but you still have a cold and you can still pass it on.
Ok so this is the point in the article where I give you my heart felt dissertation on the power of images and pull out my bibliography of quotes and books to prove to you that these issues still exist… but i think this time I won’t. This is a journey that I should not have to inspire you to take. Do the research yourself, ask yourself hard questions and be honest. in the mean time ill be working on alternatives. I’m actually taking a break from editing to write this - I found the unanswered letter I wrote to TOM from myspace and thought I’d make mention of it on my site before it vanished into obscurity.