Being Non-Black in Black Business

Staying In Your Lane is A Free Action And I Beg You Use It

This past week was SGDQ-Summer Games Done Quick-which is an annual event put on by GamesDoneQuick to raisemoney for charity. The charity of choice is MSF: Doctors Without Borders, which honestly? Is one of my all time favorite organizations. I used to work directly with their organizers-Greta and Leila-when I was still at Tiltify. My earnest and honest to god highlight of the event was seeing them on stage at the finale because it let’s me know they are doing well. I really adore everything that GDQ is doing for the speedrunning community and we’re a potent force. I’m also humbled and honored that the staff at GDQ trust me with their events for Juneteenth and Unapologetically Black and Fast, which are two day long events celebrating Black joy and Black Independence Day, respectfully. GDQ in recent years has been working it’s butt off to be better about diversity, inclusion, and equity-so much so that any time they go on ‘commercial break’ they have affirmations that Black Lives Matter, that Trans Rights are Human Rights, all of that good stuff.

Which is why when we talk about their decision making process around taking advantage of a popular Black runner’s generosity to keep the schedule on track, if you’re not Black or GDQ Staff? I need you to stay out of it.

The conversation is far more than ‘why this decision was fucked up’; it’s a conversation that GDQ and the Black speedrun community need to have. So all of your side commentaries about how ‘well there’s just so many other things clouding it up’ or ‘oh I see you’re still angry about BDSP’ can stay in the drafts where they belong.

Oh, right, context. I’ll try to keep this brief:
A Black speedrunner volunteered to drop his run because the schedule was three hours behind. Later on in the run, when the event had some free time open up, no one thought to ask said Black speedrunner FIRST if he would like to add his run back-which would’ve negated 98% on the conversation being had. Instead, they chose to bring back a run that didn’t make their incentive in the first place. This lead to a lot of…we’ll say ‘back and forth’ on what in the world happened there. Before we go further: the speedrunner in question has received and apology and has stated they wanted to use that run for a future date. This is where I’m going to start getting ‘shitty, snippy, an unfair’ as the fragile and easy-to-upset white people are going to say.

The surface problem is obvious: the person who volunteered their cleared run should’ve been asked first, full stop. But what people who are chiming in (and as a reminder, have no business in doing so) don’t get (because they aren’t Black-shocker!) is the underlying, covert racism at play here. This can be broken down in a few ways.

Proactive v. passive allyship
Something I noticed right off the bat when the reveal first happened was the way language was handled: the speedrunner in question volunteered his run without prompt. He saw that the schedule was suffering and there was nothing/no one that ‘encouraged him’ to say ‘I should drop my run to help soften the schedule’-he did that on his own volition. The dude is a genuinely good person, so that makes sense. When the news broke that he wasn’t asked before the Run Of Choice got readded, the first thing that popped up?

A white person commentator tagging them, and going ‘well, we assumed they asked him first — ‘ and I’ll be real, I stopped reading the tweet there because I knew it was just going to be whinging that equated to ‘please don’t be angry, we were just having so much fun and didn’t think about it!’

The speedrunner who dropped his run was being a proactive ally: he viewed it as trying to help everyone win. Whereas this commentator was being a passive ally: they’ve taken GDQ to bat, for sure, but when the spotlight was on them and fun was being had, it became top priority. Tweets like those are made to ask for forgiveness first-not to admit that they dropped the ball. It didn’t dawn on them to ask if the runner that they on any other day would advocate for, got asked prior to their group. The actual runner of said group played it right: he ain’t say shit. But I want to highlight this because this is common. It’s normalized and regular occurring that visibly marginalized people-especially people of color-are expected to give up the things they cherish for the greater good before anyone else. I’m not surprised this commentator didn’t think to ask if the volunteer dropped run was checked in on first-that can be hand waved away with ‘that isn’t their job’…but part of wanting better for the space and advocating for better representation includes stepping aside when the opportunity to uplift those you want to see win is presented. The attempt wasn’t even made. And we shouldn’t have to remind you that you don’t have to be told or encouraged, you could’ve just asked. Not dissimilar to how he just dropped his run.

Popularity and Comfort
The run that got readded was a Pokemon game. The biggest slap in the face was the fact that it was a Pokemon game, that was already ran, and additionally was a bonus game. If you’re unfamiliar: bonus games at GDQ are games that get played if you meet the incentive for them specifically. Typically its some dollar amount aligned with how much money has been raised thus far, general mood, pace of donations, time slot-don’t get it twisted, plotting bonus games are damn hard work, and it’s disappointing if your bonus game doesn’t make it. This is important context to add in that this in turn, should not have been as fast and ‘seamless’ a decision to add back in once the incentive got missed. Does it suck when bonus games miss? For sure. But as a bonus game person, you kinda hold that L and keep it pushing. It doesn’t happen often, but if my Project Manager sense is right, I’d wager it missed because there was already a run of said Pokemon game on during it’s final pushes. We saw pretty similar with the back to back Elden Ring runs in the final hours. When the first one ended, the second one had missed by roughly $90K.

And yes, it missed. You opened up the floor for another 15 minutes of donations and shrill screaming in the mic because it missed. I’m not mincing words on it.

This is such a wild decision because with GDQ putting a lot of their mission for more diversity front and center, it feels almost like a no-brainer to go ‘quick, someone DM the Black speedrunner and tell him he’s back on’-but covert racism doesn’t allow that. Covert racism defaults to comfort-which is why the run that got picked was the failed bonus run of a Pokemon game [popular] that had already been seen, being ran by mostly (what I am assuming are) white people [comfort]. It was a perfect opportunity to showcase a game that hadn’t been seen yet, get some additional love to the runner, bring in a pleasant surprise, and get hype. Instead, people of color are expected to be understanding and amicable about why they got looked over, even when the perpetrator admits they were in the wrong.

Lovebombing w/ Zero Support
So this particular issue the runner himself pointed out, and is why I wanted to write this up: after the egregious mistreatment of his person and time, like clockwork the likes, follows, and presumably subs came in. He called it out as such:

Me in February and Hotfix Juneteenth: Celebrate black creators all year! Be there for their successes! We exist!
Y’all: ok
Me in JULY: *tweets GDQ discourse*
Y’all: dude I am SO embarrassed I hadn’t been following! Here’s 800 follows , I love you, good man, pats for patrick!!

Like.
This is…actually useless. But this is the point where as the author, I would hope you recognize a lot of this convo is not specifically about GDQ. It’s about non-Black people and biases as they happened via GDQ. It’s about how all of the above had to happen at the covert level, and the Black runner then gets to deal with this at the overt level when everyone magically has deep rooted and long-standing concerns about how bad he was treated, and reassure him that he’s a great person, an even better runner, and he deserves all the support in the world.

And it happens every time he gets bot raided.
And it happens every time a racist or a transphobe walks into his chat.

But it never happens when he pulls off one of the trickiest skips in MM2.
It never happens when he gets his 14th WR.
It never happens when he’s spending an entire day hosting on GDQ’s channel.

What’s scuffed specifically is that in roughly a week? Many of these new supporters are going to treat him the same way GDQ did with his volunteer dropped run: forgotten. This may also be a good time to highlight that we have yet to see an apology from the commentator publicly (since they felt compelled to speak on it), even though GDQ itself has issued some semblance of a statement. Most of these actions aren’t intentional, but it’s what a lot of you do. And rather than give a bunch of shitty reasons from Reddit on why ‘we shouldnt be so harsh on them’, I need y’all to understand you’re clouding a conversation that you have no business being in in the first place. Once this side of the runner came out, I think it’s worth noting that the commentator started magically pivoting to ‘other issues’-and if you don’t have the range, not remarking is something you can do.

First and foremost GDQ, doesn’t need your protection. They’re an organization with the chops to organize a week long event twice a year that raises almost a consistent $3mil in donations-some of y’all struggle to remember your category. We don’t need your 10 tweet threads about how GDQ ‘cares immensely about the runners’, ‘putting on these marathons are a lot of work’, ‘there is so much care going into — -’

GDQ wouldn’t being having the ongoing conversation about better diversity if that were already ‘resolved’ and they wouldn’t be constantly saying things about marginalized people’s rights on their channels if it didn’t need work building trust in those communities. No one worth listening to (read: not trolls) ever once said they don’t care, or that they aren’t working their asses off, but we are highlighting that none of this was OK, from multiple levels. And specifically: this is a conversation that GDQ needs to be willing to have on why this happened the way it did specifically with the impacted parties and communities. You do not need to run up and protect them. They’ve already said that they dropped the ball. The Black speedrun community reserves a right to be shitty about it for however long we need and it isn’t on us to ‘think about’ how the nonBlack runners may feel bad later. Stuff like this causes legitimate ripples and waves. This discourages new talent from wanting to be involved. It keeps many Black runners who are already afraid to hop in at bay. If you’ve ever asked yourself (which many of you haven’t) ‘why don’t we see more Black runners’: stuff like this is why. It isn’t just on GDQ to put on events for us and hope for the best: when y’all pull up and make condescending ass comments about how they aren’t doing enough without acknowledging or engaging what they ARE doing, it’s annoying as hell. I’ve literally had to clap people who wanted to say ‘GDQ needs more Black events’ and had to remind them the year prior was Juneteenth and they just whiffed on it. Yes, I was immediately met with self-aggrandizing fuckery.

Which is probably a ‘point two’: the Black speedrunning community all got to see this in 4K. It’s going to have a guaranteed impact on all of us: vets who are trying to follow along with the changes and growth who have to see this, newbies who dream of getting on Hotfix but then start questioning if they’re even wanted. This runner isn’t exactly small time, so if this happened to him, what does that mean for our teeny tiny twice a year all Black events? What does it mean when we want to be on a Hotfix show? How do we broach that while also broaching the low headcount of Black runners? A topic that many of you forgot is ALSO important in the context of this one? And note I said runners. Not ‘how many Black people were at GDQ’-I’m talking runners.

My biggest thing however, and what I want to highlight the hardest: a lot of you are reducing this to ‘you’re just upset he didn’t get featured, it’s messed up’ and I think y’all would benefit strongly from shutting the fuck up. Black people being excluded is common practice for us. It isn’t just that the run got chosen, its the nature of all the events prior. It’s the lack of people who otherwise say and claim ‘we love him! he’s great!’ not supporting him once the news broke. It’s the centering for clicks and jumping in on a conversation in which people severely lack the education (or in some cases are too clouded by their own spotlight to contribute anything of value). The Black speedrunning space already suffers severely from a lack of support and we can hardly find each other. We just saw at one of the biggest events of the year shaft one of the best known creators and like clock work we are expected to just “understand” why that possibly maybe potentially couldn't have been prevented and was ‘super unintentional’. The intention isn’t the issue: the normalcy of it is. The speed in which people wanted to stop talking about it and focus on ‘other issues’ is. “Well but didn’t he get an apology?”-he did, but we’re not going to see actualized tangible progress on it unless y’all speak up and additionally y’all learn to own when your commentary isn’t helpful, or actually harmful. And we see you when that conversation is going and you make a conscious choice to keep lumping it in slightly with all of your ‘other criticisms’ as a means to bury it because you deem it ‘not the biggest issue’.

For you.

Y’all can talk about the schedule being 4 hours behind and sit the ‘Black Speedrunner generosity abused’ convo out. Y’all can talk about the lack of prep in some of the tech convos. Talk about the need to hard eval bonus incentives. But I am begging yall to remove yourself from the ‘volunteer dropped run’ convo because there are so many layers that too many of you fail to understand (and upon realizing such, don’t want to admit that ‘hey, I should’ve never been in this talk’ and instead hard pivot to ‘other problems’ like Reddit trolls, as if CoolMatty hasn’t already dropkicked most of them into the sun, bless that man for real). Or y’all can better work on your own praxis because the support was lackluster at best. We’re also accustomed to the love bombing. We’re accustomed to being abused and having hundreds of ‘well meaning’ nonBlack people pull up right after and support for 24 hours.

GDQ itself recognizes it’s shortcomings.
I need y’all to recognize yours. It will be FAR more valuable.
I need y’all to recognize where you’re complacent, even if you’re trying to help, and how to go about better year round support. That means exactly what this runner said: be present and engaged for UBAF + Juneteenth, which we as a collective worked hard to build. Be present and engaged and uplift that before you fix your Twitter fingers to advise people to ‘mellow out’ about our representation once again being squandered. A lot of yall who want to have a piece of this pie were nowhere to be found for either event. Some of y’all let your friends come to the event and show their ass. Some of you don’t even have rules against bigotry in your chats. So maybe now isn’t the time to pretend you like your fellow Black runners. Talking about issues and confronting them aren’t the same. We see you when said Black speedrunner has been on the scene for years on end but you just enter his chat and follow *today*. And that’s not me saying you have to be on extreme high alert and always scouring for Black runners. I’m saying maybe before you hop into a conversation on an issue impacting our community, you ask yourself if you’re as big a supporter as you think or say you are.

When we do things like events, or our tweets pass up your timelines, a crumb of effort would be appreciated. Because waiting until a well known runner is done dirty to magically appear, to visit our channels once and dip, to facilitate a ‘favorite runners’ list, isn’t it. Over the last two months, we’ve had Black runners subject to full scale hate campaigns and abuse and y’all never seem to be present OR pull up to help get them taken down. Some of you have had more to say about why we should be more ‘understanding’ or ‘forgiving’ about a Pokemon run being haphazardly picked up over the Black runner, than Black runners ever at all. I need you to stop getting defensive every time Black people speak up and maybe spend more energy hyping us up. If you absolutely MUST contribute or feel like you’re suffering FOMO? Introduce our content to your communities Tell your friends. Do more to engage this convo. We got a master thread challenging them on more marginalized gender speedrunners-keep the energy for more Black runners.

Now to be clear, I know that a lot of this isn’t and wasn’t intentional, but doesn’t make it less harmful. The Black speedrunner community talks to each other. We see the patterns and trends even if y’all don’t.

We notice it when a guy runs a spliced vod of a game at one of the largest charity events of the year and how the only people who came for his neck was his respective community (which, reasonable), but when a Black runner is running a showcase of a JP only game, everyone needed to chime in, some even going as far as calling him an imbecile. They even called GDQ an imbecile-which is wild because even for how incendiary I have been, I don’t think I’ve ever once felt the need to go as far as saying anything so rude about a band of people trying their best. We notice it when you put more energy into silencing a topic that impacts Black runners than actually challenging how and where it impacts Black runners. We see you when you only follow our channels AFTER a bad incident, and we see you when your speedrunner cohorts say asinine shit to us and you NEVER pull up. I looked at the people who liked the shitty comments made to GDQ about needing more Black events (which, don’t get me wrong, they do), and looked at how many of them scoffed when I asked ‘so did you miss the previous one?’

Yes, he in fact did miss the previous one.

All I’m saying is if you want to be involved in Black issues, even though you yourself are not Black, unless you’re deferring to your Black speedrunner friends (of which many of you have a grand total of like, two), literally don’t. There are plenty of other things for you to get in on. Advocate for better vetting. Demand transparency on why runs don’t get in or show pitches get declined. Ask how we’re going to do better about high goal incentives. SUGGEST MORE BLACK RUNNERS AND DROP NAMES.

But I am fucking begging y’all, please, to stay out of Black ass issues. I know it’s easy to think that ‘we just wanna bitch that Pokemon got chosen over him’, but it’s so much more disrespectful than that and I need those of you who don’t have the range to stop assuming you do just because you’re adjacent.