Live in your world, play in ours: David Leonard examines social fantasy and racial cross-dressing in video games. (Culture).

Video games represent a modern, sophisticated, multicultural, virtual form of minstrelsy. In other words, they provide players--a broad cross section of white middle-class suburbanites and young, urban people of color--with the opportunity to be black athletes or Ninjas. In those frequent cases where white heroes rule virtual reality, the enjoyment comes from dominating characters of color, from transporting oneself into a foreign and dangerous environment. Video games enable the virtual enjoyment of those bodies and spaces (dangerous inner-city communities) which are currently off limits to a predominantly white middle-class suburban playing population.

...