Even when racism wanes, it never goes out of style. Not as a practice, mind you — I’d be fascinated to see any argument suggesting that racism hasn’t precipitously declined in the post-war era — but as a boogeyman, a brush with which to tar others, and (rather too obviously for a subset of modern progressives) something one can vicariously thrill to. Ah, sweet authentic oppression, just like in the good old days.

Even Joe Biden was out there calling plays from the same tattered but trusty book last Saturday, when he spoke at Howard University and told the predominantly African-American graduating class: “The most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland is white supremacy. And I’m not saying this because I’m at a black HBCU, I say it wherever I go.” To give the president credit on this one, he has indeed been an abject race-baiter for decades, this weekend’s blurt being a mere retread of earlier triumphs, a Return of the Son of “They’re Gonna Put Y’all Back in Chains.”

But thankfully technology is always there to push forward even when the president is stuck showing reruns, and it’s heartening to discover that the next wave of interactive gaming entertainment is virtual-reality racism. Why be taught about the evil of bigotry in books, or by overzealous 27-year-old white women with fresh M.Ed. degrees, when you can experience it personally? And maybe even try out inflicting some for that matter?

To be fair, one of the games here mentioned has a decent hook: Barnstormers sells you on the idea of playing baseball against the best of the Negro League’s talent, only to later let you explore their actual day-to-day world as traveling ballplayers, seeing how they were treated by white America. Look, I’m a baseball guy: If you give me a good physics engine, solid pitching and batting mechanics, and the ability to pitch to Josh Gibson? I’d eat my anti-racism veggies for that (and might even do so with gusto, especially because it’s a travesty that segregation kept so much incredible talent out of the Major League for so long).

It’s when we get into the “direct immersion” role-playing VR games that things begin to get funny, and strangely revealing. On a Plane, due later this year, is an immersive VR experience about interacting with a Malaysian woman dressed in traditional garb in exactly the situation you expect to be interacting with her. (The sequels write themselves.) What will you say during this fraught conversation? Will you outright Do a Racism? (That’ll cost you 35 points.) Will you employ the Othering gaze? (Minus seven points.) Oafishly demonstrate white privilege? (Minus five points.) Will you fail to Read the Room (minus ten points) or will you carefully defuse tension with a timely Land Acknowledgment (add ten points, good for a bonus round and another chance at Doing the Work)?

There is a curiously self-flagellant aspect to all of this, and not just on the part of the creators but on the part of anyone who would play such a game as anything other than a Human Resources or educational requirement. The belief that racism can really only be “truly” understood in the first person is impossibly dumb, reflecting the empathy-centered “feelings” culture around which such goofy educational games germinate in the first place.

I’m also sure you wouldn’t want a game like this to be truly “open-ended.” For one thing, the open-ended VR racism experience — imagine ChatGPT powering a horde of plausibly bigoted circa 1963 Birmingham cops — would swiftly turn into near-sexual catnip to a certain sort of progressive, offering the opportunity to “Dolezal” all they want and self-actualize in a haze of vicariously lived oppression experiences. (“Is Jenny coming out to the bar tonight?” “No, she’s playing through the Bull Connor scenario again.”)

But imagine what the trolls would do once they found out. I almost want a game like this to exist simply because it would become a massive sociology experiment the likes of which we haven’t seen since the days of Zimbardo and Milgram. An example of humanity acting out its various cultural psychoses, within a game designed to frame every interaction the way our most aggressive activists would have us do in real life, might be an instructive demonstration of where we’re heading these days.