Kaneva's Diversity

As stated in my proposal, one of my fears about joining a virtual world was that I would join one that did not fit my profile regarding gender, sexual preference, and specifically race. I’ve been very fortunate in my real world to grow up and make it this far without ever coming across any major racial prejudices; at least none to my face!
Immediately after I joined the World of Kaneva, I was able to do avatar searches and the first list alone reassured me that I had picked the best virtual world for myself. There were more than enough African Americans on the site to make me feel comfortable about interacting in the community and this was a plus, because I was already freaked out about chatting with strangers anyway!
Once I set up my avatar and my avatar’s life, I started to mix and mingle; I went shopping for furniture and job hunting! At each location I saw a variety of different races and everyone seemed to be getting along. To test that out, I tried it myself. I went up to a Caucasian avatar, and immediately after getting his attention, he was willing to have a full conversation with me! It was kind of weird how comfortable he was, but it did help me to understand how people who use these virtual worlds on a daily basis get so addicted to it.
Although the avatars are supposed to represent the actual person working the computer, I think that many times people choose to be their complete opposites and this may be why race is not a big deal in the World of Kaneva. If people are pretending to be people they aren’t or acting out their alter egos, they may be thrilled to mix and mingle with people of different races, because they can’t do it in their real world.
On another end, I think the virtual worlds would be even more relaxed and care- free if the avatars had no color. For instance, when I first joined World of Kaneva, my avatar was gray until I customized it. I actually tried leaving it gray, and that was not an option. To me, this is putting an importance on race. If virtual worlds with human- like avatars do allow people to be “colorless,” I think studying how people interact not knowing anything about the race of the person would be very interesting. In class we talked about how our society constructs gender, beliefs, roles, etc. I think society is often responsible for how people view people of different racial backgrounds. The media portrays each race in specific ways and that it was people see on a daily basis and family and friends influence us as well, so often we take on the views of the people around us. What would happen if everyone was given the chance to make their own decision on race? World of Kaneva and other virtual worlds could test this out!