This sounds a whole lot like, “well, maybe it would be easier for black people to get jobs if they talked and acted white and stopped giving their kids such crazy names.” You don’t see the problem here?
It seems a little like you’re going out of your way to avoid seeing how this could be a problem, TBH.
Ingress came out when mobile technology was still fairly new, and white people tend to be early adopters – partially because they tend to have more disposable income and partially for cultural reasons (keeping up with the Joneses and all that). Ingress itself was a bleeding-edge example of AR, and so its uptake could be expected to follow a similar racial and socio-economic divide to mobile technology in general.
If mostly white people are playing, then mostly areas where white people hang out will tend to get populated with game objects. Since more game objects makes the game more fun and rewarding, the game will tend to be more fun and rewarding for people who hang out in areas where white people hang out, i.e. white people. New players are mostly getting referred by old players, and since old players are disproportionately white, so are the new players. The opportunity is open to all, but realistically we can predict that it will start white and get even whiter as time goes on.
Uh…that’s why it’s an example of systemic racism. White people aren’t going out of their way to exclude black folks, but segregation and systems of exclusion tend to perpetuate themselves unless people go out of their way to increase diversity. That’s like the whole reason we’re talking about it.
I think everyone’s already pretty clear on the idea that intentionally excluding black people is immoral. We’re trying to talk about how inaction can cause similarly bad results.
