Esports Boost Diversity in Stem Careers

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Kevin Fair used to disassemble his Nintendo console as a child, fix issues, and then reassemble it. The Black entrepreneur says that this encounter changed his life since it showed him that the entertainment system was more than just a plaything. Fair was inspired to learn how to code and repair computers by his love of video games. In 2009, he launched I Play Games!, a Chicago-based business that demonstrates another aspect of video gaming to young people of color.

Fair claims that the skills gamers naturally acquire help prepare them for careers in IT, coding, software engineering, and more. Schools and businesses like Fair's are utilizing students' enthusiasm for esports - multiplayer video games - to prepare them for careers in science, technology, engineering, and math, or "STEM." According to a 2015 Pew Research Center research, Black teenagers are slightly more likely than White and Hispanic teenagers to play video games. DePaul University in Chicago introduced a new esports scholarship this academic year intending to help students gain practical skills for the video game business. Students of color make up nine of the ten new scholars. A $1,500 scholarship has been awarded to Aramis Reyes, an 18-year-old computer science student with a specialty in game creation and development. Reyes, a Hispanic and Latino, claimed that esports is "absolutely" a tool to increase diversity in STEM fields and that it seems like a community for students of color. 

Despite the existence of racism online, the gaming community, in Reyes' opinion, is amicable. However, more is required to bridge the STEM diversity gap than just video games. Teenagers' access to game consoles and computers varies according to their family's income, and the Federal Reserve stated in 2021 that average Black and Hispanic households earn nearly half as much as average white households.