Is Resident Evil 5 Racist?

What is it with yanks and almost absolute no knowledge of how the world works outside their country.

So everyone who speaks spanish is suddenly stereotypical mexican? How about the hunderds of millions of other south-americans and the tens of millions...i don't know... Spaniards?

Bloody hell... it would be racist not the add in the black people! so we had zombie dogs, ravens, snakes, american people, southern European people and now black people, next up, killing zombie Indian people!

Damn those Japanese, white supremacists!

Yeah, not this one again. I heard this bs around E3 so its wierd its been dragged up again.

The again I feel goes back to the uneducated populous view of what videogames are, against what we know them to be, in an ever evolving industry.

The RE series has always had zombies in it. For anyone with half a brain, if you google of wiki 'Zombie' and what it means, you'll see that its origins are from afro carribean culture.

What's wrong with these people? Don't they know their own black non-christian history? As an afro carribean person, big gamer and huge RE fan, I find it quite annoying that some black americans feel the need to get jumped about this. Again another case of double standards. The films industry has been churning out zombie flicks for years, not discriminating on gender ro race. The RE series is doing the same thing but it seems that they are being labeled racist for it. What a strange way of thinking.

Does anyone remember MJ's Thriller video? Awesome as it was, I doubt if all the dancers in that video were black, but you never hear anything about it. Were they being discriminated against because the concept of the 'zombie' is from black history and some dancers are white? This is beyond the joke now.

I'm afraid that black americans, have become so reactionary and caught up in their fear of racism, that they find themselves looking for it against them, almost at every turn, sometimes where there is none. Its fine to be vigilant to a degree, but this is crossing the line into paranoia and jumping at shadows. This race card has become too easy to play.

In a similar way to the Resistance biz ages ago, people are again taking what they see, out of the context its built around. Besides that, the RE series has had playables characters from white, black, hispanic and oriental origins. That's much better than most games out there. Dont forget Kenneth J Sullivan (dead, Officer Marvin Branagh (dead, and Kevin Smith from REO/REO2.

Umbrella's T-virus is also based on the Ebola virus, discovered in africa. Does that make africans responsible for it out to kill us all? Of course not.

RE:6 - Hitler takes over Stars!

RE:7 - Oprah takes over Umbrella!

RE:8 - Zombies Made to Stand On Buses

RE:9 - Zombies Given The Vote Edition

RE:10 - Zombies Complain That a RE:Game Contains Zombies Attacking and Killing People.


Now this is how silly it really is!

I think the sensitivity probably arises from another part of African, non-Christian history, whereby the only reason that Afro-Caribbean residents were in the Caribbean in the first place was because they were shipped there as slaves.

Now, the other thing that might be slightly annoying is that the jolly old Zombie movies from the 1930s (White Zombie, Revolt of the Zombies for example) saw the Afro Caribbean as either (a) thick as s**t (b) completely evil (c) zombies, e.g. walking dead. Twas the job of the upstanding white man to wipe the buggers out, thus cleansing the tropical paradise of those non-Christian superstitions and enabling spiffing, white, Christianity to, like, totally rool!

So, much in the same way as a game depicting a German officer sweeping into Warsaw to kill all the Jewish zombies could be seen as offensive, a white dude blasting his way through predominantly black villages cleansing them of zombies might piss off some people who see a few historical relevancies.



What on earth is the point here? The point of the grief is that a white character is reverting to the 1930s and blasting black characters. Not that the black characters are portrayed as zombies. Also, the Thriller video used white and black dancers. Joji, old son, that was a whacko-tangent.



Indeed the race card can be easy to play. That's undeniable. However, a reaction that says, "Ohhhh, they're talking nonsense" and then quoting a Michael Jackson video because - (a) it had zombies in (b) Michael Jackson is African American (I hate that phrase!) (c) Some black people were in it dancing - isn't doing much to stop that kind of badly structured debate either.



Nope, you've lost me there.... all that said, I've not played the game as I am waiting for "Potato Famine III" in which our English hero gets to starve the population of a small island called Aire in a post-apocalyptic dystopian vision of the future/past. It's an FPS (First Potato Shooter).

Cheers

Tim

George Santayana - 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'

stereotypical Mexican accents…

that made me laugh heartily.

but seriously, talk about seeing a race issue where there isnt one.

I can't remember beyond 30 years, given that I was either too young or not yet born.

Guess I'm condemned to repeat anything that happened before that...

I Think a lot of non-black people (is that correct way to say it) are jumping on the this cant be racist, its silly and why on earth can it be racist, but i agree with Tim`s coments, and i think we need to stop a remember what has happened in the past.

maybe there is some Drama and Over reaction to the game, but although these people havent directly lived the hardship of the past, they have been educated to the past to remmeber what happen and to stop it happening again.

Maybe we need to stop and reasearch what happened and understand that people of all race and religion have History, Feelings and above all Fears!

to config,

was the quote not to point out to not literally remember the past, but not to be ignorant to it?

George could have been slightly précising the issue: "those who don't remember and/or bother to find out the historical detail are condemned to repeat it" - but I can't remember if he did or didn't.



You just did.

Ah-ha! I see what you did there. Very good. Very good.


Yes it very probably was, and I was being facetious.

Oh Ok, I missed it then

Did where? What are you going on about? Who are you? Why am I typing this...

Okay, enough temporal shenanigans!

Tim

Jesus Christ! Is Resident Evil racist? The game isn't called Jenna Revenge or anything like that (now that is proper racism we should be fighting). Heaven forbid you kill a black person in a game, cause obviously killing whitey is alright in every other game involving shooting. Obviously shooting South Americans in R6 Vegas and GRAW is now racist...pull them games! Stranglehold - no that is racist to Hong Kong people, pull it! Mario is a stereotype of fat Italian plumbers....pull that game! Medal of Honour - killing germans is bad , pull that game - oh hang on, they are Nazi's so that i alright....right? As a black person myself, i find it absolutely absurd that people over react like this. Games are easy targets for people like this, it helps them avoid the real issues like the fact that gun crime in their country is so bad that kids are dying every day. Or the lack of father figures or the fact that they let their children be baby sat by the telly, or xbox or whatever. Stop looking for blame and meaning where there isn't any. I can't wait for Resi 5 - it looks sick and i look forward to gunning down whatever colour zombies there are.

Hey, I know all about my history and indeed a lot of its not pretty, but I'm living proof that, even when things get dark, some good comes along to bury all that bad and negative feeling of mistreatment. Sure, everyone has suffered in history, some more than others. The big danger though is being able to remain objective and be able to distinguish who is out to get you, from those who isn't. If you can't create that distance, feelings of hate and resentment could become the core of your soul.

Capcom have more ethnic characters in their games than most other developers (you might be able to dig further on this Spong). Imagine a world where all characters were white, it would get tired easily, and surely we'd later be told there aren't ANY ethnic characters (as a developer/publisher it can't be easy). When building ever realistic worlds for games, art has to imitate life. Everyone, regardless of age, colour or creed is game for such representation in games, just like films or books etc. Get over it.

Okay that MJ reference wasn't the best. But when I'm thinking about or playing any games, it doesn't matter if you are 'Black or White'.

There, that's better. LOL.

looks like spong is running out of news to report... so they have decided to create their own.

Right on cue, Mr Henry....you should register on Spong.

the whole mortally wounded zombie fodder cop who looks like will smith thing in resi 2 was a racist subtext

so...*sniff*...Corpse Killers was racist?

Awwww....never could beat that game without the light gun...too hard with controller, at least for me...

Just had a flashback to Garrett Morris' song from a brilliant SNL sketch

"Gonna get me a shotgun and kill all the whiteys I see,
Gonna get me a shotgun and kill all the whiteys I see-ee,
'Cause when I kill'd all the whiteys I see,
Whitey, he won't bo-ther mee-ee."

which of course was a total ripoff of some old white womans original song replacing 'Whitey" with a slightly darker euphemism.

but my song would be about zombies...so its onlt racist against the undead...