Resident Evil 5 is "racist"

[Lord Scottish]

I have a simple solution to this entire issue: Let's stop giving these reactionary blogs (like this one and the LocoRoco one) so much unwarranted attention.

I'm black, by the way, and I'm with Bernhardt on this one: Racism is a symptom, not the problem itself.

[Fei]

My dad is black, and I live in a small town full of white people, so I had the following quirk about me as a child.  Whenever the token black guy died in a movie, it struck me harder emotionally because the only black person I knew of personally was my own father.

Call me crazy, but this is what I've noticed.

SHORT LIST OF DEAD BLACK PEOPLE IN VIDEOGAMES
-----------------------

Code:

Resident Evil 1: Black guy dies to the first zombie in the game.

Resident Evil 2: Black guy cop dies after turning white (zombification).

Metal Gear Solid: Darpa chief dies right away

Metal Gear Solid 2: The only black guy blows up (honorable death at least)

Metal Gear Solid 3 actually speaks directly about Racism, again, honorably.

Winback: Black guy on the squad gets sniped while still on the helicopter, if I recall.
--------

I shouldn't notice, but I do.  It's racist to notice.

Are the jokes about the black guy dying at the start of the movie just a result of people like me keeping a tally, or is there something to it?

I've all ready mulled over Resident Evil being racist so I'm not sure what I think of this.  At least RE5 won't have one single black person to represent the entire race, only to have him killed.  But if my paranoia is correct, then RE5 is almost laughably blatant in it's portrayal of racist sentiment.

But, it's not like a videogame can lynch me.  I'll buy it, and I'll like it.  Mental masturbation.

[Takezo]

Is it me or is it funny that the only people who advocate just 'letting it all go' are the hwhite folk. Oh yeah, very easy for you to say. Just get over it Tyrone.

That's what we call sweeping an issue under the rug.

It is just you. Go back to the linked article in question and read the user comments below, posted from African Americans, native Africans (one from Ethiopia I do recall), Hispanics, Asians, everyone. I have a very good African-American friend who thinks that letting it go (yes, rememberingthe past, but not continually bringing it up like it still holds dominion over our lives) is the best solution. This was also the "basic" solution (he gives greater details) proposed by Jamaican-born Harvard prof. Orlando Patterson in many of his books. See:

http://www.paulagordon.com/shows/patterson/


As he says, keeping an optimistic outlook is key. Finger-pointing at a zombie game is certainly not the answer.

Oh comeon I typed HWHITE FOLK. Thought it was obvious I was being facetious ;( Although sweeping it under the rug by just telling people to ignore/stop bringing it up is a pretty thoughtless response, just throwing that one out there.

[Eusis]

Did you edit that list yourself or did some mod come in? It didn't even register to me, probably because most of the games are fairly old and half of those were pretty early in the game anyway. Winback was the only one I wasn't familiar with, and I didn't really care.

[Ramza]

Oh comeon I typed HWHITE FOLK. Thought it was obvious I was being facetious ;( Although sweeping it under the rug by just telling people to ignore/stop bringing it up is a pretty thoughtless response, just throwing that one out there.

...oh. I actually did not realize you were being facetious. My bad, friend!

Ramza

[Fei]

I edited it myself.  As embarrassing as it all ready is, I didn't want to catch hell for not marking spoilers :P

Winback was a lower profile game, and I was only watching my friend play it.  I asked him at the time if he noticed what I noticed, to which he replied "I don't see people as being of a different color."

So on the slim chance that someone is actually insisting on killing off black characters, nobody is seeing it that way, which is a good thing.

It's just funny to me personally how I'm always keeping an eye out for the black characters in games to test this damn theory, and then RE5 comes out with NOTHING but black people in it :P  If they really are trying to be racist, even I can't help but laugh at the RE5 situation.  I am having a hard time staying objective.  haha.

edit: I am currently playing F.E.A.R... the point I'm at has a black guy coming in to defuse a bomb.  We'll see what happens.

[Azrael]

I just thought I'd point this out even though it's pretty far back.

Zombification has it's roots in the West Indies and West AFrica.  It's roots mainly lie in Vodou, not voodoo.  Voodoo is some retardedly stupid Hollywood shit that really does a disservice to what Vodou really is.  And Zombie's are actually just people who've been ressurected.  They aren't brain dead beasts that go around trying to kill people, they're just people ressurected.  They are believed however to be controlled by the person who ressurected them.

[Bernhardt]

[Dragon]In short, humans are a bunch of fools...[/Dragon]

... What the FUCK are you doing there?

LoLz, too much Drakengard for me.

I'm just trying to say, this isn't really the place or time for a racial debate, not that I'm taking or making any offense at anyone taking either side.

After all, the shift of the topic is moving towards racism en generale, rather than in regards to RE5.

[Takezo]

You lose for playing slackengard

[Prime Mover]

Aside from RE5, I wonder how much of this is owed to the Die Hard series, which always featured a black side kick (sans Die Hard 4), who was very honorable, well portrayed, and the only other person that John McClane could truly count on. MGS2 was mentioned somewhere in this thread, and I thought that it was fairly obvious that the black character from that game was partially modelled after Die Hard 1.

[Takezo]

I find it worth noting that the only autobot they killed was the nominal 'urban/street(negro)' guy in the new transformers film.

[Bernhardt]

Yeah, well, for every black man that gets shot down, there's still Will Smith. And then there's another awexome black guy, whose name I can't seem to remember. Let's be honest, there are a lot of awexome black guys out there, they just don't get a whole lot of screen time because some friggin' marketing group is trying to pimp rap/hip-hop culture out to the black community.

You see, it's the evil corporations trying to sell shit to us that are corrupting us. All those rock bands or rap "musicians" on MTV these days are all pawns of corporations who are trying to sell us shit that's designed to appeal to people who've no sense of taste, or common sense for that matter.

...

Awexome black guys in video-games:

Hermes (Front Mission 4)

Helmer (Xenosaga)

[Eusis]

So says the guy who can't spell the word awesome.

Edit: SO SAYS THE GUY WHO CAN'T SPELL CAN'T

[Bernhardt]

So says the guy who can's spell the word awesome.

Bah, I know it's spelled with "S," I'm just trying to start a new trend. AWEXOME. (Pronounced "Awesome-cross," with the "X" being the "cross.") You can also pronounce it as if there was an oomlat over the "O," but I digress.

[Ashtrot]

That's the most retarded fucking thing I've ever seen.