Resident Evil 5 Accused of Racism...

[Desroko]

ckmlb said:

Desroko said:
Well, saying "They're Japanese, not white" doesn't cut it. Japanese media has for eyars featured egregious racism towards blacks. Which, to be fair, is to large degree because for decades the only portrayals of blacks the Japanese saw was from egregiously racist American media.

That said, I don't think there was any racist intent. I just don't see how Capcom could not have foreseen the problems that would arise with a game featuring a heavily-armed white man mowing down crowds of Africans. I love the RE series, but you can't write this off. It's not avowedly racist, but it is incredibly insensitive.

The reason why it matters is because the blog suggests this is the usual white racism agains blacks by implying they are savage or after whites or evil or something. None of this holds any water when the people who made the game are not white and thus are not engaging in some kind of race war mentality.

I will bet you anything that the people who run this blog have no idea where this game even comes from.

That's debatable - you don't need to be white to be racist towards blacks, and the fact that the main character is white and not Japanese does not automatically disprove racist intent.

But then, I said all along that I don't believe that it's intended to be racist. "Intended" is the key word. Given the very long and sad history of European/American exploitation and domination of blacks, this is simply insensitive.