Racism has NOTHING to do with who is in the majority. If they minority hates the majority simply because of their race, that is STILL racism, its just accepted in society for some reason...

Kyros: I didn't realize that atrocities were temporally weighted. I could easily say "Black peoplpe haven't been slaves or had reduced rights in the past 30 years, so lets forget everything before that"

This is ridiculous. The truth is my best friend, who is white, called this controversy when RE5 was first shown. I hadn't even though of it until that point. If the game takes place in country with a near 100% black population, the zombies/ganados/enemies are going to be black. Now if Chris Redfield put on a Confederate Flag Jacket and a White Hood, I'd see his point.

Thanks for finding that.  If it's Africa, then that's more acceptable, depending on where exactly.  I'd think a lot of Africans would be thrilled to have a major franchise game be using Africa as a setting, but there will be a vocal minority that'll complain.

I expected better grom n'gai. If you listen to him on 1up yours and the bonus round he is extremely smart regaurding videogames. I was hoping that when this game comes out and casuses it inevitable shit storm of controversey that he, being a black video game insider would defend RE5, guess i was wrong.

While I can understand why he would make this statement...that people could get offended, I am confused by some of his logic.

If I did not notice the blatant racism in the RE5 trailer...I'm clearly missing it and there's something wrong with me?

How about: I don't care about race, and shooting up a bunch of dark-skinned zombies in a location where almost everyone has dark skin does not bother me at all...other than the fact that it might be scary and a little disturbing...simply because they were indeed once human and are now diseased zombies...but the race doesn't matter to me.

I hate it when people bring up racism when leaving it alone would probably be better. Even if you could derive racist themes from a game, it doesn't have to be that way...you're only continuing the problem if you constantly bring it up.

Sorry about getting to this topic late, but I had a nice response all thought up and was ready to type it out but then someone at work said pretty much exactly what I wanted to say but 10 times better so here we go...

Eeh … I kinda disagree.

I don’t think he makes a strong argument. He talks a lot about the ‘imagery’ that is presented, but he doesn’t give any real examples other than they’re black. What I mean is this. If you engage in any literary criticism, invoking imagery means a very specific thing: presenting an idea or concept that provokes a very specific reference to something or feeling. For instance a snake in the grass or something that echoes an overriding theme such as ocean waves representing feelings of being washed away. It seems to me that you can sum up his argument with “black people have history, and seeing black people invokes imagery of that history,” but doesn’t really give any concrete examples other than. He sets up his argument with “There was a lot of imagery in that trailer that dovetailed with classic racist imagery”, but only backed up that argument with the ‘feeling’ that when entering the town before they appear zombified, “they’re all dangerous; they all need to be killed … men, women and children. They all have to be killed,” but I really think that falls short as an imagery / history argument. Now if there are burning crosses in the level, etc … then absolutely I’d agree that’s a real poor decision. But it seems like he’s basically reinforcing what he denies in the article, which is that you simply can’t have a white guy shoot only black people in a video game.

I think all his points and concerns about needing to be aware of the implications of this are valid. I would back that 100%, but not on the basis of some backwards argument about history and imagery. I want him to be honest and just say … a white guy shooting up a village of black folks is bad, because we’re a really sensitive society about that, instead of trying to justify the argument with anything else. It seems like it’s reaching for justification outside of that, and I don’t think it holds up.

To add a bit of sarcasm to it …It’s ok, see … Chris Redfield is muslim … they’ve been slaughtering black people for centuries and no one seems to have a problem with it.

And to be honest, I’m a bit offended at the very first statement “Wow, clearly no one black worked on this game.” As if white people don’t care about black people and are incapable of perceiving or feeling anything regarding racial sensitivity.

It appears Capcom has a sinister agenda.

I'm eagerly anticipating this game. It will compliment CoD3 where I got to kill lots of Germans, Halo 3 where I got to kill lots of aliens, RE4 where I got to kill lots of Spaniards, and Uncharted where I got to kill lots of hispanics.

Really, black people have been left out for too long. I need to commit genocide on them in a virtual environment to close the circle.

...

Sigh... This shouldn't even be a topic of discussion. It's a fucking video game based in Haiti. Of course black people are going to die by the boatload. Maybe throw in a few fat white tourists to properly complete the image. And they're poor? OMG! Oh noes! Shit, last time I checked, Haiti wasn't exactly the French fucking Riviera.

Just because it's on topic

++ rocketpig