I love how people point out how Slavery ended in 1865 but forget about the legal discrimation i.e. segregation that took place into the 1970s. Not trying to pick on you Rocket Pig, I'm just saying. Hell, interracial marriage was illegal until 1970. I live in Virginia, up until a 2000 we had a Lee/Jackson/King Holiday. Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Martin Luther King shared a Holiday.....

Basically my point.  The shadows of regular legalized racism are cast from much closer then just slavery... and most white people, even the Irish pretty much have to go "out of their way" to find racism.

However for a lot of black people it's just a matter of life and something you grow up with.

That is my main problem with the issue. Legalized racism took place until just before I was born. Too say it just up in disappeared all of a sudden is shear stupidity. I have experience it directly. I still remember when my parents were looking for a house and my mom called about it and it was unavailable. My dad called in his "white guy" voice on the same house and got appointment to come look at it. That was right around the time in my life that I realized equality was just an ideal.

Newsweek games writer N'Gai Croal has hit out at the E3 2007 trailer for the game in an interview with MTV Multiplayer, stating, "Wow, clearly no one black worked on this game."

That statement is more racist than any imagery(that i've seen) in the game.

@bengabenga, you mean Hoodoo, NOT Voodoo, Hoodoo is the practicing of "black" magic, Voodoo is a religion... nothing personal man, most do not understand there is a difference.

I guess i am racist.... i hate zombies and want to kill them all!!! ;)

So Nintendo is being less mysogynistic by creating a game where the main character uses her out of control emotions to beat enemies? Really? I love Super Princess Peach and highly recomend the game to any platformer fan. The game is horribly offensive and stereotypical. I also don't see this recent turn around in female main characters. Sheik was cool in OoT, but that was 2 games back. In the latest game all Zelda did besides get kidnapped was shoot arrows from the back of your horse.

The comparison you made also is not the best one. There is no easy way to set-up a game where you only shoot women. There is no naturally occuring place where only women live without a man around. That game would be worse simply because it had to create a scenario where women were specifically being targetted rather than just happen to be there.

And how has the disparity between men and women been resolved yet? Women are paid less than a man on average for the same job. Violence against women is still plenty present in American, and many other cultures. I could pull up a dozen articles about the crap going on in India alone.

In the early 1900s over 14,000 Irish were killed digging canals in New Orleans. They were the main work force and took it because that was the only line of work they could get. I have been denied multiple jobs because I was white. I lost out on dozens of scholarships because I was the wrong color. The real shame of it all is if I complain people just role their eyes at me. I could easily be an exception, but everyone should agree when I say even one case is too much.

Okay, the racism accusations are wrong because they are ethnocentric claims. As in they are judging the game based on American racial issues, when the game should be judged on Japanese racial issues, or Asian racial issues at most.

So the claims are narrow-minded, by assuming our cultural and historical issues must apply to this game, made be a country with different issues and history.

You make an excellent point but when the game is sold is America and/or Africa your point becomes moot. It sort of like the White PSP ads in Europe. Sony of America didn't use those ads in North America for a reason, they knew they wouldn't be received well. Since Europe didn't have the same issues as the US in particular not many people from Europe seemed to take issue with them. Once the ads reached the US via the internet, that was not the case.

I'm not naive enough to think that racism is gone... The fact is, there will always be racism. Racism preys on the weak and ignorant. It's used as a deflection to cope with one's own failings as a human being by placing blame and hatred on another group of people who are different in some way.

And it works both ways... It's just more noticable in whites because in some cases, we're allowed to get away with it publicly with little or no repercussion and frankly, because whites hold a majority in both population and power held in America.

Anyway, I'm really not in the mood to tackle the subject of race. My earlier comment was simply a snide remark commenting on how some people want me to feel bad about slavery... Problem is that neither myself nor my ancestors had anything to do with it. My father's family was in Canada at the time and my mother's family was in a Union state. People bring up slavery to me and I laugh them off, as if I had something to do with it.

Sorry, but the Bitching & Moaning Statute of Limitations has passed on a lot of this shit. Let's worry about crime rates, poor/underdeveloped neighborhoods, education, etc... You know, shit that matters. Fix some of that stuff and "racism" will be minimized.

Forgot about that. On those grounds, one might have issue with the game, but it's still too soon, since those comments are based on a trailer, not the completed game, while those ads certainly were finished.

Also it still doesn't excuse someone close to the game industry making such comments. The blogger was one thing, but N'Gai should know better. He should remember that even though black people didn't work on the game, neither did white people.

Furthermore, the comments about the ads actually struck me as geniune concern. The comments about the game just strike me as attention whoring. 

Did no one else notice that this was about an E3 2007 trailer? This issue is as much of a zombie as the black guys Whitey McWhitington is filling full of lead.

That said, this appears to be a thoughtful clarification of Mr. Croal's viewpoint. http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=8699575&publicUserId=4551247