This game could only be considered racist if you were killing the 'bad guys' because they were black!
as it is your not you are killing them because they are zombies, who just happen to be black because of the games setting.

anyway I'm more concerned about the crap contols than anything else.....

hmm, personally, i think everyone takes whatever opportunity they can to point out racism in something.  everyone is guilty and i am definately no exception.  sure whites get the most crap for being racist but i can't say with a straight face that all people of every other race are fair and unbiased.  my biggest example is that most people of a certain race are friends almost exclusively with people of their own race. asians hang mostly with asians, blacks with blacks, indian with indian, hispanic with hispanic, middle eastern with middle eastern, and white with white.  of course there are always exceptions and it really depends on where your from but this has been my experience having lived in four states different states around the country.  i am friends with all kinds of peoples and get along with them but i have had times when i was ignored, been rude to or just plain excluded because i have lighter skin.  and i hate hearing any kind of bigotry from anyone as it gets annoying and is incredibly disrespectful. we all know it's true but are constantly talking about how bad this person or that person is when we're just as guilty. besides, it's just a game. i don't really get why people care so much.

 I still feel like some people are missing the point. Let's just look at the imagery. Images in books, movies, and video games are not accidental. They are used for a specific reason. For example, in Star Wars, they intentionally made the Empire visually similar to the German WWI troops and Nazis. Now I'm not saying Star Wars is racist. I'm saying that they used these images on purpose. It wasn't an accident or a coincidence. They did it to make the Empire seem more evil. Hell, German troops in World War I were even called Stormtroopers. This is an artistic choice.

This reason people might be offended by RE5 is for a similar reason.

So why would some people be offended by this? Maybe because it's too close to home. Maybe because it's in bad taste, or simply innappropriate. Maybe it's just too soon.

You can choose to read it however you want. But I don't think we can say that people don't have the right to be offended.

My apologies if the bold text seems condescending, I'm just trying to be clear with my intentions.

That completely misses my point!  You seemed to be saying that the zombies were being incited to kill the protagonists, which makes it JUST LIKE genocide.  Is a lynch mob GENOCIDE?  No.  Your argument is much too general to make a compelling argument that it's a "near identical" situation as the genocide that has been occurring in Africa. 

As for your zombie lynch mob, that's again a much more specific thing, like the gas chambers, than a mob of zombies out for blood/brains.  This is a GENERAL sort of mayhem which is NOT specifically targeting enthicities (only Hutus get turned into zombies? or the zombies only want to kill Tutsis? then I would agree with you). 

And are you saying that they can be racist by accident, but not insightful by accident?  That's just ludicrous. 

It is not a specific event, it is the same as RE4.  And the complaint of the game from people like N-Gai Croal, the only black guy to complain about the game to my knowledge, is that it was racist to americans, not Africans.

So because you and foont can't convince us that it is too offensive because it's racist, now you are taking the angle that it's too similar to real African suffering.  I don't think any African is suffering from a disease that turns them into zombies.

But if Africans are so offended, please show me the game sales there and people complaining in an African country about this game.  Your example comparing to 9/11, where my main point is that RE5 is not depicting any specific event, is only really valid in the US.  If the same scenerio happened first in say, Japan, then in RE5 was going to happen in Russia, then I don't think Russians would be offended.  However, that scenerio is so unlikely because most of the time you'd just bomb a building with a plane instead of use the plane.  And if you did use a plane directly you'd eject yourself.  No one but that one specific group of radicals kills themselves.

So instead of arguing that it's racist, you are giving up that angle and saying it's offensive to Africans. Those scenes show that it was fine in Star Wars (and KZ2) for using villians similar to Hitler and his army. But I guess we were over WW2 then, huh? I really doubt it.

Africans aren't over genocide in their respective countries, but I really don't think they are going to raise as much ruckus over this game as you are.

Nobody complained when CJ (black) was killing white folks in GTA SA....

True, or mobsters killed everyone in The Godfather game, Mafia, or GTA 3.  Mobsters still exist.

It is nice to see that this tread turned into a discussion, and has moved away from the thoughtless dismissals at the beginning.

Really? That's your argument? I really hope there was supposed to be a "not" in there somewhere.

Also, why does it matter who raises a ruckus? Why should only Africans be offended by this? I'm offended by this as a human being.

I'm offended because it could potentially perpetuate subterranean fears and prejudices.

And anyway, this isn't about who's killing whom and in what context. For me this is simply about the imagery. This is offensive in the same way as Cole Train in Gears of War-- it casually reinforces prejudices.