As we're getting closer and closer to the release date of RE 5, the mainstream media are getting more aware of the game. So I wasn't really surprised to see this posted on a website called Racialcious:


"One of the first things you see in the game, seconds after taking control of Chris Redfield, is a gang of African men brutally beating something in a sack. Animal or human, it’s never revealed, but these are not infected Majini. There are no red bloodshot eyes. These are ordinary Africans, who stop and stare at you menacingly as you approach. Since the Majini are not undead corpses, and are capable of driving vehicles, handling weapons and even using guns, it makes the line between the infected monsters and African civilians uncomfortably vague. Where Africans are concerned, the game seems to be suggesting, bloodthirsty savagery just comes with the territory.

Later on, there’s a cut-scene of a white blonde woman being dragged off, screaming, by black men. When you attempt to rescue her, she’s been turned and must be killed. If this has any relevance to the story it’s not apparent in the first three chapters, and it plays so blatantly into the old clichés of the dangerous “dark continent” and the primitive lust of its inhabitants that you’d swear the game was written in the 1920s. That Sheva neatly fits the approved Hollywood model of the light-skinned black heroine, and talks more like Lara Croft than her thickly-accented foes, merely compounds the problem rather than easing it. There are even more outrageous and outdated images to be found later in the game, stuff that I was honestly surprised to see in 2009, but Capcom has specifically asked that details of these scenes remain under wraps for now, whether for these reasons we don’t know.

There will be plenty of people who refuse to see anything untoward in this material. “It wasn’t racist when the enemies were Spanish in Resident Evil 4,” goes the argument, but then the Spanish don’t have the baggage of being stereotyped as subhuman animals for the past two hundred years. It’s perfectly possible to use Africa as the setting for a powerful and troubling horror story, but when you’re applying the concept of people being turned into savage monsters onto an actual ethnic group that has long been misrepresented as savage monsters, it’s hard to see how elements of race weren’t going to be a factor.

All it will take is for one mainstream media outlet to show the heroic Chris Redfield stamping on the face of a black woman, splattering her skull, and the controversy over Manhunt 2 will seem quaint by comparison. If we’re going to accept this sort of imagery in games then questions are going be asked, these questions will have merit, and we’re going to need a more convincing answer than “lol it’s just a game.”"

So, I looked up where this quote came from - Dan Whitehead, Eurogamer - and read the whole review of the game. It started off normally, talking about the control scheme, the chapters he played, the gameplay, etc and was surprised that he chose to end his review on this note, which has now been used to further the racist debate.

Edit: Sorry, I didn't realise I was advocating censorship :P. A better question would be: do you agree with his views or not?