I've been sitting on this topic for awhile now, and I have to point out the extreme stupidity of it. The topic in question? Racist comments about Resident Evil 5. According to some lady on her blog, a white male dressed in military clothing, shooting at an all-black crowd of zombies is teaching people to hate the African-American community....uhh...yeah, and the KKK is just a bunch of cosplayers. I seriously doubt Resident Evil 5 is the least of your worries. Let me break this down for you:
First, why complain now? Why just about African-American zombies? Notice how nobody said a word when the zombies looked white, or in Resident Evil 4, when they spoke Spanish and looked Mexican (and also exploited several stereotypes)...but now that the zombies are black, NOW you speak up...if you ask me that's a racist move altogether. Don't focus on the violence or sex or racism (to other races) in any other medium, no let's focus on the black zombies. That, my friends, is hypocrisy...
Second, the game takes place in Africa and is striving for realism with the new next generation hardware. How many white zombies can you really expect in AFRICA!? Not only that, the game is still early in development and the trailer only shows one or two areas of the game. At some point you KNOW there is going to be an area in the laboratory with PLENTY of zombies of other races for you to kill...but then I guess they'll complain that there aren't enough black scientist zombies which portrays blacks as stupid. After they blasted the game for being racist I would almost expect it.
Third, the game is being made by Asians...it isn't like the main character is Asian and they are making a game about Asian supremacy by making you kill zombies of all the other races. Take a chill pill man...
How about we look at this from the other side of the spectrum? The least we can say, that throughout Capcom's Resident Evil series, zombies have appeared in many different shapes, sizes and colors...that promotes zombie equality doesn't it?
granted I did get that racist vibe the first time I saw the video, but I get that vibe when I watch any Resident Evil Trailer. I think The entire argument is silly, and RE5 looks awesome anyway...
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They'll probably just call the uninfected black friend an "Uncle Tom" and write off Wesker as being the true villian as "a last minute attempt to apoligize".
Lames.
i'm getting a feeling that these "omg tahstz racist" sites just do it to get traffic.
The argument I made was simply this; if it's a zombie, then it's no longer human. If that's the case, then color is not the issue. The issue is that you have the raving undead trying to kill you, and if that ever happens to me I'll do whatever I can to make sure I stay alive, not stop and let it happen because they're black and I'm not.
Also, every shot in the trailer shows those villagers attacking FIRST, which I think is key. It's not like he just ran in and starting shooting everyone he saw, the first half the trailer clearly shows him calmly walking by the people in the village, and only after they are all infected and attack him first does he fight back with his gun.
I agree with tazarthayoot; they're zombies! I might raise an eyebrow if they just threw a bunch of black people at you to shoot, but because they are zombies, that changes it.
Of course, it's only racist when it's a white guy against a black guy, right? If it was a black guy shooting a bunch of white zombies, anyone who thought it was bad would get shunned and called a racist Nazi.
I'm glad that Capcom did this; it allows to confront this issue and shoot it down. I think it's just that you don't see many characters of the African race in video games.
We're never going to get over racism and prejudice. But eventually, society should realize that not all racist people are white.