For that same reason, I often bristled when, during the presidential campaign, people would complain that Barack Obama called himself “black,” when actually he was “half white.” My feeling has always been that how people identify themselves is entirely up to them. Although his mother is white, I often ask, “If you never heard of Obama and saw him on a street corner, would you describe him as “white?”" We do notice skin color. I think there’s nothing wrong with noticing skin color, or racial features– but we have to get to a point where such physical features no longer cause us to make assumptions or generalizations.

I would always hope that as more families form between different races that eventually distinctions will be too difficult to make and therefore be irrelevant. But an interesting situation is in Brazil, where my brother lived for a few years. It’s very interesting situation there, in that, Brazil has a similar history of enslavement of people from Africa (they actually abolished slavery after the U.S.). But there was never the same stigma among the Portuguese/Brazilians about intermarriage, and Brazilians have a vast range of skin colors. However, many people there still identify themselves and others as “black.” From my brother’s perspective, it was hard for him to understand who someone would be talking about when a Brazilian would point and say, “The black guy over there.” His white American viewpoint had a hard time distinguishing such fine details– he thought all the people the guy was pointing to were “black”!

So I think that people will always see physical features (hair color, skin color, hair texture)– but my hope would be that we get to a point where we are just describing physical features and not make assumptions about people because of certain features.

I have no doubt that the designers and players of this game had no intention to be racist. It brings up a good point though, that often is involved in disputes such as these: Whether or not an ethnic group “should” be offended by an action that was “not intended” to be offensive.

Whenever any of us is offended by something, it’s usually hard to fully articulate why we’re offended. It’s also easy to be offended even when we know “rationally” we shouldn’t be. But barely a generation away from common lynchings, murders, and other crimes against a people categorized by their skin color (in this country) I can imagine it would be easy to be offended purely by the visuals.

Maybe the problem is the fact that it was designed in our country, with its history of whites having power over blacks. If it were a product of say, Senegal, then it would completely change the perception people have of it.

Bruce Lee was supposed to star in Kung Fu but was too Asian (so they made a white guy look more Asian, go figure)… and also note that there are many other instances of remakes taking place. The Departed, The Lakehouse, My Sassy Girl, The Ring, and countless other films are simply remakes of often better Asian films because they aren’t deemed marketable enough in their original state…

I hope it does change, but then again Hollywood doesn’t necessarily make the best films, so maybe it’s better that these actors/actresses are using their talents elsewhere. Great post.

I can see how a passerby might see some clips of the game and say this is racist (I mean you are killing infected Africans, stealing their stuff, selling it back to buy weapons to kill more of them), but you need to play the game within the context of the series to see that it isn’t at all. All the games involved looting areas for treasure/ammo/weapons in order to survive. All the games involve massive amounts of killing (you can’t just let the infected survive!)

I think one of the problems is that these aren’t just zombies anymore, they are infected not-zombies as one person coined them. Powerful, fast creatures more akin to what we saw in 28 Days Later. They don’t look as dessicated as zombies, so unless you see them transform into the horrible creatures that they are, you could mistake them for crazed humans. That’s another reason why it’s important to not judge footage out of context.

RE5 is just another stop on the world map for those trying to turn humanity into bizarre creatures… Who knows where the next version will take us? It’s important to note that plenty of white infected have been killed over the years. I wonder what would happen if the main hero was black and all the enemies killed were white? Would we have the same national attention? I’m honestly not sure.

I don’t want to go too in-depth here, but claims such as this are usually unsubstantiated. Play through the entire game and then make a judgment (while also factoring in other entries in the series). This happens all the time with violence, sex, and race in videogames. The folks making the claims just do not have the historical or expert knowledge to be making comments, though they do.

Great post. I have no problem with people raising the idea, but they need to have facts to back it up. I say no, it’s not racist, but is easy to misinterpret.

I agree with Knappy about Asians in Hollywood films. I would extend this to television too. There really aren’t that many Asians in television dramas and I can think of only a few off the top of my head, and certainly none in lead roles. From my observation, advertisements fare better in terms of ethnic representation. Anyone feel the same? I have seen Asian actors in a number of ads (and not just as doctors or karate experts!!!)