Moving Gaming Forward: Having Meaningful Conversations About Social Issues
by Racialicious special correspondent Latoya Peterson, originally published at Cerise Magazine
Watching some of the carnage unfold in the blogosphere conflicts surrounding the released trailer of Resident Evil 5, one thought kept echoing in my mind:
This conversation is going nowhere.
A few members of the gaming community, while pondering a very valid point about the issue of racism in gaming, inadvertently raised the hackles of developers and designers alike when taking on one of gaming’s best loved franchises.
Jason over at Microscopiq ended up with 365 comments on his dissection of the released RE5 trailer, where he asserts:
After all, in RE4, you spend the game shooting equally out-of-their-mind Spaniards. But, then, the Spanish haven’t been so egregiously misrepresented as blacks through the ages, have they? Not even close.
From Birth of a Nation to Black Hawk Down, black folk are apparently responsible for some of the most mindless and evil activities you got. Rape, murder, satanic voodoo. With bulging eyes, simian super strength, and a room temperature IQ, we’ve been portrayed as savages beyond redemption. So, when we see images like these, it doesn’t just resonate with the long lived zombie genre, it also triggers memories of so many awful stereotypes — and what those stereotypes have been used to justify past and present. Put down the crazed negroes before they take the white women! And so on…
But perhaps the most troubling part is that these scenes seem to be set in Africa; the “dark continent.” With all the positive steps being taken of late to raise awareness of the good things happening in Africa as well as the urgent need in some parts of the continent, we really can’t afford this kind of step back. We need to find ways to humanize Africans, not dehumanize them.
Valid points, but they still raised the ire of some gamers, who wrote things like:
Resident Evil 1 – white people are zombies
Resident Evil 2 – white people are zombies
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis – white people are zombies
Resident Evil Code: Veronica – white people are zombies
Resident Evil Survivor – white people are zombies
Resident Evil Gaiden – white people are zombies
Resident Evil: Survivor 2 Code: Veronica – white people are zombies
Resident Evil Zero – white people are zombies
Resident Evil: Dead Aim – white people are zombies
Resident Evil Outbreak – white people are zombies
Resident Evil Outbreak File #2 – white people are zombies
Resident Evil 4 – white people are zombies
Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles – white people are zombies
Resident Evil 5 – ZOMG AFRICANS?! RACISM
Please, I’m sure the majority of ALL people won’t give a flying crap
- Slython
Or perhaps the argument put forth by Ivrese, also on the Microscopiq blog:
I’m sorry, but where exactly are you going with this?
Are you saying that it’s alright for white people and spanish people (which can potentially be classified as latin people, since they were historically conquered by moors and have darker skin than white europeans) and suchlike to be given the flesh-eating zombie/mutant treatment, but because blacks have historically been victimised due to the colour of their skin, it is now not okay to give black people the same kind of position, and thus they deserve to be elevated higher than said whites and spaniards?
I’m sorry, but not only does this classify you as racist towards whites and latins (and possibly towards the Japanese as they make the game and not white people), but this type of politically correct BS is what has caused the world to become far more unstable and dangerous than what the naive pc-minded numpties originally set it out to be. For pity’s sake, you’re doing far more harm than good with these kind of comments, and I hope that the potential backlash that you’re about to receive here makes you realise that you’ve taken things too far to the extreme and have completely destroyed any kind of equality you were originally hoping to obtain.
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