by A.man.I

The new installation of Resident Evil (5) is in the middle of a heated debate.  Is the game racist?  One of my news friends wanted to know what I thought about it.  Here’s the premise, think “Night of the Living Dead,” meets Africa.  That’s right, crazed bugged out black folks, out to kill the main character who happens to be white.  The mission is to destroy as many Black Zombies as possible. 

The GameSpot blog examines some of the concerns expressed in blogosphere. The VillageVoice writes: 

“You play as a white Chris Redfield, the same all-American boy who has been taking down old-school leg-draggers for years. And the zombies? You guessed it: the local villagers. Which means that the hordes of undead you’ll be pumping round after round of ammo into—they’re all black… The point is that—for this white girl, at least—the Resident Evil 5 trailer is strangely disturbing.”

Microscopiq shares the following thoughts:

“…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..”

BlackLooks adds the following thoughts to the conversation:

This is problematic on so many levels, including the depiction of Black people as inhuman savages, the killing of Black people by a white man in military clothing, and the fact that this video game is marketed to children and young adults. Start them young… fearing, hating, and destroying Black people.

Perhaps the game developers figured it was time to provide some zombie equal opportunity. After 4 games of shooting white zombies, it’s time to give the colored zombies some face time.

First of all, I think shooting games send the wrong message in general. Our culture is saturated by violence from the action movies, to TV programming, and video games. Then again, it’s just a game right? Have you ever heard of a gamer going on a frenzied shooting rampage? I haven’t, but think about the kids who may play this game. Would you want them to be entertained by shooting black people?

Chew on this – Would it be less offensive if the shooter was black? Then it would be promoting black on black violence. That’s not cool either. It would be interesting to get some thoughts from the beta testers to see how they felt about shooting the zombies. I’m still weighing the issues, but don’t think I like the premise of the game very much. What about you?