Resident Evil 5 Not Racist, Not a Political Statement Says Producer

Who the hell thinks its racist? So its ok for people to shoot whites, russians, asians etc in other games? Give me a break. I'm not racist and its just a video game. Only way it would be racist is if Chris starts saying words that are racist..

The thing that bugs me about that trailer is I can't tell where the hordes of angry black men stop and the hordes of angry black zombies start. They both appear to be shambling and biting people. I don't know if that's racist but it's something.

We haven't played the game so we can't make any informed comments about the game. All we can really talk about is the trailer. It isn't the fact that they are killing black people. It is the way the trailer depicts the people in it. Go back and look at the trailers for RE4 and compare those trailers to the two trailers we have for RE5.
There is a difference in the way they are depicted.
By having a trailer that says, "There's no reason here, no humanity" they are asking for mainstream media to jump on the "videogames are ruining our children!" bandwagon.

it was just a question of time, wasnt it?

so resi4 was racist because you had to kill lots of spanish people?

Black people in africa? IMPOSSIBLE.

Oh I so hope humanity gets wiped out by some asteroid strike. Racist or not, who cares!?!?! I'm ashamed to live among these walking assholes who make these claims.

Oversensitive much? Ive just ethnically cleansed a whole village of redneck Eastern Europeans in RE4.
I dont see anyone complaining about that.
Political correctness and positive discrimination once again obfuscate the search for true equality.
I should know, Im a black jewish pre-op lesbian zombie from Bosnia.

Bubette Shaleesa Goldbergski

*sigh* It wasn't accused of racism because of its "African setting and primarily black cast of enemies". Also it wasn't even the game, but the editing of the trailer. As N'Gai said in the article that kicked all this off "It’s not as simple as saying, “Oh, they shot Spanish zombies in ‘Resident Evil 4,’ and now ‘black zombies and that’s why people are getting upset.” The imagery is not the same. It doesn’t carry the same history, it doesn’t carry the same weight. I don’t know how to explain it more clearly than that. " I'm going to copy-paste my reply from the initial N'gai article:

His point is that there was a widespread attitude towards Africa/black people in history, transmitted by cultural means like books, plays etc. that placed Africa and its inhabitants as somewhere dark, dangerous and non-human, and the kindest thing to be said was that they had the potential to be saved by the white man. Ignorance also tends to place people defined as 'other' into one homogenous mass. These ideas (if unintended) are pretty explicit in the trailer.

These were the values and assumptions that allowed slavery and colonialism to exist, as well as many other lesser slights against the continent and its people. There are still remnants of this meme today (some people see it in Black Hawk Down for example). There was not a similar meme against spanish people, they have not historically been dehumanised in quite the same way by our culture (in a way that has traces left today).

It is not about racism in a direct 'black people suck!' way, its about using these culturally-embedded themes to stir up fear in a way that would be uncomfortable for people who know the roots of those themes, and the effect they had on the real-world thinking of people a while ago.

That said, I don't see it as a massive slight against the game - I don't think N'Gai does either judging by his tone- its just something thats a little disconcerting to some people. Unfortunately, because the disconcerting feeling comes from racial aspects, the response has to be 'NO RACISM LALALALALA', because for some reason I can't understand, admitting a racial element to something that isn't overtly, unilaterally negative to a black person is something people want to avoid at all costs, even (well, especially) if that racial element is mixed with others and only slight.

I hate when a game doesn't have white people being killed it's considered racist. - or if the game doesn't have people of the same color being killed then it's racist. People are so stupid and sensitive.

I mean, the game is set in Africa, let there be a "pre-dominantly black" cast, you know, SO IT FUCKING MAKES SENSE!

*not racist

I think Africans are the least mistreated ethnicity of all as far as videogames go. Why, I killed probably ten thousand times more Russians, Germans and Asians than black people.

We're all missing the bigger picture. ZOMBIE GENOCIDE! WHEN WILL IT END?

It would all be ok if there was a black dude killing all white dudes now wouldn't it.

No one should pay attention to the idiots outcrying 'racist'. To even respond to ridiculous shit like that only gives their argument weight.

How very very sad. This is seriously getting to be ridiculous. I have a feeling that most people are almost to the limits of letting this shit slide. I don't know what will happen, but people are going to get pissed; and these people that are constantly screaming "racist" at others will get whats coming to them.

All of these comments are so racist....even this one.

holy shit? black people in africa?!?!?@!@#$

Boggles my mind, honestly. You set a game in a certain part of the world and it's racist.

Well I agree with you so far, but your tone suggests its a counter to what I write, which I'm not really getting?

This has happened to other people, yes. And the mechanism of dehumanising people isn't dependent on colour (its just one of the elements used). I disagree with the 'if thats the worst happening' argument because no-one claimed this is the worst thing happening to someone because of racism, or that it was even that bad. This is part of the racial themes bit in my original post - the idea of no gradiation when it comes to discomfort at racial themes - either you're in the KKK or some black person is making shit up, no room for subtext or interpretation, which is where most of these themes lie.

Won't somebody think of the children!!?!????


Oh, sorry, wrong discussion.


Won't somebody think of the zombie Africans!?!?!??????

I actually think it's kinda immersion breaking the way they added all the white dudes to the rural african village in the new trailer. I wish people would just chillax.

There should be a 50 Cent zombie that takes 10 shots to kill.

What's next? Killing blondes in Sweden?

I dont see a reason not to trust them, its pretty straight forward.

At least we see a pattern. the sidekick is someone familiar with the environment (no shit) like Luis in #4.

Why's it always gotta be black with you?

Africans in Africa? That's racist!