crackerwax

It would appear that the new Resident Evil 5 trailer (I’d watch that first if i were you) has prompted a few people to pass comment on its content.

Seemingly shooting white zombies is fine, shoot as many of those fuckers as you want! Start shooting black zombies though and you’re a racist. Forget that the whole zombie thing started in Haiti and that 95% of Haitians are of predominately north and western African descent, that means nothing, clearly this must be Capcom’s latest bid to subjugate the black (wo)man, surely?

Before I continue though, have a read of this:

The new Resident Evil video game depicts a white man in what appears to be Africa killing Black people. The Black people are supposed to be zombies and the white man’s job is to destroy them and save humanity. ‘I have a job to do and I’m gonna see it through.’

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.

For a start why is ‘Black’ capitalised? When I refer to myself as white, which quite frankly is rare but then again I am probably the oppressor here, I don’t capitalise it (and neither does the author of that post you’ll notice). Still when we’re dealing with The Man it’s probably best to capitalise.

That’s from a site called Black Looks. However, let’s move away from the aspect of how it’s written and move onto what’s been written. The part I object to the most is this bit:

Start them young… fearing, hating, and destroying Black people.

Why does this have to be about race? I don’t recall anybody being up in arms when Resident Evil 4 was released, where were the world’s Spanish speaking people? Not a peep. And quite frankly rightly so because…

It’s. A. Game.

Oops. Have I said something naughty there? Nah, I don’t think so. Let’s move on and let’s look at the whole idea of:

…the depiction of Black people as inhuman savages…

For fuck’s sake, it’s the depiction of zombies as inhuman savages you’re witnessing here. Zombies who happen to be black. Don’t want to push the point but every single zombie in the Resident Evil series has been depicted as an inhuman savage. All of them, regardless of race, colour or creed they’ve all been nasty buggers intent on robbing you of your life.

In fact aside from that copper in Resident Evil 2 I can’t recall any black (or should that be Black) zombies in the series!

This seems to me to be a clear case of band wagon jumping, deliberately taking offence to something in the hope that it helps you score points. From what I can see Resident Evil 5 follows the formula of every other game in the series, you’ve been sent to a remote location, you’re on your own, people are becoming zombies, you’ve got to do something about it.

Why do people feel the need to automatically assume that there’s a racist agenda behind every single human interaction? Sad. really sad.