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BAN HOT CROSS BUNS!
WOMEN'S RIGHTS!
etc, etc
I'm surprised that terrorists, monsters, mutants, demons of hell haven't complained about the likes of duke nukem, doom and the such.
Disgraceful. we should bow our heads in shame. Whilst everyones doing that, lets hunt some demons, terrorists, mutants, undead and other evils.
*Picks up shotgun*
I think there is a point where it's the race that thinks they are being discriminated against that keep the racism alive, seeing it where it's not. Obviously i don't mean the whole race i just mean the few people that overact to things like this.
I have played many many FPS games and normally there is a fair balance of races represented, not to be safe against racism but because they are based on the current society where all races do mix.
I haven't heard anything about people complaining about Red Steel, and that is almost completely killing Asian men and women.
This just seems to be a case of someone taking something to seriously.
This whole issue is a mountain out of a molehill: Kym Platt, whose blog entry the C&VG story refers to, originally read an article on Village Voice by Bonnie Ruberg. Bonnie Ruberg seems to have got the idea for her article from at least 3 gaming forums where every single thread is discussing whether or not it's a good idea these days to bring out a game with a white protagonist beating up on black zombies.
Bonnie took it a step further and toyed around with the idea that the whole game could be not just about racism and white oppression but a parable about the AIDS epidemic and how it killed so many Africans.
The racism thread on the Capcom blogs has run to 33 pages of similar drivel and in all cases posters of ALL races are pointing out that it's a videogame set in an environment where the zombies are predominantly black for a good reason which has nothing to do with racism.
What baffles me is that in all these discussions, people are talking about black people and linking to Africa, when the game could be set anywhere (Haiti has been mentioned in a few comments). So the whole thing seems to have boiled over from a few forum postings by narrowminded thinkers into a mini-hurricane by even more narrowminded article writers.
Racism is evil for two reasons: the first reason should be obvious from the definition of the word, the second reason is because so many people never bothered to read the definition.
I'm White, my nephew is Jamaican/English, and when you ask him what colour he is he'll tell you he's flesh-coloured same as his Mum, Dad and Uncle. He's well aware of his cultural background and how it differs to everyone else's on the planet but he's been brought up in such a way that he'll never, ever be tempted to use a race card when cornered.
He loved the RE5 trailer by the way, the only thing he was upset about was us telling him there was no way we'd let him get his hands on the game until he was old enough to play it.
The same fuss was never made over Zulu, mind you that film is 33 years old now but they still show it on TV now and again. This whole issue reeks of "Lets take a poke at videogames and get a few hits on the website."
BAN HOT CROSS BUNS!
WOMEN'S RIGHTS!
etc, etc