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"Pokémon - Racist?"

I've been thinking about this for a while now and I've realised one thing about the Pokémon games. There is no ethnic diversity in the games.

Surely there should be more then white people in the Pokémon world. So far, I've explored three of those worlds, Hoenn, Johto and Kanto and not a single dark skinned face amoungst the lot.

They keep using the phrase, "We all live in a Pokémon World!" Surely the world of Pokémon would have more mixed races.

I can understand that it might be difficult to put a dark skinned player on the GBA game, but I also think it's sending the wrong message. A world with Pokémon is peaceful. And this peaceful world has no ethnic diversity.

See what I mean?

What do you think?

Pokémon is undoubtedly set in Japan.

Yes, it is meant to be set in a far away place however the culture is so Japanese - mainly because it is made by the Japanese.

If you were to have lived in some areas of Devon all your life, you probably wouldn't consider including any black people in any games you make. Why? Because they are so far and few between. (This is taken from personal experience of living in Devon half my life)

If you lived in Birmingham, London, Cardiff, etc, chances are you would include more black characters as you see them as normality.

I personally don't think it matters - it shouldn't be about skin colour - it should be about the person.

Me think you're looking into this far too much.

right, that’s it!

I think you’re been a bit trivial now, and if you want to be trivial, I'll be trivial...

I opened my box of Rice Crispies today, all of those little rice balls were white... Does this mean Kellogg’s are racist?

What about when I went into town yesterday - I didn’t see one dark coloured person... Is my town racist?

End of the day, it’s a game. Period.

illphukiir wrote:
> There is a beach there though! :D

So you're complaining about racism and you coem out with this? Okay...

This is how the Game Freak team imagined the world of Pokemon. It's not that they're singling out any particular race of people, they just had a picture in their minds of how things were going to look and stuck with it. I doubt they even thought anything about the lack of ethnic groups in their game, it's just not something they were focusing on.

They're not being racist at all.

Ashman wrote:
> Its just like this Maths books now that have to be created to have
> names such as "Sanjeet" and etc in it just to fit in with
> asian people. I mean, who honestly gives jack all?

Asian people?

Strafio wrote:
> Just because it doesn't think of black people, it doesn't mean they
> discriminated against them.
>
> They didn't think "agh! We can't have stupid black people in our
> game!", they just made the characters as they imagined them.
>
> Putting black people in just for the sake of political correctness
> would've been racist.

Its just like this Maths books now that have to be created to have names such as "Sanjeet" and etc in it just to fit in with asian people. I mean, who honestly gives jack all?

illphukiir wrote:
> tphi wrote:
> It's a fantasy world, not our world. There's no groups of people
> living in hot areas in Pokémon games, so they wouldn't have
> tanned skin anyway.
>
>
> There is a beach there though! :D

Yeh, because all the black people in the world live by the coast!

tphi wrote:
> It's a fantasy world, not our world. There's no groups of people
> living in hot areas in Pokémon games, so they wouldn't have
> tanned skin anyway.


There is a beach there though! :D

It's a fantasy world, not our world. There's no groups of people living in hot areas in Pokémon games, so they wouldn't have tanned skin anyway.

Just because it doesn't think of black people, it doesn't mean they discriminated against them.

They didn't think "agh! We can't have stupid black people in our game!", they just made the characters as they imagined them.

Putting black people in just for the sake of political correctness would've been racist.