Zombie Racism (A Rant)

N'Gai Croal of Newsweek spoke about the Resident Evil 5 trailer. Frankly I find all of the bullshit concerning racism and this game to be completely unfounded. For those of you that don't know Resident Evil 5 takes place in a fictional town in Africa, and the protagonist, Chris, is a beefy (and I mean HELLA beefy... like as in, hold me in those arms and never let go) white guy and his intentionally racially mixed and unplaceable but kinda-like-Lara-Croft-from-Tomb-Raidery sidekick Sheva.

Obviously, since it's Resident Evil, there are zombies... EVERYWHERE.

Now since they're in Africa, they are black zombies.

Naturally then it is our protagonists duty in a survival horror game to survive... which may involve shooting a few zombies.

Shooting black zombies is racist. Croal isn't the only person to think this, it's been in the News quite a bit, and I still find it ridiculous that we're having this debate. If it's a zombie, I shoot it. Also the plot of these games usually (and correct me if I'm wrong) is never intended to be violent at the start. At least in the demo I played Chris and Sheva had no intent to harm the villagers until they were spotted and chased around by the villagers with an executioners axe and tentacles shooting out of their mouths. Yay the T-Virus!

Sorry, I'll rap up this rant in a few more lines. Anyway this is something Croal had to say on the matter:

"I looked at the “Resident Evil 5 trailer and I was like, 'Wow, clearly no one black worked on this game'... The point isn’t that you can’t have black zombies. There was a lot of imagery in that trailer that dovetailed with classic racist imagery. What was not funny, but sort of interesting, was that there were so many gamers who could not at all see it. Like literally couldn’t see it. So how could you have a conversation with people who don’t understand what you’re talking about and think that you’re sort of seeing race where nothing exists?"

Ok I'm sorry... WHAT!? You're welcome to disagree with me as much as you want on this but that line I highlighted in bold, umm, isn't that what we've been trying to do for decades? Haven't we been trying to get our children to stop seeing race? If gamers are playing Resident Evil 5, and are killing zombies without regards to skin color... hey it might sound fucked up, but isn't that a good thing?

See, Croal, what would be racist if the gamers you interviewed were like "Yeah! Killing black people makes the game a lot easier! I don't feel attached!" Like, that would be seriously fucked up! But what you're hearing is that people aren't seeing race anymore, and while I personally find it hard to believe, if you've found it, don't scold the people the less ignorant of us have been trying to find, or even become.