Is Resident Evil racist?
 

So, there seems to be some debate after the guy who said it wasn't racist turned out to be an expert on things completely unrelated to the subject.

My feelings on RE5 are that it is just as racist as the first game, and if racial superiority had anything to do with the first game, why wouldn't you be playing Yosuke Matsuou putting down the whiteys instead of Chris Redfield putting down the whiteys or some such? I've just always viewed the Resident Evil series as being Generic Protagonist vs Generic Zombies created by Generic Virus. Resident Evil 5 is just Generic Protagonist & Generic Sidekick vs Generic Zombies created by Zombie Parasite and the Generic Zombies are black because they're in Africa.

They did America for a while, so when they changed from survival horror to action shooter they also decided to try a locale that wasn't Generic American City. So, we get Spanish Zombies. Spanish Zombies were fun, but they wanted a new environment. So now we have African Zombies. Maybe I missed some magic details about the game that make it racist, after all I don't exactly look for it when I'm playing a game and I haven't even played RE5 yet. So maybe it has a group of African Zombies being more Generic and Stereotypical than any other character in the franchise.

Besides, I grow weary of the same sea of zombie crackers trying to gobble me up in my zombie games.

To be honest with Resident Evil here, they went from "Anywhere - US" to "Anywhere - Spain" to "Anywhere - Africa", and in all those places there is very little cultural reflection the game. I mean, There is nothing "American" about the first american zombies (aside from a "corporate warfare" undertone) nor there was really anything spanish about the ganados (aside from a "religious" undertone). I haven't played RE5, but i would guess to say that on that front, the game repeats itself.. as in... there isn't anything "Black" or "African" about these zombies.

On that sense, Resident Evil 5 (or the whole series, actually...) is not racist at all.

Although, it always bothered me that Sheeva feels like an last minute character, added JUST to make this controversy die out a bit. But since Capcom didn't really do anything wrong (and thanks to her unlockable costume) it ended up with a feeling of "Mea culpa" and a sexist overtone (which was not really there on any of the other games...)

In the end, let me just say that i'm not expecting an Resident Evil game set on Korea

Obligatory Penny-Arcade comic post.

No, it's not racist. It would be racist if it were set in Africa and there weren't any characters with dark skin.

The Wandering God

I personally think it is just a bunch of crap from people who are trying to be offended. Look, the damn game is set in a poor region of Africa, and guess what! There are Africans!

Geez, the kind of reverse racism that sparked this whole argument a year ago is in my opinion incredibly inflammatory and sometimes I wish there was a mod for the whole internet to call bullshit and go "Hey no, cut that shit out. Two week ban for being a douche bag." in big red letters.

It's not racist. Why doesn't anyone claim racism when a novel or a movie set in Africa has, as part of its content, killing black people?

Well, the answer is, they do. They're just usually ignored, and rightly so, as crackpots. So why is it that the same accusations leveled at a game are suddenly worth paying attention to?

Short answer; no.

Longer answer; fucking hell no!

Just because all of a sudden the game features predominantly black enemies it's ZOMG OMG RACIST!!1!1!? Gimme a break. This is just people playing the race card because they've seen an oppurtunity to do so. Nobody complained about the first 2 dozen resi games being racist against whites (nor with any other games ever) and nobody called foul when the game featured spanish enemies either. But as soon as it's black people in the game suddenly people are up in arms. It's ridiculous. Would it be somewhat less racist if it were set in africa and all the zombie were white? No, that would be absurd.

But it's set in africa for plot reasons and to distinguish itself from the others and do something different, so unfortunately that means featuring black people. So what we can't set games in africa any more? If that's what they want they'll just call racist on that instead, because we're ignoring africa entirely and not giving a chance to show the continent in any way, so it's a lose-lose situation.

Basically you can't not show black people in media, but simoultaneously you can't show black people in a bad light anywhere ever, because that's racist. Yeah, whatever.

That's generally been my feelings on the subject matter, but it is possible we could be suffering from reverse-reverse-racism. Ignoring actual racism because we're so used to people declaring non-racist things racist. I'm not saying it's likely, just possible.

You know the newspost for that comic basically says 'gosh, this game is rather racist', and links to this article laying out some of the actual arguments for why the game is racist.

The article had some good points I thought, but I'd really like that sort of perspective on the game as a whole. Another thing is that of course it has this feeling of everything everywhere trying to kill you, the guy saying that that was part of what made it seem/be racist, when that is kind of the point of games like Resident Evil. Everyone and their dog wants you dead. Additionally, although the zombies are black and it is black people trying to kill you, it was white people who turned them into evil murder monsters.

It seemed like the focus of the article was on the trailer more than the game (which makes sense, since the article was written before the game even came out). So I don't really think it answers the question of whether the game is racist when it only talks about the imagery of a trailer, which, as we all know, is hardly ever a good representation of the content of the game.