Only White People Can Be Zombies
by Torrence Davis
This whole Resident Evil 5 racism card thing has gotten way out of hand. With black folks, sometimes your damned if you do and your damned if don’t. The reaction to the Resident Evil 5 trailer is not surprising, but it’s reached levels of epic nonsense.
I’ve been playing games for years. In fact, I’ve been playing video games so long, I remember walking into arcades and seeing nothing but pinball machines. I remember paying a quarter to play Pong and thinking it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. Throughout my 30+ years of gaming, I’ve seen all kinds of things, but one remains prevalent to me, the lack of black representation in video games. What’s even worse is that Japanese developers would rather use Caucasian males and females as the lead characters in their games instead of Asians. The only character in the Final Fantasy roster that actually looks Asian is Tifa Lockhart and even that’s stretching it.
Sports games? Oh yeah, blacks are all over those. Sports games have real athletes in them. You can’t screw that up. What about the huge adventure games? The only black hero I can think of in the FF universe is Barret Wallace; a third string supporting character with a gatling gun for a right hand? Where are the blacks with magical powers? I remember playing that travesty of an MMO, Final Fantasy XI Online. They had Caucasian humans, Caucasian elves, furries, gerbals and grizzly looking characters all represented. There were no blacks. I spoke up about this on the FFXI forums and at least 3 people told me to go back to Africa because this isn’t the real world and there doesn’t need to be any blacks in Final Fantasy.
Along comes GTA3 San Andreas. This game is full of blacks doing what Hollywood always has us doing; killing each other, drinking alcohol and calling each other Niggers. But wait, isn’t that what happened in the critically acclaimed Boyz In The Hood? If you’ve ever spent some time in a black neighborhood, I’m sure you’d hear the word Nigger enough times to make you think it wasn’t a racial slur. Considering GTA SA was pretty much a parody of Boyz In The Hood and Colors, I had no complaints. There were however, other prominent blacks blasting the game because of how we were represented. No one blasted Boyz In The Hood though. Hmmmm…
Anytime we have blacks doing anything other than being gangsters, it’s hardly recognized. I’d go as far to say that most white folks who purchase games, movie tickets and music, prefer to see us the way Hollywood shows us and frankly, the way some of us really act.
Next up, the first trailer for Resident Evil 5. My first reaction was one of joy. All I could think of was the fact that the game taking place in Africa must mean that there’s a large supporting cast of black characters. I applauded Capcom for it. I hate Resident Evil games but honestly, this new next gen version of the series looks promising to me. There was a moment that I thought that there might be some issues with a white man gunning down a large group of black zombies. People are stupid and love dropping the race card on anything with images like what we saw in the RE5 trailer. That’s all compounded with some beautiful imagery and tons of black zombies all on the screen at once. Well I ask you naysayers this one question; if you have 30 black zombies coming at you to feast on your flesh and you’re packing a 9mm pistol, do you shoot or try to reason? I’ll take it even deeper. How many white people complained about the 100’s of white zombies that were slaughtered in all the previous RE games? What about Dead Rising? Any complaints? Nope.
So now it’s racist to portray blacks as zombies in video games. After all these years of us trying to be treated as equals, we are going 3 steps back and playing the racist card because Capcom wants to have it’s next zombie game in Africa. I just don’t get it. The way I look at it, whites, blacks, asians, indians and latinos can all be zombies. If they all end up in a game I’m playing, you can bet I’m gonna mow them all down. Isn’t that the point of video games in the first place? Aren’t we playing to entertain ourselves and escape reality? I think the black folks that are taking part in the Capcom racist card must truly believe that only white people can be zombies. My take on the whole issue? I want to see more blacks in the media. I want to see black superheroes, black villains, black lawyers, black vampires, black mages and warlocks, black warriors, blacks that want to take over the world, blacks that are represented as intelligent characters and last but very not least, black zombies.
Stumble it!
View all posts by Torrence Davis
18 Responses to “Only White People Can Be Zombies”
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I have to agree with this guy. Videogames are dangerously taking the same path as movies. Lead characters are nothing but pure whites (and males). The last cool non-white character I saw was in FFXII, Reddas, and he wasnt even that important to the plot. It would be cool to see latino, blacks, asian or mestizo characters, but the problem is if we checkout any game project team, there arent much cultural diversity. Some black guy over here, a guy whose grampa was from MExico over there, but thats it.
I think that if we latino and black folks want to be represented outside sytereotypes on games theres only one way: we will have to start producing our own games.
I agree, but damn, I think the world’s Society is messed up. But any media stream likes to get controversy around their product. and in my opinion I think this is one. My friends joke around and ask why the black superheroes don’t have any powers except storm-shes a woman, which is good, but the majority of black superheroes have guns or had something terrible happen to them. ie..Spawn and Blade. Until I seen the trailer for Hancock but wait in the trailer Will Smith is playing a bum. like he said its bad enough we are always portrayed as gangsters. low-lifes, niggers in movies. I agree, a developer needs to step up and make a black lead for videogames come to think of it their are none. I played Final Fantasy XI also and was kind of confused as to why you couldn’t pick another “race” lol. I didnt think nothing of the Resident Evil thing though. its just looks like another way to get things stirred up in videogame world. Let me ask you do you think caucasions would get mad if Capcom had Antwain Jackson going to Europe to stop the infectious t-virus disease and killed white zombies. Yes someone would. The difference is…..no one would of heard anything or seen anything about the game……….There I said it.
If anything, Africans as zombies is scary as crap, dude . . . that’s a good reason to go there. If it were black people in Harlem, I think it would be a whole different story, but we are talking some scary tribal stuff, man.
I’ve had this article in my mind since they did that Blacks In Gaming ordeal and N’Gai talked about the irresponsibility of Capcom. That tipped the scales for me. N’Gai is a smart guy too. So I had to write this and purposely put my picture in the article so people KNOW that I’m black. Can’t wait to see the final RE5.
For the record Yufi is and looks more Asian than Tifa, and Barrett is a bonefied badass, he never left my party in FFVII. Your points are spot on though, and when Multiplayer brought all this garbage up again with N’Gai’’s comments I went batshit on multiplayer because it’s the most ridiculous thing in the world when there are so many other examples that could be brought up. I hate stereotypical roles for characters, it drives me nuts, but it doesn’t matter what color a zombie is they need to die.
Lest we forget that Japan is full of xenophobics, we may never see a black hero in their games.
What about Afro Thunder?
Let us not forget what “demographic” means and how it plays here. No matter how often you say that African Americans are coming up, as a whole they still represent a small piece of the gaming pie. The same as many minorities. Lead characters don’t get represented by their ethnicity but, rather by their toughness. When people play games, they want to be the hero because he is tough and nobody will mess with him/her. Games are generally developed with demographics in mind and heroes are created for their representation of the person playing them. I do agree with everything you said but, I just say let us not forget who is mostly playing these games.
True, but where are the majority of these games coming from? Japan. What majority of companies are we buying these games from? Japanese.
My biggest issue is this; There is almost a non-existant selection of main characters that are black in games created by Japanese developers.
I WONDER THE FUCK WHY?
I dunno,Shadow Man on the N64 and (gulp) PS2 was pretty sweet.Not to mention the countless times capcom and SNK had black characters in their fighting games,come to think of it double dragon but wait they were always villians then again there was the combatribes….either way you are totaly right people today are WAY too sensitive!
whoever is pissed off about black people being zombies, and are just now speaking up about it… obviously hasn’t seen the original Dawn of the Dead.
Appealing to “demographics” is a copout. That’s why video games remain the domain of white middle-class males - because of pandering. “Well, we have to fill our games with hot girls with big titties, because that’s how the demographics work. Our games are played by young men, so we have to cater to their desires! Sorry, ladies.”
I refuse to believe that bullshit. Plenty of worthwhile games have been made that don’t feature that sort of stupid demographic pandering, and there’s no reason why game makers should continue to pander. I want to expand the base of people who play video games, and I want better, more creative, less brainless and exploitative video games that actually say and teach intelligent things to the players.
The same applies to RE5 - one of the above comments about some “scary tribal shit” indicates precisely how racist the game’s premise is. A lone white protagonist fighting off hordes of diseased third-worlders is racist, pure and simple, up and down. You want more representation of black people in media? Sure, so do I. But in fact, black people have been represented in all sorts of media for decades. But rarely is that representation positive. So, yes, more black people in games, but let’s actually have them be portrayed as real human beings worth caring about, not as flunkies we can eliminate on our way to 100% completion. See Half-Life 2 : Ep 2 for a great example of positive portrayal.
Incidentally, you obviously didn’t get anything out of your viewing of Boyz N the Hood. The reason it was critically acclaimed was because it had intelligent things to say about WHY the situation of black young men is the way it is. Not because it had black guys calling each other “nigger”. Any of a hundred other movies would do for that.
“A lone white protagonist fighting off hordes of diseased third-worlders is racist, pure and simple, up and down.”
No it’s not racist. It’s a guy protecting himself from a mob of zombies. The fact that the protagonists is white and the zombies are black shouldn’t matter. If it was a black guy and a mob of white zombies would you still say it was racist? Are you saying that we can never have a story where a large group of Africans turn into zombies and attack some white guy?
Your logic has some faults.
Wow nicely worded my friend. I’m glad to see that there are people in this world that don’t see everything as color lines.
I myself am of mixed racial background (White & Puerto Rican) but it doesn’t bother me one bit that 99% of games don’t include a character that is of Latino decent. I see games as just that…GAMES…ENTERTAINMENT. Unless it is spewing out hate speech and willingly targeting specific races or groups of people then I’ll make a stink about and not buy or play it.
As for the people who see RE5 as “racist”? Sorry but those people are the true racists.
People who see everything on a color line level are the same people who complain about racism…think about that one.
I liked this article because its true anyone can be zombie if you want equality doesn’t matter what race or sex you have to accept all that comes with it the bad and the good. Playing the race card on every damn thing is a idiotic move. There are some games that have a black Asian or any no white main character if you ever played mercenaries ones even sweedish. Sure there aren’t as many yet but there making more games have a main character that not white or optional on race.
The point is people need to bitch less and accept things because they say there portraying the blacks as savages but like I have said before what do you wants well behaved gents? Realism is adding any race and sex and just because i have to i don’t think you can have anything but pale white vampires because there dead and loose skin color (man i’m a nerd).
I would agree that there tends to be a lack of representation of non-white culture in video games. Just trying to think of instances where you have black main characters, Im having a little trouble. I do know that in the MMO Guild Wars you have a wide spectrum of colors to make your playable character, including a couple shades of black. additionally, the third campaign of the series takes place in a fantasy-version of ancient africa, much in the same way that the first is a fantasy version of old europe and the second likewise treats asia/japan.
I think the lack of representation of culture in main playable characters in most games can be traced back to the problem that a lot of video games have with a simple lack of actual character. Meaning, the playable character is usually a hallow shell with no personality, and is a mere manifestation of the player in the game universe. If more time was taken to create characters with actual character, it would be easier to have, say, a black male who grew up in the projects, and has a “Im going to make it in life and get out of here while I still can” kind of attitude, which would be a refreshing video game.
Don’t like it?
Go back to school, learn to make your own game, and do it the way you would want it. If its good people will play it. Not much will get done if all you do is bitch n’ moan for the game developers to include your flavor of main character.
It’s not simply an issue of what color the zombies are, you have to take the context into consideration. Killing black folks mixed among white folks isn’t a big deal because, in that case, race really doesn’t matter. It’s ignorant, however, to assert that we should ignore race when there’s an extreme homogeneity in a game’s targets that conflicts with the race of the player character. We ARE NOT in a post-race society as some of you would like to think. As long as Blacks continue to occupy a disadvantaged place in society and in the world, race ABSOLUTELY DOES matter.
The fact that you say otherwise as African Americans yourselves does not grant you any more ethos on the subject than I, as a Caucasian, am entitled to. In this discussion, race doesn’t really matter. We exist here as equal entities in an equal discourse. However, I’d have to say we OUGHT to take it into account if a PRIVILEGED WHITE MALE from a FIRST WORLD COUNTRY went to a historically ravaged THIRD WORLD CONTINENT to kill–with diplomatic immunity–Black individuals who have little material wealth and a disease that is a painfully easy parallel to AIDS.
Is it a simplified reaction to simply shout, “racist”? Of course. It’s as much a class and privilege issue as it is one of race, but, unlike “Boyz In The Hood” and GTA, we certainly can’t expect a redeeming theme out of Capcom for gunning down the Aids infested Underprivileged.