Resident Evil Racism?

Check out the trailer to see what you think.

If you do not know, I am black. African-American, Afro-American, shoot, American, whatever you want to call me, I have brown skin and my origin is from Africa (even though I was born in America, let's not forget that we don't call people who are originally from Europe, European-Americans).

I stumbled across an article on D-toid by none other than Jim Sterling, who is white by the way, nothing against him, just pointing it out so that everything can be fully understood in this post. What I find interesting is that black people, with means to get their opinion out there, are really in an uproar about Resident Evil 5. They aren't mad because it's gory. They aren't mad because it's violent. They are angry because a white man is shooting up black people.

Now in all fairness making a game about a white person shooting up only black people is racist. Just like if there were a game where a black person was shooting up only white people is racist. If those white people are his oppressors, thats a different story, but you understand what I mean when I say hate is hate and shouldn't be tolerated in either form.

BUT, Resident Evil 5 does not fall into this category. Let me repeat that. Resident Evil 5 does not fall into the category of racism. Let's have an information session shall we. RE is about one man killing zombies. The last time I checked, no race in a fantasy world is immune from zombies, so therefore, any race can be zombies. The fact that RE is taking place in Africa I would expect the population of people that are infected and become zombies would be of darker skin since most of the people in Africa are...well...black.

Personally, I'm not offended by this. Once the people in Africa turned into zombies, that's when the main white character starts to shoot them, not a minute before. So really, being a zombie knows no color bounds. But if you are going to put the game in Africa, you can't just have a slew of random races in a place where the majority is black. It just doesn't make geographical sense. What's the reason for the story-line being in Africa this time? I think that's the main thing, and that has more to do with the game than any type of racism.

-Jeremy aka Adridius