Does Racism Exist in Video Games

I, for one, am tired of hearing about racism — especially in video games. The excessive use of the race card bothers me to no end. Given the United States’ history, racism is understandably a very sensitive subject. What is not, however, is the need for some people to point out racism where it simply does not exist. I mostly hear about it in podcasts but for the purpose of this article I would like to focus on one incident.

Climb in to your way-back machine and set the destination for E3 2007 when a trailer debuts for a yet-to-be-released Resident Evil 5. It’s revealed that the next installment of the zombie shooting, crest collecting franchise is set in Africa. The games’ male protagonist, Chris Redfield, is shown shooting wave after wave of zombies infected who happened to be black. As fanboys excitedly anticipate any new information, N’Gai Croal expresses disapproval.

“There was a lot of imagery in that trailer that dovetailed with classic racist imagery.”

Was such a bold statement by Mr. Croal warranted?

The “racist imagery” was purely unintentional and I would argue that only someone racist could see something as such. Does anyone honestly believe that a huge company such as Capcom would risk everything for the sole purpose of finally coming out and making its’ position on race inequality known? Even if members of the development team had made it public that they, themselves, were racist Capcom would never allow that influence to come through in their work. It just doesn’t make any sense. And that goes for every major developer and publisher out there.

As a Mexican-American, I would like to retroactively claim Resident Evi 4 as being racist towards the latino community. I am appalled that Capcom could be so insensitive as to depict Leon Kennedy shooting nothing but infected Spaniards. 

Now, why does my cry of racism sound so ridiculous while many will find his justified?

Some would argue that the African-American race has had more hardship at the hands of white people through slavery. I would then refer them to the Scots and Irish. They have had the displeasure of being the longest races held in slavery. And I haven’t heard a peep about it from them.

So I pose this question: Is someone like me racist for not seeing a problem with a white man protecting himself from black people trying to kill him, or is someone like N’Gai wrong for suggesting there was racism in content that was never intended to be racist?