For a year or so now, there has been a raging debate over the preceived racsim in the violent zombie-fest known as Capcom's Resident Evil 5. The debat, more or less,centers around the fact that a Caucasian special Forces type by the name of Chris Redfield is in Africa kills African zombies. Apparently, this is a big no-no.

The Japanese development team at Capcom, according to New York Times  author Seth Schiesel, "professed surprise at the racism concerns when black game writers in the United States started criticizing the game based on preview videos more than a year ago."

Mr. Schiesel, quite correctly, states that in the game's universe anyone of any nationality can become infected, including whites, blacks, Koreans, Chinese and so forth. The point here is that a zombie is a zombie and would need to be neutralized, regardless of former race.

The other thing to remember here is IT IS A VIDEOGAME. It is NOT promoting violence against any race. It is an entirely fictionalized story and should be treated as such.

Says Schiesel: "Resident Evil 5 is certainly violent, but it does not feel especially gratuitous in its depiction of violence against African zombies."

In short, the controversy was really not a controversy. If a game is set in a particular region where that region's populace gets infected, it would stand to reason that the person playing the game would need ot neutralize those people.

As Schiesel says, "Resident Evil 5 is not a racist game." 

Source: New York Times