Racism in videogames?

[tornadostormxl]

This is a very good topic. I would have never thought that racism would be in Videogames.

[rbudrick]

I've heard it stated before that the Super Mario Bros. was borderline racist due to some of the character names like Goomba, etc. I must express my lack of sufficient knowledge of the Italian language or Italian-American slang to make any statement whether or not this is true.

But anyway, I think I remember hearing that fighters such as Streets of Rage and Double Dragon caused controversydue to violence towards women (some enemies were women, and Marion get's punched in the gut and gunned down in the DD games). Also, many of those female characters dressed like hos, theough their attire was toned down a tad for the American release. Not racism, but maybe your standard sterotyping and demeaning of women present in every game ever...a much more prolific subject than racism in games.

-Rob

[Graham Mitchell]

But anyway, I think I remember hearing that fighters such as Streets of Rage and Double Dragon caused controversydue to violence towards women (some enemies were women, and Marion get's punched in the gut and gunned down in the DD games). Also, many of those female characters dressed like hos, theough their attire was toned down a tad for the American release. Not racism, but maybe your standard sterotyping and demeaning of women present in every game ever...a much more prolific subject than racism in games.

-Rob

You know, I've read that Final Fight caused a stir for beating the crap out of Roxy and Poison as well (and the fact that their shirts fly up). Capcom averted this apparently by giving the girls masculine-sounding death whelps and claiming that they were transvestites. Those characters are notably absent form the SNES release, replaced by skinny punks.

[ccovell]

...I think I remember hearing that fighters such as Streets of Rage and Double Dragon caused controversydue to violence towards women...

I hate it when people get their panties in a bunch when there are female enemies in beat-em-ups. Yeah, okay, technically there is violence "against" women, but that complaint suggests that violence between anyone else should be perfectly acceptable. (Why not just flat out boycott beat-em-ups?)

It must be pointed out that there is a female protagonist in Streets of Rage too, who can dish out the pain to folks of each gender.

[Push Upstairs]

Yeah I love how people complain about a handful of women getting beat up but it is OK with complainers for 9,999 men to get their asses beat.

Blaze was my character of choice in the SOR games...aside from 1. Adam was the best for SOR1.

[OatBob]

I forgot to mention in my earlier post the inaccurate and savage depiction of American Indians in the recent Western style game, Gun. This (and Custer's Revenge) are the only truly offensive (racist) games I have seen out there.

Please avoid purchasing either of these unless you're going for a complete collection.

I would be more concerned about sexism in games, but with a male target demographic, that will unlikely change.

[starfox316]

Final Fantasy 7 was so blatantly racist, it wasn't even funny.
Barrett lived in the slums because he was black and lazy. He was satisfied cutting Uncle Sam's (Uncle SHINRA?) checks and using the welfare money to buy new gun attachments for his hand at the local Pawn (Item) Shop. Not once did he ever mention getting a job or "diversifying his stocks and buying some bombs and shit." to quote Wu Tang Financial.
Don't even get me started on Tifa's illegitimate kid she had hanging around...unwed mothers and crack addicts with guns for hands, sounds like the Bronx, only safer.



But seriously, I can't think of many racist vg moments at all. Maybe because I wasn't offended, hence they never stuck in my mind. Afterall, who makes fun of the irish? There's no such thing as an irish stereotype. ; P

::Takes off little green derby to swig a mouthful of whiskey while back-handing his crying kid and screaming at his pregnant wife to put some potatoes and rock soup on to boil for dinner.::

[Lothars]

I don't disagree that Gun had some racism in it but it was more of the time period than anything else, if the game wasn't based when it was than I could see being offended by it.

[Aswald]

Before anyone takes "racism in video games" too seriously, might I mention Tawana Brawley and the Duke University fiasco?


It really disappoints me to see anyone my age or younger buying into this. This is, once again, Baby Boomer hysteria that too many of us have been brainwashed into believing.

Remember "Cop Killer" back in the early 1990s? And how the racemongers made all of the excuses for it?

How about Imus? Did you know that Senator Hillary Clinton went to Rutgers to speak with the young "womyn" who were so traumatized by the "incident," but that they didn't even bother showing up? It was an aging Baby Boomer who was behind it all.
And of course Hillary had NO PROBLEM with attending the fundraiser with Timbalake, who uses "ho" more times than you can count and "nigger" more times than you'd hear at a three day Ku Klux Klan rally. In fact, at this time almost all of the Top 10 hip-hop albums are loaded with cussin', "nigger," and "ho." But THAT, of course, is no problem.

Who makes up the majority of human/humanoid bad guys in video games, television, or movies? White guys. Dracula, for example. And the single most vicious act in moviedom, the destruction of an entire planet, just to make a point, was done by a character played by the late Peter Cushing- a British white guy.

Don't buy into this garbage, people. Those generations and their stupidity have caused us enough grief as it is.

[OatBob]

I don't disagree that Gun had some racism in it but it was more of the time period than anything else, if the game wasn't based when it was than I could see being offended by it.

Yeah, I do understand where you come from because there was a period in history (even within the last century) that our society viewed the American Indian peoples that way.

Then again, they've taken away honorable representations of our native folks too. The University of Illinois had to retire Chief Illiniwek this past spring as a result of racist concerns. The Chief as a mascot was never overused and always presented himself in a manner that honored the extinct Illini tribe. It was a shame to see him retired as there was never any disrespect to be associated to him.

[NESaholic]

Before Bionic Comando for the NES hit the stores they removed racist stuff from the game like swastika's.
Also Wulfenstein had quite some criticism over here and some parts iirc were taken out before release, alot 'normal' people wanted it banned from hitting the stores.

[ccovell]

And Indiana Jones movies are full of swastikas yet considered classics.

Why are some people so thick that when the ENEMIES in the game do objectionable stuff, they think the game as a whole supports it?

Why? I ask.

[djsquarewave]

And Indiana Jones movies are full of swastikas yet considered classics.

Why are some people so thick that when the ENEMIES in the game do objectionable stuff, they think the game as a whole supports it?

Why? I ask.
Probably because some people are thick and will interprent the presence of an idea, no matter its context or use, as an endorsement of it.

[Az]

Before anyone takes "racism in video games" too seriously, might I mention Tawana Brawley and the Duke University fiasco?

Wonderful post.

Racism? Stereotyping? How many games have major villains that aren't Caucasians?

In fact, are there any white characters that speak with a Southern or German accent that are not cast in some sort of negative way?

[Dr. Morbis]

Well is there any?

If developers have allowed their racist, homophobic and sexist views to seep through when creating film and music then surely it has happened over the last 30 years of videogame development?


I haven't read this whole thread, but I find it deeply disturbing to see that you (and probably the rest of the majority here) is so happy about the drastic erosion of our freedom of speech and expression over the last 30 years.

If you take away everything that is even remotely offensive to anybody, what on earth will be left?

[Aswald]

Nothing.

[ccovell]

Nothing.

Your answer is offensive to us positivists.

[TVs Hasselhoff]

Back when the earth was still cooling, and Apple computers dominated school classrooms, I remember talk about a version of Oregon Trail that had you fighting off Native Americans (Injuns (sp), if you ask my dad), similar to the hunting sequences in the game.

I never came across that version, so I was never sure if it was legend or true.

Hey, did I miss The Sizz getting banned again?

[Rob2600]

Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon (Konami, 1998) for Nintendo 64:

The main character has to battle an army of gay male dancers that has invaded the country. The entire game is full of gay references, including one about a village boy who was kidnapped by the gay dancers and they forced him to do a strange dance all night long.

It's all done in a lighthearted manner, but still, I'm surprised Konami got away with some of that stuff. Overall, it's a pretty good, funny game and is worth trying out.

[Spazz]

Friday the 13th on the NES. Jason attacks the black counselor more than anybody else in the game.

[Spazz]

Wonderful post.

Racism? Stereotyping? How many games have major villains that aren't Caucasians?

In fact, are there any white characters that speak with a Southern or German accent that are not cast in some sort of negative way?

Nope. It's because of the image others make us look like to other countries over stupid shit that happened 60 damn years ago. I'm an American with lot of German heritage, it does get dull because I do want to see a black villain or an asian villain in video games also.

[j_factor]

Plenty of games have Asian villains. Did you think the president was kidnapped by caucasian ninjas?

[Push Upstairs]

If 80's cinema has taught us anything, it is that caucasian ninjas exist and are a real threat.

[smork]

If 80's cinema has taught us anything, it is that caucasian ninjas exist and are a real threat.

Them terrorists better check themselves!

http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/2457/americanninjaposterhb7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[Aswald]

"Satire loves to fasten on manners and modes, which is what PC talk really is: political etiquette, not politics itself. When the waters of PC recede- as they presently will, leaving the predictable scum of dead words on the social beach- it will be, in part, because young people get turned off by all of the carping about verbal proprieties on campus. The radical impulses of youth are generous, romantic, and instinctive, and are easily chilled by an atmosphere of prim, obsessive correction. The real problem with PC isn't "post-Marxism," but post-puritanism. Its repressive weight does not fall upon campus conservatives, who are flourishing, delighted that the PC folk give some drunken creep of a student who bellows "nigger" and "dyke" into the campus night the opportunity to posture as a martyr to speech-repression. The students it harms are the kids who would like to find a way of setting forth their dissatisfactions with the way America has gone and is going, but now find they can't speak so freely about them in case they use the wrong word and thus set off flares of complaint and little airbursts of contempt from those on their left. In an academic world where an administrator at the University of California in Santa Cruz could campaign against phrases like "a nip in the air" and "a chink in one's armor," on the grounds that such words have expressed racial disparagement in other contexts, anything is possible: how about banning "fruit tree" as disparaging to homosexuals? And their dilemma is made worse on those campuses, like Stanford, which have created speech codes. These are generally not created by students, but by their elders- BABY BOOMER ACADEMICS, MEMBERS OF A MORALIZING AND SANCTMONIOUS GENERATION BOTH LEFT AND RIGHT. As Nat Hentoff pointed out, these codes, "every one of them so overboard and vague that a student can violate a code without knowing he or she has done so," are not always imposed by student demand, for

At most colleges, it is the administration that sets up the code. Because there have been racist or sexist or homophobic taunts, anonymous notes or graffiti, the administration feels it must DO SOMETHING. The cheapest, quickest way to demonstrate that it cares is to appear to supress racist, sexist, homophobic speech.

Thus a student can be punished under academic law for verbal offences and breaches of etiquette which carry no penalty off-campus, under the real law of the land."


From "Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America" by Robert Hughes, 1993.


Unfortunately, that last paragraph is somewhat outdated. Thanks to the likes of the anti-hate babbling imbeciles here, we now do have speech codes and punishments off-campus. Selectively enforced, of course. And resulting in the Federal Government having that much more power over Americans.

[Golden Bear]

Would the "Destroy all Humans" series be considered racist?

Even though the first game was mediocre at best, committing genocide against homo sapiens was a perverse thrill.

But Mario, Punch Out, all of the GTA games contain gross stereotypes. Should they be censored?

Yes and no. On one hand they are certainly potentially harmful to race relations amongst children (i.e. Mario as an overweight, diminuitive, broken-English-speaking blue collar worker). On the other, we have an obvious compromise of first amendment rights to discontinue such characters.

I also recall that one of the Toy Story games had to be censored because one of the bosses was a Mexican bandito.

[Pantechnicon]

Would the "Destroy all Humans" series be considered racist?

Perhaps not "racist", but the game was developed by Australians and I personally felt it had a strong current of anti-American sentiment running through it. I understand they were lampooning 1950's American life, but some of the jokes cut a little too close to the bone for me. The sequel felt less vindictive, but maybe that's only because they were making fun of other countries as well like Japan and Russia.

[koster]

Would the "Destroy all Humans" series be considered racist?
Those games are speciesist, not racist. IMHO, they are no worse than any of the numerous hunting/fishing games out there. :)

[Rob2600]

Would the "Destroy all Humans" series be considered racist?

I suppose, since the aliens are against the human race.

[ALAKA]

I remember EGM complaining about racism in Kung Fu Chaos. I think it was about the announcer being stereotypically Asian.

[fairyland]

Any Mention of Resident Evil 5 yet? Seeing the trailers, it seems a huge target for anti-black racism.

[icarwngs55]

I just got the Michael Richards game...wasn't expecting the guy from Seinfeld to be so racist....WHO KNEW!?

Mike