Columnist Deems Enslaved Racially Insensitive
- Thread starter Tom Goldman
- Start date
I agree. I personally don't think RE5 is racist but I can see how it was controversial. This is reaching in the max. White guy, played by a white guy (british in fact) with an animal's name gets enslaved by a white woman...MiracleOfSound said:
He is literally the same colour as the girl, the game is more sexist than it is racist (I now regret saying that because some people might think I'm being serious ¬__¬)
Oh SNAP!Danny Ocean said:
In all honesty, I never even made the "Monkey" and "slave" connection until this jackass pointed it out. Did anybody else? Perhaps it may be in poor taste to name the slave character Monkey, but if nobody notices or thinks about it in a racially charged way, then it isn't racist.
"My slippery slope logic (He isn't black but he COULD HAVE BEEN!) is clearly reason enough to stir up controversy!"
All he's got to go on is the term 'Enslaved', and that's a word whose context is not at all exclusive to American (or even African) history.
Do these people even think about what they're saying before they publish it?
I'd say we found one of those fabled 'real life trolls'.
Which is just further proof of stupidity. It's like seeing a swastika on a 500 year old Asian temple and pulling a Godwin. To complain about something in such a way as to reveal you have zero knowledge about it makes you look like a complete idiot. But judging by the letters page in my local paper, there's an infinite supply of other complete idiots to form an audience for that kind of garbage.Tips_of_Fingers said:
Considering there's still people wailing about events from 2000+ years ago, I'm going to say never.Tips_of_Fingers said:
Oh , so his name isn't a throwback to the monkey king? Geez, the guy is just screaming for attention.
It's in the same thread of stupid like when some overzealous feminist accuses a guy for disrespecting and dehumanizing their girlfriend because they call her Kitten. *facepalm*
It's in the same thread of stupid like when some overzealous feminist accuses a guy for disrespecting and dehumanizing their girlfriend because they call her Kitten. *facepalm*
Yeah but surely can understand why people found the tribal village levels a little offensive?Frostbite3789 said:
White dude goes around shooting savage, primal, spear chucking blacks wearing grass skirts and going 'huargh ugga baluuga'... it's not hard to see how some people found that objectionable.
Enslaved's character is based on an ancient Asian story of a character called Monkey... and he's feckin white!
...And there is the end of the discussion. It's based on an ancient folk tale. And everything they are complaining about is the content of the folk tale. In a lot of ways this is worse then the Resident Evil 5 controversy. There was a logic to that, albeit completely asinine logic. It is perhaps more akin to those idiots who felt that it was offensive to release a movie called, "The Two Towers" shortly after 9/11.Tom Goldman said:
This gets into one of the problems that I referance continuously in various discussions. I doubt it will happen, but try and remember the "Enslaved" complaints here in the future, especially when you see similar kinds of complaints being made.
The problem is that racism is pretty much dead in the US, and the Western First World for that matter. To find racism you mostly need to travel to the second and third world, and into the eastern areas (Middle East, Far East). There used to be racial issues in countries like the US however, unlike today where being called a racist is an insult, and what real racists exist are a tiny fringe minority that have to hide their sentiments due to wide scale social persecution.
The thing is that a lot of political groups formed to fight racism when it was an issue. People made careers out of it, and strove to form multi-generational dynasties for a battle that they felt was going to be ongoing. Entire subcultures, like a lot of those American Blacks are part of in part define themselves by having oppressors to fight. The problem is that when the war was won, and a lot sooner than many people felt it would be, you wound up with a lot of warriors without a battle, and a lot of people with power bases that would erode making them normal, instead of important, if the conflict was to end.
Martin Luthor King Jr. himself pointed out that what he was doing was the easy part. The hard part is when the oppertunities open up and the racism is gone, and people are left with nothing but a lot of hard work, and noone to blame for their failings besides themselves. Bill Cosby gets a lot of flak for talking about this from time to time.
Pointing fingers at something like "Enslaved", "Resident Evil 5", or other pieces of media allows the black community to effectively *CREATE* an enemy for themselves. Today we're increasingly dealing with a boogieman of alleged "secret racism" or a majority that is "racist without realizing it" due to the fact that an unverifyable straw man presents an eternal enemy to blame for problems, and for minority leaders to justify why they should be important and why people NEED to turn to them for guidance and to lead them as a political block.
The thing is that with a minority group equal representation does not mean that everything is going to involve them or be 50-50. It simply means that they won't be omitted simply for being who they are.
There are examples of racism to deal with, but those are BIG problems and not the kinds of things that someone can make a political career in the US out of, or get attention. You can point fingers at places like China, or the ethnic cleansing happening throughout the third world parts of Asia, Africa, and Central and South America, but all of those issues would basically involve saying that the US should go to war and kill a whole heck of a lot of people in order to end the conflicts. Wars are never popular, and honestly anyone concerned about racism that isn't here isn't going to make much of a case for themselves as a leader.
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When it comes to Slavery itself, it's a touchy subject and I think this game is kind of cool for opening up a lot of those questions. See slavery is not an inherantly evil institution, it's simply presented that way due to modern politics and how the world is now. People rarely stop and think about it other than to immediatly jump on "slavery is bad".
To give a simple example of modern politics involving slavery, think of the idea of convicts being forced to perform hard labour? A lot of people, including me have no real problem with this. However we don't do it much anymore because someone decided to start screaming about it being slavery to the state, and forced the system to make such labour voluntary, and to provide (very minimal) wages to be spent in the commissaries.
Oh sure, there are issues with it that I have as well, but I tend to look at it from the perspective of how if the goverment uses convict labour for road repairs and such, it means that regular non-convict workers aren't going to get those contracts and not have jobs. The state employs a LOT of people to do things like work on roads that otherwise wouldn't have jobs if they used convict labour.
Still I think there ARE things that convicts can be used for, and I have no real objection to making them work as part of the sentence.
That's a slavery issue, even if people don't see it as one.
To take things in another direction, especially with unpopular wars like the ones we've been involved in, people have discussed the possibility of penal brigades. Rounding up all the people in our prisons, shipping them overseas, and forcing them to fight in The Middle East for example. If they freak out and do bad things, it's not only not in our back yard, but in the back yard of someone we don't like very much (hence why we're at war). A win/win scenario all around. There are numerous science fiction stories that explore this idea, with various "final conclusions" on whether it's good or bad.
That's a slavery issue too, and more similar to what we see with Monkey than a racial issue. He's not a nice guy from everything I've seen (at least to begin with), and he's being used as a warrior by the person that enslaved him.
Then on the subject of war, one has to look at things from the perspective of a conquereor. Yes, conquest is no longer a "morally acceptable" thing, but I think that's a transient, modern point of view in the end. When it comes to conquering or defeating another nation, what do you do with all the people? They aren't going to remember you well, and if they build back up they might very well come looking for revenge, Nobody is the bad guy from their own perspective. To deal with this problem permanantly you can either kill them all, lock them in prison forever (which is impractical), or enslave them. Viewed from an overall perspective slavery can be seen as an act of mercy.
It should also be noted that slavery is also something that has been practiced from the dawn of human civilization, starting with the black peoples in the Fertile Crescent. I frequently laugh at racist associations with slavery because in the end every race has enslaved other races at some point when global power has shifted. What's more whites, who are considered the "big bad guys" were the victims more often than not, we just happen to be the last group of people color wise to have engaged in it. I honestly think we're pretty much lightweights when you consider our scant few centuries as slavers, especially in light of the conditions we provided for slaves which while not pleasant were positively posh compared to how slaves had been treated by other civilizations. While nobody wants to be a slave (obviously) I suppose I'd rather live in a hut and pick cotton or something, than be forced to haul giant stone blocks to build a pyramid, or thrown into a pit as lion chow for someone else's lulz.
That said, it can be argued that Slavery has benefitted many people through the ages. I've read arguements that we owe Western Civilization to it. Largely because the greeks and romans enslaved us lighter skinned barbarians (even though we're all more or less white). From them we learned many things during that time in captivity. When Rome eventually fell there was a "Dark Age" but it was ultimatly that knowlege (a lot of which was preserved by the church) but in the end civilization rose from those ashes and was largely based on their teachings.
Had the Romans just turned around and genocidally killed all the Barbarians they conquered throughout Europe instead of enslaving them, there probably would be no Western civilization. A lot of the art, philsophy, and ideals on goverment that we currently hold would never have come to be.
Now granted, I don't argue the case as well as many others, and admittedly don't agree with it entirely, but it does present some interesting food for thought.
Above and beyond any racial issues or overtones, when someone talks about slavery and how any mention of the very idea is wrong or should be oppressed, stop and think about it.
The problem is that racism is pretty much dead in the US, and the Western First World for that matter. To find racism you mostly need to travel to the second and third world, and into the eastern areas (Middle East, Far East). There used to be racial issues in countries like the US however, unlike today where being called a racist is an insult, and what real racists exist are a tiny fringe minority that have to hide their sentiments due to wide scale social persecution.
The thing is that a lot of political groups formed to fight racism when it was an issue. People made careers out of it, and strove to form multi-generational dynasties for a battle that they felt was going to be ongoing. Entire subcultures, like a lot of those American Blacks are part of in part define themselves by having oppressors to fight. The problem is that when the war was won, and a lot sooner than many people felt it would be, you wound up with a lot of warriors without a battle, and a lot of people with power bases that would erode making them normal, instead of important, if the conflict was to end.
Martin Luthor King Jr. himself pointed out that what he was doing was the easy part. The hard part is when the oppertunities open up and the racism is gone, and people are left with nothing but a lot of hard work, and noone to blame for their failings besides themselves. Bill Cosby gets a lot of flak for talking about this from time to time.
Pointing fingers at something like "Enslaved", "Resident Evil 5", or other pieces of media allows the black community to effectively *CREATE* an enemy for themselves. Today we're increasingly dealing with a boogieman of alleged "secret racism" or a majority that is "racist without realizing it" due to the fact that an unverifyable straw man presents an eternal enemy to blame for problems, and for minority leaders to justify why they should be important and why people NEED to turn to them for guidance and to lead them as a political block.
The thing is that with a minority group equal representation does not mean that everything is going to involve them or be 50-50. It simply means that they won't be omitted simply for being who they are.
There are examples of racism to deal with, but those are BIG problems and not the kinds of things that someone can make a political career in the US out of, or get attention. You can point fingers at places like China, or the ethnic cleansing happening throughout the third world parts of Asia, Africa, and Central and South America, but all of those issues would basically involve saying that the US should go to war and kill a whole heck of a lot of people in order to end the conflicts. Wars are never popular, and honestly anyone concerned about racism that isn't here isn't going to make much of a case for themselves as a leader.
-
When it comes to Slavery itself, it's a touchy subject and I think this game is kind of cool for opening up a lot of those questions. See slavery is not an inherantly evil institution, it's simply presented that way due to modern politics and how the world is now. People rarely stop and think about it other than to immediatly jump on "slavery is bad".
To give a simple example of modern politics involving slavery, think of the idea of convicts being forced to perform hard labour? A lot of people, including me have no real problem with this. However we don't do it much anymore because someone decided to start screaming about it being slavery to the state, and forced the system to make such labour voluntary, and to provide (very minimal) wages to be spent in the commissaries.
Oh sure, there are issues with it that I have as well, but I tend to look at it from the perspective of how if the goverment uses convict labour for road repairs and such, it means that regular non-convict workers aren't going to get those contracts and not have jobs. The state employs a LOT of people to do things like work on roads that otherwise wouldn't have jobs if they used convict labour.
Still I think there ARE things that convicts can be used for, and I have no real objection to making them work as part of the sentence.
That's a slavery issue, even if people don't see it as one.
To take things in another direction, especially with unpopular wars like the ones we've been involved in, people have discussed the possibility of penal brigades. Rounding up all the people in our prisons, shipping them overseas, and forcing them to fight in The Middle East for example. If they freak out and do bad things, it's not only not in our back yard, but in the back yard of someone we don't like very much (hence why we're at war). A win/win scenario all around. There are numerous science fiction stories that explore this idea, with various "final conclusions" on whether it's good or bad.
That's a slavery issue too, and more similar to what we see with Monkey than a racial issue. He's not a nice guy from everything I've seen (at least to begin with), and he's being used as a warrior by the person that enslaved him.
Then on the subject of war, one has to look at things from the perspective of a conquereor. Yes, conquest is no longer a "morally acceptable" thing, but I think that's a transient, modern point of view in the end. When it comes to conquering or defeating another nation, what do you do with all the people? They aren't going to remember you well, and if they build back up they might very well come looking for revenge, Nobody is the bad guy from their own perspective. To deal with this problem permanantly you can either kill them all, lock them in prison forever (which is impractical), or enslave them. Viewed from an overall perspective slavery can be seen as an act of mercy.
It should also be noted that slavery is also something that has been practiced from the dawn of human civilization, starting with the black peoples in the Fertile Crescent. I frequently laugh at racist associations with slavery because in the end every race has enslaved other races at some point when global power has shifted. What's more whites, who are considered the "big bad guys" were the victims more often than not, we just happen to be the last group of people color wise to have engaged in it. I honestly think we're pretty much lightweights when you consider our scant few centuries as slavers, especially in light of the conditions we provided for slaves which while not pleasant were positively posh compared to how slaves had been treated by other civilizations. While nobody wants to be a slave (obviously) I suppose I'd rather live in a hut and pick cotton or something, than be forced to haul giant stone blocks to build a pyramid, or thrown into a pit as lion chow for someone else's lulz.
That said, it can be argued that Slavery has benefitted many people through the ages. I've read arguements that we owe Western Civilization to it. Largely because the greeks and romans enslaved us lighter skinned barbarians (even though we're all more or less white). From them we learned many things during that time in captivity. When Rome eventually fell there was a "Dark Age" but it was ultimatly that knowlege (a lot of which was preserved by the church) but in the end civilization rose from those ashes and was largely based on their teachings.
Had the Romans just turned around and genocidally killed all the Barbarians they conquered throughout Europe instead of enslaving them, there probably would be no Western civilization. A lot of the art, philsophy, and ideals on goverment that we currently hold would never have come to be.
Now granted, I don't argue the case as well as many others, and admittedly don't agree with it entirely, but it does present some interesting food for thought.
Above and beyond any racial issues or overtones, when someone talks about slavery and how any mention of the very idea is wrong or should be oppressed, stop and think about it.