Racial Stereotyping in Games

[Tetsuo_Shima]

An article on Eurogamer (very good site I've come to realise, now that Pia and Ronin have pointed it out):

Morgan Gray's view on racial stereotyping

Is racial stereotyping that big of a problem? I mean, fair-dos, black guys are often cast as the rough-and-tough 'rines packing M60s and RnB (one particular scene in CoD4 SP comes to mind, where the black trooper bangs out some hiphop through the TV station speakers. 'Oooo ra!!'), but is it really the bad thing that Morgan Gray makes it out to be? I'm in work just now, so I can't discuss it at length, but I'm eager to see what everyone else thinks on the matter.

I love Barrett!

 

[Cookalarcha]

Haha Barrett was awsome, and yea they do this kinda of thing alot but i only realy think a minority care. I mean would it have been as effective if a white guy was rappin nd stuff on CoD4 i think not.
And another one of these Black Tought Guys who use M60s and giant Lasers is on Metal Gear Portable Ops, he was called Cunningham he was pretty cool, he also had a peg leg like a pirate but metal...

 

[Ronin Storm]

Is racial stereotyping that big of a problem?

Taking the question wider than the games that sparked it...

The real issue here, I feel, is that by using racial stereotypes repeatedly we reinforce a very narrow view of other races and other cultures. Sure, it shouldn't take much to step back and say "hey, I realise that all black people don't necessarily rap and that some white men really can jump" but repetition is a powerful force for learning, even if the learning is actually blinkered or incorrect.

Using these stereotypes really speaks to a lack of depth in characterisation. The need to fall back on the black rapper, the Indian cab driver, the oriental shopkeeper, the square-jawed American hero, can indicate a lack of thought into the people involved and simply a need to steamroller a story forward despite the complexities of human behaviour. I guess that's the need for people to fill roles in a story, where the story could have happened with anyone as long as they filled those roles. Some of the most interesting stories are where the characters take on a life of their own and they forge the story in their own direction.

So yes, I feel it is a problem, in at least two parts. First, in blinkered reinforcement and second in poor characterisation.

 

[Dragon]

To be honest ... cou can call EVERYTHING stereotyping that happens in a game. The Germans always being Nazis and badies, the Americans (most often) being the brave heroes or whatsoever. If you want games without that racial stereotyping you have to create robot avatars that look exactly the same and behave exactly the same, so everybody is the same and noone is discriminated.

But what is so bad about a black guy doing rap music? I mean 90% of all rappers ARE black (and except maybe Eminem I've never ever heard of a "good" white rapper at all, but maybe that derives from me being not that much of a rap fan ^^) So why shouldn't the rapping dude in CoD4 be black too? Thats nothing negative at all. I mean if he wasn't black and rapping but white and (insert your favourite stereotype behaviour for white people here) would anyone care? I don't think so.

So while there is a certain cliché for every kind of person (the nerdy white, the normal white, the fat white, and samelike with the black) you should not complain about it, and there normaly is (and I'm certain in the CoD4 case there is, too). The only thing why people complain is, that we don't notice the white clichés due to the fact that those "clichés" seem like normal behaviour to us.