14 réponses à ce sujet

[Maria Caliban]

Mass Effect 1 and 2 has all of two prominent black characters: Jacob and Anderson. I struggle to think of any minor black characters besides Jacob's father.

Moreover, there's almost no mention of sexual assault in the games. I recall one prisoner during Jack's recruitment mission who tells us people attempting to take his 'dignity' in the showers, and Jack mentioning she was sexually assaulted as a child.

Given these facts, I think it's in poor taste to have a loyalty mission that centers around a black man who creates a giant rape camp in the middle of a jungle.

If you're going to write minority character, please think out the implications of the stories you tell about them. Despite what you wrote in the codex, Mass Effect is not a 'post-racial' setting. I have every suspicion that your writers didn't see any racial aspect to the story and that's a problem.

---------------
As these type of threads tend to have some stock replies, I've come up with a few stock responses.

1. Jacob is black? I don't see race. People who see race are the real racists!
There's a growing amount of evidence that people who claim to be colorblind tend to be bigoted. Pick up White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era for a detailed examination of why this is so, or here's a summery of a small study that illustrates the racism of colorblindness.

2. Maria, why are you so sensitive? Little things like this aren't the real problem.
Even if I agreed that this 'didn't matter,' I'd suggest that the vast majority of threads in this forum are spurious, so it's not like I'm lowering the level of debate.

3. People complain when BioWare doesn't have black characters. People complain when BioWare has black characters. There's no winning with you people.
If BioWare wants to tell stories about black men raping women and not be accused of racial insensitivity, then they need to also tell lots of stories about black men that doesn't include raping women. If you create worlds where non-whites are a minority then expect to have your treatment of non-whites looked at.

[Esbatty]

Side note: What about all the other officers who were a-ok with the idea of being part of the Rape gang? Sure Jacob's dad muscled/killed/exiled them out of the group over the course of a week but still he wasn't the only one... he just happened to make himself out to be some kinda... Rape Messiah.

Nevermind, i think I made things worse.

[TheBlackBaron]

Maria Caliban wrote...
1. Jacob is black? I don't see race. People who see race are the real racists!
There's a growing amount of evidence that people who claim to be colorblind tend to be bigoted. Pick up White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era for a detailed examination of why this is so, or here's a summery of a small study that illustrates the racism of colorblindness.

Seems like that's just as much of an easy out to accuse people of racism as claiming to be colorbind is for actual racists. 

Modifié par TheBlackBaron, 19 février 2012 - 08:48 .

[lakdav]

I dont know how intentional that connection was between Jacob's father being black and running an abusement park. Could be just me, we dont see many african-american black people here in Hungary, so i didnt pay much attention to it. Sure as hell i didnt develop any more negative opinion on blacks as a whole from a single person from side-quest of a video-game.

I think the main messege was "Rape is bad", rather than "Black men like to rape". Makes more sense anyway. Thats just a personal opinion though. I agree that the rate of clearly black characters and the moral weight of what one of them did is uneven in Mass Effect. But it was unintentional. It was not aimed in this direction. I wouldnt even call it a poor judgement on the developer's behalf, becouse i doubt it was even judged.

[MrFob]

Ok ,staying out of the borderline political discussion, there might actually be an in universe reason for this:
It is stated several times in the franchise that ethnic differences decline within the human population (and distinct ones are very rare by the time of the games) as people from different cultural and ethnic background interbreed more, due to more rapid global communication, transportation and intercontinental exchange on earth. Thus most people posses a mixture of different ethnic characteristics. Now I don't know if darker skin pigmentation is a dominant or recessive trait (I think it's a rather complex combination of genes) but the explanation definitely accounts for people to have more similar skin colors overall in 2183/5/6.

[RVallant]

Esbatty wrote...

Side note: What about all the other officers who were a-ok with the idea of being part of the Rape gang? Sure Jacob's dad muscled/killed/exiled them out of the group over the course of a week but still he wasn't the only one... he just happened to make himself out to be some kinda... Rape Messiah.

Nevermind, i think I made things worse.

No you didn't. That's a point that's being neglected in order to make a connection between race and the outcome.

Colourblindedness means implicating both white and black (or whatever race) in compromising and immoral positions while likewise allowing them to be heroes. Mass Effect does this pretty well, there's no colour/race bias in my view and really, when we can have a story like Jacob's loyalty mission and go "he's a bad human" rather than spout "OMG RACIST COZ HE IZ BLACK", that is when we know humanity has finally moved past racism and has started treating everyone equally.

So yeah, stop trying to find an undercurrent that simply isn't there.

[95Headhunter]

Maria Caliban wrote...

Mass Effect 1 and 2 has all of two prominent black characters: Jacob and Anderson. I struggle to think of any minor black characters besides Jacob's father.

Just off the top of my head, Admiral Kahoku, Major Kyle, Darius the warlord. I'm pretty sure either Chairman Burns or one of the biotic terrorists involved in that was black. Gianna Parasini is probably latin judging by the name, but she's pretty dark skinned. And of course, let's not forget that Shepard can very easily be black. 

Confirmation bias sure is fun, right?

Maria Caliban wrote... 

Moreover, there's almost no mention of sexual assault in the games. I recall one prisoner during Jack's recruitment mission who tells us people attempting to take his 'dignity' in the showers, and Jack mentioning she was sexually assaulted as a child.

"There's almost no mention of sexual assault apart from these two specific, explicit examples hurrrrrr"

Maria Caliban wrote... 
If you're going to write minority character, please think out the implications of the stories you tell about them. Despite what you wrote in the codex, Mass Effect is not a 'post-racial' setting. I have every suspicion that your writers didn't see any racial aspect to the story and that's a problem.

How is that a problem? If the writers didn't care what stories they were assigning what characters with what ethnicity, why should we? 

Maria Caliban wrote... 

3. People complain when BioWare doesn't have black characters. People complain when BioWare has black characters. There's no winning with you people.
If BioWare wants to tell stories about black men raping women and not be accused of racial insensitivity, then they need to also tell lots of stories about black men that doesn't include raping women. If you create worlds where non-whites are a minority then expect to have your treatment of non-whites looked at.

So all those stories of black men not raping women they already included don't count huh?

Sorry, but I really don't see why you've firstly jumped to this ridiculous conclusion and secondly felt the need to preach it to everyone on BSN. 

lakdav wrote...

I think the main messege was "Rape is bad", rather than "Black men like to rape".

 

So much this!

Modifié par 95Headhunter, 19 février 2012 - 02:41 .

[K_Tabris]

The whole post-racial society arguments describing Mass Effect, Star Trek and other sci-fi IPs are total baloney. They echo the concept of race as socially constructed, specifically the color-blind approach, which is the most insensitive, ignorant perspective on race and racism.


Holding to that view, while understandable, is ignorant and damaging. We don't know how race is going to be defined in the 2150's, so the writers had to be creative with these characters. I think they've done a good job with some of it, but the theme around Jacob's loyalty is a little too co-incidental. There are plenty of ways that mission could have been written where it wouldn't have embodied stereotypes.

Unfortunately, that, and what they apparently have in store for Jacob in ME3, is unfortunate.

Modifié par NovinhaShepard, 19 février 2012 - 03:04 .

[DeathScepter]

there are bastards regardless of skin color. For example, Jolee Bindo from Kotor 1 is a black guy and he is a strong character with decent morals.

[Jamin101]

I think the op and some other posters are the racist ones. Ive beaten the game and never once had this inclination. Maybe the game developers dont have the problem but the posters associating blacks with rape do...

[SeanNorm]

Jamin101 wrote...

I think the op and some other posters are the racist ones. Ive beaten the game and never once had this inclination. Maybe the game developers dont have the problem but the posters associating blacks with rape do...

Agreed, not once while plaything through this game (and i've played through it many a time) did I stop to consider this. Hell, I am black and didn't make the connection. Its people like Maria that make racism so much worse, constantly trying to find racial connections when they are just not there. 

[Alixen]

There are also other mentions of sexual abuse, such as Talitha in the Colonist background. If I remember right, femShepard is threaten with such by a male Turien (of all races) on Samara's loyalty mission in the club. The assassin sent to kill Tali also touched her suggestively before she backed away. There are probobly other examples too, but generally i'm going to avoid this topic. Just providing relevent examples that have nothing to do with race, or even species.

I have to admit, playing through the game multiple times, I never even considered any racial implications.

Modifié par Alixen, 22 février 2012 - 12:55 .

[Steven the Hawk]

I have to admit I never picked up on this in playing ME2. Perhaps that's because I more or less bought into the idea of the "post-racial" human society in the Mass Effect universe. I think that's a very nice aspirational sentiment, really. But Maria's got a point. This is both the mission that most prominently features sexual violence and the mission that most prominently features a black man. There's an unfortunate history, in my country and probably elsewhere as well, of racists trying to spread the fear of black men raping all our white women. I'm sure BioWare only played into this trope accidentally, but I'd very much rather they hadn't played into it at all.

[Arkalezth]

As with lakdav, white is the most common race where I live, so maybe I don't pay much attention to things like the "correct" amount of blacks in videogames or movies, though I hate when they put things like a black character, a chinese, an arab, a south american, and all the rest being white (take a look at Lost, for example, or pretty much any modern TV series). Whites may be more common in ME, but at least it doesn't reach that point of ridiculous IMO.

Anyway, most people who have written in this thread claim that they had never thought about it, nor I, because that black-rapist connection is not something you usually think about unless you're actively looking for racist references.

Jacob's father is both black and an ****, so what? Jacob himself is black, Anderson's black, and they are nice guys. Hell, Jacob even wants to kill his father for what he did. There are other black characters, and while they may not be a lot in comparison (btw, I still remember many more blacks in ME than, say, asians), they kind of cover all types of personalities. Frankly, I think it'd be much worse to put all blacks (or people of any race other than white) in the game as good guys, I'm glad that the devs were realistic and didn't limit themselves to what's politically correct (edit: shame they don't do the same on the forums and I get censored).

As a funny note, there was a thread on the old NWN2 forums where a player called the devs racists because the hoard of the black dragons in SoZ wasn't as big/rich as he expected. Of course this thread (nor 99% or others) isn't as stupid, but I got reminded of it when reading. If you go actively looking for racist references, you may find them, specially if trespassing the line of the ridiculous means nothing to you.

Modifié par Arkalezth, 23 février 2012 - 02:36 .

[domm]

Interesting post and reactions. I've played through ME1 and ME2 many times without ever thinking about race issues. My reaction to Jacob's loyalty quest was that it was a condemnation of men in general and as Jacob said - "setting yourself up in a juvenile fantasy". I think gender is the issue, not race. But, that said, if you go looking for faults, I am sure you will find them.