No, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is not racist

Smh. Ignorance makes me sad on SO many levels. As soon as we have a game that can be "art", an ethnic character makes it racist. People are retarded

Excellent article, Joseph. Very well-written. You've made some insightful points.

Well said.

People don't think it's racist because she's black and has a heavy accent, they think it's racist because of how completely ridiculous the voice acting is. No black person talks like that. It's a case of extreme/terrible over-acting.

I really appreciate this article Joseph, as a counter to the in my opinion ignorant article on "Techland", setting it straight, and for races in games/media overall, it annoys me to see that a possibly "flawed" character in anything gets depicted, when they are of any ethnicity, asian, African American, of Mexican origin or anything; and also how people assume, like they would assume that I don't like people of Asian origin just because I wrote it with a small "a" rather than a big one like the others, or that I somehow forgot to include native Americans.
Racism is a delicate subject, and it will need to be handled appropriately, but again it doesn't need to be all self serious all the time, and we shouldn't be afraid to make a flawed character --like the claimed Letitia--of another ethnicity, if anything having proper diversity is a great thing, because as Joseph said, she's just one of many people in the lower class city, with all ethnicity groups, mostly white punks, same as there are people of all ethnicity groups working in the higher labs and offices.
Race or no though, I just found the character of Letitia to be silly for one reason, the awfully hilarious voice acting, but hey, she was drunk, or on the way to.

I just thought of it as an homage to the first Deus Ex and it's take on nationalities/races.

Ba ZING!

behooved
dat word is glorious :]

My head hurts just looking at the Techland Article you responded to... man, people look WAY too much into things these days when there's no need to. Like Joseph said, it's just one person like this mixed in with other types of ethnic groups. There's no underlying racism or ploy with this, and people are just over thinking this when she's simply drunk or has a weird voice actor.

Exellent article! This situation reminds me of when Resident Evil 5 was in hot water for being racist. Racism really throws logic and morality out the window.

Great article Joseph, this sort of claim of racism on games (Like Resident Evil 5) always makes me mad

Excellent article and point, and you know what, racism today isn't as big as it was back then, I think people are just insecure with themselves or they tend to stretch the meaning of these things...or they're just plain dumb...or all of the above.

Personally I see her over zealous way of speaking to be a response to Adam Jensen's character. Being an augmented human Adam is essentially a giant walking corporate advertisement. Using the tone she does she basically is expressing anti corporate and anti augmentation sentiments. She is a character, despite her flaws and the situation she finds herself in, that is still in tune with what being a human in a world looking for quick fixes and augmentations really means. She may not be able to control her situation in life, but she is certainly capable of controlling what gets changed in or on her body, and the fact that she is un-augmented (as far as we know) makes her proud and she expresses this by sarcastically hailing Jensen as a modern marvel to be beheld and beloved by all despite having shed his humanity (albeit against his will).

I suppose this is the scene in question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He09JaBVZdE

Watch and listen. About half way through she drops the sarcastic "Oh look its capn' Jensen!" tone and starts speaking for real, and then brings it back at the end. Deus Ex in my mind has always been a series that is pro humanity without outside augmentation. Letitia embodies this sentiment and as Joseph said before despite having no visible augments of her own is perhaps one of the more powerful characters in the game. People hear the tone of speech she uses with Jensen and automatically assume that there is no depth to be had. In my opinion those people, who assume a character in the situation Letitia is in, who speak the way she does (regardless of that character's ethnicity) can have absolutely no depth or meaning, those people (the assumers) are the ones with the racial tendencies.

Would this have been as big a "problem" if Adam Jensen was black?

I can't believe people are making such a fuss out of her. People need to be reminded of what racism actually is. Can we stop nitpicking over racism in games and start nitpicking all the cultural and ethnic genocide that's gone on in the past twenty years?

Great article Joseph.

While I'm not as reactionary as the people who accuse Deus Ex of blatant racism (which to be fair I didn't find the Techland article to be doing either), I don't think Letitia is really a character that warrants defending, either. Everyone who's seen even the first line she says knows she's fucked up. Whoever wrote her character's dialogue and handled the VO work did a really, REALLY bad job. It's not because she's a homeless black woman with a heavy accent, it's how they got that point across, making her seemingly humorous in her characterization in the same way black people are usually treated in substandard parodies and comedies to this day. Plus, "heavy accent" doesn't do that beautiful minstrel show audition justice. I mean really, "WELL SHIIIIEET CAP'N!" is not a line you hear outside of blackface performances. If Jensen threatened her, I wouldn't be surprised if she shouted "DON HIT ME MASSAH, I BEES GOOD, DON'T HIT ME BAWSS!"

I don't want non-white characters to sound vanilla white any more than anyone else, and in fact if she did sound like a white person I'd hate Letitia just as much, but the fact is she doesn't sound like a black person either. Techland's article does have a point when they say she sounds almost extra-terrestrial. I've lived in South Florida almost all my life, an area with alot of black people in addition to pretty much every other ethnicity under the sun, and I have never, EVER heard a black person who sounds close to that, except in old pre-1960's cartoons that actually were racist.

I just don't think we should dismiss culturally inaccurate or offensive portrayals like this simply because they're not BLATANTLY racist. The most long-lasting forms of racial inequality in our culture are the ones that are much more subtle than calling a black person the N word. People are very comfortable ignoring racism unless it's staring them in the face wearing a white pointy hood, which is why the more subtle racial inequities and inaccuracies still last. Nobody wants to speak out against anything short of Adam Jensen hosting a KKK rally, either because they don't want to piss off fans of Deus Ex, or they don't want to be viewed as "politically correct," which is the new worst social/political taboo in our culture apparently.

Like I said, I wouldn't call Letitia a blatantly and deliberately racist character, but I don't think that's a good enough reason to simply ignore her outright. If a large amount of black people take offense to a fictional portrayal of a black person, that shouldn't be ignored. Again, to be fair, I read the entire Techland article looking for any mention of the character or game being deliberately racist, I didn't find any. The writer even makes the point that he doesn't believe the makers of Deus Ex to be racist, but rather that this character is yet another example of mainstream Western culture's extremely flawed racial mentality. He even says that the game is great regardless, he just hates this charact

It's people who nit pick over racism, like this, that keeps racism alive today. Sadly ironic

Intents and purposes.
INTENTS
AND
PURPOSES
JOSEPH. DON'T DRINK'N'WRITE.

While I think the Techland writer is misusing the 'racism' tag for his article, I do think that the way the character speaks has a similarity to an outdated stereotype. It was most likely unintentional but it does stick out like a sore thumb in a game that takes place in the future.

Very well written, good show.

Another case of nit picking. So maddening the way this stuff pops up without fail. If we want to end racism in the world then stop bringing stuff like this up. Do I see a "stereotypical" ghetto black woman with a strong accent. NO. I just see a person. All be it with a really bad accent. Not black or white. Just a PERSON.

Racism will never end with people constantly being so over sensitive about stuff and desperately trying to find ways to call RACISM RACISM when something is taken completely out of context and twisted around.

F'ing annoying man.

Racism today: Black homeless people with a accent that matches a black person
Racism tomorrow: White people wearing clothes while people in africa have nothing
The reality of it: Splitting up human race because of skin colour is racist itself, racism only has as much power as you give it

A great article as always

Usually, the homeless people are white. Thanks for switching things up, SE.

At least she SOUNDS like an African-American, unlike the woman form the hostage negotiation.

The act of nitpicking games and other media for signs of racism seems more racist than the racism itself. My mind has been fucked.

And this is why there will always be racism, people finding racism in everything.

Some people/media will find a problem in everything if they look hard enough. Just another situation of political correctness gone mad. Also you kill people in this game, will there soon be a argument as to why this game makes people want to commit murder?

A great article as always Joseph.

There is also an African American woman who is the manager of an entire branch of sarif industries featured in the game, but of course the critics fail to see that.

I'm not so bothered by the fact that she's black and homeless, I'm more bothered by how she speaks, in contrast with the other characters. Yeah, she's homeless so she's not expected to sound like a scholar or anything like that, but her dialect was so ridiculous, it almost like a blackface mammy impersonation.

It's kind of like saying "yeah this guy happens to be japanese, so what?" and suddenly we hear him say "WERR WERR WERR, WADDA WE HAVE HEEEEEEEEEEERRE?"

Them Video Games . . . .

Great article, Joseph. I think you got across just why this character was offensive and got all this attention.
Also...

All the people saying that nitpicking for racism, "politically correct", or "overly sensitive" is racism itself and is what is "keeping it alive" are making my head hurt. You don't get it at all.

I find it disturbing that in so many games and so much media, there's nothing wrong with always showing black people talking the way letitia does. I come from Louisiana, and you bet your ass that 99% of the people around here talk like letitia more or less. But then there's the 1% like me who speak "white" as my own people describe it.Then I see how people say they would hate it if she sounded "vanilla". It strikes me as odd that whenever a black person in media or games does speak relatively normal without all of the Ebonics and such, they're ALWAYS shown as being an abnormal type of black person. Notice how nowadays whenever a normally speaking black person appears in media they're parodying Obama? If not that, they're always light skinned. As for RE5, the thing that gets me is the fact that Sheva is the only regularly speaking black person in the game, she doesn't even use her native language at all, and her complexion as a result is the only light one out of all the natives. why not make her actually look like she lives there? I've always heard that things really are better in the north, which is where most people who seem to not pay attention to all the racist crap that still goes on the world come from, but come down around the south, and you'll see things really haven't changed much. Insert random comment that dismisses every single thing I said below.

-not that comment-

I've noticed that trend too. But there are more than 1% of "white" sounding (I really hate all that this term implies) black people than our forms of media would have you believe.

This is why I say racism does not always come in the form of the KKK or skinheads shouting the n--word everywhere.

Good job with this article, Joseph.

I won't argue with how well written your article is and the point you make about not every black character being that way in the game is certainly true. I won't even say that Deus Ex is a racist game, I don't think it is. I will say that Letitia is a horrible character that symbolizes everything that is wrong with character design for other races in video games. The fact is, anyone who thinks the game is racist because of the Letitia character has a completely valid point because the characterization of Letitia speaks to exactly how racist White people view Black people. The same way the imagery of three Black guys dragging a White woman off against her will plays the historical racist portrayal of Black man. There was no reason for a character like Letitia to be put in Deus Ex. The moment anyone gets to this character they immediately stop and go wow what is going on there because immediately everyone knows that the Letitia characterization just isn't quite right, in the context that it doesn’t fit in the game. Are there Black people that speak like Letitia, sure there are and there are also Black characters that speak like Coletrain from Gears of War. Hell, the Epic designers say the Black voice actor for him speaks exactly like that and acts just like Coletrain. I am not saying that there aren't Black people who talk like that at all and speaking that way certainly doesn't mean they are ignorant at all. It just disgusts me to be playing a game and have to deal with this character that sounds like something straight out of a film portraying Black people in a racist manner.

I was really enjoying Deus Ex and then I meet this character and it just took me out the of world and I got disgusted at this racist portrayal of Black people. The reason I felt that way was because there was no reason for them to make a character like this at all. I get that they wanted to add some flavor to this random npc you meet and I get that in the original Deus Ex game there was some idiotic portrayal of Black characters there as well and I don't think the developers meant this as anything more than being humorous. I didn't find the humor in this character at all; I immediately hated her stereotypical portrayal of Black people. This character was just a poor choice on the designer’s side of thing and Deus Ex would be a better game without this stupidity. Oh and there is definitely credence for the notion that Deus ex portrays Black people in a slightly negative or ignorant light. For example, Letitia characterization is just ignorant and yes I am saying that any Black person that speaks like her is ignorant, the elderly Black woman that was looking out for Adam is shown as poor and constantly asking for the meals on wheels people also the way she speaks is a poor stereotype, and the Black doctor lady is a total bitch; this is seen in the opening cut scene when she chastises some poor worker for dropping boxes and she bitches him out for it and again when Adam rescue

It's sad so many people see this as "not" racists. It clearly is. This article is shit. You clearly make up excuses for the racism in some attempt to appear intelligent but you clearly don't know shit about black history in america and how blacks were portrayed through a white run media that refused to allow them to be apart of it.

She has a heavy accent you say? Are you really that stupid? People are upset by her not because of her accent but because of her dialect. Do you even know what vernacular is? She says things Is Bees waiting on you cap'n and pacifics instead of specifics. This is an old racists dialect common at minstrel shows in the late 1800s and early 1900s where whites would dress up and paint themselves black in order to degrade and make light of blacks as less than human. The character in this game is in the future but she's speaking in minstrel show dialect, a dialect you don't even hear today among blacks. You made it painfully clear you have no knowledge of history concerning this or why people were actually pissed off about it. It was just another person with zero perspective on the matter trying to make excuses for a game he enjoyed. Do you honestly think if a black character is shown to be normal in one instance but a slave-era caricature in another, then that makes it ok or cancels out the racism? Think about that for a minute, it's not ebonics, it's not black slang it's a parody language made up by whites trying to keep blacks subservient and down trodden. Do you honestly think people are made because she has an accent? That she's poor and uneducated? So what sadly there are plenty of black people in that situation but when you create a character in this era that's speaking in Stepin Fetchit style parody it's a problem. Not that you would know anything about the black perspective. You stupid fuck, much like the person who created this character and wrote her dialog should have done some research before you start talking out of your ass.

Letitia isn't racist.
She was portrayed by a black female actress named Amanda Strawn, whose IMDB shows her in a variety of background roles in various films and a few shows. Use Google Images and you'll see that she is indeed a black female actress.

Funny how every ignorant idiot keeps saying it 'sounds like a white person' or 'white person imitating a racist accent'. WRONG!

I appreciate this article for addressing ONE of the biggest problems in this world. Giving special treatment for minorities by virtue of the color of their skin instead of by the virtue of their abilities to perform the tasks required of them.

People are attempting to 'game the system' and go so far out of their way to do so that it actually creates MORE racism and drives us FURTHER apart rather than helping us come together!