Oh, yes, Pokémon Black & White is racist.

(I went back and forth on this one for a while, trying to figure out whether to do it or not... I need to call this stuff out, but do we really need another white guy talking about racism? Etc. But it's got to be done, and since I'm a pretty big Pokémon player at the moment, I may as well do it.)

There were a lot of jokes going around when Pokémon Black Version and White Version were first announced. In America, the term "black and white" is practically synonymous with the race divide (as well as a particular damaging way of viewing the world, but that never got brought up), and a lot of people would going around saying things like "Black and White is racist!"

It was ridiculous and untrue. The names "Black and White" have very little to do with the race makeup of the game, and much more to do with the concepts of Yin and Yang, nature versus technology, and general color schemeyness. Still, I admit when I heard the title I had a sinking feeling that this was going to be awkward... and boy, was I right.

It started when it was announced that Pokémon Black and White would be the first game to feature a black gym leader: Aloe (Lenora in America), the "Natural-Born Mama." I cringed as soon as I saw that, and her character design was no better: a wide-hipped woman with a big cloth hairband and an enormous apron draped over her front. Apparently the character designer thought it would be a good idea to design the first black woman in the games after a mammy.

And it doesn't get better. The next black character to be introduced is Iris, another gym leader. She, at least, does not appear to be based on a racist stereotype (though I could be wrong). And despite being a young girl, she is the most powerful Gym Leader that the player faces in White Version.

But...

In the anime, Iris is depicted as a "wild child." She roams around the wilderness and swings on vines to get from place to place. To compound how savage/untamed this character is, she lets her Pokémon live in her hair. This isn't the first time a game designer has done this - a recent Final Fantasy title featured a black man who raises chocobos and has a chick who lives in his hair. It seems to be popular opinion in Japan that natural black folks' hair is no better than an animal's nest. This isn't cute. It's disgusting. Equally as disgusting is their choice to play on the "untamed animal" stereotype for the character.

In the Black version of the game, Iris doesn't show up for very long, so you'd think they wouldn't have time to mess up... aside from the GLARINGLY OBVIOUS problem of "she spends most of the story arc babysitting a white/Asian girl whose Pokémon has been stolen." Yep, when poor Bianca is just too fragile to handle things on her own, Iris steps in to hold her hand through the ordeal. Which is not positive. It is racist.

Also, Iris is only available to fight as a gym leader in White Version. In Black Version, the final gym leader is Drayden... a white guy. Ho-hum.

The third black character is Marshal, a member of the Elite Four and the only black man in the Unova league. The first time I saw this guy, I got a pretty good of impression of him - he didn't seem to draw directly from a specific stereotype. Now, I'm not entirely sure. He uses Fighting-type Pokémon, and is depicted as a large, beefy brawler, which is par for the course with Fighting-type users, but it's also a common feature of black men in white entertainment - the thug or the soldier or prizefighter or whathaveyou. (I will point out that there is a lot of difference between a prizefighter or a soldier and a member of the Elite Four and master of martial arts. Namely, honor. But it feels suspicious to me anyway. Put this one down as a "maybe.")

Discussing this issue with a friend the other day, she and I agreed that the best way to start diversifying a game is in the non-League NPC's - the guys who just sit around towns and routes waiting to be fought. See, you can add in some Gym Leaders and the like and that's great, but unless they're also being represented in the general population, they become an exception, even an import, and are made foreign as a result.

Nintendo made some efforts in this regard. Firstly, the male backpacker sprite was given black-race-hair (although the character himself has fair skin, meaning he's probably mixed race, which is fine too.) And they added two black trainer types to the game: Dancers and Football Players.

Yes. The mind boggles.

Clerks? White or Asian. Fishermen? White or Asian. Female backpackers? White or Asian. EVERY CHARACTER TYPE WHO ISN'T A DANCER OR A FOOTBALL PLAYER? White or Asian.

They didn't even make any black cops.

In case I really need to point it out, this is another stereotype put into action: the idea of black physical prowess. Black men in Pokémon Black and White consist of excellent dancers, athletes, and one martial artist, period.

Oh, and Lenora and Iris are the only two black women in the game.

Now, I would be remiss if I said there weren't some good points as well. They're just not at the forefront of my mind, usually, because HOLY COW IS THIS GAME RACIST.

Mainly it centers around Lenora, because I've only seen a little bit of Iris and I'm not far enough in the game yet to see what Marshal is like. So we'll see what they did with her.

Firstly, in the American release (and in response to criticism from black Pokémon fans and allies), Lenora's description is changed from "Natural-Born Mama" to "The Archaeologist with a Backbone." And this makes many kinds of sense, since Lenora is, in fact, an archaeologist. Which brings me to my next point: aside from her design, Lenora is one kick-ass character. She's the lead archaeologist in Nacrene City. She has a significant participating role in a storyline that you have to play through in Nacrene before you can leave the city. She owns the museum. She's smart and in a position of power (as a Gym Leader.) And she is happily married to one of the researchers who works at the same museum (a white/Asian guy, of course, but she IS in a happy, monogamous relationship.)

In other words, she's one of the few black female characters I have ever seen that I feel like black children could be exposed to without the kick-in-the-teeth that accompanies so many portrayals. Now, I could be wrong - there could be something I've missed, and of course there's still the nasty role of explaining the "mammy" clothes, which could be more harmful than I'm giving it credit for. (Which makes me wonder how many white parents aren't explaining to their white kids what Lenora's outfit means. But then we're getting into "teaching tool" territory, and that's a subject for another post.)

Also, for once none of the black characters are criminals.

A final point: so far, I've limited this discussion to how the game treats two recognized races: black and white/Asian. And aside from the black/white mixed-race backpackers and an ambiguously tan male Psychic (who might be mixed race of any kind, Latino Mexican, indigenous North American Filipino, southern Japanese, or anything else you can think of) these are the only two racial groups depicted in the game. Meanwhile, the myriad of other races that comprise the visual and cultural makeup of the United States (and particularly New York, on which the Unova region is based) continue to be erased.

(By the way, I refer to the majority race in Black and White as white/Asian because the way these characters are typically seen is largely dependent on where the game has been released - the average Japanese player is going to see them as Japanese, whereas the average European-descended player is going to see them as European-descended, and the artists went to absolutely no effort to make a distinction between the two. Also because the region is based on an American location rather than Japan, so there's no way of telling which the artists intended.)