No one is suggesting revisionists of any group (black or otherwise) don't exist or don't have a following. But what you need to understand is that BHM is not bound to any movement/group and is something US schools/media all over the country participate in, and this includes corporations like Google and Viacom. US education, media, and corporations do not and would not participate/celebrate any black figures or actions by these figures that aren't factual. So overall, the average US citizen and yourself if you were to visit this country and be educated in our education system during BHM, would be getting accurate/real info on black historical figures.
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Is Clementine from The Walking Dead black?
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No one is suggesting revisionists of any group (black or otherwise) don't exist or don't have a following. But what you need to understand is that BHM is not bound to any movement/group and is something US schools/media all over the country participate in, and this includes corporations like Google and Viacom. US education, media, and corporations do not and would not participate/celebrate any black figures or actions by these figures that aren't factual. So overall, the average US citizen and yourself if you were to visit this country and be educated in our education system during BHM, would be getting accurate/real info on black historical figures.
I hope so.
Maybe if instead of shooting she was twerkin it while whippin her hair back n forth.
goddamnit that song is stuck in my head now.
Okay now I'm lmao
jim-jam bongs
Member
I hope so.
lol
Definitely sarcasm. It's something I find funny with the voice acting in games and animation for black characters, it even shows up in real life too sometimes. I had a friend remark recently upon meeting another friend from out of town that "she doesn't sound black at all". I smiled and nodded, while screaming internally.
breakfuss
Member
Terrible, terrible posts. WHO said this?
Speaking strictly for myself here. There's no question that Clem is Black. We saw the family portrait and it's confirmed on the wiki page. Nothing is being disputed here.
I know there are Black people who look like Clem. Just as I know Black people can look like damned near anything. But, no, I do not believe the majority of self-identifying Black Americans look like her. Does that make her any less Black, or worthy of being presented as such? Hell no. I would never say something so foolish. I just find her design rather interesting given the existing dearth of black female characters. Yeah, I may have briefly thought, "is that the best they could do?" And I'm not just talking about her freaking complexion. It's even stranger when you see the portrait of her family. Some of you apparently see it at as TellTale having a nuanced take on race and, well, uh...I don't agree. I think they purposely gave her an ambiguous and "neutral" look, and I don't necessarily have a problem with that. I question it, but I don't have a problem.
Okay phew.
And wow... I dunno, what's a black person supposed to sound like? You should have asked her lol
one of the many microagressions we face daily.
The Ps4 Looks Great
Banned
basically you're confused that they made a black character light skin, there is no reason to assume that they made her a neutral character
mullet2000
Member
To be fair her voice actress is White.
But yeah, I getcha. It was mannerisms, not the voice itself.
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
And more to come! Thanks for counting
It's probably more valuable and worthwhile to have a discussion about ideas of race than it is to have endless conversations about the future of the Wii U. And I say this as someone who has taken part in many Wii U threads.
what does the majority of them look like?
Devolution
Member
Who said this?
Then you go into a rant about how she doesn't look like a majority of black people. I can't lol.
As if a good portion of this thread hasn't been the paper bag test.
Hah
Ploid 3.0
Member
I'm betting the way they look in Hollywood movies or on the news. Tee hee.
Transformers IX Caster: Sorry you're not black enough. Imagine the length of the gaf thread if they find out you're supposed to be black. You also don't sound black, your black accent is lacking.
soundscream
Member
This thread is so helpful, I wasn't aware that there was a default African American look.
n00bsauce87
Member
I think when you have zombies trying to eat you, one's skin color is just a topic of non-importance.
Maybe I'm just crazy to look at the bigger picture here
Maybe I'm just crazy to look at the bigger picture here
Doesn't the issue of race play a part in the story of The Walking Dead game? I know that the creators have said that they put a lot of thought into Lee's race. At various points in the game, characters ask Lee if Clementine is his daughter. The possibility of Clementine being Lee's biological daughter also makes race relevant.
John Rabbit
Banned
i figured she was mixed. i don't even remember seeing her family picture though. didn't really matter though. the most specific reference to race that i can recall came from Larry.
Zoe
Member
It's not on the screen for very long, and it's hard to make out the details unless you specifically zoom in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=hp2ZTNdjgYI#t=1249
AcademicSaucer
Member
Ok, this finally got my attention, why on earth is this thread 18 pages long ?
Race is a social construct and there's not much to it. There is more genetic variation among populations of chimpanzees than among humans. Human populations have not been isolated for an evolutionary-significant period of time.
Going from black to white and back again takes 4-5 generations of 'interbreeding'. The cosmetic features of a human are only a small part of our genome, but we impose a bunch of shit on top of them. The only reason there is a actually identities such as white/black/asian is that people are shit to one another based on those features.
Going from black to white and back again takes 4-5 generations of 'interbreeding'. The cosmetic features of a human are only a small part of our genome, but we impose a bunch of shit on top of them. The only reason there is a actually identities such as white/black/asian is that people are shit to one another based on those features.
Who is she referring too?
I've already read articles that devoted a sentence or two to questioning Sheva's "African-ness" due to her skin color an "Australian accent."
Hunger Games character. Was a minor outcry when she turned out to be black in the first film.
I'd like to point out the many, many post in this thread that claim otherwise
A character named Rue from "The Hunger Games." Fans of the book were confused when the character was black in the movie because they pictured her as white (even though the author herself said she was black and described her as such in the text).
Xenon
Member
Hence why I'm saying it's not. It's not! lol
DC1
Member
Wow.
It was all jokes and giggles on the first few pages. But 18+ pages later, I'm a little amazed at the legs of this 'question'.
First: There shouldn't be an issue of her blackness. She's black even if you adhere to the unsubstantiated adopted interracial theory.
Second: What is this investigative desire to make Clem (An African american co-lead in a very successfully game where the lead also happens to be African american) something other than black?
It was all jokes and giggles on the first few pages. But 18+ pages later, I'm a little amazed at the legs of this 'question'.
First: There shouldn't be an issue of her blackness. She's black even if you adhere to the unsubstantiated adopted interracial theory.
Second: What is this investigative desire to make Clem (An African american co-lead in a very successfully game where the lead also happens to be African american) something other than black?
R
Retro_
Unconfirmed Member
I agree 100% with this much. But what you don't seem to be taking into account here is that limited experience can result in a limited perspective, which I think is what is the main reason behind what is happening here.
I have asked myself that. but that wasn't one of the answers I came up with.
I don't have one that applies to every case, but the one I think applies to most of the responses in this thread is that people noticed features that lined up with features they associate with Asians rather than Black. Most commonly the slanted eyes and skin tone.
and while I think that conclusion is also a bit colored by racism personally, that's not the main issue of the thread and what most of the participants are criticizing. The problem isn't how people identified her, it's how they reacted when they found out what was intended. Instead of just expanding their world view to include Clementine's look and complexion as one they could identify as black, people instead decide to come up with all these excuses like I said. From "She's mixed" or "she was based on an asian girl" to the more extreme "does this look black to you?", "do these people look like they're from the same race?" and "she doesn't have any black features".
I....don't think she's ethnically ambiguous at all. (To me that's just another excuse people are coming up with to explain why they got it wrong)
I just think they designed a black character without all the typical features of black people in video games.
and as a result you have alot of confused people who didn't pick up on her ethnicity because her look doesn't fit into their world view of what people from that group typically look like. Especially in video games.
Basically I think Telltale tried to make a black character who's defining character traits weren't that she was black.(Like pretty much every other example in the medium) It seems they did their job too well though and as a result exposed some things about their audience.
Blackace
if you see me in a fight with a bear, don't help me fool, help the bear!
My reaction to this thread.
this commercial blew my mind when I saw it!!
breakfuss
Member
Yes, I am totally mystified by her bright, luminous skin.
So saying that the majority of Black people don't look like Clementine is the same as saying all Blacks look the same? Or better, that all Blacks resemble Wesley Snipes? Gotcha. It's not like I suggested there exists some kind of negro pokedex. Just simply taking a wild guess that on the bell curve of Black (American) identity, Clementine falls somewhere on the very tail end. An end that could easily be shared with a number of other racial identities. Obviously color lines are shifting. The notion or image of Blackness has never been a constant. Given the history of black media portrayal, though, it's a fairly sensitive subject. Colorism is real. Under- and mis-representation are real. Should TellTale or any developer have to walk on eggshells because of it? Absolutely not. They could have made her orange and I wouldn't thought twice about it. But, yeah, when I discovered that she is in fact a little Black girl, it gave me pause since she could damn near be considered a lot of things. There may be nothing more to it, but unfortunately that's not the way I always view these matters. Doesn't make me ignorant.
Fist bump!
My dad is also Creole (and Samoan), and my mom is Black, and somewhat darker skinned. My mom also has red hair and freckles, but me and my sisters do not have red hair (but we do have very hard to see freckles on our cheeks.
"Not sounding black" is the story of my life in a nutshell. Very, very frustrating. I'm also "well spoken" apparently...
Rastafarian42
Member
As a black man I feel real stupid right now I thought Clementine was Asian. Even saw the picture of her family and everything on both play throughs.
SonofdonCD
Member
I agree with this in principle, but one thing previous decades has on us now is there were a lot more shows with black leads/predominantly black casts than today (and I mean they are the face of the show like Kerry Washington on Scandal, not like Diggle on Arrow where he's at best the second or third lead on the show). Outside of the Shonda Rhimes ABC shows, there are very few on network television.
Except they didn't. There are plenty of black people that look like Clementine. She doesn't need more "black" features to denote that she is black, as not all blacks have those stereotypical features. There was also plenty of other evidence of this fact. Like:
-Aforementioned photo of family
-Everyone automatically assuming she was Lee's daughter, and being surprised when they found out she wasn't
-The setting, while not definitive, does raise the likelihood of her being African American, over being, say, Asian American
-That kinky hair
There has never been a time in the history of this country where this assumption would be true, even today! Even a white man walking down the street with a little Asian girl would get plenty of stares from people. You think a black man doing the same would be considered less suspicious?!
Precisely.
That comparison of Glen and Clem does nothing for me. His eyes has more of that stereotypical slant eyes thing going on than Clem, whose eyes are not nearly the same shape. And yes, I did play through the whole game (just beat it yesterday, actually, so it's all still fresh in my mind).
Talking about race is not, by definition, racism or a racist act. Look, people are different. They are from different places, have different skin tones, have different features, body parts and sexual orientations. Pointing out the differences shouldn't be looked at as anathema. Using those differences to explicitly divide us should. We shouldn't act like we are all the same. I like my heritage. I like that my father is from the Caribbean and has different lineage than my mother (and the pic of Clem's mom could be my mom as well, she is that light skinned). The fact that all my grandparents have different backgrounds and ethnicities. I love my heritage. Acting like it doesn't matter and that we shouldn't even acknowledge it diminishes all of that. We shouldn't be worried about this. We should be more worried about learning how to tolerate all of the differences in ourselves. Cause once we stop worrying about whether you are better than me, understanding can begin and we can all get along.
I think that's a lot better of a solution than for all of us to stop seeing differences in ourselves.
I don't think it was either of these things, in most of the cases in this thread. I think it comes moreso from ignorance. Ignorance has a negative connotation, when it shouldn't. The ignorant person isn't necessarily being mean spirited or malicious. With the lack of knowledge comes the lack of being able to possibly know the truth. That's why this drive by many people to think talking about differences in race and ethnicity is bad and only brings about racism is the wrong way to go. It can lead to people thinking that Rue was a small, innocent, pure little blond white girl, when she is not. Yeah, that was partially due to poor reading comprehension on the part of the offenders, but the point still stands.
GraveHorizon
poop meter feature creep
Goddamn, I was just talking about that today! Is that the new "black guy with electricity powers"? It's like black people are seen as "more human" when they're made half robot. Also the description of "black guy who was turned into a cyborg" seems to call attention to race more to me for some reason.
In recent episodes, he's been demoted from right-hand man to adviser/conscience. The angel on Ollie's shoulder spitballing ideas
that are wrong
Similar to the pony art revelation, I learned yesterday that some people don't see the words "very dark skin" as referring to black people at all. Apparently nobody unseen fiction is black unless explicitly stated to be so.
Fair point. I'm assuming ambiguity = intent, when its more likely people are interpreting the art style differently.
Good response. I'll admit that I thought your responses were making it sound like people who thought Clem was asian were closet racists, but you laid it out and I can't disagree
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
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