Perched high above the enemy encampment, I crayon in ‘people to murder’ on my map like some sort of psychotic Boy Scout. Fighting to chamber a round into ‘Gladys’, my well loved but largely unreliable sniper rifle, I take note of the wind, and then draw a bead on a surprisingly large group of rebels.
A sharp rustling noise behind me causes the bullet to part someone’s hair, and I angrily wheel about to find my Desert Eagle trained on a curious Zebra. The monochromatic jackass rears in fright and thunders away through the trees hooting, snapping off branches, and generally alerting half of Africa. Muttering, I re-holster my sidearm and turn back to a very angry hornet’s nest. The local yahoos have noticed the calamity on the ridge and have sent out a jeep with a .50 cal to say howdy doody.
I offer my own greetings by targeting an RPG into it, and the cart-wheeling wreck ignites the surrounding savannah with an epic inferno. As sniper and small arms fire starts to sizzle past my head, I slide behind some nearby rocks. After a minute the frantic screams subside and I re-emerge to see a charred version of the same village. While I’m satisfied that the evil, charcoaled gun-runners are toast, I know that a much more important hunt is about to begin. That zebra is going to pay…
Thanks for your patience. You’ve just experienced a typical assault in the game Far Cry 2, a game set exclusively in Africa. What did we do wrong in this highly successful encounter? What crucial detail escaped our cold, methodical eye? The answer, according to some knee-jerk reactionists, is simple: we didn’t notice the skin colour of the people we just topped. And that information is very, very important, folks.
If the twelve people we just burned to kingdom come had have been all white, or a cheerful mix of black and white, we would all still be standing on the smiley side of the political correctness line. If 100% of the evil gun-running, mercenaries based in Africa had have been… oh, we don’t know…African, and of a darker complexion, the PC alarm system would have gone into oogah overtime. Is that fair? Probably not.
In our defense, we do possess the ability to perceive black and white tones on our enemies – as demonstrated in us typing ‘zebra’ as opposed to ‘horse’ – but beyond that, the two colours have little to no relevance when we’re getting our kill on. A quick survey of the office reveals very similar results, nobody gives a shit, as long as they get to shoot somebody.
