Oh no. It has happened again. After 14 games of ‘Assassin’s Creed’, Ubisoft has decided that the protagonist of their new installment, ‘Shadows’, will be black. And of course, the Internet has broken because of people who have set the limit on race after believing that jumping from towers to a haystack doesn’t break your skull, that using DNA to live life and change the past of our ancestors is possible, and that Leonardo DaVinci helped a clan of assassins. This is as far as we can go.
Assassin’s meh
“Historical accuracy” is that expression that many have learned to be racist without fear of being called out. And, coincidentally, it only matters when a character in a popular culture title is black. It’s not racism, it’s “historical accuracy”. Even in a science fiction saga like ‘Assassin’s Creed’ (does Abstergo ring a bell?), where we have seen all kinds of historical inaccuracies, there are a bunch of very loud people who draw the line at race.
At Ubisoft, however, they have covered their backs: Yasuke was a real character who, although it is believed that he did not become a samurai, did live in 16th century Japan, and little is known about him. In fact, something that many people criticize Ubisoft for is that the Japanese must be enraged by the fact that a black samurai appears. You know, the country that created ‘Afro Samurai’, included him as a character in ‘Samurai warriors 5’ and made him the protagonist of his own anime in 2021 produced by the Mappa studio. That country. Very angry, indeed.
At the end, it’s the same fear that some people have when they see a woman as the protagonist of a saga: the fear of losing the privileges that leads to the constant repetition, almost like a mantra, of the word “woke”, as if it meant something at this point. Not accepting the present as a way to try to relive a past in which you were the protagonist in the pop culture you consumed. It’s not “historical accuracy”, it’s not “concern for a saga”: it’s simply the most outdated racism possible. And no, it’s not modern or “countercultural” or “politically incorrect”: it’s absurd and terribly narrow-minded. You choose which side of history you want to be on.
