This is how I feel about it too.
At the moment, there's staff communication basically saying this thread is now
only about racist stereotyping of black people, and his character does not excuse the stereotype. Makes me feel that people ONLY see his exterior which to me, a lot of scenes in the game show to be a foolish way of looking at the man - that's before you see the scenes that show his mannerisms are mostly for show. He's a big softy with a gun for an arm.
I respect Square for not heavily altering his character because of his earlier representations, instead the new Barrett to me feels like an understanding of how his earlier presentation was actually rooted in that mentality. This game allows us to see how he transcends it to be MORE than just an angry black man.
I just looked through the index of black stereotypes on Tvtropes and man, I'm just glad I don't let that colour my perceptions too heavily because I'm certain he's actually a few more of those tropes.
Uncle Tomfoolery: A stereotypical black guy with the sole purpose of comic relief
Token Black Friend: A black character whose main purpose is to revolve around the non-black main character and/or only add diversity to a work
Salt and Pepper: A duo of one black person and one white person with personalities that are hilariously polar
Malcolm Xerox: Someone who is willing to go to violent extremes for the sake of an oppressed group
Magical Negro: A black character who is both wise and mystic, only existing to give wisdom to other non-black characters
But Not Too Black: A character
is black, but their skin tone is very pale, with the
unfortunate implication that this makes them "easier to swallow."
Blaxploitation: A genre of film with a hero whose main attributes is the fact that they're black (almost always behaving stereotypically), badass, and fighting against the bad guys pretty violently
African Terrorists: Sub-Saharan African terrorists, often carrying out guerrilla operations and maybe working for someone else.)
but not
actually any of them? I just think it's reductive as hell to see things through this website.
Funnily enough there's a black stereotype here that Resetera constantly advocates for, the
Black Vikings: A minority character is in a work, but it doesn't make sense in the historical setting.
Don't even get me started on the posts about his hair, lemme go tell my boi that he's negative black stereotype because he has straight hair naturally. (Funnily enough his hairline is more like OG Barrett)
www.resetera.com
youtu.be
