Red Dead Redemption 2 is Reeeeeeeeacist

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It’s nearly the end of 2018, and I have to write an article about blackface and redface in Red Dead Redemption 2.


That sucks.

It sucks, because it means no one bothered to interrogate the casting. It sucks, because I know the pushback I’ll get for being the one to call out readily apparent racism in a game that opened to $725 million in sales. It sucks, because we’re still having to have conversations about why the perpetuation of racist stereotypes and the dehumanization of people of color is bad. It sucks, because didn’t we just do this with Uncharted: The Lost Legacy?

And it sucks, because I hoped maybe we could do better than Charles, and as a Native woman who got her start pleading with games journalists and developers to do better, I wouldn’t need to keep writing these articles.

Charles Smith has a Black father and a Native mother. He doesn’t know the name of his tribe, his father was an alcoholic, and his mother was taken by soldiers. Charles is grateful to find a group of white outlaws to accept him. He uses every part of the buffalo. Charles sucks. He’s another racist Rockstar caricature, and honestly that should be enough. But there’s another issue with Charles.

The actor who portrays him is neither Black nor Indigenous.