Battlefield 1 Might Feature The Franchise’s First African-American Playable Protagonist

Charles Oakley 32 Comments 79 views 0 likes News

Diversity is definitely something that we need more of in all forms of entertainment and media and it seems Battlefield 1 might make a pretty big step in this direction. Through leaked images and leaked promotional pictures it seems the game might feature the franchises’s first ever playable black protagonist.

The character likely features a member of the Harlem Hellfighters. The 369th Infantry would come to be known as the Harlem Hellfighters. Their motto was “God damn, let’s go.”

First organized in 1916 as the 15th New York National Guard Infantry Regiment and manned by black enlisted soldiers with both black and white officers, the U.S. Army’s 369th Infantry Regiment, popularly known as the “Harlem Hellfighters,” was the best known African American unit of World War I.  Federalized in 1917, it prepared for service in Europe and arrived in Brest, France in December.  The next month, the regiment became part of the 93rd Division (Provisional) and continued its training, now under French instructors.  In March, the regiment finally received its Federal designation and was reorganized and reequipped according to the French model.  That summer, the 369th was integrated into the French 161st Division and began combat operations.

Dubbing themselves “Men of Bronze,” the soldiers of the 369th were lucky in many ways compared to other African American military units in France in 1918.  They enjoyed a continuity of leadership, commanded throughout the war by one of their original organizers and proponents, Colonel William Hayward.  Unlike many white officers serving in the black regiments, Colonel Hayward respected his troops, dedicated himself to their well-being, and leveraged his political connections to secure support from New Yorkers.  Whereas African American valor usually went unrecognized, well over one hundred members of the regiment received American and/or French medals, including the first two Americans – Corporal Henry Johnson and Private Needham Roberts – to be awarded the coveted French Croix de Guerre.

Spending over six months in combat, perhaps the longest of any American unit in the war, the 369th suffered approximately fifteen hundred casualties but received only nine hundred replacements.  Unit histories claimed they were the first unit to cross the Rhine into Germany; they performed well at Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood, earning the epithet “Hell Fighters” from their enemies.  Nevertheless, the poor replacement system coupled with no respite from the line took its toll, leaving the unit exhausted by the armistice in November.  Although the 369th could boast of a fine combat record and a regimental Croix de Guerre, the unit was plagued by acute discipline problems resulting from disproportionate casualties among the unit’s longest-serving members and related failures to assimilate new soldiers.  After considerable effort by Colonel Hayward, the 369th was welcomed home with a parade in February 1919 and reabsorbed into the National Guard.

In World War II, the formation was organized as the 369th Antiaircraft Artillery Regiment (no relation to the also all-black 369th Infantry in the 93rd Infantry Division), and served in Hawaii and at various locations along the West Coast.  The unit survives today as the 369th Support Battalion of the New York Army National Guard.
Source: http://www.blackpast.org/aah/369th-infantry-regiment-harlem-hellfighters

If true, this means that Battlefield 1 will be the first ever game with a playable black protagonist. All other games in the series before it: Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 2, Battlefield Bad Company, Battlefield 3, Battlefield 4 etc. have never featured a playable African-American protagonist.

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32 Comments

  1. Lets hope not. Never cared for BF before and they all have white protagonists, now this one looks amazing and its the only one with a black guy. Just my luck.

    • There are literally hundreds of games with white protags. I’ve been playing great games with white protags my whole life and you don’t seem me complaining. Same generic white guys get boring. Nice to have diversity.

      • Through in an Italian, Dutch, Swedish, or British. Not a black. Even Puerto Rican. (my race, but i look white)

        • Same shit, changing the ethnicity/nationality isn’t diversity, the character will be even more unrelateable if he’s a non-American white guy. I really don’t understand what difference does it make anyhow, as I said I’ve been playing white guys my whole life, you probably have aswell. Ezio, Marcus Felix, Galen Marek, Geralt, Sam Fisher, Cole Mcgrath,, Dante, John Marston, every hero from the Fable series, Nahan Drake, and I could go on.
          The guy is supposed to be a Harlem Hellfighter, and you’re a Puerto Rican, this should be a dream come true for you.
          So what’s really the problem?

          • Blacks are literally forced into everything. It gets really annoying seeing the “WHITE MAN SO EVIL MUST DIE FROM GOOD BLACK MAN” story, over and over and over and over and over again. MUH BLACK LIVES METTER

          • What are you talking about? Black people were apart of WW!! Why can’t we have a black character without you people calling it “forced” or “PC”. Besides, this is only speculation and rumor, it’s also been said that there will be multiple protags.

          • As they should. Keep them in the games i don’t play. I have about 50 games with a diverse cast of protagonists but will not play as a black character.

          • Selfish and idiotic.
            But, who are you though? Lol.
            Well, hopefully a great game comes out with a black protag so you wont be able to enjoy it.
            Later troll.

          • Good news cunt, the game will star 6 protagonists so i don’t have to deal with that black ass.

          • Lol, I told you that there was going to be multiple protags, one of them is black.

        • If you had even a modicum of education, you would realize that any modern human walking the planet today is more than 99.9 genetically identical to any other human, and in addition the first modern human was a black female from Northern Africa, making us all black. Eve was black. Ask any paleoanthropologist worth their salt. The truth is killing you.

          • They weren’t black in WW1. I was talking about WW1. If you didn’t have such a vacuous orb for a brain, you might have known that.

          • You don’t have a clue. Typical.

          • Nope. Average IQ of European descent sorts and Asians with the exception of the Philippines is 110-120. Average IQ of Africans is in the 80’s.

          • If you had even a modicum of education, you would realize that any modern human walking the planet today is more than 99.9 genetically identical to any other human, and in addition the first modern human was a black female from Northern Africa, making us all black. Eve was black. Ask any paleoanthropologist worth their salt. The truth is killing you.

    • You sound uneducated, sad, and alone. Good luck in life….you’re going to need it.

      • Thanks. Hope you get killed in traffic 🙂

        • And I hope you get the education you so desperately need. Seek knowledge and refrain from buffoonery son. Good luck.

    • Sorry to break in you’re conversation like that, but the discussion between you two is very interesting and amusing. You both make good points, but I’m gonna have to stick with the TrollCat here, even if he may not have the same reasons to be racist as I, a European citizen, do, you see…Europe and the United States of America were both established by white people and I think we agree that we did a good job. Now, the countries and cities in Africa don’t provide the live style quality that the European and American ones do and because of that, there has always been a big number of African immigrants and I am afraid that someday, in the future, we will reach a point where the white race, will be the minority on our own lands, now I’m really not a history expert or something, but I do believe that in the first world war there weren’t a lot of black men in Europe, and trying to represent it(World War I) with a black guy as a protagonist is pretty silly. I don’t want you or anyone to think I consider black people or other races animals, God no, but it’s about what we had built and our signature in OUR history. And trust me most of the black people are just as racist as most of the white people.I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong, maybe not, I don’t think I am and please…I don’t care if you consider me uneducated or sad or alone, I want to hear you’re opinion of what I’m writing now on myself, because quite frankly I don’t give a shit what you think about me, it does not affect my life at all.

  2. This article is rather presumptuous regarding the guy’s nationality. The US didn’t get involved in WWI for the first two and a half years, for all we know this guy could be a black Brit or a French guy. That’s the problem with liberal politically correct language. It is ethnocentric and presumptuous. Both Brits and the French have sizable communities of black people and had black people fight in WWI. Hell, Britain had black colonialists.

  3. If true, this could make for some very interesting gameplay and characters, and would make Battlefield my first purchase of Battlefield/Cod since Black Ops II.

  4. Only racists white people use the term “African American” to describe someone who is Black that was born on American shores.

    I held a deep conversation with a coworker that is Egyptian who is now a citizen of the U.S. Now he is what you would call an African American but they forced him to list Mediterranean on applications.

    Charlie Oakley I suppose is a European American going by his logic.

    And did some other idiot on here say that Puerto Rican is a race?

    Ignorance is bliss.

    • arabs and egyptians are not blacks. they are both caucaisan with a different skin colour. blacks on the other hand are negroids. you can tell that by looking at the bone structure. ignorant twat

      and every arab would go crazy if you would call him black or negroid. that is also the case for moors, who are arabic too. you blacks just try to make shit up.

      • STFU!

        • suck my dick monkey

    • You’re right, blacks can’t be Americans because they’re low IQ monkeys.

  5. 13% of the population, now over 50% of media representation, and even taking the history away from the white people in things like “Hamilton”

    Oh, and this game also has a “badass female” who is a hijab-wearing muslim.

    I am personally sick of the SJW agenda. Won’t but buying this one.

    Hell, even Witcher 3 got fussed at for not having any black people, and it’s set IN POLAND.

    • What next? Shogun wars with black main protagonist? Three Kingdoms era with a black emperor? 210 of 300 spartans were strong black women?

  6. They want to show diversity? they should show som pictures of sweden after their cultural enrichment. That is your diversity!!

  7. f you want to expand my horizont, and let me see the world in different viewpoints trough this single player campaign. why the fuck I can play a muslim woman, but not a german soldier?

  8. So, blacks are regulated to support roles (essentially, they were the janitors of the war) and now all of the sudden they singlehandedly win the war? It’s just another myth like the Tuskogee Airmen who maybe participated in .01% of World War battles but somehow are responsible for the Allied victory.

  9. Its down right childish of dice if you ask me…

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