Is This Racist?

Below, the latest facepalm-inducing example of tone-deafness to ethnic-caricature in the video games industry, courtest "Deus Ex: Human Revolution."


So... is this "racist?" Eh... it's definitely a racial-caricature, so on the narrowest of terms... yeah, it kinda is. My colleague Jim Sterling seems to think so. My other colleague Greg Tito sees it a bit more gray. I think Greg raises good points, though overall I think my reaction more closely aligns with Jim's in this case.

Now, to be fair, one imagines that the developer - Eidos Montreal - is staffed either by full-blown racists or devoted fans of Minstrel Show routines; so one has to imagine THIS voice coming out of THIS character-design is a case of something that was obviously going to be a problem simply not getting "caught" before it went to pressing.

My question on this, just like with "Resident Evil 5," is WHY does this stuff slip by uncaught? This isn't a small-potatoes developer - do they not have a person in Quality Control who's supposed to watch for "issues" like this? Because, I'm sorry... not to take anything away from the game, but "end result of voice/character comes off like a Stephen Fetchit bit" is kind of a problem.