And if you're saying that racism in fiction is the result of real life racists rather than the other way around ... well you wouldn't object to people erasing the touch of such people from their art, would you?
I actually think that using racism in art as a means of teaching people about the harms of racism is laudable. That was my argument in the beginning. I have always used the implicit racism against Orcs and Drow (among other races, you should see how bad Karameikans hate Gnolls) as a BBE.
I never pick a module that runs for 12 levels and then scene drops you like a bad dom. I don’t write epic campaign arcs like that either. I am constantly presenting evil to the party in many different forms. There is a cult (not an evil cult mind) and one of the cult leaders has formed a personal grudge against the party’s Cleric. Not a religious thing, purely personal, but he still keeps sending people to kill him.
The party just broke up a local franchise of the country’s most villainous thieves’ guild, killed the members and their leader, and led to the imprisonment of the lieutenant. That will come back to them. They also just ransacked a mummy lord’s crypt, flipped it a great big metaphorical bird, and escaped leaving the mummy alive.... None of that has anything to do with the adventure they were already on.
They also fought some goblin bandits. The goblins didn’t attack because they were evil, they literally opened with “gold or steel?” A typical highwayperson’s “your money or your life” statement. It was originally just a robbery. When next they meet goblins on the road they will just be simple hunters out looking for a boar. It is intended to be a social encounter for them. The hunters might even have clues for them. They also recently killed an Ogre who wanted to eat them. People are already warning them about the Ogre’s brothers. On top of all of that, there is a culture embroiled in various kinds of racism. And they only just hit level 4.
Whichever themes they choose to pursue, that determines the next BBE. If they want to combat the thieves, then the hooks are already there. If they want to fight the cult leader ******bag, then he will be the BBE. If they want to combat racism, then that will become the BBE. It’s all up to them.
Art teaches us about our world. It is less capable of doing that if it doesn’t represent our world. My games will not change. I will continue to present systemic racism as a potential BBE for the party to fight. Actually, I wrote a 6,000 prehistory to the settings 5,000 year history just to have a fantastic reveal for parties who choose racism as their BBE. In fact, I wrote a planetwide geas into the world’s cosmology for it.
But now I feel like I have to change over 25 years worth of setting development that I have done or I will be accused of being a racist because I don’t use the changes. The way I treat alignment is less as an absolute, and more of a “reputation” or “societies expectations” of the race. That is what the average person (person, not human) on the street thinks of them. So I have to not use it to make the point relevant, or I use the new changes, and then the impact of the reveals is lost on the audience. It’s the expectation the leads to the impact of the revelation.
So here I am doing what I can to present racism as a thing to overcome for almost 30 years. How many people in this thread have already not-so-vaguely accused me of racism? I cannot win for loosing, its like my dice luck is rubbing off on my real life. 🤷♂️
I actually think that using racism in art as a means of teaching people about the harms of racism is laudable.
Umm, well yes, but ... this is something that big bucks writers and directors and artists try to do every once in awhile and they mess it up a lot. It's not necessarily something that's easy to do or something to be casually attempted. Easier perhaps if you know your audience, in this case your gaming group, very well. But I still applaud WOTC for doing what they can to listen to the feedback of their players who have felt, at various times, singled out and harmed by the use of language in the games they love. Gaming is a somewhat intimate act, you know.
And your worry that you might somehow be viewed as racist? I honestly don't want to assuage that discomfort. I think you should feel uncomfortable, especially if you are white. Not because I dislike white people or you in particular. I just think that this discomfort is natural for someone who has the privilege of never being the victim of systemic racism and is now being confronted with the evidence that basically all the systems in our lives, from government to rpg's, is tinged with racism. I think a lot of the discomfort comes from not knowing and so I hope that it leads to you seeking out knowledge.
Oh yeah, also did you see my point where Wizards did say they were going to take "all peoples" in this direction and not just orcs and drow? Honestly why are you objecting to this? How is this not a good thing for Wizards to do?
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
So here I am doing what I can to present racism as a thing to overcome for almost 30 years. How many people in this thread have already not-so-vaguely accused me of racism? I cannot win for loosing, its like my dice luck is rubbing off on my real life. 🤷♂️
I'm not going to say you can't give your players the choice between fighting in-game racism and fighting an actual villain. It's just that I don't know many players who want to sit down and play a scintillating game of struggling against systematic racism. I certainly don't. I'm not saying no one would, but now? Today? With *gesticulates wildly* all this going on? I get depressed enough thinking about what else I could be doing to combat real-world racism. I don't want to get a few hours away from thinking about that for an afternoon with friends and family around the table just to have to sort out hundreds of years of injustice between two different kinds of elves.
And your worry that you might somehow be viewed as racist? I honestly don't want to assuage that discomfort. I think you should feel uncomfortable, especially if you are white. Not because I dislike white people or you in particular. I just think that this discomfort is natural for someone who has the privilege of never being the victim of systemic racism and is now being confronted with the evidence that basically all the systems in our lives, from government to rpg's, is tinged with racism. I think a lot of the discomfort comes from not knowing and so I hope that it leads to you seeking out knowledge.
That's great and all right up until you start taking the blame for something you were never involved in. My dad has been accused of denying a loan to someone because they were black. He had never met them, it was all done over the phone. They were denied because their credit was shit. But that becomes the de facto get-out-of-jail-free card if the other guy is white.
Pretending that white people can't be the victims of racism is just as ridiculous as pretending that racism doesn't exist.
And your worry that you might somehow be viewed as racist? I honestly don't want to assuage that discomfort. I think you should feel uncomfortable, especially if you are white. Not because I dislike white people or you in particular. I just think that this discomfort is natural for someone who has the privilege of never being the victim of systemic racism and is now being confronted with the evidence that basically all the systems in our lives, from government to rpg's, is tinged with racism. I think a lot of the discomfort comes from not knowing and so I hope that it leads to you seeking out knowledge.
That's great and all right up until you start taking the blame for something you were never involved in. My dad has been accused of denying a loan to someone because they were black. He had never met them, it was all done over the phone. They were denied because their credit was shit. But that becomes the de facto get-out-of-jail-free card if the other guy is white.
Pretending that white people can't be the victims of racism is just as ridiculous as pretending that racism doesn't exist.
No one is pretending that white people can't be victims of racism, they just very, very normally are not. I'm white. I have not been discriminated against based on skin color or nationality on any occasion. You can think of one circumstance where your dad was accused of being racist, right? I can't think of any. The fact that you used an example of your parent kind of proves my point. Most black people are discriminated against a gosh ton more than any white person.
Stop minimizing the problem. This is the definition of white privilege, denying other people's problems based on your own limited experiences.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Great, the forums are malfunctioning again for me so this post will have no formatting and will be just a big block of text, sorry. Racism as we currently understand it, is a systemic oppression of people for their race. White people, as the historical architects and present day benefactors of the entrenched power systems that underlie our society cannot be the victims of racism. They can be the victims of discrimination, yes, but not the systemic oppression that constitutes racism. https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/09/can-white-people-experience-racism-12340542/
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
And your worry that you might somehow be viewed as racist? I honestly don't want to assuage that discomfort. I think you should feel uncomfortable, especially if you are white. Not because I dislike white people or you in particular. I just think that this discomfort is natural for someone who has the privilege of never being the victim of systemic racism and is now being confronted with the evidence that basically all the systems in our lives, from government to rpg's, is tinged with racism. I think a lot of the discomfort comes from not knowing and so I hope that it leads to you seeking out knowledge.
That's great and all right up until you start taking the blame for something you were never involved in. My dad has been accused of denying a loan to someone because they were black. He had never met them, it was all done over the phone. They were denied because their credit was shit. But that becomes the de facto get-out-of-jail-free card if the other guy is white.
Pretending that white people can't be the victims of racism is just as ridiculous as pretending that racism doesn't exist.
This is going a bit far afield from broaching the very basics of the topic of racism in a ttrpg, but... In the United States? No, we white people can't be the victim of systemic racism. We made the system. The inequalities are set up for our benefit. The systemic barriers are set up to oppress non-whites. Now individual white people can experience prejudice from nonwhites, but it's rare and ultimately toothless as it isn't systematic or institutionalized.
Looking at your example, there are a host of systemic, institutionalized inequalities at play that can explain why that one particular Black person had bad credit. Not saying that's your dad's fault. Right now, though, all of us should be asking ourselves if we're doing enough, given that just saying "I'm not actively part of the problem of racism" falls short compared to saying "I'm doing these actively anti-racist things."
Tying this back to the portrayal of orcs and drow, we can say "it's no big deal, I didn't make the black-skinned elves the evil ones; I didn't tie orcs to stereotypes of being savage and sub-human." But instead of saying that, it's time for more of us to examine how those things can be hurtful even without us meaning them to be because they're inexorably tied to real-world racism, injustice, and inequality. We can continue to say "it's not our fault, these depictions were like this before I ever started playing" but that's just like saying "racism isn't our fault, my family never even owned slaves." It doesn't matter that those statements are factually true because they don't contribute anything meaningful to bringing more people to the table to play or to fixing systemic inequalities. Be actively anti-racist by changing the portrayals of orcs and drow in your games just as WotC is doing in their published materials going forward.
And your worry that you might somehow be viewed as racist? I honestly don't want to assuage that discomfort. I think you should feel uncomfortable, especially if you are white. Not because I dislike white people or you in particular. I just think that this discomfort is natural for someone who has the privilege of never being the victim of systemic racism and is now being confronted with the evidence that basically all the systems in our lives, from government to rpg's, is tinged with racism. I think a lot of the discomfort comes from not knowing and so I hope that it leads to you seeking out knowledge.
That's great and all right up until you start taking the blame for something you were never involved in. My dad has been accused of denying a loan to someone because they were black. He had never met them, it was all done over the phone. They were denied because their credit was shit. But that becomes the de facto get-out-of-jail-free card if the other guy is white.
Pretending that white people can't be the victims of racism is just as ridiculous as pretending that racism doesn't exist.
I think you should feel uncomfortable, especially if you are white.
And here I was hoping we could make a world where nobody has to feel uncomfortable. Silly me. I don’t think it should matter what color anyone is on the outside. I keep hoping we’ll get to a point where skin color becomes such a nonissue that the whole darned mess becomes of interest only to historians. My mistake.
Did you even read the rest of what I wrote? Racism is forefront in the news right now BECAUSE of people being bigots against people of a certain skin color. Those of us who are not white CAN'T ignore skin color, and for you to just try to close your eyes to it and brush it under the rug is kinda gross.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
White people can suffer from discrimination, and if that discrimination is from a PoC in a position of power such as a boss or other such supervisor that is racism and that is just as wrong as if it was a white discriminating against a PoC. Racism is wrong by anyone towards anyone I was denied a promotion at a job I had due to me being white the person that got the job was a PoC and could not due the job. I then had to follow him around and correct his errors to keep my job, racism goes more then 1 way and it is wrong it is always wrong. What WotC is doing is important so sit back and enjoy it, fighting it is just not worth getting mad over we need to be better people for the future of us all.
White people can suffer from discrimination, and if that discrimination is from a PoC in a position of power such as a boss or other such supervisor that is racism and that is just as wrong as if it was a white discriminating against a PoC. Racism is wrong by anyone towards anyone I was denied a promotion at a job I had due to me being white the person that got the job was a PoC and could not due the job. I then had to follow him around and correct his errors to keep my job, racism goes more then 1 way and it is wrong it is always wrong. What WotC is doing is important so sit back and enjoy it, fighting it is just not worth getting mad over we need to be better people for the future of us all.
White people can suffer from discrimination, and if that discrimination is from a PoC in a position of power such as a boss or other such supervisor that is racism and that is just as wrong as if it was a white discriminating against a PoC. Racism is wrong by anyone towards anyone I was denied a promotion at a job I had due to me being white the person that got the job was a PoC and could not due the job. I then had to follow him around and correct his errors to keep my job, racism goes more then 1 way and it is wrong it is always wrong. What WotC is doing is important so sit back and enjoy it, fighting it is just not worth getting mad over we need to be better people for the future of us all.
Reverse racism doesn't exist.
Yes it does just remember 2 wrongs don't make a right
White people can suffer from discrimination, and if that discrimination is from a PoC in a position of power such as a boss or other such supervisor that is racism and that is just as wrong as if it was a white discriminating against a PoC. Racism is wrong by anyone towards anyone I was denied a promotion at a job I had due to me being white the person that got the job was a PoC and could not due the job. I then had to follow him around and correct his errors to keep my job, racism goes more then 1 way and it is wrong it is always wrong. What WotC is doing is important so sit back and enjoy it, fighting it is just not worth getting mad over we need to be better people for the future of us all.
Reverse racism doesn't exist.
Yes it does just remember 2 wrongs don't make a right
Do your research instead of just spouting uneducated nonsense. Reverse racism isn't a thing.
https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/09/can-white-people-experience-racism-12340542/ [br]
"If an ethnic minority person treats a white person badly because of inherent prejudice against white people, that is wrong and completely unacceptable, but the wider ramifications are likely to be less significant than if it were the other way around. If a white person treats an ethnic minority badly because of the colour of their skin, not only is it morally wrong, it can also have serious and dangerous implications for the life and prospects of that person. Prejudice against white people might make individuals feel bad, but prejudice against ethnic minorities can lead to structural, systemic and lasting disadvantages (in education, healthcare, disproportionate policing, career prospects, among other areas), and this is what makes it racism. White people would only experience racism if the existing power structures enabled prejudice against them to cause this kind of widespread negative impact – as it does for people of colour. But that’s not how society currently works."
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
White people can suffer from discrimination, and if that discrimination is from a PoC in a position of power such as a boss or other such supervisor that is racism and that is just as wrong as if it was a white discriminating against a PoC. Racism is wrong by anyone towards anyone I was denied a promotion at a job I had due to me being white the person that got the job was a PoC and could not due the job. I then had to follow him around and correct his errors to keep my job, racism goes more then 1 way and it is wrong it is always wrong. What WotC is doing is important so sit back and enjoy it, fighting it is just not worth getting mad over we need to be better people for the future of us all.
Reverse racism doesn't exist.
Yes it does just remember 2 wrongs don't make a right
Do your research instead of just spouting uneducated nonsense. Reverse racism isn't a thing.
I read that story which is exactly what it is fictional That article even mentions that it is racist but not racism the two words mean the same thing that the belief that another isn't as good as the persons own race. It is a thing and it is still wrong, equality for all means exactly that everyone being equal and that includes those of white skin. To not think that is a racist ideal and I would hope that this forum discussing this could be discussed by everyone being equal without anyone thinking they were better then anyone else.
I think it's fair to say it solved a lot of the problems facing mankind and continues to go on to solve a lot of problems facing mankind. Directly from the Enlightenment we've developed:
You know, part of my criticism of your comment was about how Eurocentric it was, but I suppose I should have been more clear about that. Geeze, this is exactly the problem of referring only to Greco-Roman philosophers as "Classics" and leaving out all the great thinkers and entire schools of thought from Asia, the Middle East, and Africa just to name a few. Western thinkers and philosophers do not have a monopoly on critical thinking and your European enlightenment period was not the origin of all social progress, thank you very much.
Where did I claim otherwise? Where did I say "Western thinkers and philosophers have a monopoly on critical thinking". In fact, what I said in my following post, while using Socrates and and Athens as an example could using Confucius and ... well, we don't exactly know when Confucius wrote his text, but we can assume that China was not a pleasant place to live for most of its history. You can take any great thinker you care to name and make exactly the same point. I was making my point for presumably a European or Secondary European audience-- hence the use of English, so I made my point with common European frames of reference.
And sort of on point, look up the meaning of Baizuo some time. Having spent some time living in some of the places you mentioned, I feel like you represent their attitudes poorly.
I dont think anyone is intentionally offensive when making a fantasy setting.
If youre offended, chances are its your own fault. Theres no fixed characteristic which determines what you can or cannot be offended by. Hence why i say: why bother. Theres no reason even attempting to be inoffensive when what is and isnt offensive varies by an individual basis.
White people can suffer from discrimination, and if that discrimination is from a PoC in a position of power such as a boss or other such supervisor that is racism and that is just as wrong as if it was a white discriminating against a PoC. Racism is wrong by anyone towards anyone I was denied a promotion at a job I had due to me being white the person that got the job was a PoC and could not due the job. I then had to follow him around and correct his errors to keep my job, racism goes more then 1 way and it is wrong it is always wrong. What WotC is doing is important so sit back and enjoy it, fighting it is just not worth getting mad over we need to be better people for the future of us all.
Reverse racism doesn't exist.
Yes it does just remember 2 wrongs don't make a right
Do your research instead of just spouting uneducated nonsense. Reverse racism isn't a thing.
I mean, no it doesn't. It's just racism. Racism is discrimination based on race (just like sexism is discrimination based on sex, ageism is discrimination based on age, etc.) Racism is not discrimination against black people from white people. If black people discriminate based on white people's skin colour, that's not "reverse racism." That's just racism. The whole "you can only be racist if you have power" nonsense are people just trying to legitimise their awful behaviour and preserve the moral highground by engineering the terms to be only apply to people they don't like.
White people can suffer from discrimination, and if that discrimination is from a PoC in a position of power such as a boss or other such supervisor that is racism and that is just as wrong as if it was a white discriminating against a PoC. Racism is wrong by anyone towards anyone I was denied a promotion at a job I had due to me being white the person that got the job was a PoC and could not due the job. I then had to follow him around and correct his errors to keep my job, racism goes more then 1 way and it is wrong it is always wrong. What WotC is doing is important so sit back and enjoy it, fighting it is just not worth getting mad over we need to be better people for the future of us all.
Reverse racism doesn't exist.
Yes it does just remember 2 wrongs don't make a right
Do your research instead of just spouting uneducated nonsense. Reverse racism isn't a thing.
no it is not. racism is the discrimination of one race against another
racism
noun
prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group
this means that any race can be racist against another. what WOtC is doing is making sure that no one feels discriminated against, however small the population. I personally dont think the problem is as big as everyone says It is.......but .......it is a problem none the less and needs to be fixed. even if only one person out of the millions who play dnd feels discriminated against (white, black or otherwise), WOtC should work to change that.
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“I will take responsibility for what I have done. [...] If must fall, I will rise each time a better man.” ― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer.
https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/09/can-white-people-experience-racism-12340542/ [br] "If an ethnic minority person treats a white person badly because of inherent prejudice against white people, that is wrong and completely unacceptable, but the wider ramifications are likely to be less significant than if it were the other way around. If a white person treats an ethnic minority badly because of the colour of their skin, not only is it morally wrong, it can also have serious and dangerous implications for the life and prospects of that person. Prejudice against white people might make individuals feel bad, but prejudice against ethnic minorities can lead to structural, systemic and lasting disadvantages (in education, healthcare, disproportionate policing, career prospects, among other areas), and this is what makes it racism. White people would only experience racism if the existing power structures enabled prejudice against them to cause this kind of widespread negative impact – as it does for people of colour. But that’s not how society currently works."
Ideological nonsense. How do we know it can't have lasting impacts against "white" people? Does it make a difference in social class? Are you saying that a socially disadvantaged white person, who experiences frequent intimidation based on their skin colour are not going to have long term adverse effects because their skin colour is a lighter shade of brown than other people?
I love how this snippet is like "It's wrong, but their suffering and pain isn't equivocal to (the rest of humanity's suffering and pain under similar forces)" And we're ignoring that in most countries, white people (Really, we mean Northern European) are ethnic minorities. You accused me of being Eurocentric like two pages ago, and yet you post things like this which conflate ethnic-minorities with Ethnic minorities in Anglo-saxon countries.
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I actually think that using racism in art as a means of teaching people about the harms of racism is laudable. That was my argument in the beginning. I have always used the implicit racism against Orcs and Drow (among other races, you should see how bad Karameikans hate Gnolls) as a BBE.
I never pick a module that runs for 12 levels and then scene drops you like a bad dom. I don’t write epic campaign arcs like that either. I am constantly presenting evil to the party in many different forms. There is a cult (not an evil cult mind) and one of the cult leaders has formed a personal grudge against the party’s Cleric. Not a religious thing, purely personal, but he still keeps sending people to kill him.
The party just broke up a local franchise of the country’s most villainous thieves’ guild, killed the members and their leader, and led to the imprisonment of the lieutenant. That will come back to them. They also just ransacked a mummy lord’s crypt, flipped it a great big metaphorical bird, and escaped leaving the mummy alive.... None of that has anything to do with the adventure they were already on.
They also fought some goblin bandits. The goblins didn’t attack because they were evil, they literally opened with “gold or steel?” A typical highwayperson’s “your money or your life” statement. It was originally just a robbery. When next they meet goblins on the road they will just be simple hunters out looking for a boar. It is intended to be a social encounter for them. The hunters might even have clues for them. They also recently killed an Ogre who wanted to eat them. People are already warning them about the Ogre’s brothers. On top of all of that, there is a culture embroiled in various kinds of racism. And they only just hit level 4.
Whichever themes they choose to pursue, that determines the next BBE. If they want to combat the thieves, then the hooks are already there. If they want to fight the cult leader ******bag, then he will be the BBE. If they want to combat racism, then that will become the BBE. It’s all up to them.
Art teaches us about our world. It is less capable of doing that if it doesn’t represent our world. My games will not change. I will continue to present systemic racism as a potential BBE for the party to fight. Actually, I wrote a 6,000 prehistory to the settings 5,000 year history just to have a fantastic reveal for parties who choose racism as their BBE. In fact, I wrote a planetwide geas into the world’s cosmology for it.
But now I feel like I have to change over 25 years worth of setting development that I have done or I will be accused of being a racist because I don’t use the changes. The way I treat alignment is less as an absolute, and more of a “reputation” or “societies expectations” of the race. That is what the average person (person, not human) on the street thinks of them. So I have to not use it to make the point relevant, or I use the new changes, and then the impact of the reveals is lost on the audience. It’s the expectation the leads to the impact of the revelation.
So here I am doing what I can to present racism as a thing to overcome for almost 30 years. How many people in this thread have already not-so-vaguely accused me of racism? I cannot win for loosing, its like my dice luck is rubbing off on my real life. 🤷♂️
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Umm, well yes, but ... this is something that big bucks writers and directors and artists try to do every once in awhile and they mess it up a lot. It's not necessarily something that's easy to do or something to be casually attempted. Easier perhaps if you know your audience, in this case your gaming group, very well. But I still applaud WOTC for doing what they can to listen to the feedback of their players who have felt, at various times, singled out and harmed by the use of language in the games they love. Gaming is a somewhat intimate act, you know.
And your worry that you might somehow be viewed as racist? I honestly don't want to assuage that discomfort. I think you should feel uncomfortable, especially if you are white. Not because I dislike white people or you in particular. I just think that this discomfort is natural for someone who has the privilege of never being the victim of systemic racism and is now being confronted with the evidence that basically all the systems in our lives, from government to rpg's, is tinged with racism. I think a lot of the discomfort comes from not knowing and so I hope that it leads to you seeking out knowledge.
Sigh ... I'm reaching the limit of my current emotional energy for this so I think I will just have to provide a link: https://bthechange.com/4-steps-we-can-take-as-white-people-to-fight-racism-a582e826eb92
Oh yeah, also did you see my point where Wizards did say they were going to take "all peoples" in this direction and not just orcs and drow? Honestly why are you objecting to this? How is this not a good thing for Wizards to do?
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I'm not going to say you can't give your players the choice between fighting in-game racism and fighting an actual villain. It's just that I don't know many players who want to sit down and play a scintillating game of struggling against systematic racism. I certainly don't. I'm not saying no one would, but now? Today? With *gesticulates wildly* all this going on? I get depressed enough thinking about what else I could be doing to combat real-world racism. I don't want to get a few hours away from thinking about that for an afternoon with friends and family around the table just to have to sort out hundreds of years of injustice between two different kinds of elves.
That's great and all right up until you start taking the blame for something you were never involved in. My dad has been accused of denying a loan to someone because they were black. He had never met them, it was all done over the phone. They were denied because their credit was shit. But that becomes the de facto get-out-of-jail-free card if the other guy is white.
Pretending that white people can't be the victims of racism is just as ridiculous as pretending that racism doesn't exist.
No one is pretending that white people can't be victims of racism, they just very, very normally are not. I'm white. I have not been discriminated against based on skin color or nationality on any occasion. You can think of one circumstance where your dad was accused of being racist, right? I can't think of any. The fact that you used an example of your parent kind of proves my point. Most black people are discriminated against a gosh ton more than any white person.
Stop minimizing the problem. This is the definition of white privilege, denying other people's problems based on your own limited experiences.
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Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
This is going a bit far afield from broaching the very basics of the topic of racism in a ttrpg, but... In the United States? No, we white people can't be the victim of systemic racism. We made the system. The inequalities are set up for our benefit. The systemic barriers are set up to oppress non-whites. Now individual white people can experience prejudice from nonwhites, but it's rare and ultimately toothless as it isn't systematic or institutionalized.
Looking at your example, there are a host of systemic, institutionalized inequalities at play that can explain why that one particular Black person had bad credit. Not saying that's your dad's fault. Right now, though, all of us should be asking ourselves if we're doing enough, given that just saying "I'm not actively part of the problem of racism" falls short compared to saying "I'm doing these actively anti-racist things."
Tying this back to the portrayal of orcs and drow, we can say "it's no big deal, I didn't make the black-skinned elves the evil ones; I didn't tie orcs to stereotypes of being savage and sub-human." But instead of saying that, it's time for more of us to examine how those things can be hurtful even without us meaning them to be because they're inexorably tied to real-world racism, injustice, and inequality. We can continue to say "it's not our fault, these depictions were like this before I ever started playing" but that's just like saying "racism isn't our fault, my family never even owned slaves." It doesn't matter that those statements are factually true because they don't contribute anything meaningful to bringing more people to the table to play or to fixing systemic inequalities. Be actively anti-racist by changing the portrayals of orcs and drow in your games just as WotC is doing in their published materials going forward.
Reverse racism doesn't exist.
Did you even read the rest of what I wrote? Racism is forefront in the news right now BECAUSE of people being bigots against people of a certain skin color. Those of us who are not white CAN'T ignore skin color, and for you to just try to close your eyes to it and brush it under the rug is kinda gross.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
White people can suffer from discrimination, and if that discrimination is from a PoC in a position of power such as a boss or other such supervisor that is racism and that is just as wrong as if it was a white discriminating against a PoC. Racism is wrong by anyone towards anyone I was denied a promotion at a job I had due to me being white the person that got the job was a PoC and could not due the job. I then had to follow him around and correct his errors to keep my job, racism goes more then 1 way and it is wrong it is always wrong. What WotC is doing is important so sit back and enjoy it, fighting it is just not worth getting mad over we need to be better people for the future of us all.
Reverse racism doesn't exist.
Yes it does just remember 2 wrongs don't make a right
Do your research instead of just spouting uneducated nonsense. Reverse racism isn't a thing.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I read that story which is exactly what it is fictional That article even mentions that it is racist but not racism the two words mean the same thing that the belief that another isn't as good as the persons own race. It is a thing and it is still wrong, equality for all means exactly that everyone being equal and that includes those of white skin. To not think that is a racist ideal and I would hope that this forum discussing this could be discussed by everyone being equal without anyone thinking they were better then anyone else.
Where did I claim otherwise? Where did I say "Western thinkers and philosophers have a monopoly on critical thinking". In fact, what I said in my following post, while using Socrates and and Athens as an example could using Confucius and ... well, we don't exactly know when Confucius wrote his text, but we can assume that China was not a pleasant place to live for most of its history. You can take any great thinker you care to name and make exactly the same point. I was making my point for presumably a European or Secondary European audience-- hence the use of English, so I made my point with common European frames of reference.
And sort of on point, look up the meaning of Baizuo some time. Having spent some time living in some of the places you mentioned, I feel like you represent their attitudes poorly.
I dont think anyone is intentionally offensive when making a fantasy setting.
If youre offended, chances are its your own fault. Theres no fixed characteristic which determines what you can or cannot be offended by.
Hence why i say: why bother. Theres no reason even attempting to be inoffensive when what is and isnt offensive varies by an individual basis.
I mean, no it doesn't. It's just racism. Racism is discrimination based on race (just like sexism is discrimination based on sex, ageism is discrimination based on age, etc.) Racism is not discrimination against black people from white people. If black people discriminate based on white people's skin colour, that's not "reverse racism." That's just racism. The whole "you can only be racist if you have power" nonsense are people just trying to legitimise their awful behaviour and preserve the moral highground by engineering the terms to be only apply to people they don't like.
no it is not. racism is the discrimination of one race against another
racism
this means that any race can be racist against another. what WOtC is doing is making sure that no one feels discriminated against, however small the population. I personally dont think the problem is as big as everyone says It is.......but .......it is a problem none the less and needs to be fixed. even if only one person out of the millions who play dnd feels discriminated against (white, black or otherwise), WOtC should work to change that.
“I will take responsibility for what I have done. [...] If must fall, I will rise each time a better man.” ― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer.
Ideological nonsense. How do we know it can't have lasting impacts against "white" people? Does it make a difference in social class? Are you saying that a socially disadvantaged white person, who experiences frequent intimidation based on their skin colour are not going to have long term adverse effects because their skin colour is a lighter shade of brown than other people?
I love how this snippet is like "It's wrong, but their suffering and pain isn't equivocal to (the rest of humanity's suffering and pain under similar forces)" And we're ignoring that in most countries, white people (Really, we mean Northern European) are ethnic minorities. You accused me of being Eurocentric like two pages ago, and yet you post things like this which conflate ethnic-minorities with Ethnic minorities in Anglo-saxon countries.