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(ARTICLE) Racism In D&D (www.polygon.com)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I dislike this article. It's a little old now, but there are several things blisteringly wrong with this idea at its heart.

Purely for example, if you read a book on dragonflies and take offence because you see racial similarities between whatever race a person is and dragonflies, that's an issue with you, not the source. You are relying on your opinion on what the source says. Since opinion varies per person, you should not dictate policy based on opinion. It's an insurmountable hill to cater to whatever opinions are since opinion will always change - it's an unsound basis for any form of logic.

Let's do a thought experiment:

If a trailer-dwelling white person in the USA reads about the Vistani, and takes offence because they also live in a trailer, sees that as a negative, and assumes the Vistani are a potshot at him, is he right to be offended and call for a ban?

If a nimble Canadian POC (which is also a terrible term as it literally applies to everyone on the planet) reads about Elves and assumes they're talking about him because he also happens to know how to use a bow and is skinny with a lithe frame, is he correct in calling for a ban? What if he sees being nimble as a negative for some reason (because positive / negative characteristics are opinions and what people see as negative is not objective)? What if he sees it as being racist by saying the source is calling ALL Elves nimble and therefore good at sports? "But they stereotypically have a different skin colour!" I hear you saying. So do Orcs. That argument applies here and if you can't square that circle, then the logic falls apart utterly.

Personal identification with aspects of characters in a source material are not cause for alteration. You are an individual; you are not a group. Grouping people into camps based on visible traits or histories is a disgusting habit.

Treat people as individuals and racism dies. Treat people as groups and call out the differences constantly and you'll have people fencing themselves in while calling themselves inclusive.

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[–] steakmeout 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Treat people as individuals and racism dies?

Not sure about your reality but in this one I constantly treat people as individuals and racism is thriving.

Your response is reductive, intellectually bankrupt and reeks of privilege.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

So with you treating others as individuals, are you stating that you frequently still have racist thoughts and ideas then? Or perhaps are those groups still expressing racist ideas treating the groups they oppose as a group and not individuals?

In my main response to the article, I was referring (I thought quite clearly) to those ideas in produced media and on a global scale such as D&D.

For a functional proof, see how media historically treated the Irish or the Polish. Racism against those two groups is mostly dead because it became essentially ignored. Although I'm sure you can find some minor modern examples, it's more of a cultural oddity than a problem at this stage. Are you able to articulate why this occurred (as well as other examples through history) so that it tracks with what you've stated above?

Individualism is the only viable solution to racism that I have ever seen. Every other solution I have seen proposed doesn't deal with the reality of the world, and instead relies on how we wish things were and discards other opinions as invalid, but keeps our opinion as true (which is deeply condescending). Instead, ALL opinion is invalid for requiring change. It's the only viable way to find things objectively true and progress things in a logical fashion.

I am not proud of my background, it's simply how I arrived here. It's part of me, but does not in any way define me. I do not celebrate it, but I acknowledge it. If you think I should behave in any way because of a perceived group membership, you are wrong. I am an individual and so is everyone else.

We can not, however, force people to only think good things about the groups they may see us as belonging to. That is not an achievable or enforceable goal. The realistic way this horrible thinking dies is simply... removing any presupposition entirely.

It's the same with many partisan political issues, and it's the reason they won't be solved until looked at with a utilitarian lens; again, opinion causes strife and knowledge defeats opinion.

Do you have a functional example of why you would be correct and why my way would be worse?

[–] fathog 10 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I get where you’re coming from on this, but I disagree completely. The communities touched on in this article have been discriminated against for centuries, and while I never picked up on it, they have a point. “Dark skin = evil” is not good, and although it’s a fantasy universe, we can’t ignore the parallels between that and our depressing reality.

Same goes for orcs and dreads, if not more - hell, orcs are so similar to a racist caricature of a black person it’s borderline wild. (See “we was kangz” and the rest of the nazi/channer playbook as an example.) I think stripping orcs of any connection to a group that has historically been considered dumber & stronger is objectively good.

I also personally think it’s quite distasteful to tell someone “this isn’t racist” if they’re offended by it, but that might be a different subject. I do think it’s worth noting, since I’m pretty sure this site is 99% white, that we don’t really have the relevant contextual experience to address subjects like this. (said by someone who’s skin is whiter than mayo)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Fortunately i haven't played dnd in years, not since i got into good games, but that does mean i don't remember much and could be getting this mixed up better things, so take it with a grain of salt.

Darkness (as in the lack of light) has always been associated with evil and the underdark exists to be a place with no light, and with that in mind the creatures of the underdark more closely resemble deep sea fish than just associating dark skin with evil. The duerger for instance were just as evil but with ashy pale skin instead (only thing we're missing is a translucent race), the color of the drow alone is an incredible stretch.

For the orcs; they don't act like black people? At all? They act more like vikings with maybe a bit of Genghis Khan thrown in, and dreads (a hair style that arouse independently all over the world) alone aren't enough to make that connection.

People can be offended over literally anything, but that doesn't mean literally anything is offensive. We don't need to indulge someone if they are coming up with nonsense reasons to be upset.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Darkness (as in the lack of light) has always been associated with evil [...]

Darkness, yes, is typically associated with our instinctive fear of the night. Black, however, you may note, is not the night. The night is black. The colour black is associated with all kinds of things in all kinds of cultures around the world (oft-contradictory) and with many things in western cultures alone.

"Black has a wide range of associations. It can be linked with death, mourning, evil magic, and darkness, but it can also symbolize elegance, wealth, restraint, and power."

So black specifically (as opposed to being blinded by insufficient illumination) has not "always been associated with evil" ... even in western cultures. In other cultures it gets even more unexpected. Black is, among its many meanings, the colour of mourning in the west; white is in China. Black is the colour of authority or professionalism in China; it's literally the colour of heaven and of water. In the medieval west it's the colour of the Devil and Hell.

[–] fathog 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

I want to preface this by saying that I really shouldn’t be the one making this argument. See the disclaimer at the end of this previous comment. It’s a super tricky subject and I have neither the experience nor education to make my point properly. i’m gonna make the argument anyway though lol

For the drow, I’d like to point at the banger dungeons and dragons Community episode that they felt pressured to take down due to Chang doing blackface. I feel like that says enough. I don’t think the original creators meant to draw a parallel to dark skinned people with the drow, but it is what it is, and again - “dark elves = evil elves” is not good on its face. If the drow truly resemble fish (I’m not huge on DnD myself, have done one online campaign) then it’s way less bad, but in my experience the popular depiction is basically a black elf. (Why do the drow have dark skin if they live underground? That’s like the opposite of how that happens - translucent makes much more sense.)

As for the orcs - how would you say “black people act”? That’s a tough argument to maintain without quickly devolving into stereotypes. Historically, pseudoscience has been used to justify slavery and other mistreatment of black people for centuries, and the majority of that pseudoscience is “showing” that black people are both naturally stronger and dumber than white people. “Savages” was also a commonly used term - sound familiar? While this doesn’t make a direct correlation to orcs, who are both naturally stronger and dumber than humans, the dreads make it a bit iffy. And although dreads can be found all over the world, DnD was created by two white guys in America, so we really can’t ignore the context with regards to subconscious racism.

I understand your point about taking offense, but given the points I’ve made, I think calling this a “nonsense reason” to be upset is dismissive at best. If people truly take issue with the subtle racism embedded in this game, it should be changed - especially since the stereotype for nerds already has a lot of overlap with being racist. I, for one, would like to tell people i play games without them making jokes about me dropping the “gamer word”. Given that a lot of historically mistreated communities are just now getting a louder voice, change like this will come, and the best we can do is let it happen, even if we don’t quite get why it needs to be changed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Been playing since I was 13, so just for reference, I've never seen a Drow that looked like a fish. They're basically just purple-grey or black-skinned Elves with white hair. They are often portrayed as in shape, and extremely attractive. They are matriarchal and were considered "evil" because of their worship of Lolth.

(More info: Even Yveette Nicole Brown doesn't agree with the decision to pull that episode of Community.)

I don't think I've seen any traits associated with them that are also associated by racists to be "like black people" other than the use of the word "black." I'd also state that they are black in such a way that humans are not. There is no trace of brown in their skin and never has been in any official material I've ever seen.

Good and evil for alignment was usually associated with the place the characters come from, at least in every campaign I ever ran or participated in. I had Lawful Good Barbarian who murdered and pillaged villages because that's what Good was to him. It's relative. I said it elsewhere, but I ran a campaign with all players playing Drow where all were Lawful Good because they were deemed so by Drow societal laws. It was fun and put everyone in an odd headspace for that game.

[–] fathog 2 points 9 months ago

Damn bro I just typed out like 1000 words for the other comment! Appreciate you giving me more excuses to procrastinate work ;)

I don’t necessarily think that Drows are racist by default, but again, black skin = evil is iffy. That’s all I’m saying. If people are actually bothered, it should be changed. (Orcs are the ones with the parallels to racist stereotypes, and to me, a significantly larger offender.)

Also, I don’t agree with the removal of the DnD episode. I haven’t seen a single person actually argue for the removal - it was basically pearl clutching from NBC execs, as far as I know. But the fact that blackface was used to represent an “evil” race does more or less make my point for me.

This entire discussion is about surface level characteristics of these fantasy races, (at least from my perspective), and the beauty of DnD is that you can run and change whatever you’d like in a campaign. But I maintain that by default, the lore should attempt to separate itself from harmful stereotypes that are endemic in American culture.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I don't mean they have the innsmouth look (which is a racist reference actually), i mean they have the same adaptation to darkness that many deep sea fish do (they aren't all pale or translucent, and I'd like to point out that other evil underdark races are incredibly pale too).

As for orcs, yes I'm referring to stereotypes because that's what people are accusing them of being. They match the very broad thing that every racist tries to apply to every race, because they were an evil species, but if you pick the brain of a racist you'll hear things that absolutely don't match dnd orcs. As for dreads, and I'd like to stress I'm only bringing this up because it was a point often brought up when this nontroversy was popular, they were independently developed across europe and asia.

If anything, the real racism was simply excluding other cultures entirely.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I appreciate your reply, and I've responded to the potential racism elsewhere in this thread and don't simply want to tread old ground, so I'll go on a bit of a tangent about the comfort and lack of offence of the players.

From a psychological standpoint, humans are worse-off being comfortable all the time - doubly so in fantasy. There is no positive benefit. Immersion, confrontation, and understanding are more important (there are scads of journal articles about how it actually makes things worse mentally) than trying to enforce that everyone never offends anyone. Because offence is an opinion. Anyone can choose to be offended by quite literally anything, and if literally everything can potentially be offensive, then nothing is.

Think about the inverse though - if you can not be offended by anything, you've taken a massive amount of power away from racists. You've taken their largest weapon and completely disarmed them. If you do the opposite of the above however, you've handed them taboos they can instantly and easily use on you. You figuratively load their clip for them, point it at someone they hate, and ask them politely not to use it.

All WotC has succeeded in doing is stripping the lore from one of an infinite number of world backgrounds and given time-strapped people fewer easy bases for their own campaigns. Congrats to them I guess? They can be lazier in the name of understanding while accomplishing next to nothing positive, but hey, at least players won't have to challenge themselves or their biases.

Are you able to articulate a functional benefit to the players from them removing scads of lore?

[–] fathog 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Hm. With all due respect, saying that racism can be defeated via not being offended by it is completely absurd. MLK was so goddamn offended he changed the country. (Then the FBI killed him for being so offended.) When George Floyd was choked out by a pig, America was offended, and we saw (surface level) change. When Eric Garner was choked out by a pig, way less people were offended, and we saw no change. Racist people aren’t racist due to an expected reaction - they’re racist due to inherent immoral beliefs.

While fantasy does not necessarily need to be nice and cozy, having someone deal with similar negative shit they deal with in real life while playing a game is not good. In the campaign I played, one of the players mentioned at the start that they didn’t want any discussion or actions related to sexual assault. Should that request be ignored, since they need to be put in a less comfortable position? Of course not. If you’re dealing with subtle racism throughout your life, you should be able to escape it when you’re engaging in fantasy, should one choose. At the very least, vaguely racist archetypes should not be the default. And while the article you linked makes the point that triggering material does not make PTSD worse, it says nothing towards the inverse - so if it doesn’t help, why make people feel shitty at all?

In my opinion, if there’s a player out there who was made uncomfortable due to the depiction of Orcs and/or Drow, who isn’t after these changes, it’s worth it. These changes make the game more inclusive, which is a net win, and given the staying power of DnD, these changes will not feel like a big deal in 50 years. (Plus, I’d have to imagine they’d rewrite the lore, not just throw it out, no?)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

(For reference, I ask questions at the end of many sections to give you easy things to change my view with and thus counter me, not to be leading or an asshole)

You seem to be confusing the offence for what changed things. Large-scale action changed things in the scenarios you described. Offence may have helped trigger the actions, but did nothing in and of itself. If I hate the colour pink and I see you wear a pink shirt, is my offence going to help change things? No, it's just mindless complaining. Action will change things.

Offence without action is worthless, however action without offence can still very much change things.

Offence is one ingredient of a MUCH larger recipe, but it accomplishes little by itself. Offence is personal. As such, it's no more effective at dictating what the public should do that your personal religious beliefs.

Are you able to show cases where offence without action caused major change? Are you able to articulate why personal offence would be a positive thing to dictate policy with?

having someone deal with similar negative shit they deal with in real life while playing a game is not good

Objectively, yes, it absolutely can be. There's a reason that one of the most effective forms of therapy is Exposure and Response Prevention. It helps combat all sorts of phobias, anxieties, OCD, and prejudices. My wife is a therapist and uses it often to help clients.

Using it in a semi-gamified setting is valuable and they've been using it in full-VR environments to great effect lately with MASSIVE help towards phobias. I would even argue that people removing themselves from things that make them uncomfortable is one of the major contributors to the mess we find ourselves in now where anxiety is at an all-time high and everyone has scads of self-diagnosed issues.

That being said, would I bring sexual assault out at my table if a player has requested I don't? No, because that would be a dick move.

But also, would I bring a bunch of players together who wanted to play a full 1-20 campaign and let someone with agoraphobia dictate that the party and storyline stay strictly indoors the entire time? Also no. Putting yourself into a scenario and limiting everyone else because of your personal issues is also a dick move, especially when all aspects of it from villains to victims are imaginary to begin with.

Are you able to show that people are psychologically better off avoiding things?

[–] fathog 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Sorry mate, wasn’t trying to be an asshole or leading - I think I’ve got a vaguely combative tone by default, which when combined with years of horrid alien site usage has altered my tone quite a bit. I do stand by everything I said, however.

Racism isn’t relevant to what you’re saying here, or the article. It’s an issue that the majority of non-white Americans still face, and is a sad daily reality for a lot of our fellow countrymen. It’s not trauma, but a constant, and sometimes systemic, mistreatment. If someone isn’t bothered by racism, they’re still affected by it via historical practices such as redlining, segregation, voting laws, medical mistreatment, employment discrimination, micro aggressions, etc. I think comparing taking offense to stereotypical depictions that have historical context to a phobia is a very flawed argument to make.

The very act of taking offense is an action, and in my opinion, is much more effective when dealing with discrimination. I have a friend who used to make quite off color trans jokes - I ignored it for a while, because I personally was not bothered, but eventually brought up how offensive he was being. He stopped making those jokes, and educated himself. If I continued not taking offense, he’d likely still be making those jokes, and would be a worse person because of it.

I think the argument about anxiety being at an all time high merits another discussion entirely - off the top, I’d argue that the economy and state of the world plays a much larger part than ignoring triggers. (And as someone with a few menty B’s in my past, I’m not sure how I feel about the “scads of self-diagnosed illnesses” comment.) That being said, exposure therapy is just that - therapy. People play games to relax and feel comfortable, not necessarily deal with defeating trauma. From my knowledge, exposure therapy is significantly less effective without someone to guide you through it. But again, see above as to why this comparison is not, in my opinion, valid when it comes to the original conversation.

For your last question, yes. My ex was sexually assaulted multiple times, and told me about it in graphic detail. I can absolutely attest that my day is fucked up when I read horrid recollections of similar things, or even watch media that depicts sexual assault. I don’t need therapy for the trauma that was passed to me, because it’s not mine - when I hear accounts, I’m filled with rage and sadness at the state of the world. Until our society fundamentally changes, this rage will not go away - and I think it’s good that I’m angry about that. I’m absolutely better off just not engaging with that kind of material in my day to day, and especially when I’m trying to relax and play some DnD.

Now, I’m not saying it’s healthy for someone with their own trauma to avoid it entirely. I am absolutely an advocate for exposure therapy, and have seen it work wonders for the aforementioned ex. But people with that kind of trauma should be able to pick and choose when they interact with it, and again, it should not be the default in what is supposed to be an accessible game.

(Edit: I’d also like to point out that the original offense taken to Orcs and Drow has caused us to have this conversation, which I think in itself is a productive consequence.)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Not a problem! I can understand why you feel the way you do. I also can argue forcefully and it puts people off.

These are always my favourite conversations on here. We both say our piece and shake hands and be done with it. This is why I made this Community in the first place.

I think these Actual Conversations (TM) are legitimately important to remember in these polarized times that just because someone disagrees, doesn't mean they're an irredeemable and uneducated asshole. Sometimes two well-spoken people just disagree and that's okay.

I appreciate you engaging with me on this!

[–] fathog 2 points 9 months ago

Cheers :)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

You can criticize a lot about the writing of dnd, but this was a very stupid controversy. The orc and drow things were especially stupid, it takes more than dreads or purple skin to invoke the racist caricature that people accused wizards of.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I thought the reason people had issues with the drow was due to the parallels between their origin and a specific interpretation of the biblical Curse of Ham.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Did they? That's odd. Gygax said they were intended to be trolls as even the name "Drow" is a Scottish word for the same.

The Drow are grey-purple (or pitch black if you're talking about the originals) and their entire lore is completely different. I don't really see that parallels at all. Other than skin colour mentioned, what does that have to do with the Curse of Ham?

(An aside: I ran a campaign with all players playing Drow where all were Lawful Good because they were deemed so by Drow societal laws. It was fun and put everyone in an odd headspace for that game.)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The issue for a lot of this isn't that people just happen to see something that wasn't there, but that the source material was specifically written to be analogous to some stereotypes.

I was working in a game store when Curse of Strahd came out, and there was a guy who was probably in his 60 who was almost to the point of yelling because he wanted the real one, with "drunk dirty gypsies". It was wild to me that so many nerds were more openly vile than the guys at my previous construction job.

If a nimble Canadian POC (whole paragraph)

But if an indigenous person sees a race with the collective harmful stereotypes of "red-skinned plains/forest people, who run around scalping people, being drunk, can't be trusted, and just refuse the help of the good humans who just want to help them," they can and should find that offensive. The issue with the D&D races, is they were often written by a white guy in the 1970's, who was trying to grab at tropes that the people around him would know, in order to have a sense of familiarity baked into the game world.

The issue isn't something like "all elves are nimble because of their genetics", it's that a lot of the races have morality built in from birth that cannot be changed. So not only are some of the races drawn to look like stereotypes of certain races and given stereotypical behaviours/proficiencies as that same race as a group, but they are written to all be evil, existing only to be killed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I agree that the source material was to have some negative actions carried out by NPC races, but I disagree that they were intended to be analogous to real world racial stereotypes. I think they were intended to be well-trod archetypes assigned to random fantasy groups, not real-world racial stand-ins (with the potential exception of the Vistani, but I would argue that the Romani aren't a "race" and are more defined by their self-grouping than anything else - it's not like you could point one out in a diverse crowd of people).

If you're making enemies for a game you're creating, you're going to want to give them "bad" traits. Greedy, destructive, thieving, conniving, power-mad... Doesn't matter as long as they are things considered near-universally bad.

At some point in history, nearly every "bad" trait you could name has been associated with a race by someone being racist. I think we agree on this point.

This relates to D&D because there was (for the most part) no real-world racial intent originally, only intent that people read into because they had internalized racist thoughts about groups they belonged to and then assumed the author did as well.

That's why my examples above are what they are. If someone perceives negative racial intent where there is none, it is irrelevant. As a DM, since day one, you are also given the power to make any race or character into whatever you wish. Want to make bright white drow that are super good and live inside the sun? Go hard. It's not baked in to the game.

Originally, the only thing that these tropes for these fantasy races apply to is ONE group in ONE planet in ONE plane. Don't use that plane. Problem solved. They were there to give you a place to start with some interesting lore and that's all. You were never limited to this.