Cultural Appropriation in role-playing games (draft)

[Celebrim]

Again, I disagree with you Celebrim, but you are giving the most interesting argument I've heard in ages.

Well, that's probably the nicest compliment I've been paid since someone told me that arguing with me was like taking a 2x4 to the face.

I hope though that it doesn't quite feel like that in this case.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Just to step in here...

I find it to be an accurate paraphrase of what I saw on the page. You're making an argument, and you are not interested in or willing to discuss the logical validity of that argument?

A charitable reading of his comment would be that he doesn't want to go down the path of increasingly minute point making about who's fallacy is bigger.

That's pretty much what I'm doing - publicly noting the logical (and some of the communications) issues with your position.

Actually... I didn't say anything when you first made the fallacy argument because I was hoping it would just go away, but you misused both the Tone Argument fallacy and the Appeal to Emotion fallacy. You misused the Tone Argument fallacy because, for it to be an actual informal fallacy, the comment on tone needs to be used as a stand in for arguments against. In other words, you substitute a comment on tone instead of addressing the argument. What actually happened was the bedrock commented that he thought your combative tone wasn't helpful, and then went on to directly address your points. In that context, his comment on your tone wasn't a fallacious argument because it wasn't being used in place of an argument -- it was being used to comment on how he felt about your tone.

The appeal to emotion fallacy (specifically appeal to fear) might still be valid if the arguer uses it to dispute the validity of the theory. Instead, I see them discussing it's actual use. You made the argument that the comments on usage applied to the idea, but that wasn't actually presented. They may still do that, or I may not recall an instance where they did, but I think the jury is still out on this one.

The *number* of points you raise is not really relevant. A ton of weak arguments sums up to a weak argument.

In closing, this is actually a formal fallacy -- the fallacy of composition. That states that you cannot impute the traits of the individual points in a group to the entire group. In this case, many weak points may indeed lead to a strong argument, and unless and until you address that, you can't categorically state that a ton of weak arguments sums to a weak argument without committing the fallacy.

All of this is to show that perhaps bedrockgames was wise to not want to litigate fallacies. I'm quite sure that you'd disagree with my points here on your fallacies or misuse of them (although I stand by them with my long practice of using them in debates), but that just leads down the rabbit hole. I'll freely agree that I'm entirely wrong about all of this, and just a victim of internet vapors, if you'll not start a fallacy war and just address the arguments (which I don't think are weak).

 

[S'mon]

Yes. But, what would you prefer? That we *ignore* that we might be hurting someone?

I'd say it was a balance of interests. Claiming hurt shouldn't be an absolute trump card. I remember talking with a Saami legal representative about this. He didn't want people in
London wearing Saami dress or selling Saami dolls. I don't think that's reasonable,
whatever hurt he claims. His claim that (non-Saami) Finnish tour guides in Lapland shouldn't wear Saami dress seemed somewhat more reasonable.

Totem animals - lots of cultures have totem animals, just because yours happens to do so does
not give you a monopoly on the concept, and other representations of totem animals should not have to conform to your own culture's ideas.

 

[Celebrim]

I doubt that me trying to write from the point of view of a minority character is going to be as accurate or authentic as a person in that minority group doing so.

Perhaps. It depends on if you feel there is a such a thing as an essential minority experience. What you probably can't do if you are a white person from rural Minnesota is write with the immediatecy and depth of experience about a black character from Brooklyn as you could if you really were a black person from Brooklyn. There might indeed be shared experiences and voice you'd have being a minority in Brooklyn that weren't immediately obvious to someone who was from rural Minnesota. Your voice wouldn't be authentic because it wasn't. But notice how very different this claim is than the one I'm supposed to make.

1) It doesn't claim that there is an essential common "black" experience. It doesn't put an entire group of people in a single box which quite notably, we get to put the label on and decide what is "authentic" (or if not us, then the racial spokesperson we appoint). The ultimate end of that sort of thinking is to say that black criminals are authentic real blacks, but a black entrepreneur or a black suburbanite gamer nerd is not an authentic blacks. And you do hear lots of racists saying that, from the cultural studies professors that claim that those aren't authentic voices, the political pundits that call black politicians 'Uncle Toms' and 'House Slaves' if their beliefs don't conform to what they consider 'authentic' black beliefs, to the kids that would pass my table in high school and sneer at my friends for being 'oreos' and trying to be 'too white' as if it wasn't authentic for a black person to love books, do their homework, try to stay out of trouble, and generally be anything but a criminal.
2) It's not an absolute claim. I'm not claiming a writer can't imagine lives other than their own nor discouraging people to try.
3) It's not a racist claim. I'm not claiming that the reason a person can't write authentically about another person is skin color. The writer from rural Minnesota would have just as hard of a time writing in an authentic voice about authentic experiences of anyone from Brooklyn regardless of face. The black writer in Brooklyn likewise might well have a hard time speaking in the voice of a black family living in rural Minnesota. Indeed, we might expect that the writer in rural Minnesota could conceive either from personal experience or extrapolation better what that situation might be like and how his community would react - positively or negatively I can't imagine because I didn't grow up in rural Minnesota.
4) It's not a double standard: Did you notice how this point is only raised in one direction? Whenever it comes up, it's invariably about the inability of white people to write minority characters. But the same standard being raised doesn't claim that black people can't write authentic white characters. That standard says that privilege (a word twisted often so badly to Newspeak style mean its opposite) prevents whites from speaking of minorities, but minorities can speak of whites authentically. That double standard isn't the only reason that the idea promotes hatred - I mean it's racism, so it tends to promote hatred period - but it's a big part of it.

Granted if I am a racist who uses that characterization to present them negatively or if I am just grossly insensitive, that warrants criticism.

I half agree, but you really have to be careful there. Because when you remove tolerance and understanding from the equation here, the way that tends to be interpreted - and the way it is continually interpreted in our present society - is that it is ok to portray "minorities" if you portray them in a completely positive fashion. And what that tends to mean is that it's only ok to portray minorities as fully positive characters without significant flaws because to show a minority character as flawed is racist. Likewise what it tends to mean is that if you are doing comedy of some sort, the person doing the broad comedy has to be a white male. But I put it to you that this isn't exactly a big step forward. What it tends to mean is that we've gone from a society where in situation comedy, the broad comedy is done by a bimbo character ("I Love Lucy" being an interesting example on several levels) to a situation where every situation comedy has a 'himbo' father figure. We aren't actually attacking stereotypes or creating more real characters. We are just creating new stereotypes. That's not progress. And even wholly positive stereotypes can be damaging, because they create the impression not only of falsehood, but that any person of that race that doesn't live up to high standard has something wrong and threatening about them. You tend to end up in a situation where a person without a lot of multiracial experience who sees anyone that doesn't look like a Huxtable thinks that they must be a dangerous thug or in some other way anti-social.

You mention Kipling later, a writer that tends to send the cultural studies people into fits because he decidedly doesn't create singularly positive romantic views of other groups nor condemn his own group as uniformly devils. But close reading of the guy shows he's a lot more subversive than people used to only seeing "minorities" (as if Hindu's in India were a minority group) presented in entirely flattering ways. He's actually repeatedly attacking the assumptions of his own culture. His heroes tend to sit astride both worlds - Kim across England and India or Mowgli between civilization and the jungle or Sir Purun Das between Western and Eastern philosophy - and ultimately not only do they tend to choose to forsake Englishness, but Kipling vindicates them for it as choosing the better part. He's often explicitly attacking the values and even political policies of his own nation. He deserves a nuanced reading. But he doesn't get one because he's decidedly not 'politically correct'. He doesn't uniformly condemn England. He doesn't uniformly praise India.

My other worry here is it feels like we are creating this gulf where we can't ever truly know each other.

The whole theory proceeds from the idea that there is this gulf where we can't ever truly know each other. That's one of its bedrock beliefs. No one can "walk a mile in another's shoes". No one can empathize enough to understand. No one has common experience. No one can speak to another's situation. All you can do is confess your inability to know and understand and shut up (and take direction from the self-appointed "authentic" voices). Separating and dividing is what it is all about. It's the same group of idiots - black and white - that were always insulting my friends for being "oreos" or "zebras" because they were trying to be "white" (whatever the hell that means) promoting this damnable idea.

Another concern I have is, this seems to really kind of be about sophistication.

No. No. No. Just no. I mean it is a sophistication, but its not that getting the right sort of education makes you immune and allows your privilege and education to see more clearly than the ignorant racist country bumpkins. That's what they'd like you to believe, but notice how self-serving and how classist that ultimately is. They'd like to give the 2%er's in the Hamptons or in the academic Ivory Towers the privilege to ignore this once they've kowtowed and performed their religious absolutions because they are the 2%er's. Of course they want the privilege to ignore their own rules. But even without getting into a rant about how so many that think they are educated don't have a real education, nothing about having lived in the ivory tower gives you any kind of authentic understanding of anything except living in the ivory tower. Believe me, I've been in academia. Got the published papers to prove it. It's filled with just as many ignorant idiots as any dusty warehouse I've ever swept. Education is no defense against normal human stupidity, and to the extent that it inculcates arrogance its arguably a wide open temptation to stupidity and not a bulwark. I trust your average construction worker to have a more nuanced understanding of race and race relations than your average academic, because he has to make his theories work for him on a daily basis. It isn't proof against racism, and indeed sometimes it creates a daily friction and chaffing that shows up in racist frustration by all parties involved, but by golly it's real and not a fantasy.

You sir shouldn't back down in the slightest from some racial essentialist whose biggest encounters with people of a different race are on TV as if they understood race. 90% of these white knights are the sort that are all publically social justice, but privately are like "This black family moved just a 1/2 mile from here. I'm afraid we are going to have to sell the house. Not racist of course, just property values you understand" And no, those quotes aren't made up or hypothetical.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Perhaps. It depends on if you feel there is a such a thing as an essential minority experience. What you probably can't do if you are a white person from rural Minnesota is write with the immediatecy and depth of experience about a black character from Brooklyn as you could if you really were a black person from Brooklyn. There might indeed be shared experiences and voice you'd have being a minority in Brooklyn that weren't immediately obvious to someone who was from rural Minnesota. Your voice wouldn't be authentic because it wasn't. But notice how very different this claim is than the one I'm supposed to make.
.

My point was, a lot of this seems to be more about accuracy in portrayal and that I don't think inaccuracy on its own is an evil. We could debate all day long the feasibility of giving an accurate account of something from an outside perspective. I guess what I am trying to say here, rather than draw some kind of line about what is and isn't possible for writers, is to to say there isn't anything wrong with making the attempt.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You mention Kipling later, a writer that tends to send the cultural studies people into fits because he decidedly doesn't create singularly positive romantic views of other groups nor condemn his own group as uniformly devils. But close reading of the guy shows he's a lot more subversive than people used to only seeing "minorities" (as if Hindu's in India were a minority group) presented in entirely flattering ways. He's actually repeatedly attacking the assumptions of his own culture. His heroes tend to sit astride both worlds - Kim across England and India or Mowgli between civilization and the jungle or Sir Purun Das between Western and Eastern philosophy - and ultimately not only do they tend to choose to forsake Englishness, but Kipling vindicates them for it as choosing the better part. He's often explicitly attacking the values and even political policies of his own nation. He deserves a nuanced reading. But he doesn't get one because he's decidedly not 'politically correct'. He doesn't uniformly condemn England. He doesn't uniformly praise India.
.

I wasn't commenting on Kipling one way or the other. I mentioned him because the "never the twain shall meet line" seemed apropos.

 

[Celebrim]

I guess what I am trying to say here, rather than draw some kind of line about what is and isn't possible for writers, is to to say there isn't anything wrong with making the attempt.

I'm totally on board with that.

 

[Bedrockgames]

No. No. No. Just no. I mean it is a sophistication, but its not that getting the right sort of education makes you immune and allows your privilege and education to see more clearly than the ignorant racist country bumpkins.
.

That wasn't at all what I was arguing. I was saying this is like knowing how to talk about fine wines. It becomes a test of class and upbringing. It isn't necessarily a reflection of how racist or bad a person is, just their ability to navigate discussions using certain words and concepts.

 

[Celebrim]

I wasn't commenting on Kipling one way or the other. I mentioned him because the "never the twain shall meet line" seemed apropos.

I know. And I agree.

But even quoting Kipling without condemning him will be counted as proof positive in some circles that you are a racist.

Anyway, Kipling didn't agree that "never the twain" can meet. What he actually wrote was condemning that:

"Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat:
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!"

I've said before that "cultural appropriation" and its surrounding intellectual framework is a strand nakedly 19th century "progressive" racism, and I meant it. Kipling was speaking out against its philosophies, just as I am here and in the same language, long before it ever was labeled "political correctness".

 

[Celebrim]

That wasn't at all what I was arguing. I was saying this is like knowing how to talk about fine wines. It becomes a test of class and upbringing. It isn't necessarily a reflection of how racist or bad a person is, just their ability to navigate discussions using certain words and concepts.

Ok, yes, then I agree and am on the same page as you.

This is what is called "cocktail liberalism". You have an education sufficient to allow you to pass as a member of the right social class, as being "our sort of people", when at an exclusive cocktail party. Arguably, college education exists primarily for that reason, and not the reason the average middle class person assumes - to help prepare them for a job.

Having at least that much education myself and been invited on that account to a number of such cocktail parties, some of the worst racism I've ever encounter was in situations like that.