Doug McCrae
Legend
Some further thoughts about intent:
The minds of others are ultimately unknowable so calls to consider intent are really calls to examine a wider range of texts or other media before determining meaning. These media - personal diaries, internet message board posts, interviews with the author - are probably going to be much less accessible than rpgs and popular novels.
If we need to consider intent before judging a text to be racist do we also need to do so before judging it to be anti-racist? For example, ignoring intent allows me to easily say that Gary Gygax's Scarlet Brotherhood - an evil organisation of white supremacists from the World of Greyhawk - is an anti-racist creation. I don't need to try to figure out what was going on in the creator's head.
The minds of others are ultimately unknowable so calls to consider intent are really calls to examine a wider range of texts or other media before determining meaning. These media - personal diaries, internet message board posts, interviews with the author - are probably going to be much less accessible than rpgs and popular novels.
If we need to consider intent before judging a text to be racist do we also need to do so before judging it to be anti-racist? For example, ignoring intent allows me to easily say that Gary Gygax's Scarlet Brotherhood - an evil organisation of white supremacists from the World of Greyhawk - is an anti-racist creation. I don't need to try to figure out what was going on in the creator's head.