D&D 5E The word ‘Race’

[hawkeyefan]

Well, sorry some of our concerns are "trivial". I guess it just doesn't matter at all, if it doesn't matter to you. Sorry (truly) if I'm getting a bit hot, but this is exactly what I'm talking about. It isn't important to *you*. Okay. Don't dismiss it's importance to *me*. And you're right, if you replace the word "race" with "species" it doesn't change anything. Missing the point. It's not the word, this isn't a semantics battle. It's the concept of race, regardless of what word you use to describe it.

When the "heroes" have a green light to kill a sentient being (like, say, an orc) simply because it is EVIL (inherently), that's problematic to me, and to some others who otherwise LOVE D&D. If it doesn't bother you, super! Why the pushback on even discussing how D&D treats race?

But it is semantics. The title of the thread is "The word race" not "Racial generalizations within the game and the real world implications", even though the discussion has touched on that kind of material. I thought that I was pretty clear that I don't find concerns about racial topics trivial but rather a dislike for the word race to be used to describe race being trivial.

As for the game itself, I think if you want to examine if the "heroes" are correct for killing orcs, that's great, sounds like a potentially fun campaign that would play with expectations. In my game, the PCs don't just wander around and slaughter members of the "bad races". In fact, most of my major villains are humans.

Examining race in the game...and the material that so influenced the game...is fine. Disussions such as these can be great. I think in this case, the premise that began the conversation is trivial and flawed.

 

[Aldarc]

Couldn't read the whole thread since I last posted, because *gak* that's a lot of words for those getting offended that some of us are uncomfortable with the way D&D sometimes treats race. If you personally don't have an issue with how race is treated in the game, that's fine. If you can see how it's problematic for some folks, but it doesn't rate high on your priority meter, that's fine. But please don't be condescending and try to explain how some of us are too "PC" or are "SJWs" or how you'd be glad if we left the hobby in a huff, or worse yet, that we are imagining the whole thing. Just because *you* don't see it (or don't care), doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Oh, and at the risk of seeming condescending myself to some posting here, it isn't the use of one word, "race", that's the issue for some of us. It's how the concept of race is used in the game. Race as a stereotype, and often a negative one. And, of course, it's larger than the D&D game itself as this same issue crops up not only in other fantasy/sci-fi media (games, books, comics, etc), but in real world usage of the term also.

For me, the way D&D has treated race has shifted somewhat over the years, but often is problematic for me as I've posted upthread. But I haven't put the thought energy into how best to "fix" the problem, as it isn't high on my priority list either. Maybe someday.

This succinctly summarizes my issue with 'race' in D&D.

My own preference would be to replace player racial packages entirely with simply more flexible background options that may include some physiological differences. The Dragon/Fantasy AGE RPG does this well. The Cypher System also has great potential for treating 'race' well, since - truly alien physiology not withstanding - the descriptors allow players to define their characters in more meaningful ways than simply 'race.'

 

[Dire Bare]

Lots of things use "race" as a concept to denote creatures that are not human. Klingon is a race. Wookiee is a race. Elf is a race. Asari is a race. Tauren is a race. Dalek is a race. Kryptonian is a race. The term is common parlance in nearly any form of science fiction and fantasy. You can't call out D&D for its use of the use of the word when lots of SF&F does it. So if we're cool with damning every sci-fi, superhero, and fantasy novel, movie, game, comic or TV show from the last 50 years for being racist, lets continue.

Pretty sure I did call out that other fantasy/sci-fi properties have similar issues with the concept of race. And I can most certainly call out D&D for this, because that's what this thread is about, it's a D&D message board. For my opinion to have weight and merit, do I need to *fairly* list all of the other properties that have also used race in a way that's made me uncomfortable? And nowhere did I, nor anyone else on this thread, *damn* the entirety of D&D or fantasy/sci-fi for being racist. Sheesh. By all means, though, continue to trivialize the opinions and concerns of others.

I don't consider D&D a racist game. I don't consider the many designers and authors who have worked on D&D over the years to be racist. In fact, WotC truly deserves respect for the many ways they have tried to bring the game into line with modern, progressive sensibilities. Doesn't mean that elements of the game aren't racist to a degree, and that if I have issue with it, I'm making up problems to have. Again, if you don't see it, that's fine. If you see it, but don't care (or don't care very much), that's fine. But please stop trivializing the concerns of those of us who do.

The second part is the notion that all racial stereotypes are negative. This patently false, but especially false when it comes to nonhuman races. Take elves for example; ask anyone to describe an elf and you will get stereotypes: haughty, graceful, magical, aloof. Because that's what makes an elf an elf. Take that away and at most you have a human with pointy ears. The things that make elves elven (elvish?) are those stereotypes. And that's what draws people to them. Of course people can break the stereotype (and some of the most memorable ones do, Drizzt is a classic example of a drow who breaks the dark elf stereotype) but without that stereotype, you don't have a story of a man rebelling against his people, you have a guy who leaves a really bad city and moves somewhere else.

It might be possible to untangle race from speculative fiction, but it would be poorer for it. We'd lose the evil of the Dalek race (who is literally programmed to hate), the noble code of the Klingons (both as friend and enemy) or the stubborn tenacity of the dwarves. They'd just be humans in funny costumes, and that is worse than anything.

It's true that not all stereotypes are negative. So? I must've missed where somebody made that claim. In the real world, even *positive* stereotypes can be harmful. Stereotypes are a social tool to make it easier for us to deal with *other* people . . . the tool itself isn't a good or bad thing, but this particular tool is very often misused in both the real world and in fiction (which is just an extension of the real world, of course). All IMO, of course.

I'm not trying to take away anyone's toys, just trying to have a discussion about the use of race in D&D without the usual crowd telling me this isn't really a problem, it's all just trivial issues . . . .

Think I'll need to take a day off this thread, cool down a bit. Wow.

 

[MG.0]

When the "heroes" have a green light to kill a sentient being (like, say, an orc) simply because it is EVIL (inherently), that's problematic to me, and to some others who otherwise LOVE D&D. If it doesn't bother you, super! Why the pushback on even discussing how D&D treats race?

Of course you are entitled to feel that way. I do not understand that viewpoint in the slightest though.

1) Orcs are inherently evil
2) Herores kill orcs because they are inherently evil (or just sitting on some good loot).
3) Problem?

I wonder if maybe the problem is identifying Orcs as sentient beings in the same sense that real-world intelligent beings are. They certainly don't have to be. I think someone mentioned orc babies once. Perhaps orcs don't have babies but form in a completely alien way; perhaps they enter the world fully formed and fully evil.

Do you have the same problem with Dragons, Beholders, or Mind Flayers? Honestly curious.

 

[hawkeyefan]

This succinctly summarizes my issue with 'race' in D&D.

My own preference would be to replace player racial packages entirely with simply more flexible background options that may include some physiological differences. The Dragon/Fantasy AGE RPG does this well. The Cypher System also has great potential for treating 'race' well, since - truly alien physiology not withstanding - the descriptors allow players to define their characters in more meaningful ways than simply 'race.'

I think that's a pretty elegant solution for those who have an issue with how race is handled in the game.

Would you say that would just be a homebrew solution or should it be an option in the rules? Or should it not be an option and just be the way the game works?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

What the frak does politics have to do with it? If you think we're talking about heredity rather than the flawed social concept of race, go read a textbook. This isn't a "nature vs. nurture" debate.

What does the "flawed concept of race" have to do with what I wrote about elves and runty goblins?

"Race" is a flawed concept in the real world, partly because it's ill-defined and doesn't map well to any discrete characteristics in the same way that families do. It's easy to objectively determine who is my third cousin and who isn't; if I cared about "race", it wouldn't be easy to objectively determine who is "Native American" and who isn't, nor why "Native American" is a more appropriate granularity than "Inuit" vs. "Cherokee", nor what the practical implications are of belonging to one of those "races" either in whole or in part. But in D&D, it is easy to objectively determine who's an elf and who's not: you get +2 on your Dex, a longer lifespan, and some other stuff.

In short, the things that make "race" a flawed, messy, and frankly pretty stupid concept in real life do not apply to D&D. If real life were as simple as D&D, race wouldn't be a flawed concept, it would just be a thing, like eye color.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

In fact, WotC truly deserves respect for the many ways they have tried to bring the game into line with modern, progressive sensibilities.

Hey, aren't you the guy who was just denying that politics had anything to do with it? But now you equate "progressive" (a political flavor) with "modern" and goodness. Yeah, that smells like a political agenda, not a D&D-fun-driven agenda.

 

[Dire Bare]

Of course you are entitled to feel that way. I do not understand that viewpoint in the slightest though.

1) Orcs are inherently evil
2) Herores kill orcs because they are inherently evil (or just sitting on some good loot).
3) Problem?

I wonder if maybe the problem is identifying Orcs as sentient beings in the same sense that real-world intelligent beings are. They certainly don't have to be. I think someone mentioned orc babies once. Perhaps orcs don't have babies but form in a completely alien way; perhaps they enter the world fully formed and fully evil.

Do you have the same problem with Dragons, Beholders, or Mind Flayers? Honestly curious.

Thanks MG, this is a discussion rather that being dismissive!

Any being that is sentient, that is treated as inherently good or evil . . . often code for "can I kill it?", is problematic for me. But which creatures truly are free-willed and sentient? Even if you agree with me that race is sometimes used problematically in D&D, where it used well and where it isn't is also an area for debate. Or rather, which races/monsters are truly sentient creatures worthy of not being stereotyped as "evil" (or as anything).

I haven't worked out a system or anything, but, I tend to think of extraplanar beings (fiends, angels, elementals, etc) as not truly sentient. They are intelligent, but not truly free-willed and sentient like the mortal races. Of course, D&D lore has examples of fallen angels and risen fiends, so it doesn't have to be this way.

Aberrations are just that, aberrations. They aren't inherently evil, but they are inherently dangerous and inimical to life in the "normal" multiverse. Again, D&D lore has examples of beholders and mindflayers getting along just fine with "food" in some stories, so, just like extraplanars, perhaps aberrations need understanding too!

If you do play a game where all intelligent creatures are sentient, free-willed, and capable of both good and evil . . . it certainly changes the dynamic of D&D quite a bit and can lead to a more mature game (not that standard D&D is immature). Of course, in the real world there are no inherently evil races . . . but there is always plenty of conflict anyway, so a more "realistic" fantasy world can do it too!

 

[Greg K]

Fantasy as a genre hasn't exactly covered itself in glory when it comes to being inclusive. Everyone knows this. And, looking at D&D player demographics, it shows. Overwhelmingly white male. So, anything that might be changed to make the game more appealing to other groups, maybe isn't such a bad idea.

Most of the gamers I know are not white. Most are, actually, hispanic with whites making up the next largest group (which is a big reversal from about fifteen years ago). I also know several asian and filipino players.
The group that I see under represented is African-Americans. However, it is possible, that their are social issues at play. I would love to hear from African-American players on these boards if they have encountered similar situations to that of some of my friends.
Of the few African-American gamers I know, most have been told by family members and other African-Americans that they are not "black" enough, because they like to read fantasy fiction and science fiction and play rpgs. I witnessed this once when several kids bussed in from the inner city walked up to me after we played basketball at lunch. They wanted to know why my best friend didn't act more "black". When I questioned them, they replied, "When he is not playing basketball with us, he always has a book in his hand and playing Dungeons and Dragons". The book he had was of short stories by O Henry. That was in junior high and the memory has stuck with me to this day. In high school, one of my mentors was African-American, a former marine, an engineer, a fan of fantasy, science fiction, and my third D&D DM. He had mentioned going through something similar to my friend from junior high.
The most recent incident occurred a few weeks when another African-American gaming friend mentioned on Facebook that he has been made to feel like an outcast by other African Americans including family members, because he like things like Dungeons and Dragons as were a few other African-American gamers he knew.
None of my minority friends have had a problem with the word race to describe humans, elves, etc. The lack of African-American and Hispanic looking characters in books? Possibly, but it has never been mentioned as skin color, like sexual preference, doesn't come up in our games (for humans, as default, we assume the same ethnicity as the player unless stated otherwise).
So is the problem the use of terms like race or is it a difference in what certain communities value as appropriate recreation and its members deterring potential players (possibly, combined with a segment of the community that are actually racists and may not include certain minorities dwindling their numbers even further)?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I suggested kin at the begining of the thread but nobody paid attention to me... in the end it could be any word. I still don't get what deity you talk about.

Does kin reasonably connote things like nonorganic categories of sentient beings? If you feel it does, fine. "Kinship ties" almost always means relation by blood (or marriage), though, so I don't really know if it overcomes that particular conceptual hurdle. And while it's not dysphemistic now, does using a different word for "groups of individuals to whom we ascribe a common foundation of behavior and performance primarily because they share phenotypic traits" actually "solve" the problem, or does it just create a new euphemism for a concept some people find troublesome?

As for the deity, it's Corellon, as I've said a couple times now IIRC. Corellon is explicitly stated to be "seen as androgynous or hermaphroditic," and we're further told that "some elves are made in Corellon's image." This and other highly trans*-supportive statements can be found on page 121 of the PHB, in the "Sex" section of Ch. 4, Personality and Background.

I'm not sure I follow this, is it the ethnicity? or something in the way different ethnicities are forced to live? is there ethnocentrism in the testing methods? is it just that some other factor like poverty, occupational typecasting or something else that causes children to grow in less than ideal conditions? Reality isn't racist, people is.

It's an insanely thorny subject fraught with ad hominem, vindictiveness, and moral crusading--on both sides. Some say the statistics demonstrate differences. Others question the bias of the test-makers or test-givers; some question whether different cultural values lead to behaviors which emphasize different cognitive methods that produce equivalent results but in a way unexpected by the tests; some question whether it is in fact an issue of race or rather of education (e.g. in the US, African-Americans struggle, financially, to get access to the same level of nutrition, education, and extracurricular activities, and because they are disproportionately poor, tend to face many stressors which are known to reduce academic performance for other groups facing similar circumstances). Yet further people say that questioning the statistics reveals the bias and dishonesty of the questioners, that they would never be satisfied with any method or system that could demonstrate differences at all. Etc., etc., ad nauseam, ad infinitum.

Will miss the old name though. Why not just KM as a compromise?

According to the principles set forth in the thread that might be just as bad. That is, if "KM" still stands for "Kamikaze Midget," it's just burying the lede, concealing the continuation of an insensitive term. How is this any different from the "orcs being considered a different 'race' from humans is racist, because orcs have been associated with so-called 'mongoloid' features in times past"? Or from "the presence of Lovecraftian horror elements contributing to D&D being racist in the here-and-now because Lovecraft's own work was often explicitly racist"?

Different countries have different sensibilities, and the stuff isn't uniform even within a single country. In my country we don't consider ourselves racists, yet we do things that by proxy end up looking as if we were.

I find that these topics are often extremely difficult to detect in your own in-group. I live in one of the most liberal cities in the United States, and even here there are still distinct undercurrents of racism--it just takes a different, and often quieter, form, a form that resists simple analysis like "check for terms or phrases which are offensive or unnerving." Things aren't much different in the Seattle area, only a couple hundred miles north of here--where WotC itself is headquartered.

Edit: It has occurred to me that I confused you with a different poster, and thus don't actually know that you are from Japan or speaking about Japan. The following stuff was written with that assumption, which could be wrong. I'm not removing it completely because it demonstrates one example of how a nation can politically and socially commit to ideas that sound egalitarian, but still create a situation and system where things very much are not egalitarian. Should you actually be from Japan, Moonsong, then this would pretty obviously still apply--I just shouldn't have assumed that you are without further information.
[sblock]That said...well, at least for those I've spoken to on the subject (including a few self-admitted Japanophiles and some people actually from Japan), the general problem for the Japanese as a whole isn't "racism" per se though it is very like racism. The more common issue is xenophobia. Even anime picks up on a decent amount of this; it's not uncommon to have a character who is only half-Japanese, possibly raised in the home country of their other parent. Even when said character is rich, powerful, articulate, well-read, and all the other characteristics that should endear them to Japanese society in general, they may be stigmatized because they're outsiders, and this can easily be a source of drama . This does not mean all people from Japan are xenophobic, nor that those who behave xenophobically are even necessarily aware that they do. Just that xenophobic behavior is alarmingly common in Japan. (Though, to be fair? Xenophobic behavior from US tourists is all-too-common as well.) Part of the problem lies in a nominally egalitarian-sounding argument often presented by Japanese society and the Japanese government in particular--the idea that Japan is a nation of one, unified ethnic identity ("one race, one civilization, one language and one culture," according to former-PM and current Deputy PM Tarō Asō), when in fact it is a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society. The Ainu peoples, for example, demonstrate how the nation of Japan, if it embraces the whole archipelago of over six thousand inhabited islands, cannot be "one race" and "one culture."[/sblock]

I find wizards the very embodiment of classism... that's why I prefer sorcerers, the idea of sorcerers is more democratic and less classist.

And yet if we exclude Wizards, doesn't that seem to say that a medieval society cannot possess learned scholars? Or at least that the only learned scholars are priests? After all, the methodical study of magic that Wizards represent is clearly an analogue to the methodical study of natural philosophy, or "science" as we would call it today.

I give the same example from above, checking the 1e PHB, all I see is people, cartoon people in black and white lineart doesn't tell me about a particular ethnicity, I just see a blank slate. Browsing Pathfinder and the 5e PHB makes me feel more excluded ethnically than good old AD&D PHB. I just can't find any light-skinned member of my ethnic group that is traditionally depicted as brown skinned, all light-skinned people in there are caucasian on purpose, how is that not exclusionary? From my cultural point of view D&D has gotten more and more racist with every edition! <true, yet I don't make a big fuss>

I would say that your view is...rather unusual, shall we say. Though it might, in point of fact, be influenced by your culture! That is, I know a great many people in the United States who look at characters in anime and manga and ask, "Why are these characters all being called Japanese? They look white to me...blonde or even red hair, blue or green or even purple eyes, fair skin..." Even when you ignore works that feature justifiably strange hair or eye colors (e.g. people with 'magical' ancestry or whatever), there are still a great many depictions which Japanese readers are perfectly comfortable considering as "clearly Japanese," while people from the States are perfectly comfortable considering "clearly Caucasian." Thus, the standards by which you judge a stylized depiction of a human, and their ethnicity, may be very different from those used in other countries.

The same would happen if they removed the word race from the book. So remove the word race in order to remove the implication of ethnic bigotry. Wait so D&D races are stand ins for real life ethnic groups! and mine isn't being represented! HOw barbaric conflating skin color with ethnicity!

Yeah even though I'm no big proponent of changing the term, I sincerely doubt this would be the reaction of most readers, at least here in the United States.