D&D 5E The word ‘Race’

[FormerlyHemlock]

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."

Anecdote: when I was living in the Philippines, every once in a while we'd come across a Filipino with a startlingly light complexion, sometimes to the point where we weren't sure if they were actually American expatriates. 80+% of the time they turned out to be part-Japanese.

Japanese people are pretty light-skinned compared to Filipinos, and presumably compared to many other peoples as well. So it doesn't really surprise me that their anime characters are pretty light-skinned as well.

 

[Bagpuss]

Why?

We don't need to use race to differentiate Giants or demons or aberrations. Why do we need race to differentiate humanoids?

We use Type to differentiate between different types like Giants and Demons.

But then Race to differentiate within those Types between Fire Giants and Storm Giants, hence two words are needed as they have different meanings.

At best you could replace it with Type and Sub-Type. But Sub-type doesn't sound as nice as Race.

 

[Bagpuss]

So you are assuming that the OP and others in this thread are lying?

No, but they are a small minority. A small minority of people object to the cars, because they can be dangerous and polluting, they are correct but it doesn't mean we ban cars. Because cars are very effective and necessary for the job they do.

A word like Race, and races like orcs may have some minor negative connotations, for some people, but it is a very accurate word to describe what it describes in D&D. It does it's job well, like the car.

 

[Flamestrike]

Agree with the OP.

It infers that 'race' is a biological term, and further infers some 'races' are biologically smarter, faster, stronger, more violent than others.

It's playing on a common misconception.

Race is a social construct. In DnD however, 'race' is really 'species' and it's an objective biological category.

 

[Umbran]

To put it in your metaphor, you've hit the 'report button' and said 'I don't like this'. This does't mean that the reported post breaks the rules. Unfortunately, this metaphor breaks down at that point, because when you hit 'report post' there's someone who's the final arbiter of those rules who's job it is to look at and consider your report. In real life, there isn't, so you have to make the case that the rules are broken in your report, because there's no racism moderator in the forum of life that will do that work for you.

The final arbiter sees it thus:

Whether or not any individual is breaking the rules with a particular post is no longer the issue. What is clear is that we, collectively, are not yet capable of having this discussion in a cool-headed and respectful manner.

I'm sorry, folks, but I thought EN Worlders these days could handle this better.

Thread closed.