Yes, they've been largely deracinated in D&D. I couldn't find any reference to skin colour in the 5e entry.And since the Lord of the Rings, orcs have developed further so now they are just green skinned monsters with no real strong associations to any one group of people
But we are talking about a fictional race, that seems to hold a lot of different cultural influence. I am just saying I don't think this is so cut and dry as people are making it. If it isn't even clear if that is a reference to Siberians or Turks (or perhaps not even to people at all) I don't see that it is an obvious racist trope. It is one thing to buy into early 20th century racialist theories (which are awful) but another for an author to borrow cultural and physical features from different groups in order to create a new race of creatures. Like I said before, I do think it is on the cusp. But on the cusp, not blatant. And I can definitely see room for disagreement on the issue. And since the Lord of the Rings, orcs have developed further so now they are just green skinned monsters with no real strong associations to any one group of people (any culture that has a history of skillfully waging war, seems fair game for using as inspiration for orcs).
Sgain, though, relying on a descriptive term for your fictional antagonists that is exactly the same as one used perjorstively in the real world is, at best lazy and at worst, the exact kind of racist projection that people are criticizing that it may be.
What if, instead of lazily and reflexively using “slant-eyed”, the writer had flexed one more creative muscle and said “slit-irised, like a goat”? It conveys otherness without being an actual pejorative applied to humans. It echoes some of the lore about Satan and his allies.
Hell, even the now-cliched “glowing (color) eyes) is better than “slant-eyed”.
I'm sorry [MENTION=19675]Dannyalcatraz[/MENTION] I didn't notice that line of Lychee of the Exch.'s post when I XP'd it.
It doesn’t matter who the pejorative is aimed at. It’s offensive to REAL human beings. Using it risks alienating people. There’s a reason why it’s getting harder to find “Wop Salad” under its original name in NOLA.I am not defending the use of that term. That isn't a term I would ever use. I am saying I don't know that it is clear what it is meant to indicate in this case.
It doesn’t matter who the pejorative is aimed at. It’s offensive to REAL human beings. Using it risks alienating people.
As the saying goes, why borrow trouble?
As I have been saying, be more creative and find other descriptors.
There’s a reason why it’s getting harder to find “Wop Salad” under its original name in NOLA.
Again, I said I don't support the use of the term. I don't advocate its use and I don't use it personally or in works myself. I think it is an insulting slur. But we are trying to figure out what JRR Tolkien had in mind when he used it in the 40s* because the assertion here is that orcs are based on a racial stereotype. Without knowing what he meant by that term, we don't know whether they were meant to depict a particular race or ethnicity. I can't find a history of the slur itself, so I am not 100% sure what it would have meant to him at that time when he used the word to describe orcs. I know in present day use it is a slur. I don't know how common it was then, or if it was in use at that time. I can't tell if it was used to indicate Asian people, or if it was simply used as a descriptor (epicanthic folds are not limited to Asian people by any stretch (heck even some English people have them). That matters because it tells us how much racism is present at the inception of the orc. And who it is directed at matters because that tells us whether this is indeed a racial stereotype or just a mixture of different random cultural and ethnic traits to create flavor.
*I know it was published in the 50s