D&D General "Red Orc" American Indians and "Yellow Orc" Mongolians in D&D

[Mordhau]

I find this thread difficult to parse sometimes.

I can't see how we got from a discussion of whether the racism in Howard's work is due to a lack of critical engagement with the atittudes of his time, vs genuine hatefulness to someone wanting to give Orcs of Thar a pass.

 

[Hussar]

As someone who has lived as both a member of the majority and as a minority, I find myself far more aware of the privileges that come with simply wing the majority. The point about how people were “unaware “ of issues for example.

That’s a very comfortable place to be when you are im the majority. People in majorities have absolutely no idea how important representation really is. It’s a HUGE thing.

Simply knowing that even if things aren’t going to change today but at least the conversation is possible is an enormously important thing.

 

[Thomas Shey]

But this misses the point. Many times people are given an excuse for this behaviour as if it were somehow justified. And especially works of fiction where we give it a pass because of “it was just the times”.

I'm not obliged for what other people are doing.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Why is it so hard for people to say that, for example, the FF's were racist slave owners but that they were also brilliant statesmen? Or that H. P. Lovecraft is the father of modern horror/weird fiction but was also racist, sexist, and generally misanthropic?

I say things like that all the darn time.

because it asks the question are we and different and to those that care that is the scariest question in the world.

And my answer is that all humans have their breaking points. With luck, most never even get near them. Because those who do are capable of doing monstrous things.

 

[MGibster]

Why is it so hard for people to say that, for example, the FF's were racist slave owners but that they were also brilliant statesmen? Or that H. P. Lovecraft is the father of modern horror/weird fiction but was also racist, sexist, and generally misanthropic?

Because we're trying to figure out how to come to grips with acknowledging the problematic aspects of work created in the past that we still enjoy and continues to influence what's produced today and the values we'd like to express today. I majored in history, and I don't have a problem acknowledging that many people who accomplished great things, things we praise them for today, held beliefs and/or committed actions we find abhorrent today. In contrast to the old days where we ignored the problematic aspects and lionized what we enjoyed.

But this misses the point. Many times people are given an excuse for this behaviour as if it were somehow justified. And especially works of fiction where we give it a pass because of “it was just the times”.

What other options do we have besides giving it a pass? Lovecraft is dead and I can't hold him accountable for some of the more unfortunate aspects of his work. I acknowledge them, Herbert West--Reanimator in particular has a very painful description of a black boxer, but he and his work were products of a different era. Almost any media produced in previous decades is going to offend modern sensibilities in some way. Even innocuous movies from my childhood like The Monster Squad (1987) had scenes that both surprised and offended me when I watched it again sometime after 2015. Should we simply refuse to acknowledge Lovecraft and relegate his work to the dustbin of history?

or example the highest literary award for horror fiction, the World Fantasy Award was a bust of Lovecraft. Think about that for a second and see how bad that is. It wasn’t replaced until 2017!!

I thought it was a good idea to change the award.

Saying people were aware but didn’t give a naughty word would be FAR more accurate.

Okay. What do we get when we say that?

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

As someone who has lived as both a member of the majority and as a minority, I find myself far more aware of the privileges that come with simply wing the majority. The point about how people were “unaware “ of issues for example.

That’s a very comfortable place to be when you are im the majority. People in majorities have absolutely no idea how important representation really is. It’s a HUGE thing.

Simply knowing that even if things aren’t going to change today but at least the conversation is possible is an enormously important thing.

Exactly. And not only this, but the conversation is necessary for change to happen. There's plenty of things that should have faded out of the mainstream by now (homophobia, transphobia, ableism, etc), but haven't because we haven't talked about them enough. There are things that were headed in the right direction, but fairly quickly did a complete 180 because people stopped talking about them (racism after the Civil Rights Movement, sexism in recent years, etc).

People have known that racism was wrong for a long time, but since it hasn't been talked about all that commonly in the past few decades, it's been on the rise recently (see the recent rise in police brutality and the fallout of George Floyd's death over a year ago). The same thing has been happening with sexism recently, with more and more people being made aware of how common it was due to the #MeToo movement. Those were problems that were supposed to be "fixed" (at least in America) since women got the right to vote, since the Civil Rights Act of the 1960s, and similar events. One change is made and people like to get complacent and think that the problem is fixed, when it really isn't, and not talking about the problem can lead to it coming back.

For a long time it's been considered socially okay to call things that you don't like "gay" or "autistic/retarded", because people didn't talk about how they were as wrong on a fundamental level as sexism and racism are. Transphobia, Homophobia, Ableism, and similar types of bigotry had largely been considered "not a problem" up until very recently (ableism is a bit more complicated than the other examples, given that it's such a diverse topic).

Talking about bigotry isn't a way to fix these types of inequalities, but when we don't talk about it, the problem is practically guaranteed to get way worse.

When you know better, you do better, and you can't know better without discussing the topic.

 

[Umbran]

This is a very important point and I'm shocked more people don't get it, especially on a role-playing game forum.

I am not shocked. It is pretty par for the course. In our society we don't talk much about abuse.

 

[Umbran]

What other options do we have besides giving it a pass? Lovecraft is dead and I can't hold him accountable for some of the more unfortunate aspects of his work.

We can hold his legacy accountable. By mentioning the point every darned time we reference his work. By making sure that every time we do use his work as inspiration, we upend some parts of it that are problematic in some way. By using his work in the study of racism in culture, making him the lesson of what not to do.

 

[Hussar]

I'm not obliged for what other people are doing.

Nobody is asking you to be. You are however, obliged to acknowledge when someone tells you that something is problematic. Even if you aren't personally affected by the problem.

 

[Hussar]

What other options do we have besides giving it a pass? Lovecraft is dead and I can't hold him accountable for some of the more unfortunate aspects of his work. I acknowledge them, Herbert West--Reanimator in particular has a very painful description of a black boxer, but he and his work were products of a different era. Almost any media produced in previous decades is going to offend modern sensibilities in some way. Even innocuous movies from my childhood like The Monster Squad (1987) had scenes that both surprised and offended me when I watched it again sometime after 2015. Should we simply refuse to acknowledge Lovecraft and relegate his work to the dustbin of history?

It's not either/or. One can reclaim the ideas while consigning Lovecraft himself to the dustbin of history. It's not like we need to lionize him. Including him in the works of "inspirational D&D reading" for example. Or plastering his name everywhere whenever we talk about Mythos stories. Separate out the works from the person and, well, leave the rather horrid person in the past where he belongs.

I thought it was a good idea to change the award.


Okay. What do we get when we say that?

We get what we see today - people being called out and made aware that not caring isn't enough. It's not enough to just ignore the issue. That's how these things fester and live - when the majority sits back and tacitly accepts it as just "part of life". Actually make people award that sitting on the fence is just as harmful as actively being a racist bigot. That we all, as a society, need to call it out whenever it shows up.

IOW, we get a society where it's no longer acceptable to be a racist douche.