D&D (2024) How did I miss this about the Half races/ancestries

[Scribe]

To paraphrase MLK, the moderates can get bent.

You show me three guys in white hoods and one guy who regularly drinks with them and who wants me to be polite to them, and you’ve shown me 4 klansmen.

Not one of those 4 are 'moderates', so...thats a weird turn.

people can call it tone policing but you are losing the moderates. And you need the moderates. And you don’t just lose the moderates, you are losing people who are firmly on the left abd eoukd otherwise be your allies. I consider myself on the left

 

[doctorbadwolf]

it is a very powerful word, or at least it was. But by applying it to those things, what people hear is ‘racist’ and no one wants to be racist. Then they see you are talking about orcs, then they second guess what you mean when you call a nazi racist. You can call it stupid but when words have taboo power like that applying them to things that aren’t as nefarious of evil weakens them. You are expanding the meaning. It was once a word we used to describe bigots. But now ‘that’s racist’ could mean anything from a stupid joke on a sitcom to evil orcs or structural issues in a system that produce or contribute to unequal outcomes.

All of those things can be racism. The word just means that a thing contributes to the systemic marginalization and/or subjugation of one or more people based on the made up fairy tale of “race”.

And a popular game having a chapter on a fictional people that draws very clear lines between this “monstrous race” and real world peoples by speaking of them in a way that might as well be direct quotes from the writings of their historic subjugators, contributes to systemic racism, beyond just the personal level issue of making especially Black and Indigenous folk feel very unwelcome in that game’s community.

If the D&D community doesn’t care about this, why should I think they’ll care if it gets worse? Why should I think I’m safe?

These are literally questions I got from friends when Volo’s came out. It doesn’t matter that orcs don’t exist. They are portrayed using tropes pulled from white colonialist perceptions of African and American Indigenous peoples, and so how we talk about them will reflect that to readers who see the connection.

 

[Bedrockgames]

All of those things can be racism. The word just means that a thing contributes to the systemic marginalization and/or subjugation of one or more people based on the made up fairy tale of “race”.

Now, yes, the word has evolved considerably and the problem is, it's only one of those things that is the serious taboo which gives the word its power. When it can be applied to the other things on the list as well, you can see how it loses that power. You can certainly build an argument that things, incrementally build up to the marginalization of groups, and we probably should have a more specific word for that, but that isn't what people used to think of when someone called them racist (and why they wanted to get that label as far away from themselves as they could). There is also the fact that not everyone agrees about issues around systemic racism and how to handle them, and so you lose a lot of people when you start piling on all these additional meanings who might otherwise agree that bigotry is bad

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Not one of those 4 are 'moderates', so...thats a weird turn.

The fourth guy is a classic moderate, what are you on about? He’s not far right, he just doesn’t care what his friends’ politics are and thinks we should all be able to sit down and be civil. That’s…literally the moderate stereotype.

This is where slogans like “silence is violence” and “no justice no peace” come from. MLK’s letter from jail is all about the white moderate’s “concern” about how the movement gets too rowdy and they need to calm down and be more civil and respectable, while ignoring that people were literally being murdered in the street.

 

[SteveC]

One of my concerns is the deep fragmentation of the hobby, even to the extent that people who may be 90 percent in agreement are at one another’s throat. That is why I expressed concern about drawing sharp lines. I think it is important for people to continue engaging one another

I think this is a very important point that we see more and more. I'm seeing it as a result of this actual thread. There are people who I love to engage with on game terms, but I'm not going to hear from them any more because of stuff like this. I know there are some people who I've engaged with before who have muted me as well. And that's a shame. But life is also too short.

 

[Bedrockgames]

This is where slogans like “silence is violence” and “no justice no peace” come from. MLK’s letter from jail is all about the white moderate’s “concern” about how the movement gets too rowdy and they need to calm down and be more civil and respectable, while ignoring that people were literally being murdered in the street.

I will say everyone should certainly read the Letter from a Birmingham Prison. It is something that should be part of every high school history course in my opinion. Again though, we are talking about calling orcs in a game savages, and including half elves and half orcs, maybe even evil orcs. No one is siding with or defending people who a murdering folks in the street or trying to oppress peoples rights. That was a letter about the fight against things like segregation not Orc tropes. We are talking at worst about the policing of language, and frankly I have no idea where Martin Luther King Jr. would stand on that particular issue.

 

[Scribe]

The fourth guy is a classic moderate, what are you on about? He’s not far right, he just doesn’t care what his friends’ politics are and thinks we should all be able to sit down and be civil. That’s…literally the moderate stereotype.

Maybe in the US that counts as a moderate, but no way is "I associate with openly racist individuals in my down time" going to pass as moderate where I am.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think this is a very important point that we see more and more. I'm seeing it as a result of this actual thread. There are people who I love to engage with on game terms, but I'm not going to hear from them any more because of stuff like this. I know there are some people who I've engaged with before who have muted me as well. And that's a shame. But life is also too short.

I don't write people off. I think a lot of times people burn bridges in anger. And I think that is understandable. So if someone gets angry at me in a thread, I am still happy to talk with them latter or in other threads. With ignoring, everyone needs to approach that how they wish but my approach is to simply use it rarely and temporarily when I feel like a poster is causing me to lose my temper or not arguing in good faith. But it is just so I can focus on the other posters in the discussion.

 

[Incenjucar]

Maybe in the US that counts as a moderate, but no way is "I associate with openly racist individuals in my down time" going to pass as moderate where I am.

US politics is very, very depressing and gross.

The US is also where D&D is primarily being written, so it factors in.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Maybe in the US that counts as a moderate, but no way is "I associate with openly racist individuals in my down time" going to pass as moderate where I am.

Yeah, I don't see this as moderate behavior. I mean I think there is a place for engaging extremists with the aim of changing their hearts. Daryl Davis is a pretty interesting person in that respect. That isn't something everyone can do though. Also as a matter of religious faith there is a place for loving your enemies (which I do believe in), but I don't believe that means regularly sitting down for beer with KKK members.