The "I Didn't Comment in Another Thread" Thread

Malmuria said:

As a person of color born in the 80s, this basically describes my experience just existing and experiencing race and racism, esp until age 18 or so. A lot of, "nothing to see here, that was all in the past, let's just move on." It's the default move, not just of outright racists, but also among the well intentioned, I think because listening becomes too uncomfortable.

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As a person of color born in the early 70s and who started playing in the early 80s, race and gaming (both in terms of in-game products and attitudes/behavior at the table or among gamers more generally) has always been fraught and depressing.
Especially the amount of gaslighting that happens.
I think these boards have improved a lot on that front along with the culture at large's slight improvements - but I still feel trepidations about it. Heck, I remember multiple people on these boards saying things like "I didn't know Black people or other minorities even played D&D!"

That particular claim has long stuck with me because not only was I playing in groups of all kids of colors or mixed groups since nearly the very beginning of my time as a gamer (Heck, I was bullied out my first gaming group (where I was the only non-white kid) and have been careful how I recruit folks or which game I join ever since.) , but it so obviously establishes how some folks are incapable of separating their own isolated and segregated experience from the wider world. Thus, the beginning of their awareness of anything aside from token representation must also be to them the beginning of any people unlike them being in the hobby. Add that to how tied up their identity is with gaming, and they immediately jump to defensiveness and dismissiveness.

And I am not even bringing up what Malmuria mentioned up above, how people want to keep saying it is in the past, but folks have been doing that on these boards for 20+ years!

Once at GEN CON I was gaming at a table with a guy wearing a "This is America speak English!" t-shirt while I happened to be wearing a shirt with a stylized phone keypad surrounded by the phrase "Para Español Oprima El Numero Dos." I shamed him into leaving the table by my mere presence.

And the real wild thing is that I am a DM and world-builder who has plenty of references to slavery and in-world racism in his games, I am just careful in how that stuff is presented and played out, and make sure that is it always clear that these things are evil and wrong and meant to be fought against - but at the same time, understanding that not everyone wants to do that so different campaigns have different themes and degree of focus on those themes based on the players' concerns and sensitivities.