Cultural Appropriation in role-playing games (draft)

[The Yellow Pill]

You can find plenty of examples of classism on the right as well. For ages Republicans were viewed as the party of the wealthy while democrats were viewed as the party of the workers. When I was a kid, being liberal and being working class were strongly linked. I think there really isn't much strong evidence to support the line of causality you claim here. You can always find a person or group in any movement that expressed a particular sentiment in history...that doesn't demonstrate a direct line to behavior today. It doesn't mean it is a legacy of the thing you are pointing to.

First of all, I'm not on anyone's team, so "Republicans do it, too" is a non sequitur. It's even more so since you're talking about party affiliation instead of political philosophy when the parties have criss-crossed on that several times in the country's history. In my lifetime I have watched MANY people in the Great Lakes region where I grew up doggedly stay Democrat because organized labor was their primary voting issue, only to finally go Republican when even that wasn't enough, or when they came to believe that organized labor had turned on them completely.

My position is a lot more moderate than the suggestion that any insistence on liberal policies is rooted in elitism. What I'm suggesting is that, like all political movements, it's a tapestry of threads and one of those threads is a long running, consistent resentment of the working class. You're saying that the original motivations of some of the movement's founders shouldn't automatically apply have never gone away, but I see the exact same arguments being made when it comes to the "educated" vs. the "uneducated". If you follow morons like Bob Chipman and Jonathan McIntosh you see this ongoing frustration that people who just don't have the right credentials get any say at all in all of this. They can't possibly understand.

In fact, the argument has been made that the reason liberals tend to hate capitalism so much is precisely because uneducated but hard working folks can gain equal wealth and prestige. Without a PhD? Without even a high school diploma? What kind of world are we living in?

Also, don't confuse concern with the poor for concern for the working class. Democrats literally use the term "middle class" something like 13 times per floor speech (someone counted) but show absolute contempt for everyone whose clock reads 10:45AM right now. As in Rome you had Patricians, Plebs, and slaves; in the US you have the wealthy, the middle class, and the impoverished. Progressives are all about that last group, because they know their place and never forget how much they need those well educated folks looking out for them.

 

[Bedrockgames]

First of all, I'm not on anyone's team, so "Republicans do it, too" is a non sequitur. It's even more so since you're talking about party affiliation instead of political philosophy when the parties have criss-crossed on that several times in the country's history. In my lifetime I have watched MANY people in the Great Lakes region where I grew up doggedly stay Democrat because organized labor was their primary voting issue, only to finally go Republican when even that wasn't enough, or when they came to believe that organized labor had turned on them completely.

My position is a lot more moderate than the suggestion that any insistence on liberal policies is rooted in elitism. What I'm suggesting is that, like all political movements, it's a tapestry of threads and one of those threads is a long running, consistent resentment of the working class. You're saying that the original motivations of some of the movement's founders shouldn't automatically apply have never gone away, but I see the exact same arguments being made when it comes to the "educated" vs. the "uneducated". If you follow morons like Bob Chipman and Jonathan McIntosh you see this ongoing frustration that people who just don't have the right credentials get any say at all in all of this. They can't possibly understand.

In fact, the argument has been made that the reason liberals tend to hate capitalism so much is precisely because uneducated but hard working folks can gain equal wealth and prestige. Without a PhD? Without even a high school diploma? What kind of world are we living in?

Also, don't confuse concern with the poor for concern for the working class. Democrats literally use the term "middle class" something like 13 times per floor speech (someone counted) but show absolute contempt for everyone whose clock reads 10:45AM right now. As in Rome you had Patricians, Plebs, and slaves; in the US you have the wealthy, the middle class, and the impoverished. Progressives are all about that last group, because they know their place and never forget how much they need those well educated folks looking out for them.

No, I am saying you have to demonstrate causality and you haven't done that. Nor have you backed up your initial assertion that it was this hugely prevalent feature of the early progressive movement (it may well have been, but that is at least step on in your argument). You are just asserting that its the case, because you think a handful of feminists look down on working class men. Lots of people at that time looked down on working class men.

Either way though, I think it would be a mistake to derail the thread by debating this point. You obviously have a belief about this, and I am unlikely to dissuade you. I believe other wise. I think most people have a lot more sincerity in their motives (on both the left and the right) than your last paragraph suggests. What I can say is my liberalism does not stem from wanting people to know their place or viewing myself as some kind of paternal class (I am not upper or even middle class). I believe in social programs because I know a lot of people who are helped by them and who need them to get by. I also believe, due to the religious tradition I was raised in, that we have an obligation to take care of the least amongst us. Living in a poor city in Mass, and knowing liberals from wealthier communities, I can say I've encountered snobbery on the left, but I don't think it originates from the motives or lineage you describe in your post. However the vast majority of liberals I know (even those living in nice neighborhoods) are not snobs or classists.

 

[The Yellow Pill]

I don't know much about this, but your at least going to have to site some primary sources making these statements and some reliable secondary sources demonstrating how widespread they were. I don't normally like to press for sources but this is a sweeping claim and I am going to ignore it if it isn't supported with reputable sources.

That said, when you go back that far, you get people saying all kinds of terrible things on all sides because people were way less sensitive about others then. But I think the suffragettes were right to demand the vote. Have to admit, I get a 'feminism bad' vibe when one of the first things you raise in your critique of the left is suffragettes behaving badly. I wouldn't want to paint a whole movement as this negative thing even if those sorts of sentiments were expressed by some of their members.

Of course the suffragettes were right to demand the vote. Please.

Here are your sources:
http://www.npr.org/2011/07/13/137681070/for-stanton-all-women-were-not-created-equal
http://manchesterhistorian.com/2014/the-suffragette-split/
http://the-toast.net/tag/suffragettes/

 

[Bedrockgames]

Here are your sources:
http://www.npr.org/2011/07/13/137681070/for-stanton-all-women-were-not-created-equal
http://manchesterhistorian.com/2014/the-suffragette-split/
http://the-toast.net/tag/suffragettes/

I appreciate you linking these. I am presently working through them. My initial thoughts though are these seem to indicate not a hugely prevalent strain of thought that came to dominate the movement over time, but that they reflected existing class and racial divisions in american society that were current with the movements. This is like when I first started looking at the early labor movement stuff and discovered, to my dismay, an awful lot of racist rhetoric. The question for me though is one of causality and lineage. It is one thing for a movement to have its genesis at a time when racism or classism was pretty common and for that to be reflected in the movement at that time. It is another to say that it carried those ideas over time even as they came to be less prevalent in society. I'm not seeing the case for that. I'll take a deeper look at the links though.

 

[Lwaxy]

This has gone too far into politics by now. Please return to issues in RPGs specifically.

 

[Grumpy RPG Reviews]

This kind of topic is always intensely and inheritly political. That said, to keep anyone from justifibly closing this thread, perhaps we should just focus on cultural appropriation as it applies to role playing games.

 

[Bedrockgames]

That seems fair.

 

[Grumpy RPG Reviews]

Will someone please make counterarguments to my column, but only in terms of the column itself or how CA applies to RPGs.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Grumpy can you repost the most recent version of the column (having trouble finding it in the thread)?

 

[Ovinomancer]

This kind of topic is always intensely and inheritly political. That said, to keep anyone from justifibly closing this thread, perhaps we should just focus on cultural appropriation as it applies to role playing games.

Cultural appropriate is a political theory, though. Unless you're going to confine the discussion to entirely within RPGs, like one RPG culture borrowing from another RPG culture (like Thay culturally appropriating form the Sword Coast), I don't see how you can avoid the political aspects here. Your article is deeply political in nature.