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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kichwas" data-source="post: 6704160" data-attributes="member: 891">Power dynamics / agency. Let us imagine for a second that I hated whites and sat in my room ranting and raving about it all day long. Let us even imagine I did it on a street corner. And lets then imagine I went out and attacked someone(s).Now... as a minority with little power in the system, in the institutions that shape the USA, no matter which of those three actions I did my impact would be small.Now imagine I am the very legal and social system we exist in - not an individual, either Chicano/Mulatto as I am, or Caucasian - but the system and social norms. If as the system I disfavor a given race, they will end up in prisons more, or have less access to jobs and education. Their neighborhoods might even be cut off from transportation infrastructure and the ability to obtain such fundamentals as food... (look at "Urban Renewal" and how it was used to move black landowners into projects in the 50s, and place freeways through cities cutting off white and black neighborhoods with entrance ramps often only on the white side - drive through Oakland California and you can directly see this). Suddenly the impact of the rules and norms I have set down is massive. Institutional Bias is real and can have a lasting impact for many generations beyond the era in which it is 'technically in place'. Urban Renewal happened in the 1950s, and it still destroys the lives of black youths today in the 2010s without a single racist person who enacted it having to still even be on the planet. And that's just scratching the surface of Institutional bias. Look at any land deed in Northern California, and you will often find a section that says it is illegal to sell the land to Chinese (and other Asians). Even though many Asian Americans are financially well off today, and these sections of deeds have been declared unlawful since the 1960s by the Supreme Court... the impact of how they forced the creation of ethnically segregated neighborhoods is still felt.Individual bias versus institutional bias. Anyone can be individually biased and it is bad no matter who.But only the system can be institutionally biased - and that system is fundamentally structured to favor 'Wealthy, Caucasian, Males, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon' - in that order (50 years ago you could have flipped Caucasian and Anglo in priority - there was a time when being Irish, Italian or Jewish for example, was a very rough experience in the USA - Jewish Caucasians still get bias, and Caucasians of the Arab ethnicity are still given a raw deal). If you happen to have all five in that set, everything is set up in your favor. If you have some of them, you have privileges of varying degrees - and other people cannot do anything to equalize a situation where this comes into play.That's kind of a disturbing way to look at it. Does this mean that as a Chicano, I would be disqualified from writing a 'typical D&D module' because of its Euro-centric roots in a mythic medieval setting? That is just as "ethnic" as if I were to write a setting based on the Inca. And the fact that I am multi-racial and somewhat globalized - does that mean I am essentially bared from writing anything because no matter what I write, I am not truly a member of that group?On another angle that is missed here... the problem isn't what you assign your "token brown staffer" to... the problem is that ANYONE is a token... I lived in Asia for a time and had quite a few expat friends of White American and White European nationality. They would all describe to me an alienating experience I knew quite well: being the token non-person in any situation there were in. Over there, they were the minority. They thought Asia was being unusual towards them, some few understood that they were experiencing the reality of suddenly being "brown".- If you're getting some people just to fill in a box on your checklist, and then presuming they are the people for 'task X'... you are dehumanizing them, and yourself.This is a problem I see all over the tech industry as well. You don't solve bias by bringing in token others... you need to be overall inclusive and diverse in your outlook and in who is sitting in your desks. I've seen European firms that have an essentially 100% Caucasian staff manage to be more inclusive and diverse in what they put out than some American firms that have several 'non-whites' - because empathy, intent, and an inclusive perspective matter a lot more than filling a quota, especially if you then fail to engage and respect. I used to get stock photos for an educational company from photographers in Sweden that somehow managed to find more Chicano and African 'college students and cultural imagery' than a photographer in California could...Somebody just failed to tell the Swedes that Chicanos and Blacks were not supposed to be used as models for professionals and higher education students / faculty... so they somehow managed to miss learning to disrespect and categorize people by race...I would say it boils down to playing that female as something to observe, versus someone to be.Its why in gaming I always cringe when a male player says something like "I'm playing a female character because I want a nice butt to look at on my screen". That is direct "objectification" of an other, rather than an exploration of a different perspective.</blockquote>

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