Does DnD encourage racist thinking?
- Thread starter NoOneofConsequence
- Start date
Re: Re: Re: Does DnD encourage racist thinking?
That was always my biggest problem with races and alignment. The creation of framework that justifies the asigning of moral charactersitics based on race/species. Too many people believe racist thinking in RL coresponds to the objective facts... Its just a matter of personal taste, I guess.
While it bothers me in fiction/film, it really sticks in my craw when it comes to gaming. Perhaps because in a game millieu I an active rather than passive participant...
For me, the defining characteristic of racism, even beyond the issue of percieived superiority/inferiority, is the imputing of moral characterisitics based on race. And 1st edtion AD&D did this in spades. But I think the problems pretty much gone away.
I don't think dwarves that can mine and elves that can sing really constitute dangerous racial stereotyping. I have a problem considering all stereotyping as equally noxious. In fact, I'm a firm believer in many flavors of benign stereotyping: I look pretty darn Asian {and my actual heritage is hyper-mixed}. I've faced this first hand. I can't honestly say I've been irreparably harmed by being mistaken for hard-working, conservative, and good at math {when I was never more than fair}. My experiences in no way parallel those of my African-American friends...
Then there's the issue of mechanics: the use of stereotype in fantasy and SF is just a matter of laziness. It often has to do with overcoming the audiences disbelief, giving them a clear locus of sympathy, or comprension. Not overwhelming them, at first, with the alien. I call this the Larry Niven school of SF {where every alien race had one defining trait: violent, cowardly, immobile}.
Teaching the audience about your unreal world is of paramaount importance. Give them something easy, something they can 'know' --like all Klingons are warlike. DS9 is great example; how they began with stereotypes and worked outward from there.
Lastly, pretensious stuff. I'm not sure you can get around the essential reductiveness of 'knowing' {ah, slapdash epistomology}. Any system of knowledge is at the core, a set of rules saying how one thing is different from another. And the association of a limited set of symbols with a functionality infinite set of everything else. So unless you go around in a full-on Zen stupor, saying only that "things just are", you're effectively indulging in strereotyping. Bummer, huh?
Zappo said:
That was always my biggest problem with races and alignment. The creation of framework that justifies the asigning of moral charactersitics based on race/species. Too many people believe racist thinking in RL coresponds to the objective facts... Its just a matter of personal taste, I guess.
While it bothers me in fiction/film, it really sticks in my craw when it comes to gaming. Perhaps because in a game millieu I an active rather than passive participant...
For me, the defining characteristic of racism, even beyond the issue of percieived superiority/inferiority, is the imputing of moral characterisitics based on race. And 1st edtion AD&D did this in spades. But I think the problems pretty much gone away.
I don't think dwarves that can mine and elves that can sing really constitute dangerous racial stereotyping. I have a problem considering all stereotyping as equally noxious. In fact, I'm a firm believer in many flavors of benign stereotyping: I look pretty darn Asian {and my actual heritage is hyper-mixed}. I've faced this first hand. I can't honestly say I've been irreparably harmed by being mistaken for hard-working, conservative, and good at math {when I was never more than fair}. My experiences in no way parallel those of my African-American friends...
Then there's the issue of mechanics: the use of stereotype in fantasy and SF is just a matter of laziness. It often has to do with overcoming the audiences disbelief, giving them a clear locus of sympathy, or comprension. Not overwhelming them, at first, with the alien. I call this the Larry Niven school of SF {where every alien race had one defining trait: violent, cowardly, immobile}.
Teaching the audience about your unreal world is of paramaount importance. Give them something easy, something they can 'know' --like all Klingons are warlike. DS9 is great example; how they began with stereotypes and worked outward from there.
Lastly, pretensious stuff. I'm not sure you can get around the essential reductiveness of 'knowing' {ah, slapdash epistomology}. Any system of knowledge is at the core, a set of rules saying how one thing is different from another. And the association of a limited set of symbols with a functionality infinite set of everything else. So unless you go around in a full-on Zen stupor, saying only that "things just are", you're effectively indulging in strereotyping. Bummer, huh?
Desdichado
Hero
I'm actually more upset about the crazy notion that pod-spawned orcs was something Tolkien wrote than about anything said about racism in that thread! 
What's the world coming to when something that ignorant can be blatantly posted and not contradicted?
What's the world coming to when something that ignorant can be blatantly posted and not contradicted?
WizarDru
Adventurer
LostSoul said:
That would be 'The 13th Warrior', starring Antonio Banderas, adapted from Michael Crichton's 'Eaters of the Dead'...a wry little tribute to Gilgamesh.
The thing you've missed there is that the barbarians are pretty much spot on for being Chaotic Evil, and actually foster that terrifying, inhuman image. They aren't primitive, as the film shows....but they create an image of themselves, and then capitalize on it. The fear generated from that perception is what makes them appear to be an unbeatable foe, until the adventuring party, errr...I mean, main characters arrive. (by the way, Crichton is clearly a killer DM). I wouldn't constitute that as racism, per se, but YMMV.
mythago
Hero
Real-world barbarians are often far more Lawful than their civilized counterparts, anyway. 
Why not? In the real world, you can have different species crossbreed--that's how we get mules. Some of them will be sterile hybrids; I seem to remember at least one cheesy fantasy series where the main character refused to let his daughter marry an Elf, because the children would be sterile. IIRC, anthropologists also believe that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon man would have been able to interbreed, as Jean Auel's books assume to be fact.
Interestingly, D&D doesn't address whether orcs and elves can interbreed. You'd think so, since both are interfertile with humans, and there's that whole Tolkien thing about Orcs being horribly twisted Elves.
Why not? In the real world, you can have different species crossbreed--that's how we get mules. Some of them will be sterile hybrids; I seem to remember at least one cheesy fantasy series where the main character refused to let his daughter marry an Elf, because the children would be sterile. IIRC, anthropologists also believe that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon man would have been able to interbreed, as Jean Auel's books assume to be fact.
Interestingly, D&D doesn't address whether orcs and elves can interbreed. You'd think so, since both are interfertile with humans, and there's that whole Tolkien thing about Orcs being horribly twisted Elves.
Desdichado
Hero
Yes, but if half-elves and half-orcs are not sterile mules, then there has to be a closer relationship than that -- they have to be at most seperated into sub-species. That's what the definition of species is. And the examples you gave are creatures that are in the same genus, so this concept of alien-ness I've seen here is right out.mythago said:
And, only some anthropologists believe that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon men could have interbred. That's actually a quite contentious (although very interesting) debate on Neanderthal anthropology.
