Does DnD encourage racist thinking?

[Agback]

G'day

I'm afraid that it probably does, but in a subtle and insidious way. It encourages us to rehearse thinking of issues in terms of conflict between races.

But I'm the first to admit that there is no evidence to hand to support this fear. I hope I'm wrong.

Regards,


Agback

 

[Agback]

Interestingly, D&D doesn't address whether orcs and elves can interbreed. You'd think so, since both are interfertile with humans....

G'day

You may be interested to learn that interfertility is not transitive. The best-known example of a cline in which the extremes are not interfertile is Arctic terns. But they are fairly common.

Regards,


Agback

 

[Kichwas]

You've stated that you do not wish us to use real world examples.

But...

without using them, I cannot make a logical claim for why the D&D setup is encouraging of racism.

I will just make one violation of your request and state that pop culture and fictional analogies / parody have been used since the dawn of media to promote racial agendas. D&D has all of this, but we've divorced it from the attempt to make it an actual statement.

 

[Zappo]

Re: 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.

I understand your position. But I think that, conversely, it could be argued that D&D discourages "RL racism" because it shows very clearly that its "correct racism" is based in objective facts that any adventuring party can easily verify.

Thus teaching the players that you need facts to back a stereotype, or drop it.

This leads to another problem, as you noted. Many people take racist thinking as objective facts. IMO, that is part of a much wider problem, bigger than racism, probably bigger than anything else, that will likely plague humanity forever, ie. lack of independent thinking, lack of desire for proof when we're afraid to be proven wrong. But that's an entirely different problem. And D&D and RPGs in general encourage independent thinking.

Why not? In the real world, you can have different species crossbreed--that's how we get mules.

Because D&D has too many exceptions, making the whole thing messy. Some outsiders crossbreed with almost anything, for example; dragons too; polymorph spells allow anything to crossbreed with anything; and in general with magic you can throw all rules out of the window.

In any case, it doesn't matter at all whether orcs are technically a different species from humans or not; IRL, racism existed much before classification. What matters is that orcs can be clearly distinguished from humans by physical features, and orcs are objectively evil in the vast majority of cases (of course, it could be argued that killing something that just might be good is a bad thing - but that's another matter entirely).

 

[Buttercup]

So if you decide elves are technically Homo silvanus, or something, you could go with the idea that they can bred with humans.

For some reason, this tickles me. What other names can we come up with?

Orcs=Homo vulgaris
Dwarves=Homo occupatus
Halflings= Homo dimidius
Gnomes=Homo molestus

 

[hong]

For some reason, this tickles me. What other names can we come up with?

Orcs=Homo vulgaris
Dwarves=Homo occupatus
Halflings= Homo dimidius
Gnomes=Homo molestus

Elves=Homo homo


Hong "that's why they get all the chicks" Ooi

 

[Desdichado]

You realize you just contradicted yourself, yes? If the creatures had to be in the same SUBspecies, horses and donkeys would not be interfertile. Horses are Equus caballus, donkeys Equus asinus; they are not members of the same species but different subspecies. Their offspring are sterile (in most cases) because mules end up with an odd number of chromosomes. Odd numbers don't divide neatly in two during meiosis.

Anyway. So if you decide elves are technically Homo silvanus, or something, you could go with the idea that they can bred with humans.

I think the "blah blah magical blah" explanation is probably easiest

No, I didn't contradict myself. I said (not very clearly, I admit) that if they were able to produce fertile offspring, they would have to be at the most distant sub-species within the same species. Therefore, Homo sapiens sapiens with Homo sapiens silvanus and Homo sapiens orcus or some such. And, as I described above, there's no reason whatsoever to assume any tpe of blah bola magical blah explanation. Hand-waving inconsistencies of any kind away with "it's magical" is a lazy way out, IMO.

And as I said, falsely separating out "specism" from "racism" when they are really the same thing doesn't really help anyway, so whether or not they belong to the same species or not shouldn't be used as an excuse to justify that it's not racism. The real question is, do you want to institutionalize racism against orcs and goblins (etc.) in your game or not? And is there any problem with doing so?

 

[Desdichado]

Regarding that other one, tohugh, spome linguist analyzed the elvish lasnguages and both contained lots of Hebrew in thme, too (IIRC, both had Hebrew, latin, and Greek....one dialect had welsh, while the other has some other nordic language)

No, that's not true. Sindarin borrows many of it's forms (although none of the vocabulary) of Welsh and Quenya does likewise with Finnish. Dwarvish and Adunaic share some grammar forms with Hebrew, notably the use of tri-consonant radicals as base forms (nominative) of the word. To put a noun in another case, you would add vowels instead of endings, as Latin and Russian do, for instance. Therefore, the radical Kh Z D can be KhaZaD for "dwarves" and KhaZDul for "of the dwarves, dwarvish" to give an example. But, really, except for the fact that Tolkien specifically wrote that and explained that, we don't know enough about dwarvish or any other language except the two elvish languages to say much of anything about the structure.

 

[mythago]

they would have to be at the most distant sub-species within the same species

But that's not so. Horses and donkeys are different species within the same genus and are interfertile. If what you said were the case, donkeys would have to be Equus caballus asinus, and they're not. Same with lions and tigers, which are both in genus Panthera and are interfertile.

Anyway. D&D makes pretty clear that there IS prejudice against goblins and orcs, viz. the charisma hit half-orcs take.

 

[RSKennan]

Just as there is no reason to assume that the "magical handwaving" explaination of imaginary beings interbreeding is true, there is also no reason to assume that they are the same species, genus or have any other biological relationship to one another whatsoever. Either way of explaining it is a matter of personal choice, and the amount of suspension of disbelief the group can handle. In a great many games, (not mine, but many nonetheless) science as we know it doesn't even work, let alone rule the world. A system that operates with parellels to our own concept of physics, biology etc, seems to be in place in these games, with notable exceptions; magic works, allowing for all kinds of gross violations of causality, thermodynamics, and don't get me started. Gunpowder doesn't work. Who cares if you mix saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal in the perfect proprtions? You get zip. This speaks to the nature of the difference. A fantasy world does not, and some would say, should not model our own reality.

Personally I prefer to think that an elf's "biology" is as different from our own biololgy as a virus, with some convergent parellels (similar organs etc). Form follows function. In my games, an elf (or any nonhuman race) will never be simply another type of human, and I and my players like it that way. To me, saying a dwarf is hardy is like saying an eagle has good eyes. Similarly, saying an orc is bloodthirsty is like saying rattlesnakes seek out warmth. A simple fact based upon knowledge of the beast in question. How can that be racist?

Parenthetically; I'll say that I too have concerns about the semblance of racism in our hobby. I've had this discussion with close friends, and have even taken the side that the game does have those undertones, but I have come to think that a mere discussion of the differences between people/beings/creatures does not constitute racist thought. Even when those differences are that the (fantasy)"race"/species in question eats humans and is therefore hated by most of said humans. Many humans feel the same way about any predator, be it a wolf or bacterium. Others can see past that and recognise the natural order of things.