Comparing OA to minstrel shows is inapt.Benign racism is still racism.
OA does not depict East Asian people as inhuman or subhuman. The back cover copy, which is probably the worst past of the book, buys into "mysterious East" bullsh*t. The interior text doesn't. Mostly - not completely, but mostly - it is presented from the persepctive of the setting it is depicting, rather than presenting East Asia as an object for Western exploitation or curiosity.
The presentation of Kara-Tur has two versions of China and two versions of Japan. I can't straightforwardly date the two versions of China. The two versions of Japan are c 13-14th centuries CE and then about 300 years later. So there is no implication that East Asia is static or unchanging - common elements in eg Hegel's accounts of East Asia.
It's people's prerogative to be offended by it. I assume that goes without saying. If people want WotC to stop selling it, they can call for that. But if someone is going to compare it to minstrel shows, well I will disagree with that.
Minstrel shows are works of racial hatred. Their function is to establish and perpetuate a conception of Black people - particularly but not exclusively African Americans - as subhuman, inferior, lacking in agency.Yes, I have read it. I own it, and have used it in the past. And I agree that the book was not a a work of racial hatred or intended to cause offence. However, it apparenty does cause offence, it perpetuates some racist stereotypes (as the minstrels shows did)
The depiction of people in OA does not have these features.
I don't think this claim is true either. It does not give entirely incorrect perceptions of Asian cultures. It is not a work of history, obviously. But here are some perceptions it gives which are correct: that China, many centuries ago, had a bureaucratic form of government, powerful enough to support paper money; that Japanese popular religous practice often integrates elements of Buddhism and Shinto; that popular culture in China includes various sorts of ascetics who can work miracles and/or perform great feats of physical prowess.gives entirely incorrect perceptions of Asians and Asian cultures
I haven't expressed any opinion on whether OA is racist.Just because a work isn't intended to be racist doen't mean that it isn't.
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not acting or suggest tnot to act in some way to acknowledge the ills of OA is the same as allowing its racist material to perpetuate.
I think it is - obviously - not as racist as LotR. Nor as racist as Gygax's PHB and DMG (I'm looking particularly at the treatment of half-orcs) nor his MM (with its Sumatran rats, Japanese Ogres, Draco Orientalis Sino Dux, and Rakshasa which originate in India - the only part of the real worls which is also part of Gygax's AD&D gameworld is Asia, as a source of these various creatures).
If you read OA you will see that it does not support or even in any clear way intimate imperialism, "white mans' burden" or social Darwinism. You can find the last of these in Gygax's AD&D MM - before we get to "humanoids" there are "cavemen" and "tribesmen" (the latter have a 50% chance to be cannibals). In OA - and as I already said above - the cultures are presented as viable and worthwhile on their own terms and not only in the context of their relationship to some imagined Europe or North America.They describe how that such charactures and woeful reductions have been used to justify such behavor. That's the legacy of these tropes that they can't be disentagled from. If you don't know what I mean about imperialistic behavior, read this, this, and this. Even now white nationalists and white supremacists contine to use these old stereotypes, tropes, and psuedo-science to justify their worldviews.
Whether these varous works - Gygax's AD&D books, LotR, OA - should all be withdrawn from the market I leave as a call for others to make. I already own copies of all of them and will not be disposing of them. From the point of view of RPGing techniques, OA is the best AD&D work published.