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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9636348" data-attributes="member: 4937">Probably because no one has ever latched onto Goblins as representing a particular real world ethnic group.  This is the Klingon problem.  In Star Trek, the Klingons evolved over time from being simplistic orcs that reveled in being deceitful tricky backstabbing monsters, fulfilling the role of "obvious one-dimensional bad guys" well, to being an honorable warrior species.  But because people aren't very creative, in trying to make the Klingons into less one-dimensional villains people with the best of intentions but no real discernment started increasingly borrowing bits of Japanese culture and gluing it onto the Klingons - making them more and more like Samurai.   So now it is reasonable to ask, "Are Klingons a sort of negative Asian stereotype?"  And the answer should be, "No, Klingons aren't Asian, Sulu is Asian.  Klingons are Klingons."  But well, that argument is hard to sustain once people start deliberately developing their culture from Japanese, down to having Klingon Opera based on Noh and so forth.  Mix in a liberal sprinkling of Viking culture (as it is popularly imagined) and you have "honorable warrior people who love fighting".  Is it racist?  Well, maybe or maybe not, but it isn't very creative.The same thing has happened particular with Orcs and Native Americans, both in D&D products and outside D&D.  Need a primitive warrior people?  Grab Native American garb.  Heck, WotC for all its protesting is still doing this stupidity, presenting orcs in the most recent addition as Latinos.  Now, could I protest that Goblins are a negative racial stereotype?  I probably could.  We could actually trace that as well, though I don't think it is was ever the intention, it does suggest how even in the 1990s attempts to be "racially sensitive" often led to being more racist than before rather than less.  (Again, Latino orcs or the fact that Lando Calrissian is a more respectful black character than Finn, as poor John Boyega who deserved better will happily agree with me on.)Personally, I think that WotC is just making the problem worse and more embarrassing (those minstrel people in the Spelljammer setting, what the heck were they thinking?)  I can sympathize with, "We don't want people to identify this fantasy species with an ethnic group", but every time they try to fix it I feel they make the problem radically worse.   And the problem of thinking that "you can't have sentient species who are inherently evil; let's fix the problem by doing away with that" is that it just leads to absurdity, as some other controversies in popular media are showing.</blockquote>

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