Oriental Adventures, was it really that racist?

[Haiku Elvis]

Thing is - all of these things are more ideological narratives stemming from obsessions with the past than they are salient points about modern society. Native Americans are born US citizens and can leave reservations, pursue education, anything they want. White people are far more criticized for things like wearing dreads than black people are - virtually no one who has good hygiene is criticized for wearing natural hairstyles. Hate crimes against Sikhs and religious minorities aren't particularly common, and western women carry tons of privilege in all kinds of unrecognized ways.

My European friend from Serbia, who is both white and christian, has been told to go back where he came from on more than one occasion - one time even being verbally assaulted by a stranger in the street. It has nothing to do with anything other than he's from another country and can situationally spark someone's generalized xenophobia.

But here's the real issue - constantly pandering to these kinds of ideas as a justification for double standards is ironically the best way to keep people trapped in the past rather than allowing us to move together into a more egalitarian future. And it isn't unique to them - all kinds of people have faced oppression throughout history.

I've limited my previous engagement with this thread to one post as I don't want to get caught up in any of the arguments flying around and that is still my intention but I have to point out a couple of things with those examples and the underlying assumptions that I feel are incorrect.

Native Americans being US citizens andbeing allowed to leave the reservations (if they can afford it) and get an education (if they can afford it) seems a very low bar as an example of racial inequality being so far in the past it isn't relevant to today's society.
The fact your example is based on most native americans still living on reservations, which were basically unwanted wasteland holding pens to put the remnants of the native tribes after they were ethnically cleansed off their valuable traditional land kind of gives away that there are ongoing and unresolved issues here. The huge income disparities directly related to their previous treatment and dispossetion also directly influence their abities to do the things you say. Hence my italicised additions.
People of african descent getting comments about their hair is so a real thing.
We had a global zoom meeting at work last year where things like microagressions and biases and how to remove them from the workplace were discussed.
I was shocked by how many people of african descent had examples of comments about their natural hair "we have a client coming in later you aren't going to leave it like that are you?" kind of thing. Seriously before that I would have asumed you were right.

I'll leave the religious minorities issue alone as it must vary enormously and I don't have the direct experience to comment accurately.

The western women privilege comment strikes me as a bit of a weird addition as the thread has been about minorities and representation or peoples reactions to it and that doesn't seem to follow on from the prievious topics in the thread.
All I'll say is put yourself in the position where women feel you are sympathetic and willing to hear and you'll be shocked how many women you know will have had experiences of being groped, had in appropriate sexual comments aimed at them in public or been put in situations where they feel they actively have to get out of there or something bad will happen to them.

In terms of people being trapped in the past - if some guy stiffed you for a grand and after few years of trying to get your money back someone else decided for you that you were trapped in the past and the slate should be wiped clean you wouldn't like it. Great for the guy who took your money but sucks to be you.

If the playing field is uneven, wiping out the past as if nothing is wrong can just freeze the inequality in place.

Also it is interesting to note that in one of the rare cases where white Britons and Americans were genuine victims - in the Japanese camps in world war II. The survivours persued legal campaigns for compensation for decades afterwards wanting a sense of justice or reparation in the same way that other groups that have suffered historical wrongs. This isn't an Aha! Gotcha thing just people mostly want the same things its the circumstances they are in that more affects how they act.

I don't particularly go in for heros, I didn't have any posters of football players I wanted to be on my walls (possibly some of actresses in sexy outfits but if pressed I'll deny everything) but to my mind one of the greatest people I've shared time on this planet with was the sadly recently passed Desmond Tutu and the most important thing he did was arguably run the Truth and Reconciliation commision in South Africa after the fall of apartheid. He didn't shy away from the complexities and made sure the same rules applied fairly to all but was uncompromising in insisting the way to move on way to face up to the past and acknowledge what had happened an nothing should get swept beneath the carpet just because it made some people feel awkward, if they ever wanted to move on and achieve that egalitarian future it was a vital need.

I mostly agree with this, but there's a signficant caveat. Feelings and emotions are a result of biases shaped from years of being taught how to think moreso than they are a result of just baseline experience. It's not only important to challenge facts, but also to challenge (respectually) the biases that are at play in shaping peoples' subjectve interpretation of reality. This is something we have societally lost touch with over the past couple of decades.

When someone claims offense to something, it's worth fully unpacking that and not just pandering to it. As humans, we should respect one another enough to challenge each other as adults, and that includes pointing out biases that might be at play in how they interpret situations they encounter.

A really good example of this dilemma is the "scope creep" on blackface. It actually refers to something very specific, but more and more things are lumped under the idea of blackface in ways that make zero sense. Here's a newsflash - darkening your complexion slightly to dress as Prince for halloween isn't even remotly the same thing as performing a blackface minstrel show where you exaggerate features to mock an entire race. Why do we act like they are? It's completely irrational and a sign of how we've grown carried away pandering to victimhood.

While I agree with a lot of the basic sentiment of the first two paragraphs the last one I feel is way out I'm afraid.

A simile to hopefully explain my view.

Imagine at someones retirement party they asked his friend he had worked with to do a roast (the speech full of insulting jokes not a beef join kind).
Great bit rude but no harm done.

Now imagine the same guy was bullied in his early years at the company and they asked his old boss who was the main instigator back in the day. And he comes up with the same speech word for word as the first example.
Now we have a guy having his bully that made his life a misery years ago insulting him again while people laugh along.

You do not have two identical situations here even if on face value two identical actions. You cannot arbitrarily discount the past and look at the action removed of all context to decide if it is good or bad.
Repeating actions that have intentionally caused harm in the past even if the intention isn't to cause harm this time can still cause harm.
In the world we live in where blackface - mocking black people generally - part of a wider putting down and demeaning of a section of the population was itself in part, part of a feedback loop that ecouraged and justified policies that helped keep black people as de facto second class citizens. It carried on on TV into the 60s at least in the UK so was aceptable within living memory.
Any kind of mimicing the same concept even if the motivations are different is saying the previous harm doesn't count or the hurt and damage it caused don't count.
Not blacking your skin shows an understanding that lines were crossed and the effects of that are still with us, damage was done and repairs need to be made. And to be fair not blacking up is a pretty easy standard to maintain its not a huge sacrifice to make.

The history isn't dead and seperate: it's preamble, it's set up, it's session zero, it's the bleedin Hobbit to Lord of the Rings.

Putting a hand over one eye and saying I see nothing wrong cuts off the bit of the equation that makes it wrong so obviously it looks like there isn't a problem but it is still there. Just out of frame.

OA has racial prejudice issues despite the best efforts of it's writer and checkers as it repeated some tropes that had been used to present an inacurate often negative version of asian people previously.
And it downplayed histories/cultures/ historical animosities and transposed different people and cultures in a kind of pan east Asian blob that had an implicit we don't really care if its wrong its what we want them to be attitude, that was insulting to many people related to the cultures that got "stiffed" or overwritten if not to all evenly. Again repeating historical attitudes to a lack of care when portraying other peoples. Comparing this to the treatment of cultures with different histories to decide if it's racist or not isn't going to be a fair comparison.

PS It sucks for your Serbian friend, my wife gets the same thing here in the UK. Xenophobia is wrong in all forms we can only hope to improve ourselves I just don't think we'll get there by forgetting it ever happened.

 

[Hussar]

...that his work (Lovecraft's) shouldn't appear in any game's bibliography...

As the one who generated this particular idea, let me just say that this has never, to my knowledge, been suggested.

What was suggested that in a list of inspirational reading Lovecraft's name should be left off. No one has ever remotely suggested that in a scholarly treatise, where a bibliography would be found, that Lovecraft should be left out. But, unfortunately, my particular suggestion has been warped to mean what you are claiming here. That was never the claim.

And I do stand by the notion that Lovecraft's name should not appear on a list of inspiration reading for the game.

 

[MGibster]

What was suggested that in a list of inspirational reading Lovecraft's name should be left off. No one has ever remotely suggested that in a scholarly treatise, where a bibliography would be found, that Lovecraft should be left out. But, unfortunately, my particular suggestion has been warped to mean what you are claiming here. That was never the claim.

I call a list of inspirational reading a bibliography. The word can be used outside of a scholarly context.

 

[Random Task]

As the one who generated this particular idea, let me just say that this has never, to my knowledge, been suggested.

What was suggested that in a list of inspirational reading Lovecraft's name should be left off. No one has ever remotely suggested that in a scholarly treatise, where a bibliography would be found, that Lovecraft should be left out. But, unfortunately, my particular suggestion has been warped to mean what you are claiming here. That was never the claim.

And I do stand by the notion that Lovecraft's name should not appear on a list of inspiration reading for the game.

So, what are the criteria for striking someone's work off the reading list for imperfect morals? Would you teach Lovecraft in a class on 20th century speculative fiction or fantastic literature?

 

[FrogReaver]

As an aside, I know we can't discuss "politics", but right now, this very minute, the US has a huge problem with people attempting to prevent discussion of certain issues, and actively trying pull books from libraries and schools (kinda funny given the internet exists, I know), and even to burn those books in some cases. And it's pretty much the same people as MADD, and they're absolutely utilizing governmental/hierarchical power (rather than voting with their feet or their dollars), in this case local governmental and school boards and stuff to do this. If they weren't it wouldn't be an issue. And it's rather different to what people seem so worried about here.

This bothers me. I fully agree it's an important discussion to have but it's not one we can have here. I can't comment on your comment. I can't share my views on it. Doing so would be political and I would inevitably get modded for it.

Do you know what it's like to watch while someone can share a viewpoint you disagree with and you can say nothing about it?

 

[MGibster]

So, what are the criteria for striking someone's work off the reading list for imperfect morals? Would you teach Lovecraft in a class on 20th century speculative fiction or fantastic literature?

It seems pretty clear that Hussar is not opposed to the inclusion of Lovecraft in an academic context. I didn't major in literature, so I don't know how often Lovecraft comes up but I don't imagine it's as frequently as other authors.

 

[FrogReaver]

As the one who generated this particular idea, let me just say that this has never, to my knowledge, been suggested.

What was suggested that in a list of inspirational reading Lovecraft's name should be left off. No one has ever remotely suggested that in a scholarly treatise, where a bibliography would be found, that Lovecraft should be left out. But, unfortunately, my particular suggestion has been warped to mean what you are claiming here. That was never the claim.

And I do stand by the notion that Lovecraft's name should not appear on a list of inspiration reading for the game.

So you say the author is racist - 'we can look past his moral failings and focus on his work'
So you say his work is racist - 'we can look past it's racism and focus on the good/interesting from it'

I don't understand the reasoning that's turning people away from the principle that even extremely bad men sometimes have a good idea. That we don't have to approve of their badness to be inspired by something good/interesting they did/said/wrote.

 

[Random Task]

It seems pretty clear that Hussar is not opposed to the inclusion of Lovecraft in an academic context.

No one has ever remotely suggested that in a scholarly treatise, where a bibliography would be found, that Lovecraft should be left out.

The statement seems to imply that Lovecraft should be used if needed in a reference work, not taught in a class.

I didn't major in literature, so I don't know how often Lovecraft comes up but I don't imagine it's as frequently as other authors.

There are plenty of other major authors with problematic elements whose work is still being actively read, taught, produced for theater and adapted for other media.

For instance, the Merchant of Venice.

 

[Irlo]

So, what are the criteria for striking someone's work off the reading list for imperfect morals?

I’d say that if you believe that the work stands a good chance of alienating the players you’re trying to inspire, you should probably not include it on an inspirational reading list. Seems like a solid criteria for me.

 

[Mordhau]

Just put a warning next to his name in the reading list and people can use their own judgement rather than being treated like fragile porcelain.

It would be wrong to leave Lovecraft off an inspirational reading list because he's an important part of the history of the game. If we're going to play a fifty year old game then we should be willing to acknowledge that history warts and all.

It's not that we have to. We could all be playing a game written this decade.