Oriental Adventures, was it really that racist?

[FrogReaver]

I think you have a misunderstanding of what white privilege is.

White privilege is not that White people are better off economically.

White privilege is the advantages of being White. A lot of that is White people not having to deal with the add on problems of not being White. It includes White being defined as normal and non-White as different from the normal or alien or threatening or other. It includes representation and identity issues. It includes an advantage of not dealing with the specific systemic disadvantages for Non-Whites.

This is separate from say male privilege which is men not having to deal with the issues that women do and having certain advantages just from their sex.

Non-White men have male privilege.

There is privilege economically from being rich or even from just not being poor.

There is privilege with health.

There is privilege about being a not minority religion.

There is privilege and lack of privilege in many, many dimensions.

The vast majority of people are a varying mix of privilege and not privilege.

Poor white people have white privilege by definition. That is not a consolation for being poor that makes being poor any better or a reason to dismiss their problems, but their white privilege does not go away because of other problems.

That's fair. I may have a misunderstanding there. Let's say I accept your definition. How insulting is it to the white people in poverty to tell them they have privilege in relation to Lebron James, when any bit of white privilege they have is miniscule in comparison to his 500 million dollar net worth privilege. I mean it's obvious that they technically have white privilege by your definition but still incredibly insulting. IMO.

 

[Bill Zebub]

By the way, for anybody who truly interested in some perspective on race, Isabel Wilkerson's book "Caste" is amazing.

Her basic thesis is that it's not just pointless but counterproductive to try to identify and shame bad apple racists. They aren't the problem. The problem is that our society has long-held, deeply-seated beliefs that are both reflected and propagated by our social systems. I couldn't put the book down, and honestly I don't spend much time reading about social issues.

She doesn't use this particular analogy, but one way of thinking about it is that a lot of the problems with police violence toward black men isn't because the individual cops are "racist" in the traditional sense, but that our society has instilled in them an idea that black men are dangerous. They don't intend to resort to violence more readily with black men, but they are primed to more quickly interpret danger signals. Thus, the solution isn't to root out the blatant racists from our police departments, but to address the sources/causes of this fear. That biased fear is racism, but not the sort that is usually invoked by that word. (Which is why Wilkerson's use of the word "caste" in place of "racism" can be helpful.)

 

[Bill Zebub]

That's fair. I may have a misunderstanding there. Let's say I accept your definition. How insulting is it to the white people in poverty to tell them they have privilege in relation to Lebron James. Any bit of white privilege they have is miniscule in comparison to his 500 million dollar net worth privilege. I mean it's obvious that they technically have white privilege by your definition but still incredibly insulting. IMO.

Once again you have left me speechless.

 

[Voadam]

One problem with these discussions in general is that the things we disagree with are what gets brought up and discussed. I've seen very little mention of valid criticisms here. One did recently get brought up on another thread which was that the Japaneese named classes seemed to be the 'normal' ones while chineese named classes seemed to be the more unusual (like monk / barbarian if I remember correctly). I think that's a pretty clear problem. And I agree it's one I wouldn't want to see repeated in a new OA if that ever occured.

Close.

Most every class is Japanese and the Japanese ones fit in with the feudal Japanese society portrayed in OA.

Exceptions are the Chinese Monks and Wu Jen and the Barbarians who are Mongols for the steppe barbarians and I am not sure for the cold forest and jungle barbarians (possibly a bunch of more South Asian ethnicities).

The Chinese monks are outside of the feudal Japanese honor system entirely and Wu-Jen are said to rarely be found living with the rest of human society. For barbarians it says:

Barbarians are automatically considered outsiders and thus occupy the lowest levels of the caste system. Barbarian characters never roll on Table 38: Character Birth. When dealing with people from the settled lands, the birth of the barbarian has little importance. The military and financial power of the barbarian is a far more important factor. The barbarian's clan is very important to him and other barbarians, and all barbarians must belong to a particular clan.

So the non-Japanese ones are all fairly outside of the society of OA.

This can work for a specific fantasy feudal Japanese centered setting but can get to be a bad fit quick if taking any other perspective on an Asian setting.

 

[billd91]

I think you have a misunderstanding of what white privilege is.

White privilege is not that White people are better off economically.

White privilege is the advantages of being White. A lot of that is White people not having to deal with the add on problems of not being White. It includes White being defined as normal and non-White as different from the normal or alien or threatening or other. It includes representation and identity issues. It includes an advantage of not dealing with the specific systemic disadvantages for Non-Whites.

This is separate from say male privilege which is men not having to deal with the issues that women do and having certain advantages just from their sex.

Non-White men have male privilege.

There is privilege economically from being rich or even from just not being poor.

There is privilege with health.

There is privilege about being a not minority religion.

There is privilege and lack of privilege in many, many dimensions.

The vast majority of people are a varying mix of privilege and not privilege.

Poor white people have white privilege by definition. That is not a consolation for being poor that makes being poor any better or a reason to dismiss their problems, but their white privilege does not go away because of other problems.

And the thing is, it's not surprising that people misunderstand this. There's a lot of nuance in the topic and people tend to not be very good at nuance. People hear they have <various, but particularly white> privilege, they look at their crappy lives, high bills, and stress, and return with "I don't feel privileged" and reflexively get defensive on it.

And it's easy for politicians, particularly of the populist but not very subtle variety, to rally people around that defensiveness. It's a lot harder to effectively communicate nuanced ideas.

 

[FrogReaver]

Close.

Most every class is Japanese and the Japanese ones fit in with the feudal Japanese society portrayed in OA.

Exceptions are the Chinese Monks and Wu Jen and the Barbarians who are Mongols for the steppe barbarians and I am not sure for the cold forest and jungle barbarians (possibly a bunch of more South Asian ethnicities).

The Chinese monks are outside of the feudal Japanese honor system entirely and Wu-Jen are said to rarely be found living with the rest of human society. For barbarians it says:

Barbarians are automatically considered outsiders and thus occupy the lowest levels of the caste system. Barbarian characters never roll on Table 38: Character Birth. When dealing with people from the settled lands, the birth of the barbarian has little importance. The military and financial power of the barbarian is a far more important factor. The barbarian's clan is very important to him and other barbarians, and all barbarians must belong to a particular clan.

So the non-Japanese ones are all fairly outside of the society of OA.

This can work for a specific fantasy feudal Japanese centered setting but can get to be a bad fit quick if taking any other perspective on an Asian setting.

Thanks and apologies as well. You say here what I was trying to say without messing up the race/nationality of classes in question.

 

[Deset Gled]

Was 'Oriental' considered racist when the book was written?

Yes.

Certainly, words change meanings and connotations. Including the word "oriental". But back in 1988? Yes. Awareness of that wasn't as widespread as it is today, and it's not on the same level as some other slurs. But again, do we need to determine the relative offensiveness of the term to agree it is offensive?

No.

Oriental Adventures was first published in 1985. At that time "Oriental" was not considered a racist term by default. Many universities still had "Oriental Studies" as a field of study into the 90s. University of Pennsylvania changed their department name to remove "Oriental" in 1991, University of Arizona in 1990, and that's just what I could find with a quick google search. TSR may not have been on the cutting edge of terminology, but you can't fault them for their usage of it at the time.

 

[FrogReaver]

I'm confused about why people think Oriental Adventures is particularly relevant to ongoing issues for D&D to do better?

It was written by writers who no longer work for a company that no longer exists, over a generation ago.

That doesn't mean that problems it may have no longer exist, but it does mean we can't assume they currently exist. The place to go to look at any continuing issues would be more recent works. Discussing 30 year old books, is if anything a distraction.

IMO, it's a bit of a microcosm.

 

[Mordhau]

Close.

Most every class is Japanese and the Japanese ones fit in with the feudal Japanese society portrayed in OA.

Exceptions are the Chinese Monks and Wu Jen and the Barbarians who are Mongols for the steppe barbarians and I am not sure for the cold forest and jungle barbarians (possibly a bunch of more South Asian ethnicities).

The Chinese monks are outside of the feudal Japanese honor system entirely and Wu-Jen are said to rarely be found living with the rest of human society. For barbarians it says:

Barbarians are automatically considered outsiders and thus occupy the lowest levels of the caste system. Barbarian characters never roll on Table 38: Character Birth. When dealing with people from the settled lands, the birth of the barbarian has little importance. The military and financial power of the barbarian is a far more important factor. The barbarian's clan is very important to him and other barbarians, and all barbarians must belong to a particular clan.

So the non-Japanese ones are all fairly outside of the society of OA.

This can work for a specific fantasy feudal Japanese centered setting but can get to be a bad fit quick if taking any other perspective on an Asian setting.

From memory there's some very odd design there. IIRC just about all of the non-human races are also outside of society.

Which means the average party would not fit into the society at all.

 

[FrogReaver]

From memory there's some very odd design there. IIRC just about all of the non-human races are also outside of society.

Which means the average party would not fit into the society at all.

lol, that's just D&D for ya