D&D General "Red Orc" American Indians and "Yellow Orc" Mongolians in D&D

[BookTenTiger]

I fully agree with this stance. Let the past be the past and focus ourselves on the here and now to build a better society. We have enough problems to solve on the here and now and that we can change so focusing on the past is a vital pointless. A simple warning note on the work should be enough.

Ah, I actually disagree with this. I think examining the past is a vital step in moving forward.

 

[billd91]

Ah, I actually disagree with this. I think examining the past is a vital step in moving forward.

You can't fix something if you don't know how broken it is.
Preventing people from examining the past and how it affects the present and future is exactly what the blockheads opposing things like Critical Race Theory (as if they even know what it is) or banning the teaching of "stereotypical" treatments of people (really in this case targeting anything structural or even hinting at widely felt common experiences) are trying to do. It's because they don't want it fixed.

 

[Helldritch]

Ah, I actually disagree with this. I think examining the past is a vital step in moving forward.

I did not say to ignore the past, but to work on the here and now. This is a big difference. He who ignores the past is doomed to repeat it. The ones who scrutinize the past misses on present and gets lost in the past.

In other words, stay aware of what was but fight for the here and now so that the future will be better.

 

[BookTenTiger]

You can't fix something if you don't know how broken it is.
Preventing people from examining the past and how it affects the present and future is exactly what the blockheads opposing things like Critical Race Theory (as if they even know what it is) or banning the teaching of "stereotypical" treatments of people (really in this case targeting anything structural or even hinting at widely felt common experiences) are trying to do. It's because they don't want it fixed.

Yep. Entrenched racism keeps people in power, so they need to convince people to maintain the institutions that continue the racist traditions.

 

[Zardnaar]

Hi Zardnaar; it's easy to speculate that "a few Greeks hated" Theros. Yet because your speculation seems to counter what I shared, it would be more helpful if you gave concrete evidence for that.

It's just what some posters were saying months ago.

Main point is most of the world isn't American and don't always like American takes on their culture.

My theory is long extinct cultures with no direct cultural successors (eg ancient Greece modern Greece or Rome to Modern Italy) are reasonably safe to respectfully use.

In your home games knock yourself out. I don't use RL cultures as inspiration beyond the basics eg architecture perhaps.

Mostly because of early exposure to Mystara which I though was a cheap clownified knock off. Same with OA circa 1993.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

In the eyes of a current-day lawyer, the words of fray Bartolome de las Casas wouldn't be more than a compilation of "urban legends", without data about dates, places, and names of victims or criminals. There were "rotten apples", but that didn't mean it was the normal. If the news tells about a bad action by a Mexican, this doesn't mean all Mexicans to be bad people.

There were bad people among the Spanish conquerors, but the Spanish empire wasn't the "evil empire" if we compare with the actions by the rest. Why not to investigate the list of conflicts between the native Northamericans with Spanish and English-speakers? It is not only a offense against the Spanishs from Europe, but all the Hispanoamericans with Spanish ancestors. Even "pureblood" Iberoamericans will start to wonder if the black lenged is to convinced them they had been happier under the control of a no-Spanish power.

If today we need a consideration about how adding elements from no-Western cultures in a respectful way then we may start to think about a double standard when we talk about others. We should start to deliberate if the current rules of politically corrections really are just and helping for a better coexistence or being like a propaganda weapon.

Really do you want to preach about me needing self-criticism and humildity, or is it emotional manipulation appealing the shame and the guiling feeling? Napoleon's troops almost destroyed la Alhambra, a Muslim palace in Granada, but he is a hero for the French people. Francis Drake trafficed with slaves, but he is remembered like other hero. Spain defeated Otoman empire in the battle of Lepanto, helping for the end of the Otoman piracy, but we can't produce a movie about that because Turkey can be offended.

Why not a setting where vampires with French or Brittish accent invade an ersatz of Asian and/or African civiliations? Or a clone of Gengis Khan invading Middle-East lands and destroying mosques. Why a dark lord of Ravenloft can be an ersatz of the cardinal Richeleiu but not of John Calvin, HenryVIII + Elisabeth II of England, Martin Luther or Joseph Smith?

* Today evil orcs are imagined like the fantasy equivalent of desert-raiders with heavy-metal look (with a punk touch) from post-apocalypse movies.

* If we use creatures and monsters from no-Western folklore, how to avoid the accusation of cultural appropiation? Maybe coworking with a local company. Whasington Irving wrote about the legends of al-Alhambra. Should be he reported for this?

* The Iroquois weren't very loved by the rest of neighbours year before the arrival of the white man. Here their possible bad reputation is not our fault.

* Today Hasbro is the first one who wants a good relation with the Asian market, avoiding all possible tropes about "Yellow menace", but I am afraid the main Asian powers haven't got a good opinion about other neighbours.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

A heavy set dark skinned woman with big lips and a bone. Similar to caricatures of savage Africans.

The sports team in vaguely Central American-ish attire proudly holding a severed head and leg. This is from the Oenkmar section which is explicitly pre-Columbian Central American themed.

Breakdancing and boomboxes, with spikes in their heads (in one ear out the other for one because there is nothing in between apparently). Looks like it can be taken as a depiction of stupid orcs as 80s American Black people.

I didn't think anyone would take these pictures as just depictions of general silliness without racial or ethno-national connotations.

Okay, I see what you're getting at Voadam. And I see the relevance.

I just don't want to make scattershot accusations where it's not certain. I try to focus on what is certain. And text is often more straightforward than imagery.

Quite. It's extremely hard to read some of that art as anything but heavily racially-coded. I'm sure the artist thought it was "just good fun", but it's fun at the expense of specific ethnicities (ones which were not having a great time and still aren't). I think the out-and-out racial animus in the text is probably a lot more obvious, possible to research and easy-to-demonstrate though, what with the "Red" and "Yellow" Orcs being racist from the name down.

There's arguably more things going on with the art - the breakdancing one for example has elements of punk and hiphop cultures jammed together, but that doesn't really make it better when it's clearly trying to imply they're all literal morons (likewise the central American one is clearly shoving basketball and Central American culture together - but the fact that most basketball players are black is not lost on the viewer). Showing people the pictures, most people of today (including pretty much everyone in this thread) is going "Oh my god!" because it's obviously racist, but to break down and detail why it's racist on paper (as opposed to just knowing it) kind of takes a different skill-set to what the OP has, so I think it might be unfair for us to require him to do that too. You'd really want an art historian with a speciality in racial propaganda and stereotypes in the 20th century.

Ruin Explorer, I generally agree with how you characterize my approach and research limitations.

I can see that the first image Voadam shared could be interpreted as a parody of a Black woman. The modern-style spandex top contributes to that perception. Yet it's not as straightforward as the textual elements. If this illustration was for a "Black Orcs" section of the book, then it would be certain. I'm definitely willing to call TSR/WotC/Hasbro to the carpet; but analyzing stereotypical motifs within imagery is beyond my expertise, unless it's certainly obvious. Still, Voadam, you make a valid point.

As for the image of breakdancing and the boombox. As others have expressed, my initial impression is that it is a primarily a parody of punk culture (the mohawk and piercings), of boombox culture, and of breakdancing culture. I could see that the fact that breakdancing arose in an African American context could be problematic. I'm not sure of the nuances here though. If any of the humanoids were depicted with Black/African physiognomy (e.g. kinky hair or black skin), it would be more obviously problematic.

Yes, there's a parody of the Mesoamerican Ballgame. I acknowledge that the goofy depiction of the Mesoamerican Ballgame is an appropriation of Nahuatl / Indigenous Mexica culture. I wonder what parameters a professional Nahuatl cultural consultant would suggest in regard to fantasy depictions of the Mesoamerican Ballgame.

I've started to look more closely at the Oenkmar chapter. Yet another reason for my "skipping" over that chapter is that I have not seen a racial slur associated with the Oenkmarians, in the way that the term "red orcs" and "yellow orcs" are close to real-world racial slurs. My goal in the OP was not to document every real-world cultural motif which is found in GAZ10 (or Mystara as a whole!). I went into extra detail with "Red Orcland" and "Yellow Orkia" simply to nail down the fact that the racial terms "red" and "yellow" are definitely referring to "Indigenous American" and "East Asian" parodies.

Yet I'll state again that my research is not inherently opposed to fantasy adaptations of Mesoamerican, Indigenous North American, or East Asian cultural elements. My research is opposed to racial slurs of any sort, and to disrespectful adaptations of real world cultures, especially marginalized / indigenous cultures.

 

[bedir than]

The famous pirate Redbeard wan't English, but Otoman, with Greek blood. Why Otomans corsairs (who attacked villages in the coasts to catch slaves) can't be the bad guys in a XXI century movie? Is not that a double standar?

Some of the greatest works of fiction are based on the Pirates of the Barbary Coast. Some are written by POC and others are written by Spaniards. Several of those works have appeared in modern film.

Barbary pirates - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

As for the Conquistadors
We could ask the people of Tenochtitlan how good the Spanish were, but they're nearly entirely and completely dead after their city was razed

 

[BookTenTiger]

In the eyes of a current-day lawyer, the words of fray Bartolome de las Casas wouldn't be more than a compilation of "urban legends", without data about dates, places, and names of victims or criminals. There were "rotten apples", but that didn't mean it was the normal. If the news tells about a bad action by a Mexican, this doesn't mean all Mexicans to be bad people.

There were bad people among the Spanish conquerors, but the Spanish empire wasn't the "evil empire" if we compare with the actions by the rest. Why not to investigate the list of conflicts between the native Northamericans with Spanish and English-speakers? It is not only a offense against the Spanishs from Europe, but all the Hispanoamericans with Spanish ancestors. Even "pureblood" Iberoamericans will start to wonder if the black lenged is to convinced them they had been happier under the control of a no-Spanish power.

If today we need a consideration about how adding elements from no-Western cultures in a respectful way then we may start to think about a double standard when we talk about others. We should start to deliberate if the current rules of politically corrections really are just and helping for a better coexistence or being like a propaganda weapon.

Really do you want to preach about me needing self-criticism and humildity, or is it emotional manipulation appealing the shame and the guiling feeling? Napoleon's troops almost destroyed la Alhambra, a Muslim palace in Granada, but he is a hero for the French people. Francis Drake trafficed with slaves, but he is remembered like other hero. Spain defeated Otoman empire in the battle of Lepanto, helping for the end of the Otoman piracy, but we can't produce a movie about that because Turkey can be offended.

Why not a setting where vampires with French or Brittish accent invade an ersatz of Asian and/or African civiliations? Or a clone of Gengis Khan invading Middle-East lands and destroying mosques. Why a dark lord of Ravenloft can be an ersatz of the cardinal Richeleiu but not of John Calvin, HenryVIII + Elisabeth II of England, Martin Luther or Joseph Smith?

* Today evil orcs are imagined like the fantasy equivalent of desert-raiders with heavy-metal look (with a punk touch) from post-apocalypse movies.

* If we use creatures and monsters from no-Western folklore, how to avoid the accusation of cultural appropiation? Maybe coworking with a local company. Whasington Irving wrote about the legends of al-Alhambra. Should be he reported for this?

* The Iroquois weren't very loved by the rest of neighbours year before the arrival of the white man. Here their possible bad reputation is not our fault.

* Today Hasbro is the first one who wants a good relation with the Asian market, avoiding all possible tropes about "Yellow menace", but I am afraid the main Asian powers haven't got a good opinion about other neighbours.

This reads as if you are saying it's okay to be racist towards Native Americans because people vilify Conquistadors?

 

[MGibster]

In the eyes of a current-day lawyer, the words of fray Bartolome de las Casas wouldn't be more than a compilation of "urban legends", without data about dates, places, and names of victims or criminals. There were "rotten apples", but that didn't mean it was the normal. If the news tells about a bad action by a Mexican, this doesn't mean all Mexicans to be bad people.

The above seems like an attack on the idea of history itself.

We could ask the people of Tenochtitlan how good the Spanish were, but they're nearly entirely and completely dead after their city was razed

Or we could ask their neighbors the Tlaxcala who helped the Spanish, in part, because they were tired of being victimized by those in Tenochtitlan.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Or we could ask their neighbors the Tlaxcala who helped the Spanish, in part, because they were tired of being victimized by those in Tenochtitlan.

I think it's important to remember that Native Americans were not (and are not) Noble Savages... They were nations and peoples who historically acted like other nations and peoples, including war, persecution, politics, and even slavery.

However, none of that is an excuse to publish works that treat them in a racist, mocking way.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Why not a setting where vampires with French or Brittish accent invade an ersatz of Asian and/or African civiliations?

LOL. You write like that hasn't happened!

You might want to look at stuff like Firebite - Wikipedia

Sheesh indeed in my own setting I have a faction based on the British East India Company - who spoiler alert if you're one of my player, but I know no-one is - have leadership who are secretly vampires (and some of their kill squads and so on are too).

Oh or Warhammer Fantasy Battle, which has Germanic and Central European Vampires ravaging South America, not conquistadors.

It's about white, British or Australian accented vampires being fought by Indigenous vampire hunters, in a war that's been going on for centuries. Trying to use your own ignorance of media is as an arguing tactic is not really very helpful. The only reason we don't see more of it is that vampires are rarely "the bad guys" these days, and vampire legends are so widespread that they tend to use local vampire styles rather than importing Western ones.

Also frankly it's a bit "on the nose" lol.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Do you ask about the people of Tenochtitlan? Then I can answer about how lots of indigineous Americans helped Hernan Cortez against Aztec empire, for example the Tlaxcaltecs, and with this the end of the human sacrifices.

I wonder if you can find a native Northamerican from XIX centure who would rather to live in a English-speaker Indian reversvation than in a mission funded by Catholic Spanish-speakers missionaries?

Don't you understand? For me this is like a walking-dead zombi reporting every full moon the werewolves bite people and eat kitties. I am not who should be ashamed and feeling guilty while we are silent about the actions by others. If you don't allow the Otoman empire to be the antagonist faction but a Catholic bishop or Spanish conquerors can appear like the bad guys of the story, then that is double standar. I am tired. I think others should be ashamed more than me.

And we should to reconsider the romantic image of the pirates from the fiction. They weren't only criminals, they did horrible things with the female prisoners, and most of attacks weren't against the Spanish ships, because these traveled together in convoys to be safer, but against villages in the coast to catch slaves. If today "Gone with the Wind" needs a previous disclaimer, maybe in a future all productions about pirates will need something like this.

* Today the "barbarians" from the fantasy fiction aren't copies of ancient cultures but more like a remix of neopaganism and tribal-punk.

* The trope of the noble savage is not only false, but also dangerous. Those people always were fighting each other for the zones for crops or hunt, and today some intertribal wars continue. And they have to learn to respect the women.

* Any solution? To avoid accusations about racist allegories I suggest to use creatures from the same folklore in the opposite sides. For example if in the story A the bad guys are the onis, then other creature from the Japanese folklore will fight against the onis. If the monsters of the week in the story B are the jian-shi (Chinese vampires) then a Chinese creature will help against the jian-shi.

 

[Mordhau]

Dividing people in history into good and evil is far too simplistic.

Dividing people into oppressors and oppressed (at least in a particular moment rather than essentially*) doesn't have to be, but when we then take those oppressors and make them models for cartoonish evil we are mostly just falling back into the first trap and excusing ourselves because we are distancing their actions from us.

*And of course just because someone is being oppressed doesn't mean they weren't just yesterday oppressing someone else.

 

[Morrus]

I am tired. I think others should be ashamed more than me.

Nobody said you plundered any nations. That's not how this works. Maybe you were unlucky as yours was the last post in the thread when I looked (but your 6 warnings say it was just the likely odds) but you need to leave this thread now, please. You're on your last warning regarding this type of thing.

 

[el-remmen]

Okay, I see what you're getting at Voadam. And I see the relevance.

I just don't want to make scattershot accusations where it's not certain. I try to focus on what is certain. And text is often more straightforward than imagery.

I don't know about that. My training is in literary studies, but as someone who studies comics and other forms of visual culture as well, there are visual rhetorics of racialization and white supremacy that at least two of those images clearly make use of and would fall into the rubric of racist imagery from this scholar's pov. Sure images can be slippery, but so can text - the framing context (as in the relationship of words and images in this product) does a lot of work to provide pretty clear signs.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

I don't know about that. My training is in literary studies, but as someone who studies comics and other forms of visual culture as well, there are visual rhetorics of racialization and white supremacy that at least two of those images clearly make use of and would fall into the rubric of racist imagery from this scholar's pov. Sure images can be slippery, but so can text - the framing context (as in the relationship of words and images in this product) does a lot of work to provide pretty clear signs.

Rather than my general pronouncement that text is easier than images, I should rather say: "In the case of GAZ10, I found the text to contain obvious problems; whereas I am personally less certain about how to objectively parse those images."

I'm not denying the possibility of some potentially problematic aspects in those images, as I mentioned above. I believe you're well-equipped for an objective analysis. Would you pinpoint the exact images and motifs?

 

[Dungeonosophy]

If you don't allow the Otoman empire to be the antagonist faction but a Catholic bishop or Spanish conquerors can appear like the bad guys of the story, then that is double standar.

At risk of veering off-topic, there is, in fact, a fantasy allegory of the Ottoman Empire in the D&D Multiverse: namely, the Hagiarchy of Great Hule, in the World of Mystara. And, for better or worse, Hule is mostly presented as an antagonistic faction, as worshippers of the entropic power of Loki.

Furthermore, Hule has Spanish-based neighbors...the Espan peoples of the Savage Baronies. Each barony represents a different aspect of Hispanic culture:

Torreon: Inspired from Spanish conquistadors, mostly swordsmen for hire and mercenaries. Everybody has Torreoners in their pay.
Narvaez: Inspired from the Spanish Inquisition (knights and priests, early 1600's). A place to avoid for "heretics," non-humans, and wizards.
Saragon: Inspired from Moorish Spain. Also a magiocracy.
Gargona: Mid 1600's Spain, a place for artists and diplomats.
Almarron: Spanish California. Los Angeles at the time of Zorro.
Guadalante: Gauchos of the Argentine pampas.

See: "Savage Coast Real World Cultural Inspirations"

But that's not what this thread is about.

 

[MGibster]

I think it's important to remember that Native Americans were not (and are not) Noble Savages... They were nations and peoples who historically acted like other nations and peoples, including war, persecution, politics, and even slavery.

Yeah. I think we're always better off looking at every group of human being as multi-faceted and complex.

However, none of that is an excuse to publish works that treat them in a racist, mocking way.

I can't disagree here. I've defended some publications in the past, Oriental Adventures for example even if I acknowledge it's flawed, but I can't mount such a defense for The Orcs of Thar.

 

[Helldritch]

At some point, it is certainly possible that every cultures have been copied, served as inspiration or parodied (with respect or not) by almost all RPGs and not only D&D. The real problem, is that it was/is not always done with good taste and respect.

I sure hope that future products will be more in line respect and avoid the pitfall some of their predecessors fell into.