The problem with Evil races is not what you think

[Dannyalcatraz]

And who is being "constantly dismissive" of "western literature"? Who has dismissed any literature in this thread? Do regard it as "dismissive" of JRRT, or HPL, or REH, to do the sort of textual analysis and exegesis that (eg) @Doug McCrae has done in this thread? From where I'm standing that just looks like pretty standard literary criticism. Where is this alleged "dismissal" to be found?

Gotta say, HPL is a big, fat racist who would probably be utterly appalled that I (a multiracial black dude) have read his complete works*, and the stuff other writers based on it. But the fact of his well-documented racism doesn’t diminish the massive contribution he made to what we call genre fiction today.

So yeah, IDing racist tropes is totally fair game, IMHO. The older I get, the more I find myself divorcing creators from their works because, let’s face it, humans are pretty shoddy critters.

But accepting their human nature doesn’t excuse their inclusion of their inner demons in their work.

* well, if I’m honest, he’d be appalled I could read at all.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Ok, let me explain this to you. I get all of that. I’m well aware of all and I deplore that, and stand against that and stand with those who suffer from this Don’t for a second think otherwise. This is not the same as fictional monsters in D&D. So spare me the attempt to reach for moral superiority. This is my problem as the debate is being framed as a moralistic crusade, any one who is opposed to this opinion must be up holders of the social status quo. I stand against this argument because I believe in social progress and equality, I believe the constant linking of orcs as racist is problematic, the constant dismissiveness of western literature because of historical reasons that when explained reach dangerously close to the noble savage trope and is also a very US/Eurocentric POV . This also has implications for how terms and names are weaponised in modern politics in a manner that concerns me, but for obvious reasons, this is not the place to detail that.

You might disagree with my viewpoint on execution, that’s fine, but that’s not the same as saying that our goals are not the same.

As I've said, I'm not really in a position to, nor feel inclined to, throw any shots at anyone here, really. I'm just saying that, yes it may well be, probably is, true that orcs in D&D were never intended as any sort of racial stereotype. Yet, they do evoke one, and that alone is pretty problematic. I think you mentioned the Vistani. I know nothing of their 5e lore. 4e kind of deconstructed the whole 'cosmic Gypsie' thing, which I know some people were fairly approving of. OTOH the old school ones were very definitely a blatant stereotype, right? I mean, not all of it was negative, but even if it is just a really inaccurate caricature, it is still kind of a bummer, right? Now, clearly there is the difference from orcs and hobgoblins and such that these were based on one very specific group of real-world people. I think though it is a matter of degree more than of kind. If you are not happy with one, you probably shouldn't be totally OK with the other. That's my opinion anyway.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Gotta say, HPL is a big, fat racist who would probably be utterly appalled that I (a multiracial black dude) have read his complete works*, and the stuff other writers based on it. But the fact of his well-documented racism doesn’t diminish the massive contribution he made to what we call genre fiction today.

So yeah, IDing racist tropes is totally fair game, IMHO. The older I get, the more I find myself divorcing creators from their works because, let’s face it, humans are pretty shoddy critters.

But accepting their human nature doesn’t excuse their inclusion of their inner demons in their work.

* well, if I’m honest, he’d be appalled I could read at all.

Yeah, I've had to wonder if my handle is really all that cool... I mean, as with every other aspect of HPL and race, "Abdul Alhazred" is a completely idiotic and not at all realistic Arabic name, just stupid gibberish really. Made up by someone who apparently didn't know enough about, or couldn't be bothered to, learn 2 words of correct Arabic (Abdul means pretty literally "Servant of God", 'Alhazred' is just gibberish). Typical Lovecraft unfortunately. As you say, we are all rather flawed!

 

[Doug McCrae]

CONTENT WARNING: VERY RACIST CLAIMS, IN QUOTATION

This post is about the correspondence between the alignment and mental abilities of the D&D "savage" humanoids and ideas about racial moral and intellectual inferiority. It uses the list on page 7 of the D&D 5e Monster Manual (2014) — bugbears, gnolls, goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds, lizardfolk, and orcs. In the AD&D 1e Dungeon Masters Guide (1979) (pg 40) all of these races (along with cavemen, which includes tribesmen) have witch doctors. AD&D 1e and D&D 5e will be considered.

John Arthur, Race, Equality, and the Burdens of History (2007) describes the five major forms that "beliefs in racial inferiority can take." This post uses the first two: "Another race may be thought to be (1) intellectually inferior (naturally less able to understand complex problems or less artistically creative); (2) morally inferior (inherently less virtuous; less trustworthy, hard working, loyal)."

AD&D 1e

	Alignment	Intelligence
Bugbear	Chaotic evil	Low to Average (low)
Gnoll	Chaotic evil	Low-average
Goblin	Lawful evil	Average (low)
Hobgoblin	Lawful evil	Average
Kobold	Lawful evil	Average (low)
Lizard Man	Neutral	Low (average)
Orc	Lawful evil	Average (low)

Average means human intelligence: 8-10. Low is 5-7. (1e MM pg 6)

All but one of the "savage" humanoids are evil, and all but one are below average intelligence.

AD&D 1e Monster Manual (1977): "Gnolls… dislike work" "All goblins are slave takers and fond of torture." "Kobolds hate most other life, delighting in killing and torture." "Orcs are cruel and hate living things… They take slaves for work, food, and entertainment (torture, etc.) but not elves whom they kill immediately."

D&D 5e

To measure both the ability to "understand complex problems" and artistic creativity all three mental ability scores are used – Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma.

	Alignment	INT	WIS	CHA	Total*
Bugbear	Chaotic evil	8	11	9	-2
Gnoll	Chaotic evil	6	10	7	-7
Goblin	Neutral evil	10	8	8	-4
Hobgoblin	Lawful evil	10	10	9	-1
Kobold	Lawful evil	8	7	8	-7
Lizardfolk	Neutral	7	12	7	-4
Orc	Chaotic evil	7	11	10	-2

*This column represents the total difference of INT + WIS + CHA from an assumed baseline of three 10s (30) — the ability scores of the Commoner NPC in Appendix B (5e MM pg 345).

All but one of the "savage" humanoids are evil, and all are intellectually inferior to the baseline when all three mental ability scores are taken into account. This post from an older thread argues that lizardfolk are misaligned as neutral and ought to be evil.

Several of the "savage" humanoids — bugbears, lizardfolk, and orcs — have Wisdom scores above the baseline. D&D 5e PHB: "Wisdom reflects how attuned you are to the world around you and represents perceptiveness and intuition." (pg 178) This is not inconsistent with racist ideas. Arthur de Gobineau, The Inequality of Human Races (1853): "[Black people's] senses, especially taste and smell, are developed to an extent unknown to the other two races."

D&D 5e MM: "Bugbears are born for battle and mayhem". They have a "love of carnage" "Even when paid, bugbears are at best unreliable allies." "No goodness or compassion resides in the heart of a gnoll. Like a demon, it lacks anything resembling a conscience, and can't be taught or coerced to put aside its destructive tendencies." "Goblins are… black-hearted, selfish… lazy and undisciplined… motivated by greed and malice." Orcs have a "lust for slaughter."

Morally and Intellectually Inferior

Josiah C Nott, Two Lectures on the Connection Between the Biblical and Physical History of Man (1849):

The capacity of the crania of the Mongol, Indian, and Negro, and all dark-skinned races, is smaller than that of the pure white man. And this deficiency seems to be especially well-marked in those parts of the brain which have been assigned to the moral and intellectual faculties.​

Gobineau: "The negroid variety['s]… mental faculties are dull or even non-existent." Alfred R Wallace, The Origin of Human Races and the Antiquity of Man (1864): "The intellectual and moral… qualities of the European are superior." William Benjamin Smith, The Color Line (1905): "When we come to the profounder mental, moral, and social differences, we can find no other terms than greater and less to describe the relative endowments of the widely sundered races."

According to Robert Wald Sussman, The Myth of Race (2014), the Pioneer Fund is "the major source of funding" for scientific racism today. Michael Levin, emeritus professor of philosophy at the City University of New York, has been one of its recipients. "Blacks just aren't as moral as whites, genetically, Levin argues. He holds that blacks have two unalterable characteristics: less intelligence and greater proneness to violence."

Like a Demon

Kay Wright Lewis, A Curse Upon the Nation (2017): "Native people were "demons" and "beasts in the shape of men," and Europeans often refused to recognize them as fully human."

Born for Battle and Mayhem, Love of Carnage, Lust for Slaughter, Destructive Tendencies

Samuel George Morton, An Inquiry Into the Distinctive Characteristics of the Aboriginal Race of America (1844):

The [Indian's] love of war is so general, so characteristic, that it scarcely calls for a comment or an illustration. One nation is in almost perpetual hostility with another, tribe against tribe, man against man; and with this ruling passion are linked a merciless revenge and an unsparing destructiveness.​

Dislike Work, Lazy, Selfish, Greedy

Gobineau: "The yellow man has little physical energy, and is inclined to apathy… His whole desire is to live in the easiest and most comfortable way possible." Charles Wentworth Dilke, Greater Britain (1868):

The apathy of the Cinghalese [Sri Lankans] is not surprising; but they are not merely lazy, they are a cowardly, effeminate, and revengeful race. They sleep and smoke, and smoke and sleep, rousing themselves only once in the day to snatch a bowl of curry and rice, or to fleece a white man.​

 

[Doug McCrae]

CONTENT WARNING: GENOCIDAL RACISM, IN QUOTATION

This post examines whether some of the D&D 5e "savage" humanoids — bugbears, gnolls, kobolds, lizardfolk, and orcs — cannot be considered racist because they are more like animals than people.

In the D&D 5e Monster Manual (2014) artwork the bugbear's snout resembles a bear's. "Hyenas were transformed into the first gnolls." Gnoll heads look like those of hyenas. Gnolls and kobolds have digitigrade legs, like dogs or hyenas. Kobolds are "egg-laying" and have tails. Kobolds and lizardfolk are "reptilian" and have heads resembling those of lizards. Orcs have "low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks."

The category of "humanoid" in D&D 5e includes the races "most suitable as player characters" — humans, dwarves, elves, and halflings — as well as the "savage" humanoids — bugbears, gnolls, goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds, lizardfolk, and orcs. All humanoids have "language and culture, few if any innate magical abilities (though most humanoids can learn spellcasting), and a bipedal form."

In addition, the "savage" humanoids that could be considered beast-like all use tools, such as weapons. Most wear clothing or armour, lizardfolk being the only exception. Most have religion. Most build or modify structures, even gnolls. All are social and live in communities. They have alignments rather than being unaligned as animals are in D&D 5e.

"Gnolls rarely build permanent structures or craft anything of lasting value." But this demonstrates that they occasionally do so. Gnoll leaders adorn their bodies with art, including "demonic sigils." This suggests they have a form of writing. Gnolls worship Yeenoghu. Kobolds possess "a cleverness for trap making and tunneling" and worship Kurtulmak. Lizardfolk live in "hut villages." They dance, tell stories, and "craft tools and ornamental jewelry." They have shamans and worship Semuanya. Orcs can interbreed with other humanoids, including humans, producing children. Gruumsh and Luthic are the orcish gods.

It can be concluded therefore that the beast-like features of bugbears, gnolls, kobolds, lizardfolk, and orcs are superficial. They are, in all important respects, people.

The Racist Use of the Idea That People Are Like Animals

Assigning the properties of animals to real world peoples has been, and continues to be, a significant element of racism as the following examples demonstrate. Robert Miles and Malcolm Brown, Racism 2e (2003):

The African was attributed with a bestial character and there was much speculation about the origin and consequences of the supposed physical similarities between Africans and apes, both of which were 'discovered' by Europeans at the same time in a common geographical location. Some Europeans suggested that sexual intercourse occurred between Africans and apes… the African was less civilised, a barbarian, by virtue of supposedly looking more like a beast and behaving in ways that approximated to the behaviour of beasts.​

Robert Sussman, The Myth of Race (2014): "Charles White (1728– 1813), an English physician… proposed that black Africans... were an intermediate form between true humans (white Europeans) and apes, with other races intermediate between these extremes." Orcish "low foreheads" and, in the artwork, disproportionately long arms correspond to this idea that black people resemble apes. Nathan G Alexander, Race in a Godless World (2019):

Charles Bradlaugh… used the French physician Jules Cloquet's facial angle, measuring "an European, a Negro, an infant chimpanzee, a full grown chimpanzee, a male gorilla, and a Newfoundland dog" to show that the facial angle was highest for a European and gradually became lower as one moved down to the lower races and non-human animals... The arm of "the Negro" was longer than that of the European and was nearly indistinguishable, proportionally, from a gorilla's.​

Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil (2007):

The Sydney Herald claimed in 1838 that Aborigines had "bestowed no labour upon the land—their ownership, their right, was nothing more than that of the Emu or the Kangaroo."​

​

Governor George Gipps... had 12 men tried for the Myall Creek massacre; they were acquitted. A juror called blacks "a set of monkies and the earlier they are exterminated from the face of the earth the better."​

David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness (1991): "It was an open question in the mind of nineteenth-century white Protestants whether these Celtic immigrants belonged to the white race. They were vilified, segregated, and castigated as savage, simian, and bestial." Sussman:

Ernst Haeckel (1834– 1919) was one of the most respected scientists of his time… He called for the halting of immigration of the "filthy" Jews and, claiming that since inferior races are "nearer to the mammals (apes and dogs) than to civilized Europeans, we must, therefore, assign a totally different value to their lives."​

Karl Hannemann in Bulletin of the German Association of National Socialist Physicians (June 1938): "Rats, bedbugs and fleas are also natural occurrences in the same way as Jews and Gypsies. All existence is a struggle; we must therefore gradually biologically eradicate all these vermin." Katie Hopkins in The Sun (17th April 2015): "Make no mistake, these migrants are like cockroaches."

EDIT: This section's argument isn't that all animal people are racist. It's that the use of animal features applied to real world people by racists demonstrates that animal people in fiction can be racist.

 

[aramis erak]

Doug, I honestly think you're going a bit overboard here.

THe use of animal-men in RPGs is (excepting the Orc, Troll, and Ent, both taken from Tolkien's casually racist view) Is seldom to disguise hate; it's to draw a culture that would be offensive if any existing phenotype were assigned to it.

 

[Esau Cairn]

It is personal (an attack, to be clear), you know it is, and the title is not antagonistic. Stop the passive aggressiveness.

Appeal to Authority is a fallacy. And I have a Master's degree. So what?

No I do not, and I never said that. You are wrong.

No I do not, and I never said that. Again you are wrong.

This is wordsmithing

This shows me that you did not read what I wrote. The problem is people making such vile interpretations. Games are unreal. People who want to assert such interpretations are the problem, and should be shunned. If you are unable to separate the unreal game from your feelings among players of good faith, then that is your problem, not the game's problem. But as I said, lots of players cannot be taken at good faith, and their toxic influence confuses player feelings and game objectives. This is a very real problem, which is why toxic players needs to be ejected. Playing in a setting with ethical problems is fine as long as the players understand that the setting is problematic and act accordingly. Now you not wanting to play in such a setting is your choice and is fine, but without any conflict what are you fighting? Several commentators have suggested undead or other clearly Evil monsters. That's also fine, but it's boring. The greatest monsters are evil humans. If you are uncomfortable with the reality of humans in a completely unreal setting, then I don't know what to say. As I said, it's a matter of trust. If you can't trust your group to understand the unrealness of the game (i.e. they are getting off on racism, sexism, etc.), the you need a different group. Based upon your final comment, you have the right group!

I did not do this. Race = species, and most RPG players know this. Changing the terminology is fine with me, but so is not changing it, as I am fine with abstract definitions.

Agreed, which I addressed and rejected. Again, did you read what I wrote?

Which was my point!

You proved my point, if in no other manner, than personally attacking me and insisting I was wrong (and being passive aggressive) when all objective evidence would show that is not the case. But you're free to believe in--and to rationalize--all your prejudices.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Doug, I honestly think you're going a bit overboard here.

THe use of animal-men in RPGs is (excepting the Orc, Troll, and Ent, both taken from Tolkien's casually racist view) Is seldom to disguise hate; it's to draw a culture that would be offensive if any existing phenotype were assigned to it.

Well, like any other tool, it’s one that could be misused. If you’re using an animorphic species as a stand in for a RW race that has been described with that species’ characteristics, odds are good you’re not playing nice.

But if your racial/cultural stand-ins are removed from animalistic stereotypes, then you’re probably safe. For instance, if your campaign’s Arabic analogues were based on brightly colored parrots- including their speech patterns and other mannerisms, it would be hard to say you were using racist dog whistles.

(And I’m pretty sure when I used Minotaurs for a Plains Indian culture, I wasn’t being racist.)

 

[pemerton]

My view, and I think this is similar to @Doug McCrae's view, is that what is at issue is tropes and related ideas.

Consider Lizardmen/Lizardfolk: they are (literally) presented as resembling certain animals; they are also presented as culturally closely resembling a stereotyped conception of "native" peoples: they live in "huts", they use "primitive" tools and weapons, they practice exo-cannibalism, etc.

One school of thought has it: we use Lizardfolk so we can enjoy those pulp tropes but not associate them with any actual human peoples.

Another school of thought, which I personally am closer to, has it: using Lizardfolk keeps alive these tropes which have no cogency or currency except as byproducts of the racist ideologies connected to European colonialism particularly in Africa and Asia. It's the tropes themselves that carry this baggage and hence keep the racist ideas alive.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The charge of cannibalism, in some form, might be perennial -- it was levelled at early Christians, at Jews in medieval Europe, and against those believed to be witches in the early modern period. But the form it appears in in D&D -- Edgar Rice Burroughs-style pulp cannibalism (or exo-cannibalism) -- derives, I think, from accusations made about non-white colonised peoples going back to Columbus. When I was a kid in the 70s and 80s, the missionary-in-the-cannibal's-pot image was common in cartoons.

Ideas about racial, biological, inherited, unchangeable traits -- such as the way orcs and half-orcs in 5e can never be free of evil no matter how hard they try -- are also modern I think.

Even if an orc chooses a good alignment, it struggles against its innate tendencies for its entire life. (Even half-orcs feel the lingering pull of the orc god's influence.) (PHB)​

​

No matter how domesticated an orc might seem, its blood lust flows just beneath the surface. With its instinctive love of battle and its desire to prove its strength, an orc trying to live within the confines of civilization is faced with a difficult task. (Volo's Guide to Monsters)​

 

[Doug McCrae]

THe use of animal-men in RPGs is (excepting the Orc, Troll, and Ent, both taken from Tolkien's casually racist view) Is seldom to disguise hate; it's to draw a culture that would be offensive if any existing phenotype were assigned to it.

I don't think it's ever been a matter of hate, exactly. At what level Gygax was aware when he gave evil humanoids non-European properties in 1e -- shamans and witch doctors, "mongrel" for half-orcs, etc -- I'm not sure. The AD&D 1e Monster Manual was written very quickly, under a lot of commercial pressure (according to Jon Peterson in Playing at the World) so it might be the product of 40 or so years' worth of absorption of pulp, such as Howard and Lovecraft, coming out unconsciously. The creators of 5e seem to have been deliberately going back to the roots of D&D in embracing pulp tropes -- in some cases going further than D&D ever had before -- and probably thought that, as @pemerton says, it was okay because they were applying them to monsters.

 

[Cadence]

My view, and I think this is similar to @Doug McCrae's view, is that what is at issue is tropes and related ideas.

Consider Lizardmen/Lizardfolk: they are (literally) presented as resembling certain animals; they are also presented as culturally closely resembling a stereotyped conception of "native" peoples: they live in "huts", they use "primitive" tools and weapons, they practice exo-cannibalism, etc.

One school of thought has it: we use Lizardfolk so we can enjoy those pulp tropes but not associate them with any actual human peoples.

Another school of thought, which I personally am closer to, has it: using Lizardfolk keeps alive these tropes which have no cogency or currency except as byproducts of the racist ideologies connected to European colonialism particularly in Africa and Asia. It's the tropes themselves that carry this baggage and hence keep the racist ideas alive.

When is something tripe and when is it a natural feeling story element?

It feels like human shaped animal monsters have a long history in film and pop culture and myth - creature from the black lagoon, yeti, hundreds of things from folklore collected in the PF bestiaries.

Do Tanuki and Vanara and Kappa and Minotaurs and Satyr, etc... need to be people in masks with no innate personality traits or differences in mental processing than real people?

Would a humanoid bower bird build a really really fancy hut? Would a humanoid beaver? If we have a lizard brained lizadish humanoid or would it live in a burrow or would some lizards build artificial structures if they had opposable thumbs? Would a humanoid coyote or wolf do things that looked like worshipping the moon? Would a humanoid elephant venerate the dead?

Would a humanoid version of a territorial apex predator reasonably still want to be a territorial apex predator in competition with people? If it was, would people not compete with them? Could a slightly smarter gorilla species possibly be made more erudite than humans , and another play up the bestiality? If the later, do we have to avoid competition between them and humans to avoid any awful tropes (I'm sure I can find some horrible racist pictures from not long ago to show they're still in use). Should we just entirely avoid some species to humanoidize?

If we want to have some more advanced than humans in terms of technology or magic is that problematic? Can we have some be less? Would more intelligent than dogs but less than human dog men not build artificial shelter when a cave wasn't around? If it happens that some designs are the ones that are obviously more effective, would we need to avoid those just because some real groups of humans did/do use those? If the base species is cannibalistic, does that need to be avoided in the more humanoid one to avoid problems? Real otters use tools, would humanoid ones either need to use the full suite of human tools or none of them to avoid using only "primitive" ones?

Does the creature from the black lagoon need to have language and literature and science and live in a house to avoid tropes?

Is it ok to just have the things the races do semi-logically follow from what the base species does? Is it ok to have a species that uses all body tattoos or feathered head garments or... as long as the patterns don't look Maori and they aren't used for an island dwelling sea exploring race obviously met as a stand in? Are feathered head coverings ok as long as it doesn't look like something used by a real tribe in the US for a fake species that lives in that ecosystem and doesn't use stereotypical things like totem poles or teepees?

If there is a wizard-made rat people, is living in the sewers, being generally looked down on by people, and not being afforded the same opportunities as those on the surface an ok space to play in? Or can I not explore some of the things Glen Cook did with that in his Garrett series?

It feels like there's a big place out there that allows for humanoids that aren't just people in masks and that aren't just lazy tropes. Is it just that doing so takes work and we'd have to recognize it will probably still inadvertantly hit something even if being careful? (And recognizing that many things from the past didn't care at all about trying or being careful).

 

[Cadence]

Repeat...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Doug, I honestly think you're going a bit overboard here.

THe use of animal-men in RPGs is (excepting the Orc, Troll, and Ent, both taken from Tolkien's casually racist view) Is seldom to disguise hate; it's to draw a culture that would be offensive if any existing phenotype were assigned to it.

So, where is the canonically evil, primitive, lazy, sub-human race in D&D which evokes the racial characteristics of blonde haired blue eyed northwestern Europeans? I mean, if there's nothing to it, then why are their ALWAYS canonically tall blonde, light-skinned noble savages, or simply 'advanced civilized humans'. Sure, some percentage of them might then be evil NPCs, but overall? So we see, associated with traits assigned to 'inferior races of humans' in the 18th-20th Centuries are invariably evil sub-human humanoid species, CANONICALLY, in D&D. The only reason this doesn't leap out at people in this forum (those for whom it doesn't) is that they are used to it. They are completely inured to casual racist bigoted language and ideas to the point where they simply cannot even see them when they are right in front of their faces. Indeed, in my experience when they think them, act them, and propagate them!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

My view, and I think this is similar to @Doug McCrae's view, is that what is at issue is tropes and related ideas.

Consider Lizardmen/Lizardfolk: they are (literally) presented as resembling certain animals; they are also presented as culturally closely resembling a stereotyped conception of "native" peoples: they live in "huts", they use "primitive" tools and weapons, they practice exo-cannibalism, etc.

One school of thought has it: we use Lizardfolk so we can enjoy those pulp tropes but not associate them with any actual human peoples.

Another school of thought, which I personally am closer to, has it: using Lizardfolk keeps alive these tropes which have no cogency or currency except as byproducts of the racist ideologies connected to European colonialism particularly in Africa and Asia. It's the tropes themselves that carry this baggage and hence keep the racist ideas alive.

Exactly. If canonical D&D had evil blonde blue-eyed monsters, or monsters which evoked all the tropes derived from the colonial period of world history about Europeans, then I would be a bit less suspicious. Yet it really doesn't. I mean, lets imagine such a race. Lets just coopt Dragonborn! They are evil, colonial slave masters who eat babies, kidnap the women of other races for nefarious purposes, whatever all the various ideas are. I would say, were this race canonical to D&D and of equal weight to things like orcs or lizardmen, at least the game is impartially racist! Yet that is clearly not the case. I mean, I'm sure you can come up with an example of a setting that does something slightly like that, but it sure isn't the major theme in D&D like humanoids are! (and I mean that word in its AD&D sense, monstrous humanoids, not demi-humans).

 

[Doug McCrae]

I should add that my argument in the post upthread isn't that all animal people are racist. It's that the use of animal features applied to real world people by racists demonstrates that animal people in fiction can be racist. (I'll add this to my OP as an edit.)

Elsewhere in this thread I've made stronger arguments about what I think is racist in D&D, to do with correspondences with racist claims, and in some cases derivation from Tolkien, Howard, Lovecraft, and other cultural sources. Ultimately all of it comes from the (often unconscious and unexamined) absorption and reproduction of ideas in the wider culture.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't think it's ever been a matter of hate, exactly. At what level Gygax was aware when he gave evil humanoids non-European properties in 1e -- shamans and witch doctors, "mongrel" for half-orcs, etc -- I'm not sure. The AD&D 1e Monster Manual was written very quickly, under a lot of commercial pressure (according to Jon Peterson in Playing at the World) so it might be the product of 40 or so years' worth of absorption of pulp, such as Howard and Lovecraft, coming out unconsciously. The creators of 5e seem to have been deliberately going back to the roots of D&D in embracing pulp tropes -- in some cases going further than D&D ever had before -- and probably thought that, as @pemerton says, it was okay because they were applying them to monsters.

I doubt the concept ever crossed E. Gary Gygax's mind. I didn't know the guy and can't say what he personally believed, but nothing I ever heard about the guy indicated he was a hater of any sort, more the opposite really. He never confronted overt racism aimed at him, being a white man in suburban USA. So it simply never entered his mind as a possibility.

I mean, even 20 years ago, I probably would not have actively thought of it myself. I grew up in the same sort of environment Gygax did. There were no 'colored people' of any sort whatsoever! A few servicemen brought back Korean or Japanese wives, that was about it, and those wives were very very quiet. My own family was pretty open about the existence of racism and we were taught about it. Still, it would have been completely foreign to my mind to think that an orc was an embodiment of a racist stereotype. So, I strongly suspect a 1970's EGG simply couldn't have even conceived that notion unless he'd had minorities to interact with in his work on D&D, and I very strongly doubt that was the case, certainly not at that early stage of TSR when it was him and a few friends and business associates. He might have met someone like M. A. R. Barker perhaps, but that would be about the size of it. Even Dr Barker wasn't exactly 'dark skinned' from what I know.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

When is something tripe and when is it a natural feeling story element?

It feels like human shaped animal monsters have a long history in film and pop culture and myth - creature from the black lagoon, yeti, hundreds of things from folklore collected in the PF bestiaries.

Do Tanuki and Vanara and Kappa and Minotaurs and Satyr, etc... need to be people in masks with no innate personality traits or differences in mental processing than real people?

Would a humanoid bower bird build a really really fancy hut? Would a humanoid beaver? If we have a lizard brained lizadish humanoid or would it live in a burrow or would some lizards build artificial structures if they had opposable thumbs? Would a humanoid coyote or wolf do things that looked like worshipping the moon? Would a humanoid elephant venerate the dead?

Would a humanoid version of a territorial apex predator reasonably still want to be a territorial apex predator in competition with people? If it was, would people not compete with them? Could a slightly smarter gorilla species possibly be made more erudite than humans , and another play up the bestiality? If the later, do we have to avoid competition between them and humans to avoid any awful tropes (I'm sure I can find some horrible racist pictures from not long ago to show they're still in use). Should we just entirely avoid some species to humanoidize?

If we want to have some more advanced than humans in terms of technology or magic is that problematic? Can we have some be less? Would more intelligent than dogs but less than human dog men not build artificial shelter when a cave wasn't around? If it happens that some designs are the ones that are obviously more effective, would we need to avoid those just because some real groups of humans did/do use those? If the base species is cannibalistic, does that need to be avoided in the more humanoid one to avoid problems? Real otters use tools, would humanoid ones either need to use the full suite of human tools or none of them to avoid using only "primitive" ones?

Does the creature from the black lagoon need to have language and literature and science and live in a house to avoid tropes?

Is it ok to just have the things the races do semi-logically follow from what the base species does? Is it ok to have a species that uses all body tattoos or feathered head garments or... as long as the patterns don't look Maori and they aren't used for an island dwelling sea exploring race obviously met as a stand in? Are feathered head coverings ok as long as it doesn't look like something used by a real tribe in the US for a fake species that lives in that ecosystem and doesn't use stereotypical things like totem poles or teepees?

If there is a wizard-made rat people, is living in the sewers, being generally looked down on by people, and not being afforded the same opportunities as those on the surface an ok space to play in? Or can I not explore some of the things Glen Cook did with that in his Garrett series?

It feels like there's a big place out there that allows for humanoids that aren't just people in masks and that aren't just lazy tropes. Is it just that doing so takes work and we'd have to recognize it will probably still inadvertantly hit something even if being careful? (And recognizing that many things from the past didn't care at all about trying or being careful).

Well, lets imagine it as an orc. What would an orc race have to be in order to avoid being deeply problematic? I would say that first we should dump the word 'race', lets call it a 'species', it is not a human, it is another species. I would probably totally avoid the whole 'breeding with humans' thing entirely. If the issue ever comes up, then OK, maybe orcs and humans are in the same genus. Maybe they can create sterile offspring, or whatever. But why even go there?

Orcs are not inherently evil. There may well be an orc civilization which has standards and culture which the PCs will not approve of. OK, fine, so do cultures on the real Earth (and yes we label them as inferior to us, our bad). I mean, we have plenty of fictional models already out there, like Klingons, which are certainly not an 'evil race' or particularly 'primitive' etc. In fact, I think Star Trek did a fairly decent job, right? (I'm sure there are points where it might be criticized, I really haven't studied the topic). I mean, there are other non-D&D versions of orcs too, some of which are probably more acceptable.

Anyway, obviously they can't be INHERENTLY primitive, evil, stupid, aggressive, etc. That's really it. While this might create some problems for existing D&D settings and lore, it doesn't seem all that onerous to me. Now, creatures which are much less obviously humanoid, we can be less worried about. The example of 'parrots' is good, a bird people are much less evocative of humans, and as long as you avoid trying to carbon copy a human culture onto them, I am sure it should be fine. That leaves a LOT of design space open! Cat people, dog people, bird people, lizard people, snake people, insect people, etc. etc. etc. Just don't make the more anthro ones inherently negative AND associated with cultural traits we link to racist ideas.

It is all rather unfortunate. This would be a lot easier, except we're burdened with a nasty history. That's life.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Lets just coopt Dragonborn! They are evil, colonial slave masters who eat babies, kidnap the women of other races for nefarious purposes, whatever all the various ideas are. I would say, were this race canonical to D&D and of equal weight to things like orcs or lizardmen, at least the game is impartially racist!

D&D's closest analogue to that are probably the Drow, who owe a lot to Moorcock's Melniboneans, almost certainly intended by Moorcock as a metaphor for the British Empire. Ofc D&D takes that anti-imperialist message and turns it on its head by making its Melniboneans dark-skinned.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

D&D's closest analogue to that are probably the Drow, who owe a lot to Moorcock's Melniboneans, almost certainly intended by Moorcock as a metaphor for the British Empire. Ofc D&D takes that anti-imperialist message and turns it on its head by making its Melniboneans dark-skinned and matriarchal.

Right, again one of those Gygax "I never thought of that" kinds of things, I suspect. That is, he certainly was at least partly inspired by the 'trow' or 'drow' of Norse/Anglo Saxon myth, a black-skinned underground race of 'alfs' or 'dwarves', maybe also identical with 'svart alfar' (and maybe not). Later some artists and authors seem to have extrapolated this more in the direction of a negroid kind of look (I know one module has an illustration of a kinky haired drow woman, for example).

I always figured the drow did take some inspiration from Moorcock, yes. They have the same sort of overly hedonistic, morally 'depraved' society, and a similar relationship with other races. I suspect the matriarchal part was either incorporated to fit with Lolth (who may have been invented first, who knows), and/or perhaps as simply an attempt to make them more different, culturally and socially, than 'normal people'. Of course, it certainly doesn't come across too well in terms of depicting a matriarchal social order in a good light!

Drow Tales has a slightly different spin on all of this, though it is still an underground matriarchal society of basically evil dark-skinned 'elves'.