The problem with Evil races is not what you think

[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'.