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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8326606" data-attributes="member: 82106">Right, and while I am leery of drawing this discussion too far into the 'current events' swamp, I would just like to point out that this is very close cousin to a certain vociferous group of partisans in my own country and their complaints about the idea that racism could be 'embedded in the structure of society itself'. I certainly don't see any convincing reason to throw labels at anyone, like [USER=6688441]@transmission89[/USER], but when he/she asserts that JRRT did not actively draw certain parallels, and that his analogy between orcs and Mongols isn't diagnostic of a form of racist view, that feels like a very similar kind of logic. That is, that only OVERT PERSONAL statements of racial bias somehow 'count' as racism. I have news for people, that's not how it is experienced in life! People who may join an RPG and find out that the 'bad guys' are a humanoid race that was explicitly built to evoke their own people and associates negative traits with them, do not feel like it is &quot;OK&quot; simply because the association was made by someone who &quot;wasn't really racist&quot; and has simply been schlepped along for 3 generations of work since then. Not any more than a guy who gets pulled over by the police every week for no other reason than his skin color is really all that worried about the nuances of why each individual LEO is doing it. Sorry, again, not trying to go beyond talking about RPGs here. Just there's a certain segment of every group of people you interact with who are simply not grasping this basic truth, and then stuff like &quot;JRRT didn't actually SAY he wanted to make people think Mongolians are bad people&quot; pops up. Its missing the point, nor can anyone really say what JRRT actually thought, albeit perhaps not consciously. Unconscious bias is not 'better', and I think it is a real issue for RPGs.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 8326606, member: 82106"] Right, and while I am leery of drawing this discussion too far into the 'current events' swamp, I would just like to point out that this is very close cousin to a certain vociferous group of partisans in my own country and their complaints about the idea that racism could be 'embedded in the structure of society itself'. I certainly don't see any convincing reason to throw labels at anyone, like [USER=6688441]@transmission89[/USER], but when he/she asserts that JRRT did not actively draw certain parallels, and that his analogy between orcs and Mongols isn't diagnostic of a form of racist view, that feels like a very similar kind of logic. That is, that only OVERT PERSONAL statements of racial bias somehow 'count' as racism. I have news for people, that's not how it is experienced in life! People who may join an RPG and find out that the 'bad guys' are a humanoid race that was explicitly built to evoke their own people and associates negative traits with them, do not feel like it is "OK" simply because the association was made by someone who "wasn't really racist" and has simply been schlepped along for 3 generations of work since then. Not any more than a guy who gets pulled over by the police every week for no other reason than his skin color is really all that worried about the nuances of why each individual LEO is doing it. Sorry, again, not trying to go beyond talking about RPGs here. Just there's a certain segment of every group of people you interact with who are simply not grasping this basic truth, and then stuff like "JRRT didn't actually SAY he wanted to make people think Mongolians are bad people" pops up. Its missing the point, nor can anyone really say what JRRT actually thought, albeit perhaps not consciously. Unconscious bias is not 'better', and I think it is a real issue for RPGs. [/QUOTE]

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