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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8329332" data-attributes="member: 82106">OK, let me explain it to you:'Farah' is a highly skilled professional, ambitious, very good at her job, hard-working, etc. Every day she goes to work and encounters things like 'Sally' (a customer) who says "Oh, sweetie, will you go get the real [insert profession here], I need someone to help me." THIS IS EVERY DAY NORMAL RACISM. This is just what happens EVERY SINGLE DAY before lunch when you look a certain way. I'm not kidding, and this was not some backwards small town someplace, that's the way it is in every single town and city in the USA. Period, end of report. I can recall 'Darren' and 'Joseph' standing outside my window talking about how they deal with run-ins with the local police, going through how many times they each got pulled over for 'driving while black' THAT MONTH and the various crap they got put through and how to deal with it. Just shooting the breeze, trading tips of the trade so to speak. These are educated, adult, home-owning, law-abiding men in their 50's and 60's. Ones who, aside from their skin color and whatever, would easily pass for you or me, living in a mixed race area. I am not going to bother to delve deeply into what their opinions of orcs would be, or is. It should be obvious. Of course they see the parallels! Do you think they haven't read LotR? Or Conan? Or H. P. Lovecraft? I mean, did you not note 'Lovecraft Country'? Obviously these genres, and RPGs, are not any less appealing or foreign to them than to you or me. They can color between the lines. They DO see, know, and understand, the history of prejudice, probably far far better than you (or me either). And, I am pretty sure, I hope I am not too out of place by saying this, that they also 'get' that when you or I put orcs in our campaign world, we are not attempting to create a stand-in for people of color. These are perfectly intelligent people. However, they came from a day at the office on Friday when they got insulted 3 times, and then pulled over by a cop on the way home, for no discernible reason. OK. Now, how much more remnant racialized European stereotype mythology which was used for 500 years to stomp all over every other ethnic group, bar none, on the face of the Earth are they really going to want to put up with along with their D&D? Please tell me.I don't think you comprehend the magnitude or impact of racial stereotypes in the world today. If it was nothing but D&D, I think we'd all do exactly as you seem to propose and laugh about it and just say "well, that's how people were in ancient times" and then maybe in play turn those tropes on their heads. Its a bit different in reality though, fantasy is supposed to be an escape from that kind of thing, not an exemplar of it. Maybe there ARE constructive ways to use it, but we are going to have to be really sophisticated in doing that. I concur with the people who have stated, in the game design world, that they feel more comfortable leaving various cultures to people who grew up in them, and to just entirely demolishing racial stereotypes entirely (which is probably neigh impossible, but...).</blockquote>

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