D&D (2024) What new jargon do you want to replace "Race"?

[Kinematics]

That is just a bizarre complaint. Humans are a species. People generally are fine with this.

So are chimps and gorillas. And when people push humans as a species, there are many who push back, either with complaints mocking how "humans descended from monkeys", or in comparing (some) humans with animals. In fact, one of the most common racist tropes is displaying black people in a way that looks like some sort of ape, equivocating the idea between them and mere animals.

Saying people are generally fine with this is ignoring very large swaths of inconveniences. I would assert that people who are fine with understanding that humans are species are also perfectly able to separate the concept of a fantasy race from a real-world race. Given that the change is to address people who have issues with how the word 'race' suggests real-world issues, it also suggests that real-world concepts of species, and how that relates to humans or other sapient creatures, is very much on topic.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Also, species has another definition: kind or sort.

Which more accurately depicts some of the species, which do not have ancestry or kin.

 

[Vaalingrade]

And when people push humans as a species, there are many who push back, either with complaints mocking how "humans descended from monkeys"

Those people can be safely ignored because they hate D&D anyway.

 

[Scribe]

I would assert that people who are fine with understanding that humans are species are also perfectly able to separate the concept of a fantasy race from a real-world race.

I'd say so. I'd also say that's not who this label change, is meant to target.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So are chimps and gorillas.

Yes, so what?

And when people push humans as a species, there are many who push back, either with complaints mocking how "humans descended from monkeys", or in comparing (some) humans with animals. In fact, one of the most common racist tropes is displaying black people in a way that looks like some sort of ape, equivocating the idea between them and mere animals.

Saying people are generally fine with this is ignoring very large swaths of inconveniences. I would assert that people who are fine with understanding that humans are species are also perfectly able to separate the concept of a fantasy race from a real-world race. Given that the change is to address people who have issues with how the word 'race' suggests real-world issues, it also suggests that real-world concepts of species, and how that relates to humans or other sapient creatures, is very much on topic.

I really don't think that offending creationists is a sensible worry.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

.

 

[Hriston]

That is just a bizarre complaint. Humans are a species. People generally are fine with this.

It isn't bizarre. Humans are one species just like we are one race. As other people besides me have pointed out in this thread, when you divide people into separate species the way people are divided into races, you replace the language of racism with the language of virulent racism. I'm not sure that's in the direction D&D should go at this point, which is why I'm in favor of the word people to specify the box from which we select whether our character is a dwarf or an elf.

 

[Bedrockgames]

So are chimps and gorillas. And when people push humans as a species, there are many who push back, either with complaints mocking how "humans descended from monkeys", or in comparing (some) humans with animals. In fact, one of the most common racist tropes is displaying black people in a way that looks like some sort of ape, equivocating the idea between them and mere animals.

Humans are a species though. I think when you run into trouble is dividing humans into different species among themselves (that in my opinion is where you get into the realm of the racialist science that caused so many atrocities in the 20th century).

Saying people are generally fine with this is ignoring very large swaths of inconveniences. I would assert that people who are fine with understanding that humans are species are also perfectly able to separate the concept of a fantasy race from a real-world race. Given that the change is to address people who have issues with how the word 'race' suggests real-world issues, it also suggests that real-world concepts of species, and how that relates to humans or other sapient creatures, is very much on topic.

I think this bolded part gets at a key part of the disagreement and I think if we can put aside some of the emotion that comes up in these debates and hear what different people are saying, we will see there is actually a few different ways of intellectually juggling these things going on, that is leading us to different conclusions and different stances on the ethics of how demihumans ought to be conceived of in an RPG. I would take the bolded a step further and say people who are generally okay with this idea, not only separate the concept of fantasy race from real world race, they see it as a whole other category (something much closer to the gulf between a human and a neanderthal or maybe even an even more distantly related human-like hominid). They are positing races that have no connection to real world races (though things may be drawn in from the real world for flavor, which is I think where a lot of disagreements arise) and see them as vastly different things than differences among human groups. A bit like raves or species you might have in science fiction (where there is a thought experiment around things like the lifespan, physiology, etc impacts their culture). It’s more about trying to imagine other forms or sentient life or trying to imagine beings operating on more mythic levels. I think his people are approaching that stuff is going to shape how troubled by the terminology and groupings here.

I think the argument in favor of shifting to species is it eliminates confusion that Demi humans might be thought of like different racial groups. By calling them species you are at least clarifying these are not meant to be like human races at all but more like differences between humans and other intelligent hominids that became extinct

 

[Bedrockgames]

It isn't bizarre. Humans are one species just like we are one race. As other people besides me have pointed out in this thread, when you divide people into separate species the way people are divided into races, you replace the language of racism with the language of virulent racism. I'm not sure that's in the direction D&D should go at this point, which is why I'm in favor of the word people to specify the box from which we select whether our character is a dwarf or an elf.

The interesting thing here is I feel very much the opposite, as I do share a lot of the real world concerns people have expressed. But I think when you start turning elves and dwarves into people, in the sense of a people, like Italians, Germans, etc. That is when you start running into problems because the races in D&D are clearly not meant to be anything like the differences between people. In real life, as you say we are one race, we are one species. The difference between someone who is Italian and someone who is Chinese is cultural. And physical differences are superficial. But the physical differences between a dwarf and human are enormous, the difference between an elf and halfling equally so. I think using people to refer to beings in a setting that are visibly a different species from humans, actually opens the door more into that old racialist science and that old way of talking about peoples (which led to the kind of thinking that underpinned Nazi Germany). I am not saying that it would lead there, or that people advocating for peoples are consciously invoking that. But I don't have much issue with race or species in D&D, because I can make the distinction in my mind between a human and an elf, and they don't really compare to the difference between two different human groups in the real world (elves are visibly something way beyond normal human). But when I hear people talk about the elven people, that actually starts to make me much more uncomfortable (and not because it is humanizing elves but because they represent the kind of difference among people that racists used to believe in when they talked about difference races or different peoples in the world).

 

[Frozen_Heart]

And we've looped back round to: Are the DnD schmorps all just different ethnicities of human? Or are they completely different species?

And no one can agree on the answer.