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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hriston" data-source="post: 8862955" data-attributes="member: 6787503">But the word people, especially in a fantasy context, doesn't confer a human identity. Fantasy invites us to imagine people who are not human. This in itself is the problem, but I don't think the solution is to get rid of the fantasy. I don't think the fantasy is inherently racist. Would you agree that an elf or a dwarf, as they are imagined, is a person? I don't think the solution is to deny their personhood. That looks to me like the worst kind of racism, where we are designating a class of non-people. It was just over 150 years ago that it was still the law in my country, the USA, that an enslaved person counted as only three-fifths of a person for the purposes of representation and taxation. Is that the kind of language that should be used in D&D, that a member of this or that PC species is not a person?The word race is being removed because of its ties to racist discourse. The basis of racism is the division of people into different races. These categories are then used to justify racist ideologies and practices. D&D has a problem because the division of people into such categories is a staple of the fantasy D&D tries to facilitate, and D&D has fallen into the trap of mirroring real-world stereotypes and hurtful language that have been used to justify racism. The solution, if D&D is going to continue to be a purveyor of this type of fantasy, is to be conscientious about what you say and to not fall into the trap.During the time I've been alive which is the late 20th and early 21st century, I've heard the word people (in the singular sense) used respectfully in public discourse in the USA to refer to this or that community. To me, it's a term that recognizes the dignity and personhood of the members of the group. Although the concept of "a people" is central to ethnic nationalism, I don't think it necessarily entails the ethnocentrism that can lead to ethnic nationalism. It also forms a conceptual basis for human rights law, international law, constitutional law, and claims of popular sovereignty.I don't think species does the work you say it does here, or that it's the work that's needed for D&D to avoid racist content. I don't think anyone needs clarification about whether PC races are meant to represent human groups. The problem is that D&D has used racist language to describe fictional non-human groups, so to clarify that the non-humans are different species from the humans doesn't help if racist content is still included. Also, in the past there have been other real-world species of humans such as Homo habilis and Homo erectus, so just because a group is stated to be a separate species doesn't mean it's not human.This is the problem that's being addressed by removing race. The othering of fantasy races in D&D mirrors the real-life othering of real-life out-groups. D&D doesn't need to participate in that and shouldn't.</blockquote>

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