{"id":18,"date":"2020-06-27T00:05:36","date_gmt":"2020-06-27T00:05:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shardsofblue.com\/blog\/?p=18"},"modified":"2020-07-20T22:04:31","modified_gmt":"2020-07-20T22:04:31","slug":"fantasy-racism-cant-be-solved-by-euphemisms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shardsofblue.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/27\/fantasy-racism-cant-be-solved-by-euphemisms\/","title":{"rendered":"Fantasy Racism Can&#8217;t Be Solved by Euphemisms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A user on Twitter asked the following question:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">In regards to races in TTRPGs, I know that no race is inherently evil but are we okay to have evil cultures? Like instead of marking an Illithid as evil, having &#39;Society Structure: Evil&#39; instead.  Just trying to build a better dialogue in the games I design.<\/p>&mdash; Jameson McDaniel &quot;Game&quot; &quot;Designer&quot; (@GM_Mace) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/GM_Mace\/status\/1276263103706001408?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 25, 2020<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The short answer is no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let me put this in real-world terms. I know someone who believes Mexicans are lazy, not because of biological essentialism, but because their \u201cculture\u201d is lazy. That Black people\u2019s high imprisonment rates are because their \u201cculture\u201d is belligerent &amp; criminal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you say Drow aren\u2019t born evil but their culture is evil, you\u2019re just replacing biological essentialism w\/ cultural racism. Can a nation push harmful ideals? Absolutely. But is the whole culture evil? Maybe <em>aspects<\/em> of the culture have been twisted to evil (any culture can be). Maybe the Drow <em>nation<\/em> or leadership is pushing harmful, \u201cevil\u201d policies. But that shouldn\u2019t be implied as culturally indicative of all Drow. To label the race\u2019s entire culture as \u201cevil\u201d mirrors an IRL euphemistic racist justification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What about saying the Drow <em>nation<\/em> is evil, referring to the political power structure? It\u2019s still a drastic oversimplification that perpetuates harmful stereotypes. We can do better &amp; still keep things simple enough for a game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For example: Here\u2019s a napkin-sketch for replacing Drow-as-evil (without tackling the obvious colorism in the race as written): <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>State religion: Cult of Lolth <\/li><li>Societal Structure: Matriarchal <\/li><li>Values: Family loyalty, personal achievement <\/li><li>Enemies: Dwarven kingdoms, Deep Gnomes<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, Drow as-written need to be reworked entirely (they shouldn\u2019t be a literal representation of dark-skin as a curse, to <em>start<\/em>), but this is my 3-minute sketch of how D&amp;D could quickly &amp; clearly describe a nation (<em>not<\/em> a race) without the alignment descriptor at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is why we need to educate ourselves on RL historical racism. Replacing \u201crace\u201d with \u201cculture\u201d isn\u2019t a new idea. It\u2019s been used to justify enslavement, colonization, and genocide, even by people who didn\u2019t believe in biological essentialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So no, having \u201cevil cultures\u201d isn\u2019t a fix for fantasy racism. An evil cult? Fine. A destructive, militant nation? Go for it (unpack it first*). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But an \u201cevil culture\u201d? That\u2019s just a euphemism and doesn\u2019t fix jack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>*By which I mean look at whether your nation is an analogue for a real-world group, at what stereotypes you\u2019re perpetuating, give the nation dissenters &amp; rebels, imagine what the society might look at if a different group was in power, etc.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Let me put this in real-world terms. I know someone who believes Mexicans are lazy, not because of biological essentialism, but because their \u201cculture\u201d is lazy. That Black people\u2019s high imprisonment rates are b\/c their \u201cculture\u201d is belligerent &amp; criminal. (1) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/TTRPG?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#TTRPG<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/DnD?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#DnD<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/4uJRwRFfoE\">https:\/\/t.co\/4uJRwRFfoE<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Rox (@shardsofblue) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/shardsofblue\/status\/1276536313060241408?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 26, 2020<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A user on Twitter asked the following question: &#8220;In regards to races in TTRPGs, I know that no race is inherently evil but are we okay to have evil cultures? Like instead of marking an Illithid as evil, having &#8216;Society Structure: Evil&#8217; instead.  Just trying to build a better dialogue in the games I design.&#8221; The short answer is no. [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4,6,12,5],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tabletop-rpgs","tag-dd","tag-racism","tag-twitter-thread","tag-worldbuilding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shardsofblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shardsofblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shardsofblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shardsofblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shardsofblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shardsofblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shardsofblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shardsofblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shardsofblue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}