Zkribbler
Deity
Huffpost today has an article on racism in high fantasy, esp. Dungeons & Dragons.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dungeons-and-dragons-diversity-evil-races_n_5ef3b7cac5b643f5b22eb22a
Exerpt:
It wasn't until I introduced my drows that I realized something was terribly wrong. Drows are black skinned, evil, subterranean elves. In real life, black skins are because of melanin which protects skin against the sun's rays. Subterranean creatures should be white, not black. Making drows black is racist, no doubt about it. Thus my evil elves are albinos.
The Huffpost article and the planned direction of D&D contends that someone's morals and abilities should not be based upon the race into which they are born. If so, how will this change fantasies?
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dungeons-and-dragons-diversity-evil-races_n_5ef3b7cac5b643f5b22eb22a
Exerpt:
Being brought up in a world of white privilege, I blithely skipped over all of this. I accepted that in fantasies elves are good, and orcs are bad. My first two novels are a bit better, being set in a multi-racial city. Still my craftsmen are gnomes, my elves are musical & beautiful, my orcs are irritable, etc.“‘Races’ in D&D are fundamentally different than our concept of ‘races’ in the real world,” medievalist Paul B. Sturtevant told HuffPost. “In D&D, races are based in deep biological differences, whereas we know that in the real world, race is a social construct based upon arbitrary and superficial differences. Using the word ‘race’ in the game where they really mean something more like ‘species’ promotes racist ideas.”
In a 2017 article, Sturtevant wrote that D&D’s idea of “race” is a holdover from “The Lord of the Rings” and author J.R.R. Tolkien, who “conflat[ed] race, culture and ability.”
In his novel, Tolkien outlined “the ‘racial’ characteristics of men, of dwarves, of elves, of orcs,” Sturtevant wrote, adding that Tolkien “created the blueprint for the troubling relationship between race and fantasy that would govern twentieth-century fantasies.”
This blueprint has been dissected by academics such as Helen Young of Australia’s Deakin University, who writes about fantasy and race. In a 2017 interview with Pacific Standard, Young argued that Tolkien’s idea of race as a hard reality rather than a social construct was inherently racist, and while Tolkien may not have harbored extremist views personally, his work was filled with examples of “good” races with European cultural traits and “bad” races described through “orientalist stereotypes.”
A look at D&D’s “Player’s Handbook” and online resource database offers a glimpse at how modern fantasy has internalized Tolkien’s ideas about race.
Elves, for instance, are described as good and often depicted as white, except for a subset of the species known as “drow,” who are ebony-skinned, “more often evil than not” and occasionally called “dark elves.”
Half-orcs are similarly described as having “a tendency towards chaos” and “the most accomplished half-orcs are those with enough self-control to get by in a civilized land.”
...
“I think this shift is a good start, but they must go further,” Sturtevant said. “It’s a problem that [Wizards of the Coast] don’t seem to be getting rid of their use of the term ‘race’ altogether.”
Young echoed this sentiment. “Racism isn’t just negative stereotypes; it is also an underlying belief that a particular group of people have something inherently in common with each other and also that they are also inherently different from other groups,” she said.
“The change so that orcs and drow aren’t necessarily evil is superficial if that racist logic of inherent difference is still there,” Young said. She stressed that removing gameplay concepts such as orc characters starting with a lower intelligence would be a “much bigger step because it could remove the basic logic of race.” (Wizards of the Coast indicated in its statement that it would be moving towards this in future releases.)
It wasn't until I introduced my drows that I realized something was terribly wrong. Drows are black skinned, evil, subterranean elves. In real life, black skins are because of melanin which protects skin against the sun's rays. Subterranean creatures should be white, not black. Making drows black is racist, no doubt about it. Thus my evil elves are albinos.
The Huffpost article and the planned direction of D&D contends that someone's morals and abilities should not be based upon the race into which they are born. If so, how will this change fantasies?