Quote from: Dimitrios;565185I've found it's surprisingly common for people to have no idea that there is any distinction between Egypt of the Pharaohs and Egypt of the Ptolemys. They just lump them together.

In the US at least I think it is because there is so little ancient history taught in middle school or highschool (at least that was the case when I attended).

Quote from: technoextreme;565175Uhhh.... If you ever actually performed math in your life which given the average education level of the people here it might be possibly you haven't then yeah Egypt does matter.

How was your grammar education?

Regardless, what does Egypt have to do with Paizo's depictions of black people?

Quote from: StormBringer;565119Ok, how overtly racist?  It would literally have to say "This book is racist" on the cover, then have n*gger in the header of every page, with sp*cs as a playable class?  Nothing short of that could even be considered to have some degree of racism?

This is still defining what it isn't.  We need to find out what it is.  What kind of depictions or art would make you say "Ok, this is racist."?

It seems like you're looking for the creation of a line, so then it becomes easy to label something racist and be legit, which, actually doesn't surprise me too much, based on that other thread.

The problem with defining racism is that in many cases it is a thoughtcrime, defined by intent.  A historical article defining and explaining what a Minstrel Show is, showing white people in blackface, is not racist, no matter how offensive the imagery might be, or the racial background of the author.  Creating a blog article about the BET awards using those same pictures would be obscenely racist(or would it - if it was satire by Spike Lee?).

Talking about black people in Golarion and saying "They're all like this" and showing a picture of a shirtless, spearwielding tribesman is racist.  Showing that same exact picture as an accurate representation of one black culture (one of which Norton proved there are many) is not racist.  Except for yet another white person looking for yet another way to have a conversation about how the modern white world is racist.


BTW, do some reading on the neuroscience/psychology of stereotyping.  Guess what?  The act itself is not "ist", it's a way our brain categorizes and processes information.  I go to a town in the backwoods country of West Virginia, my brain is going to have some ideas about what I will find when I go there.  My brain is playing percentages for me.  It's up to me whether I actually stop in the town and talk to anybody or drive through thinking everyone is going to be an ignorant inbred hick.  What I do with the stereotype is the racist act.  Now some stereotypes are formed from real experience and facts, others are formed from propaganda and "echo-chamber learning" and some are deliberately created as a racist act itself.  

Knowing the difference and judging on an individual basis is the key.

Quote from: StormBringer;565119Ok, how overtly racist?  It would literally have to say "This book is racist" on the cover, then have n*gger in the header of every page, with sp*cs as a playable class?  

That would be my view. If they don't actually say "We're racist!" then you are engaging in witch-hunting.  You're trying to associate them with Nazi ideology. Unless they are actual Neo-Nazis, you should not be doing that.

Quote from: Dimitrios;565185I've found it's surprisingly common for people to have no idea that there is any distinction between Egypt of the Pharaohs and Egypt of the Ptolemys. They just lump them together.

Technically, the Ptolemys were the Pharaohs. But I know what you mean

Quote from: S'mon;565270That would be my view. If they don't actually say "We're racist!" then you are engaging in witch-hunting.  You're trying to associate them with Nazi ideology. Unless they are actual Neo-Nazis, you should not be doing that.

I don't think people have to announce themselves as racist for them to be so. Most racists probably don't believe they are racist. There is real racism that should be addressed (I know I have encountered it in various forms during my life)...I am just not convinced that using cultural analogs (especially historical ones) is the same as promoting racist stereotypes. I live in an area where all kinds of stereotypes float around and are a big problem. It is ugly and QI don't like it when I encounter it because it can have a real impact on people. But I don't think having a culture in a fantasy rpg with a tea ceremony or samurai is the same sort of thing. Fantasy games draw on iconic images from history all the time. For the most part that is what this Golarion setting appears to be doing. Everyone knows what a zulu warrior is, what a samurai is, and what a knight is.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;565369I don't think people have to announce themselves as racist for them to be so. Most racists probably don't believe they are racist. There is real racism that should be addressed (I know I have encountered it in various forms during my life)...I am just not convinced that using cultural analogs (especially historical ones) is the same as promoting racist stereotypes. I live in an area where all kinds of stereotypes float around and are a big problem. It is ugly and QI don't like it when I encounter it because it can have a real impact on people. But I don't think having a culture in a fantasy rpg with a tea ceremony or samurai is the same sort of thing. Fantasy games draw on iconic images from history all the time. For the most part that is what this Golarion setting appears to be doing. Everyone knows what a zulu warrior is, what a samurai is, and what a knight is.

This is my thoughts almost exactly.  If something wasn't racist unless explicitly said as much, we wouldn't have any racism.  Yay!

But we all know it doesn't work that way.  Just look at B.T.

I think the problem is when people go looking for racism when there might not be any, and interpret things in the most negative way possible.  Or do whatever the hell MGuy was suggesting with his "it's racist unless you put all the African warriors in royal garb" thing, which makes no sense at all.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;565382MGuy was suggesting with his "it's racist unless you put all the African warriors in royal garb" thing, which makes no sense at all.

Mguy was saying that when Zulu Warriors actually look like this:


It's racist to portray them as looking like this:


Instead, they should look like this:

Quote from: TomatoMalone;563883You cannot be this fucking obtuse. The Viking and the Pict, inaccurate though all their depictions may be, are stereotypes made by other white people. They have never been used to marginalize or oppress minorities. They have never been used to dismiss the entirety of white people as a bunch of savages/thieves/honorable tea-swilling samurai. Stop talking out of your ass and think before you post.

This is a problem.  I see two scenarios:

A) You include a Zulu rip off because you're lazy.  You're a racist.

B) You decide not to include a Zulu rip off because some people would get offended.  Guess what, you're still a racist because everyone in your game is European and Asian.

I'd say in this set-up, then it's probably okay to be a racist, because everyone would be.

Quote from: John Morrow;565041I don't think the problem is the claim that Golarion is racist because all black humans are spear-wielding savages.  I think the problem is that they believe Golarion is racist because some black humans are spear-wielding savages, which matches stereotypes applied by racists to blacks.

Well, in the original thread on tangency.net, there were people claiming that the one spear-wielding tribal culture was the ONLY "african"-esque culture presented in Golarion, which is in fact not true.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;565404Well, in the original thread on tangency.net, there were people claiming that the one spear-wielding tribal culture was the ONLY "african"-esque culture presented in Golarion, which is in fact not true.

Attention-seeking, narcissistic political fanatics lie to make the chosen targets of their Five Minute Hate look bad.

Quelle surprise!

Quote from: Sacrosanct;564838I find it funny that those who are calling it lazy seem to have their solutions as one of the following:

1. include every culture (which is logistically impossible)

or

2. completely change the culture so that it doesn't resemble anything like it actually is.


Either one seems awfully boneheaded to me.  I haven't seen anyone give another answer.

I'm going to repeat this, because it seems certain folks keep glossing over it.  I know there are a lot more African cultures other than the Zulu or Swahili.  But when you're creating a setting book, you're only going to have between a handful to a dozen cultures, depending on if you're doing a specific region or an entire world.  The Zulu is the most romanticized culture from non-Egyptian Africa in most fantasy settings.  That's inarguable fact.  We can validate this by just looking at how many works of fiction (books and movies) that focus on pre-modern, non-Egyptian Africa are out there.

Am I to believe that you should just skip the most popular romanticized culture because that would be racist because you didn't include every other one?  How fucking ridiculous is that?  It's the same reason why most European cultures that in fantasy settings are based from Britain, Germany, or France, and not Hungary, Sweden, and Spain.  You're limited to a few choices, so you choose the most popular ones to go with.  If you're racist for not including the Soninke in your setting book, then you're racist for not including the Danes as a unique culture as well.

And MGuy's solution to make it not racist?  Make sure every depiction of an African warrior is in royal garb.  Do you depict every European wearing a crown and velvet cape?  Of course not.  In his fight to eliminate this so-called racism, he's holding an ethic group to a different standard than another.  Gee, I wonder what that is called...

Come on guys, seriously?

Quote from: James Gillen;565111Character Classes: Nobleman, Knight, Woman Who Stays in the Castle, Farmer With Shit All Over Him

'ow do you know he's the king?
'e 'asn't got shit all over him.

Quote from: CRKrueger;565388Mguy was saying that when Zulu Warriors actually look like this:


It's racist to portray them as looking like this:


Instead, they should look like this:

Unbelievably Awesome!

Quote from: jhkim;565099Old race stereotypes (to give an idea - say from prior to 1950) are generally racist - i.e. the grasping moneylending Jew; the lazy, watermelon-eating pickaninny; the lying thieving gypsy; etc.  These examples are typical of the stereotypes of non-white characters in old fiction.  These stereotypes are not based on accurate depictions of historical reality, but rather on the biased views of mainstream Western authors.  (Non-Western authors have different stereotypes - often that are also racist.)

Thomas Sowell discusses the near universal maligning of "middleman minorities" around the globe regardless of the ethnicities involved in his book Race and Culture.  Sowell writes, "Whatever the race or culture of the middlemen, they have aroused suspicions, resentments, and misunderstandings in the most disparate societies around the world. Even where they were not a distinct minority at all, the very functions they performed have been misunderstood and the people performing them condemned. Selling the same product for more than it cost the seller has been seen as morally objectionable, and requiring more money to be repaid than was lent originally has been condemned in both secular and religious laws. Merchants were held in low esteem in Confucian China and usury was outlawed in both the Christian societies of medieval Europe and the Moslem societies of North Africa and the Middle East."  Those feelings are only made worse by the fact that "middleman minorities" are often a closed and close-knit ethnicity that has more success than the majority population, even in the face of persecution and discrimination, which leads to suspicions of dishonesty, cheating, collusion, theft, and even supernatural workings.   The end result is often not only discrimination but violent persecution and one can find the same pattern across a variety of ethnicities around the world and in the more general demonization of merchants, moneylenders, venture capitalists, and private equity firms (paging Gordon Gekko and Bain Capital) within the majority culture.

Similarly, I think that the Roma touch upon similar primal suspicions against wanderers, entertainers, and self-styled mystics who are distrusted because they lack social ties to the local community and, again, form a closed and close-knit ethnicity yet seem to have a powerful and alluring ability to draw people to them, get them to part with money, and seemingly control their lives.  Here, too, you can see the same stereotype applied to others who live a similar lifestyle (e.g., Irish Travellers) as well as those who make a living in a similar way (e.g., wandering entertainment troupes, traveling circuses, etc.).   They are an opaque social influence outside of the control of the existing social order.  

Even if you isolate these stereotypes from their historical ethnicities, people will connect them back to real world ethic stereotypes that have a similar package of traits.  If you want to see this at work, Google the words "Scrooge" and "Jewish", even though there is plenty of evidence that Scrooge is not, in fact, Jewish in A Christmas Carol, but he is a predictably greedy moneylender.  Basically, these same stereotypes appear again and again in fiction because they reflect a common train of thought that leads from particular characteristics, whether it reflects the truth or not.

So how should this be handled?  Should the stereotype of the greedy merchant or mysterious and alluring but dangerous wanderer be banished?  Is it enough to simply not associate those roles with a specific ethnicity, leaving the possibility of greedy merchants or alluring but dangerous wanderers as individuals in a broader ethnicity open?  Is it possible to illustrate the inaccuracies of the stereotypes and emphasize the common humanity of those groups without coming off as preachy and self-righteous?  I don't know what the right answer is here, but I do think that justifying their use simply on the basis of their ubiquitous presence in the source fiction that many role-playing games draws doesn't sound very persuasive to me.

Quote from: jhkim;565099So, on the one hand, Fu Manchu is certainly an powerful stereotype that is familiar and quickly conveys content - that may be seen as a feature to use.  However, I think that there is a problem with continuing to use that stereotype straight.

I think Fu Manchu used as a model for an individual villain is different than Fu Manchu used as a model for an entire ethnicity, the later clearly being a problem.

For example, the character Lo Pan in the movie Big Trouble In Little China is a classic Fu Manchu-style villain (so much so that he's given as an example of the type on the Fu Manchu WIkipedia page) and the movie contains other Chinese stereotypes that led Roger Ebert to comment that the movie was "straight out of the era of Charlie Chan and Fu Manchu, with no apologies and all of the usual stereotypes."  yet the movie also featured fully Americanized Chinese characters with no discernible accent, emphasized commonality as well as exotic otherness, and portrayed the Americans somewhat simplistically and even negatively at times.  So is that movie racist?  I don't think it is, but I'd be curious if you disagree and like to know why if you do.

Quote from: jhkim;565099I could go on a bit about why I think it is bad, but I'd like to hear first from you - do you think that stereotypes like Fu Manchu or the lying thieving gypsy should be considered features and used for good effect?  Or do you think that they are a problem - but that they rare offshoots and that non-white stereotypes in old fiction are usually not like that?

I think that otherness, exotic villains, and alluring but dangerous strangers are all common, useful, and strong fictional elements that can produce enjoyable results.  As I said above, they resonate with the way people interpret certain social roles, even when they are not tied to a particular ethnicity.  I also think that context can matter (whether the stereotype is the only depiction presented or part of a broader palette of characters and character types for that ethnicity).  For example, I think a Fu Manchu villain and other stereotypes in Big Trouble In Little China that exists alongside a wider ranger of Chinese characters is not the same as a Fu Manchu villain leading faceless Chinese minions in a heavy-handed Cold War thriller depicting the Chinese people as a menace.  So part of my answer is that I can imaging a Fu Manchu villain being used to good effect in an appropriate context, holding up Big Trouble In Little China as an example, but  I also can imagine it being a problem and coming off quite racist.

With Gypsies (and Jews, which you mentioned above), the best solution is to probably not tie an ethnicity to those social roles such that the wandering entertainers are more akin to wandering Renaissance acting troupes than an ethnicity and the merchants and moneylenders are more independent businessmen than an ethnicity and then you can have your Gordon Gekko, Scrooge, hard-partying rock band tour bus, traveling circus side-show, or even members of an ethnicity that are bad apples without maligning an entire ethnicity in the process or evoking nasty real world stereotypes.  That Gypsies and Jews filled the roles they filled was at least partially because the discrimination face by those people closed other options to them.  On the other hand, that situation is not uncommon and such groups exist around the world, so maybe one could include such ethnicities, along with some misperception and persecution to illustrate why such stereotypes are a problem in the real world, though I find it difficult to imagine this being done without coming off as preachy and self-righteous.