Quote from: S'mon;566525I grew up around a lot of drunken young Irishmen on the University of Ulster campus at Jordanstown. My mother saved the lives of several, when their drunken-ness caused them to walk through plate glass doors (then go to sleep with blood pouring from their wounds), fall into the freezing-cold stream in winter, etc.

Yet I never saw them as less than human.

Quote from: S'mon;566527No, it's the opposite - the cultures that drink most (Italians, southern Germans, French) are the least likely to get 'roaring drunk'. The English think they have a drunkenness problem*, and they do compared to the French etc, but much less than the Irish. The usual pattern is that the longer a group has been exposed to alchohol, the better they tolerate it.

*I was at a University in England, an English academic lamented the drunken behaviour of the students. I laughed, and explained that compared to what I had seen from southern-Irish students in Ulster, his supposed rowdy behaviour was incredibly sedate.

You're an Ulster Scot, S'mon, its that very group of nasties, loyalists, who are most responsible for promoting anti-Irish racism. You know, that same group who are burning out pregnant women because they have brown skin and intimidating schoolgirls because they come from the wrong part of town. The ones that beat up homosexuals and were armed by apartheid-era South Africa.

UU is a fine example of this "culture", it was a tenured professor there who released two seperate academic papers detailing his earnest belief that black people had naturally lower IQs than white people, and women couldn't do mathematics.

Now approaching Belfast airport, please set your watches to local time, 1740 AD.

I'm not saying that's you, far from it, but lets just say I'm not surprised you were unable to resist sticking your oar in.

Quote from: jhkim;566212I'm fine with saying that harmless, non-racist, and/or accurate stereotypes exist.  I'm fine if an evaluation of Golarion says that the stereotype use in it is not racist.  I've just started playing in Golarion now, and I haven't had any issues with it so far - but I'm currently only using the Pathfinder Beginner Box to run games for my son and nephews.  

However, some people seem to be going further and arguing that any complaints about racist stereotypes are inherently wrong.  I completely disagree. There are many racist stereotypes that are real and have serious negative effects.

I think that the reasonable/moderate people in this discussion are all taking an opinion somewhere between all stereotypes are fine and all stereotypes are wrong, if not racist.  And the impression I have is that those who are complaining about Golarion are either people who believe all stereotypes are bad or who believe anything short of unassailably positive are bad (perhaps believing that, "Extremism in the opposition to racism is no vice.")  

What I'm looking for is some detail on the criteria that the rest of the people in the middle  are using to distinguish the acceptable stereotypes from the unacceptable stereotypes.  It seems pretty clear that the overtly racist stereotypes are being universally rejected as bad and cultural quirks such as the Tea Ceremony are OK, but by what measure is a line drawn between those two?  Is any stereotype that's been used to demean or dehumanize a minority and fuel real world discrimination a problem, even if it's detached from a real world people and applied to a fantasy culture (e.g., savage, drunk, greedy, thieves, violent, swindler, cannibal, etc.)?  Can a stereotype be softened enough to be acceptable by providing mitigating positives or by otherwise humanizing the holders of those traits?  Is there a right and wrong way to use them?

This relates to points I raised in Evil Orcs = Genocidal Colonial endorsement, which is that I think people who have trouble with common depictions of evil monstrous humanoids as being racist see resonance between the monstrous traits attributed to them and the traits used by racists to justify the slaughter of persecuted minorities.  Does simply applying a negative stereotype to a fantasy ethnicity or race evoke the application of those same traits against real people?  I can see where it might.

Quote from: jhkim;566212I've now read the chapter in the first link (1995 Jussim et al).  It concentrates on knocking down straw men - like the dismissal of racism in stereotypes on page 11.  Most of the points addressed in this whole section have no attribution at all, and the minority that do are citations from the 1960s at the latest.

The references are at the end, but as the Science News article explains, "For more than 60 years, scientists have treated stereotypes as by definition erroneous, illogical, and inflexible."  In other words, few people were doing research on stereotype accuracy because doing so goes against prevailing opinion and could get one branded a racist.  That book was published in 1996 and Lee Jussim has more recent papers on his web site, including articles on Stereotypes and Sterotyping to be included in the Cambridge Dictionary of Psychology.  And of course the reason why they spend all that time knocking down what you see as straw men is because there are actually people making those arguments in academia.

Quote from: jhkim;566212Sure, not every stereotype falsely attributes a genetic component to the trend.  That doesn't mean that racist stereotypes don't exist.  The authors in principle acknowledge something like this, saying "Although ethnocentrism undoubtedly sometimes influences evaluations (e.g. Campbell, 1967), it is premature to conclude that even stereotypes about personality necessarily reflect ethnocentrism."

The author does acknowledge that racist and inaccurate stereotypes can exist, and I'm not claiming that they don't.  But I think it would be difficult to say almost anything about any culture without relying on the sorts of generalizations that are the stuff of stereotypes, even if plenty of exceptions exist.  So I don't see how stereotypes can be avoided, either.

Quote from: jhkim;566212This goes back to my point.  I contend that stereotypes like the lying thieving gypsy, the greedy Jew, Sambo and pickaninny, and others really are problematic - even if some other stereotypes are not problematic.  I think you agree with me in this, John, but it seems like people keep implying that there are no problems in stereotypes.

I agree with you, but I'm trying to get even more specific about why they are problems.  In particular, is the "thieving Gypsy", "greedy Jew"", and so only only problematic as a matched set or are cultural characteristics such as "thieving" or "greedy" problematic no matter where they are used, both because such negative stereotypes will inevitably be used to justify discrimination and because of how readily they evoke the same attributes being applied to specific real world ethnicities?  As I pointed out earlier, there are people who interpret Scrooge in A Christmas Carol as Jewish, even though he seems pretty clearly not Jewish to me, simply on the basis of his profession and greed.  Similarly, the "noble savage" seems to get called out regardless of the specifics of the ethnicity put into that role.  And as I mentioned above, other people see the shadow of racial stereotypes in the monstrous traits applied to evil humanoids in games, too.  So is there a safe way to use a negative stereotype often used to justify discrimination, persecution, or even genocide or are they inherently toxic?  And is it ever acceptable to include a deliberately nasty culture in the setting (e.g., fantasy Nazis) such that their nation is readily seen as bad guys and the players should generally want to wipe them (or perhaps just their culture) out?

I know you've given an answer for that, which is to mix things up so that they don't quite fit the common packages of traits.  I think your examples also implied that making them more well-rounded with more to them than the simple stereotype helps, too.  I think your answer is pretty good, but I'm also curious what other people think about it.

Quote from: CRKrueger;566557

Note the ape-like facial features of the Irish on the right, and look at the message, lazy, free-loading, waiting for a hand-out while the real Americans worked.  All the racist stereotypes leveled against minorities in America today by hate groups were initiated and used against minorities back then...who were immigrant european whites.

Really?  To me the two guys look pretty similar.  It's just that the one in America is wearing work clothes and doing labor like a "real American" and his "ape-like" counterpart who stayed on the old sod is wearing a top hat and suit but has to look out on the beach and wait for the pot of gold... cause there's no jobs in the old country.

They're the same guy, or could be the same guy.  It's just that one moved where the opportunity was.

JG

Quote from: CRKrueger;566557

Note the ape-like facial features of the Irish on the right, and look at the message, lazy, free-loading, waiting for a hand-out while the real Americans worked.  All the racist stereotypes leveled against minorities in America today by hate groups were initiated and used against minorities back then...who were immigrant european whites.

?? Surely the picture shows Irish immigrants on the left working, to send home money to their relatives in Ireland? The facial features are the same in both, and unless you're some kind of anti-Irish racist they are not 'apelike' IMO. There's a common, distinctive Irish facial & skull type which you see on eg actor Colm Meaney, IRA leader Martin McGuinness, or Scots-Irish Senator Jim Webb -

Webb's a bit of a hero of mine.

Quote from: The Traveller;566560You're an Ulster Scot, S'mon, its that very group of nasties, loyalists, who are most responsible for promoting anti-Irish racism.

Yeah, yeah - but my mother's family are mostly indigenous to Donegal in north-west Ireland. They're McBrides, who have always been Irish. They are a sept of the MacDonalds, the Scottish 'Lords of the Isles', who ruled a kingdom from the north & northeast coasts of Ireland to western Scotland, including much of the Highlands.

Hence, Ulster Scot.

(Also, I was born in Edinburgh).

Quote from: James Gillen;566692Really?  To me the two guys look pretty similar.  It's just that the one in America is wearing work clothes and doing labor like a "real American" and his "ape-like" counterpart who stayed on the old sod is wearing a top hat and suit but has to look out on the beach and wait for the pot of gold... cause there's no jobs in the old country.

They're the same guy, or could be the same guy.  It's just that one moved where the opportunity was.

JG

Yup.

Quote from: The Traveller;566560You're an Ulster Scot, S'mon, its that very group of nasties, loyalists, who are most responsible for promoting anti-Irish racism. You know, that same group who are burning out pregnant women because they have brown skin and intimidating schoolgirls because they come from the wrong part of town. The ones that beat up homosexuals and were armed by apartheid-era South Africa.

UU is a fine example of this "culture", it was a tenured professor there who released two seperate academic papers detailing his earnest belief that black people had naturally lower IQs than white people, and women couldn't do mathematics.

Now approaching Belfast airport, please set your watches to local time, 1740 AD.

I'm not saying that's you, far from it, but lets just say I'm not surprised you were unable to resist sticking your oar in.

1690 AD, surely.

Quote from: The Traveller;566560You're an Ulster Scot, S'mon, its that very group of nasties, loyalists, who are most responsible for promoting anti-Irish racism. You know, that same group who are burning out pregnant women because they have brown skin and intimidating schoolgirls because they come from the wrong part of town. The ones that beat up homosexuals and were armed by apartheid-era South Africa.

BTW, how is this not 'racist stereotyping'?

Heh, you're right with the jaw, I grabbed one fast, try these then.

How the fuck is this thread still going?

Quote from: danbuter;566837How the fuck is this thread still going?

And how did it transform from "Is Golarion racist?" into a history of Irish persecution in the 1800's?

Quote from: danbuter;566837How the fuck is this thread still going?

Well there was the part where we asked if wizards were more racist than fighters.

Quote from: jeff37923;566842And how did it transform from "Is Golarion racist?" into a history of Irish persecution in the 1800's?

Well, it's been quite a while since the answer was proven to be no, so the thread has to continue somehow.  

As for my part, I was told my "Irish Ape" example was flawed, so I needed to correct my mistake with better examples.

Quote from: Imp;566886Well there was the part where we asked if wizards were more racist than fighters.

Well, obviously Dwarven Gods are racist against Elves. Not granting spells and the like! :mad:

Quote from: S'mon;566710BTW, how is this not 'racist stereotyping'?

That would be like being racist against the Ku Klux Klan.

Anyone identifying themselves as "Ulster Scot" and coming out with lies (whether invented personally or received from mawmay) about drunken Irish people constantly wandering into these panes of glass apparently strewn all over the place before collapsing into raging icy torrents from which they had to be heroically rescued by the sober protestant, is probably not someone to invite around for dinner. Especially as its the preferred ethnic identification of the aforementioned loyalist/unionists.

Perhaps it might be an idea to keep it in your pants in future, I otherwise quite enjoyed your posts.