Badger Pod nerdcast tonight "Social ustice in Tabletop Games"

[Ratman_tf]

I'm no historian, but I've never heard of any tribe or civilization that discriminated and dehumanized others on the basis of their skin color prior to the "white race."

Religion, nationality, and ethnicity sure. Skin color? No.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade

"...the moral characteristics found in their mentality are close to the instinctive characteristics found naturally in animals."

"As for the Zanj, they are people of black color, flat noses, kinky hair, and little understanding or intelligence"

"We know that the Zanj (blacks) are the least intelligent and the least discerning of mankind, and the least capable of understanding the consequences of their actions."

[Blacky the Blackball]

I once had an argument with a young lady who insisted that, if there were only women in the world, they wouldn't compete in any way for partners.

Well, the straight ones wouldn't.

[MrHurst]

Religion, nationality, and ethnicity sure. Skin color? No.

Uh, if they're do it over religion, nationality and ethnicity, what would make you think they didn't over skin color? And I can tell you first hand I can find you a douche bag of any given color who thinks of any other colors as animals.

[PencilBoy99]

Lots of people like power. It's kind of natural. Power means being able to make other people do what you want.

Earning power is hard - you either have to work hard to get it (like some kind of job thing), or just be lucky.

Now, you can just claim all sorts of things and get power over other people.

[ArrozConLeche]

You think all people in China share one skin tone?

Uh, if they're do it over religion, nationality and ethnicity, what would make you think they didn't over skin color? And I can tell you first hand I can find you a douche bag of any given color who thinks of any other colors as animals.

The Romans, The Babylonians, The Mongols, The Japanese....actually, it might be easier to ask, who hasn't done that...

The Aztecs initially thought Caucasians were deities because of their skin colour and fancy foreign clothes, but thats a civilization that played basketball with human heads and committed so many human sacrifices per year they had to build a whole 'nother city just to host them all. So...little bit of this, little bit of that...

Again: Skin color as a sign of other traits like existence or lack of intelligence, morality, and whether you're even fully human. What most people recognize as racism these days.

Tristam, I'll grant you the Aztecs, perhaps, but that is also clearly a religious thing, and not a generalization of the sort I described above.

Or to wonder why you think prejudice based on skin colour is somehow worse than prejudice based on "those guy come from another village"?

Show me where I said that. I think you're reading too much into what I've posted. My only "beef" here is the notion that racism as we know it existed way before "whites" came up with the concept of race based mostly on the color of one's skin.

China and India have varying skin tones, who knows if that played into their notion of the Other?  All we know is thousands of years of wars amongst themselves and against each other.  The Egyptians warred with the Nubians.  3000BC was full of Empires across the world warring, raping, murdering, enslaving people of different religions, tribes, nations, cultures, and yes, skin tone, none of them white.

Could have, sure, but I think you would have to look at the historical records to be sure. Did the Chinese and Indians apply blanket generalizations on people based on their skin color and perhaps other phenotypic markers despite these people having little else in common? The closest thing I've seen so far is what Ratman posted and that concerns the Arab slave trade.

I am sick and tired of arguing with you because you are thick headed and I am starting to think your racist, or just hate your own race.

Haha, I hate my own race? As in race traitor?

Am I racist? Probably in a blind spot sort of way, but if you're making that assumption based stuff like this and this,  then you're probably being a liiitle oversensitive, aren't you?

Am I thick headed? If you say so, but it's a fact that I'm more thick skinned than you. And this proves I'm right, tee hee:

I do both of us a favor and put you on ignore.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade

"...the moral characteristics found in their mentality are close to the instinctive characteristics found naturally in animals."

"As for the Zanj, they are people of black color, flat noses, kinky hair, and little understanding or intelligence"

"We know that the Zanj (blacks) are the least intelligent and the least discerning of mankind, and the least capable of understanding the consequences of their actions."

Thank you. This is pretty much what I was looking for Snowman, et al to answer. I was ignorant of this aspect of the Arab slave trade. My understanding was that they had slaves of many "races". Maybe what you quote is common knowledge, but I sure never heard of it, so thank you for educating me.

I read more about the word "Zanj" and it looks like it was/is used to refer not to black people as a whole but to specific people of a region.

African men, women and children—whether Akamba, Kamanga, Makua, Ndonde, Oromo, Yao or Zaramo, or any of the other dozens of peoples or nations from Mozambique in the south to Sudan in the north—have been called by a range of names. Among the most widely used (historically and presently) are Kaffir, Siddi, Habshi and Zanji—and all their variations (e.g., Caffre and Sheedi):

Kaffir comes from the Arabic word kafir, meaning nonbeliever (a non-Muslim), but is often used in much of the Indian Ocean world (outside of East Africa) to describe any person of African descent, regardless of religion or faith.

Siddi (or Sidi) is derived either from sayyid, an honorific title used in Arabic, originally to denote someone in the lineage of the Prophet Muhammad (possibly picked up in reference to the Arab captains referred to as such who initially brought Africans to the area of Iran/Pakistan), or from the Arabic saydi, meaning captive or prisoner of war.

Zanji is a term used in Arabic and Farsi (the language of Iran) denoting a black person from eastern Africa, outside of Abyssinia (Ethiopia).

Habshi is derived from Al-Habash, the Arabic term for Abyssinia.

So, clearly, the quotes you posted are specific to the "zanj" as a people of a particular region and/or ethnicity, and most likely not to all Africans or black skinned people.

On the other hand, one Persian geographer named Ibn al-Faqih quotes someone who says this about Zanji, the Somali (Abyssinians) and "other blacks who resemble them":

A man of discernment said: The people of Iraq ... do not come out with something between blonde, buff and blanched coloring, such as the infants dropped from the wombs of the women of the Slavs and others of similar light complexion; nor are they overdone in the womb until they are burned, so that the child comes out something between black, murky, malodorous, stinking, and crinkly-haired, with uneven limbs, deficient minds, and depraved passions, such as the Zanj, the Somali, and other blacks who resemble them. The Iraqis are neither half-baked dough nor burned crust but between the two.

Only if one takes the "other blacks who resemble them" as generalizing all black skinned people, then I guess a person could make the point that dehumanizing large, unrelated groups of people on the basis of their skin color alone  goes back to the Arab slave trade. However, one can very well read that as referring to a particular group of people who happen to be black.

[jhkim]

I don't necessarily disagree with most of what you say here, but what it ignores is that the people pushing the X-card are suggesting something about the hobby as a whole.  The whole x-card thing is based on the premise that the entirety of the RPG hobby (or indeed, of geek culture, or even of western civilization as a whole) is "Toxic", and that this is a way to try to impose social engineering to 'fix' this 'toxicity'.  

All of which is not just bullshit, but dangerous bullshit.

If anyone actually says this, then they're wrong. However, as far as I can tell, no one speaking about the X-card has actually said this. There are some people who say that traditional RPGs are broken and/or harmful, just as there are some people who say that new-style story games are broken and/or harmful. However, there is no particular connection to the X-card that I can see.

[jeff37923]

Could have, sure, but I think you would have to look at the historical records to be sure. Did the Chinese and Indians apply blanket generalizations on people based on their skin color and perhaps other phenotypic markers despite these people having little else in common? The closest thing I've seen so far is what Ratman posted and that concerns the Arab slave trade.

Anecdotal evidence, but while in the Navy our ship pulled into Hong Kong. Some guys from my department and I went bar-hopping. At one bar, they would allow all of us in except for the black guy, who the bar owner was calling a demon because of his skin color. If we came in with him, we would have been refused service. So we skipped that bar and made sure that every other sailor off the Nimitz knew about why.

So, yes, the Chinese can be racists, just like everyone else.

[Ratman_tf]

Thank you. This is pretty much what I was looking for Snowman, et al to answer. I was ignorant of this aspect of the Arab slave trade. My understanding was that they had slaves of many "races". Maybe what you quote is common knowledge, but I sure never heard of it, so thank you for educating me.

No prob. I got interested in the Arab slave trade via the Janissaries and the taking of christian slaves by the Ottoman Empire, so the arab slave practices sprung to mind.
I'm no historian either, my knowledge is purely layman google-fu and youtube documentaries and such.

Only if one takes the "other blacks who resemble them" as generalizing all black skinned people, then I guess a person could make the point that dehumanizing large, unrelated groups of people on the basis of their skin color alone  goes back to the Arab slave trade. However, one can very well read that as referring to a particular group of people who happen to be black.

Personally, I find the mechanics of dehumanizing others more interesting than specifically who got dehumanized. In a detached "How do these things happen." way, of course.
I don't find the dehumanization of black people any more or less deplorable than the dehumanizing of people by religon or region. It's all dehumanization in order to polarize people and justify atrocity. And noting that there were strong anti-slavery sentiments in the US, I think casting "white people" as the architechts of racial slavery to be a bit hyperbolistic.

[Novastar]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainu_people

[RPGPundit]

I'm closing this thread, as it's veered too far off-topic.