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I dislike this article. It’s a little old now, but there are several things blisteringly wrong with this idea at its heart.
Purely for example, if you read a book on dragonflies and take offence because you see racial similarities between whatever race a person is and dragonflies, that’s an issue with you, not the source. You are relying on your opinion on what the source says. Since opinion varies per person, you should not dictate policy based on opinion. It’s an insurmountable hill to cater to whatever opinions are since opinion will always change - it’s an unsound basis for any form of logic.
Let’s do a thought experiment:
If a trailer-dwelling white person in the USA reads about the Vistani, and takes offence because they also live in a trailer, sees that as a negative, and assumes the Vistani are a potshot at him, is he right to be offended and call for a ban?
If a nimble Canadian POC (which is also a terrible term as it literally applies to everyone on the planet) reads about Elves and assumes they’re talking about him because he also happens to know how to use a bow and is skinny with a lithe frame, is he correct in calling for a ban? What if he sees being nimble as a negative for some reason (because positive / negative characteristics are opinions and what people see as negative is not objective)? What if he sees it as being racist by saying the source is calling ALL Elves nimble and therefore good at sports? “But they stereotypically have a different skin colour!” I hear you saying. So do Orcs. That argument applies here and if you can’t square that circle, then the logic falls apart utterly.
Personal identification with aspects of characters in a source material are not cause for alteration. You are an individual; you are not a group. Grouping people into camps based on visible traits or histories is a disgusting habit.
Treat people as individuals and racism dies. Treat people as groups and call out the differences constantly and you’ll have people fencing themselves in while calling themselves inclusive.
Been playing since I was 13, so just for reference, I’ve never seen a Drow that looked like a fish. They’re basically just purple-grey or black-skinned Elves with white hair. They are often portrayed as in shape, and extremely attractive. They are matriarchal and were considered “evil” because of their worship of Lolth.
(More info: Even Yveette Nicole Brown doesn’t agree with the decision to pull that episode of Community.)
I don’t think I’ve seen any traits associated with them that are also associated by racists to be “like black people” other than the use of the word “black.” I’d also state that they are black in such a way that humans are not. There is no trace of brown in their skin and never has been in any official material I’ve ever seen.
Good and evil for alignment was usually associated with the place the characters come from, at least in every campaign I ever ran or participated in. I had Lawful Good Barbarian who murdered and pillaged villages because that’s what Good was to him. It’s relative. I said it elsewhere, but I ran a campaign with all players playing Drow where all were Lawful Good because they were deemed so by Drow societal laws. It was fun and put everyone in an odd headspace for that game.
Damn bro I just typed out like 1000 words for the other comment! Appreciate you giving me more excuses to procrastinate work ;)
I don’t necessarily think that Drows are racist by default, but again, black skin = evil is iffy. That’s all I’m saying. If people are actually bothered, it should be changed. (Orcs are the ones with the parallels to racist stereotypes, and to me, a significantly larger offender.)
Also, I don’t agree with the removal of the DnD episode. I haven’t seen a single person actually argue for the removal - it was basically pearl clutching from NBC execs, as far as I know. But the fact that blackface was used to represent an “evil” race does more or less make my point for me.
This entire discussion is about surface level characteristics of these fantasy races, (at least from my perspective), and the beauty of DnD is that you can run and change whatever you’d like in a campaign. But I maintain that by default, the lore should attempt to separate itself from harmful stereotypes that are endemic in American culture.