Something I think a lot of fantasy roleplaying fans don’t pick up on is that the reason many games’ depictions of orcs and other “monstrous races” get criticised for being racist isn’t just because they’re dark-skinned and evil.
I mean, yes, there’s that, but it’s also that a lot of the tropes that are associated with orcs and such in fantasy RPGs are literally eugenicist rhetoric – and, more specifically, anti-Black eugenicist rhetoric – with the serial numbers lightly sanded off.
Like, you ever notice how common the following elements are?
Being capable of using complex tool and weapons, but relying on raiding and pillaging to obtain them, not because they’re incapable of making them, but because they’re simply too
congenitally
lazy to do so
Having an intrinsic drive to despoil and corrupt the fruits of civilisation, and in particular, taking pleasure in destroying beautiful things specifically because they’re beautiful
Being treated as childishly superstitious for believing in evil spirits, even though such treatment makes no sense from a worldbuilding perspective because they live in a fantasy setting and evil ghosts are objectively real
Reproducing rapidly and reaching sexual maturity quickly, typically at an age when a human would still be a child, with great emphasis placed on the danger of them “outbreeding” civilised peoples if left unchecked
Lusting for the women of other species, resulting in all manner of twisted half-breeds; “heroic” members of their kind are typically drawn from these half-breeds, who must struggle constantly with their base natures
Seriously, a lot of this stuff is copied and pasted directly from 19th Century eugenicist screeds about the intrinsic inferiority of the Black race – they basically just scratched out the n-word and wrote in “orc”.
(And no, you can’t pass it off as folks imitating Tolkien without realising what they were doing. While Tolkien’s orcs undeniably employ racist imagery and stereotypes, there it’s mostly anti-East Asian stuff, not anti-Black stuff. The incorporation of explicitly anti-Black tropes into fantasy fiction’s depiction of orcs is a more recent development, and at least some of the folks doing it absolutely knew what they were up to.)
I really think Jackson is to blame for the recent anti-black bs with orcs, considering how he codes them.
And while Tolkien’s racism regarding orcs is specifically East-Asian directed, I do think there are elements of anti-blackness regarding his orcs as well. While he never came out and said it, there are certainly things I’ve seen and written about that can’t be unseen.
just an unfriendly reminder the école polytechnique shooting, the most deadly shooting in canada, happened bc a white male was not accepted to the university and he decided to blame women for it, not his own faults
and another unfriendly reminder that the toronto van attack, the second biggest attack in canada, happened because a white male felt entitled to attention from women and blamed society in general for his lack of a romantic relationship, not his own faults
and don’t forget about the many, many Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women that are lost to a potent mixture of racism and misogyny.
misogyny kills. even in canada. especially in canada.
The cop says “Get out of the vehicle” but then right after tells the
guys gf “he’s not cooperating with me, he keeps trying to get out of the
vehicle”
Anyways cops don’t deserve respect and the fact people still think they do is ridiculous.
This is just painful to watch and listen to. The citizens are being polite, nonconfrontational and patient while the cop is physically and verbally harassing them. It’s overwhelmingly obvious that it’s Not Safe for the driver to get out of the car and that the cop is not a safe person. 😦
Watching this display of power is disgusting. This officer knows he is invulnerable, he is immune, he doesn’t have consequences, so he doesn’t need to treat people like people.
There a problem? Tell them calmly what it is, let them know, they are people. And we all know that there is never a need to arrest someone over a damned tail light. He was arrested because this officer could. Because no one will stop him.
Because they can disrespect you, treat you like shit, manhandle you and if you pull away you can be charged with resisting them.
You can say that dude had attitude but he was scared and angry and he had every right to be both of those things. And the sound of her voice breaking gets to me, she is scared for him, really scared.
ATTENTION: TO ANY TRANS PEOPLE/ANYONE PURCHASING THESE PRODUCTS.(including cis people who purchase for trans partners or family.)
This asshole is the owner of FTMconnect. He scams people and is a racist asshole. If you are purchasing any products off FTMconnect please stop. Youre only putting money in this piece of shits pockets. Do not fund this asshole. Do not buy from his website. He attacks BLM and supports white supremecy. Not to mention(again) he rips people off often when buying from his website. Stop buying from him. Stop supporting him. He is shit.
Service announcment over.
Hey he fucked me over and listed my home address on his blog so people could find me! I had to move!
There’s some pretty fucked up stuff in the notes. I strongly advise you guys to not buy anything from this dude.
every so often i post a few passages from this. it’s by ken liu, whose explanation of silkpunk i just reblogged, and it’s an excerpt from his story paper menagerie (linked here in its entirety; it won the hugo, the nebula, and the world fantasy awards, the first work of fiction to do so). it is not remotely an easy read, particularly if you are a child of a diaspora, particularly if you have ever struggled with assimilation, particularly if you are struggling with cultural and personal identity. it shouldn’t need to pull its punches, and it doesn’t. if you haven’t read it already, i cannot recommend it highly enough. it will not make you feel better, but it is an axe for one’s internal frozen sea, if you will. sometimes a story like this is the only way to stay alive.
“I’m laying there, scared enough, not wanting this done, telling her I didn’t want it done. All of a sudden I smell something burning. If I could’ve moved my legs I probably would’ve kicked her.”- Brenda Pelletier on being sterilized against her will
Brenda Pelletier checked in to Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon five years ago to give birth to her baby girl. She left, with her tubes tied. The tubal ligation procedure happened, she says, after she was pressured into it by hospital staff, while she was in a vulnerable state.
And as a Métis woman, Brenda Pelletier’s experience appears not to be an isolated case.
At least three other aboriginal women have come forward to say that they too were pressured to be sterilized at the Saskatoon hospital in recent years.
Ok but this is true!!! I was 19 years old when i went into the hospital to give birth to my first child and while i was laying in bed reading and signing consent forms i came across one that woukd give them.permission to tie my tubes. The nurse kept telling me i didnt have to read them all that they were all about my stay in the hospital and intake forms and when i began to read that particular form the nurse came to me laughed nervously and said well we put that in there just in case you wanted to get your rubes tied. I then asked if they always gave them to woman giving birth she said no, the doctor had asked for thematic be put in there “just in case” I didnt want any future children. The nurse then went on to ask me about my future and if i was really sure i wanted to have more children or not. Until my mom came intimate room to check up on me and the nurse then took all the papers from me and left. For the rest of my delivery the nurses refused to give me medication for the pain or an epidural saying it was too early for that and it might stop my labour. I honestly think they withheld pain medication and the epidural to show me how hard child birth can be. Afterwards when they were releasing me the nurse asked me again if i was sure i didnt want to get ny tubes tied. Which i said no to. She then went on and explained thaf if i did i woukd just have to make an appointment with my doctor and i would be in and out in no time at all. That is my experience with the Canadian healthcare system and being a native woman. It is wrong that anyone would try and force something like that on a 19 year old. Please share. Let it be known what is happening to native woman. We have rights just like any other woman and shouldn’t be pushed into suxh decision at such a young age.
Hey white folks with uteruses who do not want or should not have kids,
you know how you’re outraged about how hard it is to get a Doctor to agree to sterilize you even to save your life?
Guess what else they do? Double your outrage.
And those two issues are not unrelated. White supremacy pushes an idea of who should be having kids and who shouldnt. White, abled women are prioritized especially ones who arent poor, they should have many kids, to further white supremacy, while those deemed “undesireable” (people who arent white, people who are disabled, people who are poor and uneducated and especially people who are more than one of those things) should be kept from having children for the good of society.
So when doctors refuse to sterilize white, educated women who want it, they are functioning within the same thought process as when doctors sterilize non-white women against their will.
Since this article came out in 2016, a class action lawsuit has been filed by two of the victims.
The history of birth control in Canada is riddled with this racism and white supremacy. Some of the first women to get birth control? People of colour and poor white people, because non-white babies were a threat and if you were poor and white you were considered bad stock.
If you were reasonably well off and white, you couldn’t get birth control because it was considered your duty to pump out white babies of good stock.
So it shouldn’t be a surprise it’s going on to this day. Canada and women’s rights in Canada are founded on racism and genocide.
Nevaeh now wears a scarf to cover several bald spots and her singed
hair. She was left with first-degree burns, but it could have been worse
according to Tanya Robinson, Nevaeh’s mother.
“The doctor told me her hairstyle saved her life,” Tanya recalled. “Had it been different, she might not be here.”
This isn’t the first time Nevaeh has experienced bullying. Two years ago, another student broke her thumb.
I’m walking into that school like
Hate crime. It should qualify as one.
Nevaeh is thirteen years old. This happened at Gompers School in the Philadelphia School District. The school district has not issued any comment, but y’all can make yours:
Samuel Gompers School
Address: 5701 Wynnefield Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19131
District: The School District of Philadelphia
Phone: (215) 581-5503
The School District of Philadelphia
Address:
440 N Broad St, Philadelphia, PA 19130
Phone: 215-400-4000
This happened October 25, 2018. This isn’t some random post that won’t die. It’s happening now. Call. Demand accountability.
I don’t know if anyone has really posted about this, but it’s really been bothering me. So many people draw Aziraphale as white, but draw Crowley as poc. On top of it, the majority of people who do this seem to draw him as just vaguely poc, like maybe he’s part native american or latinx or something, which is even worse, as it just associates vaguely being poc as being evil, rather than this person happens to be poc and here is his race.
People have associated poc with demons for a long ass time and because of that it just seems natural. It’s part of “character development” to have Crowley with dark skin and hair and Aziraphale with pale skin, but you can look at the antisemitism in Tangeled and Snow White to see how this aspect of character development just feeds on prejudice against minorities and perpetuates it.
I’m not saying anyone is doing it on purpose, but just asking, as a person of color, to please stop this. Even if you have to make Crowley’s skin lighter from now on. If your design of Aziraphale is white, you can’t have Crowley be a person of color without it being racist, even if racism wasn’t your intention.
willowfoot 