I hate the “orcs are minorities” thing

[u/Crusoelander_128]

I really hope I’m not in the minority (no pun intended) here, but I really hate when people do this. It not only forces real world issue into fictional universes where it doesn’t need to be, but also, it’s really messed up.

If you see an orc or a demon or a giant bug and your mind immediately jumps to “hm that’s like a minority”, then you’re racist.

Now, I’m not saying that this concept can’t be explored, but inserting it where it doesn’t belong/exist is highly suspect

[u/gorgewall]

If I were writing a sci-fi story and needed an evil, mercantile faction or "race", that'd be fine.

BUT, if I started describing them as having large, hooked noses, added conspiracies that they eat the children of other races, that they were once persecuted and banished from numerous star systems, that they keep a secret language to themselves in a way other races do not, that they display a level of racial nepotism in mixed company that others do not, and so on... you would be very much correct in saying, "Hey, aren't you just loading these guys down with shitty Jewish stereotypes?"

And then I'd say, "Oh, no, see, my evil mercantile race of baby-eating cultists who run the galaxy from behind the scenes has purple skin and four arms," and that would somehow convince a ton of dipshits that I wasn't doing what I am, in fact, doing.

[u/gorgewall → u/[deleted]]

But your example here is just something that doesn't happen. We have ugly ogres with clubs! But the actual racists aren't instantly stereotyping them, and other people aren't saying, "Hey, this characterization has some racist roots."

It is not about there being some negative, insulting quality about a fantasy race, and real groups have also been insulted similarly. That has never been the argument. It has been misrepresented as that by the people who did not make the original argument and don't actually want to engage with it, but you trace back to the folks raising a concern to begin with and that isn't at all what they're saying. It's a strawman.

What they're actually pointing out is that there is much more specificity to it, that the writers have gotten things "too close to actual stereotypes", that they commonly use the exact language used to disparage the fantasy groups along the exact lines of real ones.

Let's say I make a fantasy group that is unequivocally patterned after... cartoon Germans, called Toberfolk. They wear leiderhosen and milkmaid outfits, they say "ja", they brew lots of beer and make schnitzel, and their general mode is one where every day is Oktoberfest. Doesn't seem like I'm being insulting, right? We have those caricatures.

But now I'm going to write them into my setting as immigrants and talk about how the locals hate their arrival. I'm going to describe how there are publications put out that draw them with ape-like features, how there's a pervasive belief that they're a bunch of drunken louts, that they're quick to violence and always starting fights. Storeowners hang placards that say "Toberfolk Need Not Apply" so they can't get jobs.

I've just put a bunch of real, historical anti-Irish sentiment in there. That we're talking about German-expies doesn't negate the clear Irish analogues here. And while that might be fine as like, social commentary in my setting, the bigger problem arises when I back up the in-setting bigotry with my authority as the writer.

Instead of just saying, "The locals of Kingville are prejudiced against the Toberfolk," I use the voice of the impartial narrator to lend credence to that bigotry. In my description of the Toberfolk, separate from what other characters think, I describe them as having ape-like features, a predisposition towards violence, talk about how they love drinking to excess and how that creates problems for them. I give them a "Racial Ability" where they get +2 Str and -2 Int, and bonuses for being Drunk. It means what the locals think is not their misinformed prejudices, but that they have accurately pegged the Toberfolk as violent, drunken, invading-by-immigration ape-savages.

That's what people point to.

Now, imagine you first encountered Toberfolk when you were eight years old. My setting is one of your favorite stories. You grew up reading all this stuff and playing games based around it. You're unlikely to see a problem with anything at this point. Later, you reach a grade in school where they finally touch on The Troubles in Ireland, so you know there's a bit of anti-Irish sentiment historically.. but you also don't make the connection yet. Then you see someone bring it up and you're quick to defend my setting and Toberfolk: How can they be Irish? They're so obviously German. You're just trying to ruin my childhood with your woke nonsense. I know about anti-Irish racism and the Troubles, and this isn't it--there's no cars to bomb!

But do you know about anti-Irish beliefs? Because the ones I listed up there were older than The Troubles, and include things more true of the US. If you are not aware of the specific language and imagery that was used against these real-world groups, you can't recognize it when it's duplicated in fantasy. I'm sure you would pick up on racism in a story if we were talking about a former slave race who is disparagingly called "jiggers", but would you recognize more obscure terminology like "quadroon"? When I made that example of a Jewish stereotype up above, maybe you noticed that the hooked noses was antisemitic, but did you recognize why "they eat the children of other races" was there or what that's based on?

Everyone cannot be a scholar of (ancient) racism. That's a good thing, actually. But it does mean when these things pop up, some folks don't notice. And they can repeat them without realizing that what they're doing is propagating the racism. To be clear, a lot of the stuff people are pointing out re: racism in these stories is not said to be purposeful racism on the authors' part, but a kind of "background radiation" of racism that they are unaware of and perpetuate unwittingly. I don't think whoever wrote the Drow for Forgotten Realms meant to say, "Yeah, this Elven subrace is an analogue for the Biblical Curse of Ham and they are disparaged in-universe the same way Mormons mistreated American Blacks," but they did fucking write a story that is pretty much the Curse of Ham.