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Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?


cyst13

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

Another point is that under third ed DnD, orcs aren't always evil, they are now 'usually chaotic evil'. I believe only extra-planar beings such as demons and devils are always evil.

 

Cyst13, do you think that makes the concept less racist?

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

Phil,

 

I empathize with your gag factor in having to read this entire post. I'm about ready to ignore it altogether myself. After 200 posts, I feel I've seen this argument from every angle there is to see. But you raised a good point. I haven't, as yet, offered an example from my own gaming experience, so here goes:

 

I was playing in a guy's homebrew fantasy game that had a humanoid race that were basically orcs, though he named them something else to appear creative. All of these guys that we had met had been bad news and were impossible to reason with under any circumstances. When we were visiting one city, we saw one of these "orcs" leaning up against a wall and whistling to himself, minding his own business. The thief w a dagger PC stealths up and stabs the guy in the throat, killing him. When I asked him why he did that, he told me that they were all scum and deserved to die. To me, that's rehearsing racism. And that incident is not unique to my gaming experience.

 

As to whether I feel myself becoming more racist when I play games with orcs, no I don't. But then I don't have the slightest idea how becoming more racist would feel. One's judgement of one's own personality is notoriously unreliable. I live in Portland, OR, which is a liberal bastion. Other than the skinheads, you'd be VERY hard pressed to find a white person in this city who admits to being a racist. Yet when the DA's office conducted a study of Portland juries, they found that white juries routinely gave longer sentences to black criminals than white criminals for the same crimes. If you interviewed any of the white people on those juries and asked them if they felt themselves being racist when they were deliberating, I doubt any of them would say yes.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

Doug,

 

Frankly, I'm thoroughly sick of the entire concept of alignments. If you posit an imaginary race or species with roughly human-level intelligence, then the individual members of that species should be capable of acting individually. If there are cultural factors involved that encourage the members of a species to conform to one set of values, that's fine. But those cultural factors should be described. The game should explain why most orcs are driven to act in a way that could be described as chaotic evil. If those conditions were changed, would they continue to be evil?

 

Stanley Milgrom conducted a famous sociology experiement in the 70s in which he had volunteers administer electric shocks to a human being under the guidance of a professional scientist in a white coat. Unbeknownst to the volunteer, the subject was an actor who was not actually being shocked, but he acted as if he were. If I remember correctly, 60% of the volunteers followed the orders of the scientist and continued administering electric shocks to the point where they had apparently killed the human subject.

 

I mention that experiement because I think it shows that essentially good people can get caught up in a perverted institution and commit acts which would be considered evil. To show orcs being caught up in such a situation provides nuance to a game and allows the PCs to interact with the orcs in ways other than simply killing them. If the PCs can manage to remove some of the orcs from their cultural institutions or if they can convince orcs within those institutions that they are doing something wrong and they have alternatives, they would be able to save both orcs and their potential victims.

 

Even if you don't believe that having evil races in a game can promote real life racism (and I'm not fully sure I do), I think it's just a good thing to imagine the PC's adversaries richly with real motivations. Just being evil doesn't cut it for me. Not only does dealing with realistically motivated adversaries allow for a wider range of PC strategies, but it encourages all the real life humans involved in the game to think of creative not-necessarily-violent solutions to the problem of "evil" groups.

 

This carries over directly to our current war on terrorism. Is attacking terrorists militarily always the best way of stopping terrorism? Or are there non-military strategies that we could use to complement military force that would help solve the problem? This is the sort of creative thought process that RPGs can encourage if they allow for honestly motivated adversaries.

 

End of rant.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

I've been following this with some interest. As I've said before, I run a group in my local church hall every Thursday and the issue of racism has come up more than once.

 

Teenage boys seem at times almost inherently racist and I've been using the system to reflect their attitudes back at them. They, as the system almost encourages, choose demi-humans (I'm including half-orcs in that) as characters coz of all teh cool stuff that they get. I tell them as they choose it that the region dislikes and discriminates against demi-humans. Which they choose to ignore due to the cool stuff.

 

I then reflect their language about other people back at them in game replacing real world terminology with in-game stuff bad mouthing orcs, dwarves and elves. They get really annoyed but I've noticed they are far more thoughtful in their language use real-world than they were before. Hasn't improved their instinctive terminologies though!! :)

 

Don't know if that is a for or against point...

 

 

Doc

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

Doc Democracy,

 

I received your message about discussing species. I don't know how to send private messages, so I'll just say I'm always willing to talk biology. I'm not a scientist, but I try to stay informed. If you start a thread on the NGD board, give me a heads-up. I don't spend much time there and am not likely to notice your thread on my own. Thanks for the interest.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

As to whether I feel myself becoming more racist when I play games with orcs' date=' no I don't. But then I don't have the slightest idea how becoming more racist would feel. One's judgement of one's own personality is notoriously unreliable.[/quote']

Racism isn't a matter of personality. It's a matter of values and beliefs. Are you not aware of your own feelings? I heard a story on the radio once about a guy who was mugged by a black guy, and as a result of this unpleasant experience, noticed himself becoming racist. He would start to feel uncomfortable and suspicious of any black person he saw. This is what it means to have an experience "make you more racist."

 

I have also been mugged, once in my life (more than enough), and the mugger was black. This did not cause me to become more racist at all. Why not? What is the difference between me and the guy on the radio? Simple: I have also had plenty of positive experiences with black people. I interact on a regular basis with black co-workers, friends, and fellow gamers. The guy on the radio admitted that he really didn't know any black people personally. The only direct experience he had ever had with a black person was to be mugged. The cure/vaccination for racism is to expose yourself to other ethnicities, to learn through direct experience that people who look different from you are just people, and not any different in any inherent way that really matters. It has nothing to do with determining the mugger's motives, brain chemistry, or neural structure. Precisely because I'm not racist, I want the police to find and arrest the mugger and throw him in jail. Because I'm not racist, I know that the only significant difference between the mugger and me is the choices we made: he chose to do something evil, and I didn't. He had every bit as much capacity as I do to do good or to at least refrain from doing evil. To grant him leniency because he's black is absolutely racist. It basically says that black people can't help being evil, that they have a genetic predisposition to evil, which is a dispicable, racist belief which I wholly reject!

 

The same can be said of orcs, demons, or migdalars. If they're inherently evil, then they must be stopped. If they are predisposed toward evil, then we must be prepared to defend ourselves and stop the evil that they do. If they are fully free-willed, then they are fully responsible for the evil they do and must be dealt with accordingly.

 

If orcs have free will, I would treat evil orcs the same way I treat evil humans. That is the very opposite of racism.

 

And just because you can compile statistics that show differences in sentencing of blacks and whites, doesn't mean those differences are caused by racism.

 

So, RPGing with evil monsters isn't making you more racist. It isn't making me more racist. But you still believe that somewhere out there, someone is becoming more racist? You might as well say, "I've never seen a dragon, and I don't know anyone whose ever seen a dragon, but I still believe there are dragons out there somewhere."

 

Oh, yeah, and about the thief who backstabbed the orc minding his own business: maybe the character is in fact racist. But does that mean the player is racist? If an actor plays a racist character, does that make the actor more racist? If an actor plays a stupid character, does that make the actor more stupid? If an actor plays a highly intelligent character, does that make the actor more intelligent? If a racist actor plays a non-racist character, does that make the actor less racist? If a gay actor plays a straight character, does that make the actor less gay? If a straight actor plays a gay character, does that make the actor more gay? Why is racism the only factor you're concerned about? Isn't the possibility of my becoming more violent more of a concern than becoming racist? After all, there's a lot of combat in these games. What about players who play berserkers or have a Berserk/Enraged? Aren't they "rehearsing" berserk violence?

 

The idea that the characteristics of characters automatically transfer to the players is contrary to the whole idea of role-playing, IMO. People have been telling stories and playing roles of good and evil characters for entertainment since the dawn of history. When kids play cops and robbers, someone has to be the bad guy. Do these kids grow up to be real-life criminals? The acitivity being rehearsed is the necessary and good activity of fighting against evil. I think the world might be a better place if more people "rehearsed" fighting against evil, if they understood that evil doesn't go away by appeasement or inaction, but by active opposition.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

Are you speaking for yourself? Do any of you (cyst13' date=' Agamegos, et al.) feel yourself becoming racist when playing in such RPGs? Do you fear it is making you racist?[/quote']

 

Well, I never play such games, so the question is nugatory. But I have considerably modified my own cognition and behaviour by rehearsing thoughts (in treatment of depression and a tendency to lose my temper), and I have been astonished at how effective this technique can be. I don't feel calmer or sweeter than I used to, but I never lose my temper and rarely feel angry any more. This was a real eye-opener to me.

 

And there is some question as to whether I would feel racist when and if I became more racist. There is a well-known psychological illusion in which people (most of us) ascribe our own decisions to rational processes even while acknowledging that others reach the same decisions through errors. When we learn that 90% of people rate themselves in the top 10% for driving skill, or that 60% rate themselves in the top 10% for social adjustment , or whatever, we laugh at the others, not at ourselves.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

At the risk of Agemegos and I seeming like clones, I gotta say I'm with him again on this point. I'm not sure that you and I can ever come to an agreement on this point, Phil, because we have two mutually exclusive views of human motivations. You seem to believe that your behaviors and attitudes are solely influenced by your conscious beliefs. I'm of the belief that most of what we think and do is influenced by emotions and learned responses that are outside of our conscious awareness. I do think the DA study I cited before is valid. Since race was the only significant variable in the cases studied and since they used a large sample, race was concluded to be the determinate in length of sentencing. I don't think the jurors had to be aware of racist predispositions within themselves in order to be influenced by them. This is the reason why judges ask jurors to excuse themselves from cases if they have some prior involvement with a similar case. People can not consciously will away their biases.

 

While the example you cite of the guy being mugged seemed like racism (and perhaps it was), it may have been that he had developed a phobia of black people. Traumatic experiences can produce feelings of fear in similar circumstances. While this is one possible basis for racism, and can be felt in the form of fear, it is not the only one.

 

As for the guy who's PC stabbed the orc, I asked him about it player to player. (My PC wasn't there at the time, or I would've stopped him) He was not answering as his character and he saw nothing wrong with what he did.

 

As for the idea that if orcs are intrinsically evil, they must be stopped: that's true. Again, I'm simply questioning the point of making the orcs intrinsically evil to begin with. It doesn't make for better storytelling. It doesn't have any relation to real life. And it severely restricts the number of options available to the PCs in dealing with the orcs. The notion of intrinsic evil is one of the weakest tropes of the fantasy genre and I think it's past time that we outgrow it.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

I think the world might be a better place if more people "rehearsed" fighting against evil' date=' if they understood that evil doesn't go away by appeasement or inaction, but by active opposition.[/quote']

 

I agree, though I would add the rider that fighting with evil people is not always the best (nor even an effective) way to combat evil. But then in RP characters are by no means limited to fighting as a means to oppose evil. As I mentioned (or at least alluded to) before, I think that RP offers a valuable opportunity to rehearse truth, justice, temperance, fortitude, prudence, and other heroic qualities.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

I'm not sure that you and I can ever come to an agreement on this point' date=' Phil, because we have two mutually exclusive views of human motivations. You seem to believe that your behaviors and attitudes are solely influenced by your conscious beliefs. I'm of the belief that most of what we think and do is influenced by emotions and learned responses that are outside of our conscious awareness.[/quote']

Ah! Then allow me to clarify: I don't necessarily think that all of our behaviors and attitudes are shaped by conscious beliefs: I just think that our moral actions, i.e., whether we do good or evil, are so shaped. I may have a habbit of drumming my fingers on the table, which I am completely unsconscious of, and which stems from some subconscious emotion, but drumming my fingers on the table is not a good or evil action. Children often act out on subconscious emotions, but adults usually learn to consciously choose their actions. I may feel like killing someone due to some repressed emotion of which I am not fully aware, but I make the conscious decision not to kill, because I believe to do so would be morally wrong. Can you provide an example of someone doing something evil (or good) without any possibility of conscious control? Apart from children and the insane, that is.

 

People can not consciously will away their biases.

Another important area where we disagree. My reactions to this statement include, "Speak for yourself," and "So how does one get rid of one's bias, if not consciously?"

 

As for the idea that if orcs are intrinsically evil, they must be stopped: that's true. Again, I'm simply questioning the point of making the orcs intrinsically evil to begin with. It doesn't make for better storytelling. It doesn't have any relation to real life. And it severely restricts the number of options available to the PCs in dealing with the orcs. The notion of intrinsic evil is one of the weakest tropes of the fantasy genre and I think it's past time that we outgrow it.

I don't necessarily disagree with you on this, but I think I'm beginning to see the source of our difference: I really don't think it's all that important whether or not orcs' evil is inherent. If evil is being done, you try to stop it, regardless of the motivation behind it, or whether it is consciously chosen, unconsciously precipitated, or supernaturally imposed. IMO, IME, and IMG, the motivations of the villains are less important than the responce of the heroes. The heroes are the stars of the show, after all.

 

Oh, BTW, my "feeling like killing someone" example above, is not directed at you. I'm not upset or angry at you. I think you're wrong about a few things, and we don't have to come to agreement. This conversation has been very long, and quite possibly a complete waste of time, but I've enjoyed it.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

Just finished reading the Digital Hero article about the evil race of Migdalars. Recently' date=' on a thread about race and gaming, Michael Hopcroft wrote that he deplored the fantasy staple of evil races. Is the idea that an entire race can be evil an intrinsically racist concept, even if the race does not actually exist in the real world? Does the 'evil race' trope encourage fantasy gamers to think in negative stereotypes? Or is this merely entertainment which does not affect our real life thinking?[/quote']

 

If you look into the origination of evil races you would see some differences. I would guess that Tolkien's Mythology is the best originator. But to understand Tolkien's concept, you have to understand the origin of orcs, goblins, etc.

 

These races were formed from elves who chose evil, and were changed into orcs by their corruption and the influence of the dark lords.

 

Thus these races were formed by choice, not by genetics, per se. From the point of the first choice of these races ancestors, came the members of the race that followed. Now we have a problem. Because while the first orcs were formed from the repercussions of a choice, the prodigy were not. So the first orcs were not a racist concept, but on the face of it, the prodigy were.

 

But this idea only goes so far. Because Tolkien talked about the control of the dark lord Sauron over orcs, goblins and the rest. Sauron was using some kind of mind control on the "dark races." This is demonstrated in the Return of the King book, when Tolkien says the orcs fled being now freed from the Dark Lord's grasp, or some such statement.

 

So now we have mind control involved. But why would orcs be more susceptible to mind control than other races? Something in the water they drank? Who knows, someone more versed and interested in the Simarillion and Tolkien's Mythology may be better able to explain.

 

If you do not think the concept of 'evil races' encourages racist thought because this is just pretend, would it be acceptable to run a Earth setting campaign with the 'evil race' being conspiratorial Jews, Yellow Menace Chinese, or dark jungle-cult Africans? These have all been featured in the adventure entertainment of past eras. If you think it's okay to game evil Migdalars and Orcs but not evil Jews, Chinese or Africans, please explain why.

 

Actually conspiratorial Jews have been used in Hero Games, there was one character named Kabbalah I believe who was a villian. Using one member of a race or ethinicity means nothing in my opinion. It person is judged on their personal conduct.

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Re: Is "evil race" an intrinsically rascist concept?

 

For my example, I'm going to choose the same one I've been using. First, though, I'm not talking about committing evil. I think that's a loaded term for the reasons I expressed in another thread. There are two distinct connotations for evil and people rarely bother to specifiy which they intend. Instead, this is an example of people allowing unconscious biases to influence their decisions: the juror example given above. Unconscious biases play important roles in the decidions of jurors, judges, politicians, and scientists. It is common practice for people in all these positions to excuse themselves from their duties in the interest of avoiding unconscious bias. The double-blind method of experimentation was designed specifically to counteract possible biases by the subjects and scientists involved in medical experiments. If evil races in games do predispose players towards stereotyping real life groups of people, I don't think this would likely manifest itself in violent acts. I don't believe even the most violent RPGs promote real life violence. However, this unconscious bias might manifest itself in the decisions jurors make, in voting decisions, and in the friends one chooses. I can't prove this, but that's my hypothesis.

 

As far as consciously willing away one's biases, it's been shown repeatedly that even well educated professionals who are fully aware of the concept of observer biases continue to exhibit those biases. There is an extensive literature dealing with this in the sciences since it directly relates to the ability to do objective science. Perhaps I'll try to find some studies to cite at a later date.

 

One of the reasons why I specifically do not like the intrinsic element of evil races is because it severely restricts PC options. I've harped on this before, but once more can't hurt. If an entire race is evil for the sake of evil and they pose a threat to you and yours, all that you can do is destroy them. Sometimes this is the case in real life, as when we fought the Nazis (which, BTW, I support). More often, though, there are other options than military force. With terrorism, for example, while military confrontation is an option and many times a necessity, this usually must be supplemented with non-violent forms of intervention. There is an excellent tome called The Other Path which describes how the govt. of Peru largely conquered the Sundero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerillas/terrorists through legal and economic means. They restructured the economy of the nation to allow the poor to start their own businesses and own their own homes. Once they were invested in the health of the Peruvian nation, the poor were no longer fertile recruiting ground for the Sunderos. Many Sunderos quit the rebel life and joined the civilian economy. That is one kind of intervention to stop an evil (def 1) group that would not be possible against an intrinsically evil race. You can't offer intrinsically evil beings any incentives to stop doing evil. You can only kill them, and then go kill some more of them. This may work for computer games, but in RPGs, it's a real yawn.

 

I'm glad to hear you've enjoyed this debate, Phil. I'm really sick of it, but that's no reflection on you. I've been arguing this thing for 18 pages now.

 

P.S: When you admitted to unconscious impulses to do things like tap your fingers, you allowed me to sneak in a reference to a great book about the emotional basis of decision making. Antonio Damasio, a highly respected neuroresearcher and physician, wrote a book entitled Descarte's Error. In it, he gives evidence from his own clinical practice and from experimental research that the state of one's body can influence one's thoughts. He shows how your body in effect creates your emotions. When you feel irritable when your body is tensed up, that affects your decision making process. I can't possibly do justice to the thesis of this book in this thread, but if you are interested in reading a non-hippie book about this topic, I highly recommend this one.

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