Character Creation Has A Race Problem

[kikix12]

It has nothing to do with light spectrums.

I know it have nothing to do with lights spectrum and I did know what people mean by "people of color". Though I did not have any idea on where it originated from, so that's good to know.

My point is that this fancy little term uses very clearly defined words, then twists them into something nearly completely irrelevant to the origins of the word, THEN makes exclusions to that, fancy themselves prideful in being that (as part of a majority), while accusing the minority (if we consider the "people of color" as a group, that group constitutes ~67% of the world population) of them being discriminatory.

The whole concept there, the premises, are wrong. What's wrong with using non-white, non-Caucasian etc?! Seriously. Fighting fire with fire works, but fighting a bomb with a bomb does not.

[Rokke]

I know it have nothing to do with lights spectrum and I did know what people mean by "people of color". Though I did not have any idea on where it originated from, so that's good to know.

My point is that this fancy little term uses very clearly defined terms, then twists them into something nearly completely irrelevant to the origins of the word, THEN makes exclusions to that, fancy themselves prideful in being that (as part of a majority), while accusing the minority (if we consider the "people of color" as a group, that group constitutes ~67% of the world population) of them being discriminatory.

The whole concept there, the premises, are wrong. What's wrong with using non-white, non-Caucasian etc?! Seriously. Fighting fire with fire works, but fighting a bomb with a bomb does not.

Im no linguistics expert and thar be some buzzwords sprinkled in, please bear with me**: Historically it was used to unify “other” people, which why I think it continues to encompass a larger group of people. When you break “other” groups down into smaller groups you have a lot of folks vying for attention to their own cause which makes smaller groups goals less likely. Even amongst minority groups some are over represented vs others (a whole 'nother can of worms) but as a whole they tend to be underrepresented across various mediums of entertainment. I think people wanting to see themselves in [insert a thing here] is natural. I don't think it works in every situation, nor do I think demanding an insert in everything is the way to go, but I get the wanting.

a tl;dr: its Complicated™ because words, meanings, and racial relations all evolve over time.


** Personally, I don’t disagree with the fact that this is SE’s game and ultimately they can put whatever they want in their own game. Applying rl demographic breakdowns to a game where Genghis Khan’s stand-in is a 7 foot tall lizard man that rides a giant purple parrot is kinda moot, but at the same time I don’t think adding cornrows as a hair option would be particularly lorebreaking. But we're getting waaaay off topic here, so I'll end this with a picture of hair I'd want :)