WotC WotC's Chris Perkins On D&D's Inclusivity Processes Going Forward

The Witcher itself is an almost endless series of problems caused by othering people and generally being unkind and inconsiderate.

GMforPowergamers said:

we as a people have a long history of 'otherizing' people and making them 'less then'. African Americans are the ones that have the longest run in modern time as 'the other' but make no mistake you can find people to dislike races, creeds, nationalities, skin tones, and hair colors much easier then you would like.

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Alot if the Polish jokes in America are the same here replace Poles with Irish.

Even then it was mostly in the 80's from older people who were kids in the 40's or 50's. Irish jokes would likely get a *huh I don't get it now".

Leftovers from the old Catholic/Protestant stuff. If it wasn't the same joke it was something like Englishman, Irishman and a Scotsman type joke and Oaddy is the butt of it.

Galandris said:

I don't know who Aunt Jemmima is, but there is an American brand called "Uncle Ben's" that produces rice. The iconic Black person on the package was perceived as a sign of American progressism to feature a Black person who wanted to provide us the best rice of the world (as apparently the US are producing rice, but why not) that doesn't stick when overcooked, instead of using a White person as the company's logo. Removing it recently felt very backward and less inclusive, with people commenting "hey, that's very racist to remove the image of an affluent Black person that everyone knows and that has absolutely no offensive reference". (Because of course nobody associated "wearing a jacket like any exec" with "being a manservant"... in the ads he was just appearing to be owning a large mansion like the top 1% with many cars parked in front). Especially since they gave him an American accent, reinforcing the association (American = rich).

Of course, the intent was to remove the idea that he was just the butler of an unseen and probably white owner, but as they didn't explicitely mentionned he was a butler, there was no way to asssociate that... outside of a culture where "well-dressed Black person" = "imagery of a servant", that apparently motivated his removal percieved as offensive, especially coupled with the name, because there was some problem with being called Ben. Where the most famous Bens are Ben Affleck and Ben Kenobi, and generally stands as the diminutive form of Benjamin, which is more prevalent in affluent families, the name was absolutely not seen as something problematic and the move to remove the image of a successful Black business owner in rice industry was seen as really puzzling. A move that made sense within a certain cultural framework didn't translate at all in another.

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Forgive me for using your post to illustrate why WotC is right to hire cultural consultants. Because you obviously have good intentions, and you just as obviously don't know what you don't know. So you have a whole thesis here that is predicated on a complete ignorance of what the words "Aunt" and "Uncle" mean in this specific context. "Aunt" (or "Auntie") and "Uncle" were the fond titles that privileged White folks gave to particularly favoured house slaves or, after the end of slavery, house servants that took care of domestic labour. "Uncle Ben" is not supposed to be a wealthy executive - that interpretation is laughably wrong. He was designed to represent the White myth of the loyal Black slave/servant.

Pretty much every White Southerner understood this when these brand brands were invented, and pretty much every Black American still does. Yet what was completely obvious to them was not even on your radar. And this does not make you a bad person - like, I said, you seem to have good intentions, and you obviously put thought into your totally wrong thesis about the meaning of the name "Ben," etc. And that's not your fault, because you lacked the cultural context to understand where those brand names came from.

Just like WotC lacked the cultural context to pick up on the fact that featuring a race of formerly enslaved monkey-people might be problematic to folks whose ancestors were often derogatorily compared to monkeys and were enslaved. So, WotC are hiring people who will understand those contexts to try to avoid future mistakes. We don't know what we don't know. It's not a bad thing to ask around.

Gradine said:

I'll also add that Japanese media is very far from above reproach with regards to anti-black racism and exclusion. This goes doubly for Japanese media that leans very heavily on white representation.

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A little OT, but anime people are perceived as Japanese by the original target audience. Anime was heavily influenced by Osamu Tezuka, who watched a lot of Disney, thus the huge eyes, but if you ask Japanese character what they perceive the nationality of the character to be, they'll say 'Japanese'.

When they want to make a character European in ancestry, they'll give them a big nose and brows, and sometimes blond hair and blue eyes (though not all Europeans look like that). As we all know, anime hair color is not meant to be realistic...

Vaalingrade said:

If they need a reason for a diverse cast, then they should need a reason for a non-diverse cast. You know what has a diverse cast? EARTH.

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When I watched Good Omens, one of the things I noticed was the diverse cast made the story seem bigger. The story would have seemed smaller if the casting director limited their selection to pale British people.

Galandris said:

I don't know who Aunt Jemmima is, but there is an American brand called "Uncle Ben's" that produces rice. The iconic Black person on the package was perceived as a sign of American progressism to feature a Black person who wanted to provide us the best rice of the world (as apparently the US are producing rice, but why not) that doesn't stick when overcooked, instead of using a White person as the company's logo.

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We've been producing rice here in the United States since we were a colony of Great Britain, and were I live, Arkansas, we're quite proud to be the largest rice producer in the country. So it's no surprise that Uncle Ben was an American to me.

Galandris said:

Removing it recently felt very backward and less inclusive, with people commenting "hey, that's very racist to remove the image of an affluent Black person that everyone knows and that has absolutely no offensive reference".

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Here's the thing, whites referring to African Americans as "aunt" or "uncle" has its own sordid history most of us aren't aware of because it's been decades since this practice was prevalent. Aunt or uncle might be something you'd call a black servant who was older than you as a term of endearment. Uncle Ben in particular was originally modeled after an enslaved plantation house cook, or the idea of one, nobody's really sure if Uncle Ben was modeled after a real person. When he was created, it was undestood exactly what Uncle Ben was and what his relationship was to customers. Like Aunt Jemima, he was a servant taking care of the masters of the house and would have been understood as such at the time he was made into a mascot to sell rice.

So this is yet another example of something that can appear innocuous to many of us but is offensive to other people. And is another example of why sensitivity readers are a good idea. A lot of Americans have very little experience with Romas, to the point where I've had people say, "Those are real people?" thinking they were just the products of old stories and Hollywood movies. Because of this lack of familiarity among many Americans, a lot of us are bad at recognizing stereotypes about them. So you get things like the Vistani from Ravenloft and a sourcebook for Vampire in the 1990s that I can't spell out here because is a warnable offense.

Clint_L said:

Forgive me for using your post to illustrate why WotC is right to hire cultural consultants. Because you obviously have good intentions, and you just as obviously don't know what you don't know. So you have a whole thesis here that is predicated on a complete ignorance of what the words "Aunt" and "Uncle" mean in this specific context. "Aunt" (or "Auntie") and "Uncle" were the fond titles that privileged White folks gave to particularly favoured house slaves or, after the end of slavery, house servants that took care of domestic labour. "Uncle Ben" is not supposed to be a wealthy executive - that interpretation is laughably wrong. He was designed to represent the White myth of the loyal Black slave/servant.

Pretty much every White Southerner understood this when these brand brands were invented, and pretty much every Black American still does. Yet what was completely obvious to them was not even on your radar. And this does not make you a bad person - like, I said, you seem to have good intentions, and you obviously put thought into your totally wrong thesis about the meaning of the name "Ben," etc. And that's not your fault, because you lacked the cultural context to understand where those brand names came from.

Just like WotC lacked the cultural context to pick up on the fact that featuring a race of formerly enslaved monkey-people might be problematic to folks whose ancestors were often derogatorily compared to monkeys and were enslaved. So, WotC are hiring people who will understand those contexts to try to avoid future mistakes. We don't know what we don't know. It's not a bad thing to ask around.

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even this, witch may be right I am no expert on rice or race based brands, shows a problem, because the google of the origin of the name gives a different answer.

The founder of Mars, Forrest E Mars, first branded the rice product as the Original Converted Brand Rice in 1942. The name was then changed to Uncle Ben’s Original Converted Brand Rice in 1947.
Uncle Ben was the name of a fictional character, first used in 1946, as a reference to an African-American Texan rice farmer.

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Texas wasn't a big slave state, and nothing in this origin references ANY of what you said... now god knows my google fu is not the best, and getting your info from the web is spotty at best, BUT it shows that there is a major disconnect on what the story is.

Nobody back in the day had any confusion about what Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima represented. They just didn't see it as offensive. This article is the first thing that came up when I googled "Why is Uncle Ben offensive":


People always wanna get so pedantic on these issues. Just admit that you didn't know a thing and move on.

Clint_L said:

Nobody back in the day had any confusion about what Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima represented. They just didn't see it as offensive. This article is the first thing that came up when I googled "Why is Uncle Ben offensive":

Opinion | Aunt Jemima was always feeding us racist myths about Black women — not pancakes

The mascots were intended to let white consumers indulge in a fantasy of enslaved people as submissive, self-effacing, loyal and contentedly pacified.

www.nbcnews.com

People always wanna get so pedantic on these issues. Just admit that you didn't know a thing and move on.

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again, I am no expert, nor do I claim to be. I am just showing you why what YOU think should be common knowledge isn't. Maybe what came up is misinformation, if not I don't know why we are getting very different results.

I will say the idea that in 1947 'everyone knew' seems odd to me, but even odder is that is before my parents were born (although close my mom may have been in grandma's belly depending on months) and I am old enough that my contemporaries have grandkids. So 4 generations ago MAYBE it was common knowledge, but it isn't today is all I am saying.

GMforPowergamers said:

Texas wasn't a big slave state, and nothing in this origin references ANY of what you said... now god knows my google fu is not the best, and getting your info from the web is spotty at best, BUT it shows that there is a major disconnect on what the story is.

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Well, they didn't have that many, compared to Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, and Missisisippi, but being able to own slaves was one of the big reasons they seceded from Mexico.

Blue Orange said:

Well, they didn't have that many, but being able to own slaves was one of the big reasons they seceded from Mexico.

History of slavery in Texas - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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yes they were a Sothern state still