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Cliches you can't stand

And the reason why Afro-Americans are pushing for representation and diversity in media is for more reasons than lack of black people. It has to do with not only lack of representation, but being denied opportunities to participate in and create media over white people, damaging stereotypical portrayals and roles in media that persist to this day, and unfairness in exposure and earnings that again persists to this day. It's discrimination on multiple levels, not just being left out. So this is all part of a push to both take back what they're owed and reverse the damage caused by the media sphere that has exploited them for so long.

Some guy in Poland not writing about black people does not hurt black people. Stop trivializing the issue.

Konradleijon said:
How did you become a conciliar?
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Many people voted for him.
 
Arawn_Emrys said:
Whether a story is set in another world or not doesn't prevent people of color from being in it. Even fucking D&D knows that. Look at Dragonlance. Theros Ironfeld, the guy who goes from being a village blacksmith to forging the aformentioned lances, was black. Noone commented on this despite that because him being Ergothian (black) was simply not relevant.
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In the actual Middle Ages (which most of the fantasy series mentioned have their setting "based on" )Skin color wasn't the main way people judged each other. A obviously foreign person may not have it the best in medieval times but racism as we know it didn't exist yet. Not that discrimination didn't exist.
 
Also i doubt central europe in 2000BC was uniformly white the way most people we consider white.
Middle ages definitely did not have europe be exclusively white people, or the time of roman empire.
 
Konradleijon said:
How did you become a conciliar? I guess SV isn't as progressive as I thought. And yes stories should include more then white people
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"Stories" as a whole, yes. That does not translate to "every single story".

Also, once again, given the composition of Poland by ancestry, the usual arguments about representation just sort of... don't work there? Of course, Poland and other European countries have their own problems with racism and ethnic groups, and that en masse. See issues with Roma, for example. But those are indeed their own problems, in structure, history and detail very different to how North American works specifically. Thus, to demand to make such representation specifically about the specific North American variety of colour-based racism, to adopt certain sensitivities that arose due to specific conditions in North American societies, that is frankly just - well, ironically, it's ethnocentrism. Taking the own cultural structures as granted and universal.

I still maintain that a book by a Polish author written for a Polish audience does not absolutely need representation for black people, because the usual arguments for representation do not work here. One could maybe think about having equivalents to Jews and Roma instead, but that is of course a tad more difficult to depict than to just give someone a dark skin.

spacemonkey37 said:
That's definitely not the case, though. The Witcher setting does have non-white people.
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...meaning the whole fucking discussion was moot to begin with?
 
Susano said:
Thus, to demand to make such representation specifically about the specific North American variety of colour-based racism, to adopt certain sensitivities that arose due to specific conditions in North American societies, that is frankly just - well, ironically, it's ethnocentrism. Taking the own cultural structures as granted and universal.

I still maintain that a book by a Polish author written for a Polish audience does not absolutely need representation for black people, because the usual arguments for representation do not work here. One could maybe think about having equivalents to Jews and Roma instead, but that is of course a tad more difficult to depict than to just give someone a dark skin.
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You do know non-white people exist all over right. It's the common argument about ethnocentrism when ever you say another country has racism problems. "Stop forcing your own values on Foreign cultures you dumb Americans racism isn't a thing in Europe ,ignore the Roma" Colonialism happened all across Europe including Poland. Like if their was a Portal in Central Europe 2000 BCE their should be a whole lot of Asian people their .

and the Witcher does have allegories to Jews/Roma it doesn't do it will at all.
 
Konradleijon said:
In the actual Middle Ages (which most of the fantasy series mentioned have their setting "based on" )Skin color wasn't the main way people judged each other. A obviously foreign person may not have it the best in medieval times but racism as we know it didn't exist yet. Not that discrimination didn't exist.
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See, that is exactly what I mean about North American ethnocentrism. Just because the North American variety of skin-based racism didn't exist, well, that obviously means there was no racism, right? Well, wrong. If you read even as far back as Roman and and Greek authors, you will encounter a lot, a lot of racism. Just not colour-based. But you absolutely did have a racial ascribing to of "essential qualities" to people based on birth and blood, including notions of superiority and inferiority. It wasn't about black and white, of course, it was about Greeks, Italics, Thracians, Celts, Germanics etc etc, but it was still racism.

That is the crux of the issue: Having it be about skin colour, rather than anything else, is not a universal as you seem to think!

Konradleijon said:
I don't think 2000 BCE humans should look like modern poles.
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Eh, they probably looked similar enough? The genetic mutations that caused white skin, fairer hair and the possibility of blue eyes all occured some millenia before that. I'm not sure in what way the look of people in most of Europe would have greatly changed since then.

Konradleijon said:
You do know non-white people exist all over right. It's the common argument about ethnocentrism when ever you say another country has racism problems. "Stop forcing your own values on Foreign cultures you dumb Americans racism isn't a thing in Europe ,ignore the Roma" Colonialism happened all across Europe including Poland. Like if their was a Portal in Central Europe 2000 BCE their should be a whole lot of Asian people their .

and the Witcher does have allegories to Jews/Roma it doesn't do it will at all.
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I specifically mentioned the Roma, though? My point is exactly that while Central and East European countries do have problems with racism, it is not the same kind of racism as in North America. That doesn't make any side superior or the angels or anything, but it is in fact a difference. Hence, you can't demand that representation always has to work via skin colour, because problems of racism are not always about skin colour, and assuming so is in fact ethnocentrism.
 
Valmond said:
I think the discussion was not really about the setting, originally, but the games?
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Well, if it is really so that the books do have darkskinned people and the games do not, then that actually becomes a whole lot dodgier. That sort of would make a difference then. Going from just not having that be an element to specifically and deliberately excluding them.
 
Susano said:
Eh, they probably looked similar enough? The genetic mutations that caused white skin, fairer hair and the possibility of blue eyes all occured some millenia before that. I'm not sure in what way the look of people in most of Europe would have greatly changed since then.
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From what I heard their was many Central Asian steppe Nomads in Poland at the time. Which should look Asian
 
I would very strongly caution against making any assumptions about how people 4 thousand years in the past looked like.
The white europe is largely a myth.

Like the whole thing with Kingdom Come and white washing the time period thing.
Kinda wish i had not bought the game.
 
Konradleijon said:
From what I heard their was many Central Asian steppe Nomads in Poland at the time. Which should look Asian
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Poland? Not really, for the simple reason it, ah, is not steppe. I.e., the steppe peoples couldn't graze their horses there, which of course is an important factor. There is an Eurasian "steppe corridor" that stretches all the way from China to Europe, but the European end goes more Southern Ukraine, Moldavia, Wallachia and then Hungary. Pannonia (what is now Hungary) of course was the base of several steppe people empires in the early middle ages, like the Huns, the Avars and, well, the Magyars (Hungarians) before they settled down.

But:
a) that was indeed Hungary, not Poland,
b) that was in the early middle ages not 2,000 BC,
c) indeed, riding was not even much of a thing in 2,000 BC yet, it was mostly charioteering - but the very nature of chariots meant they were elite objects, few and rare, instead of how everyone was mounted in the later steppe nomad peoples.
d) Even so, Poland is good for agriculture, rather than nomadic herding, which is exactly what we find in archaeological excavations of the time.
e) Unlike later on, when most steppe peoples were and are Turkic, the earliest steppe peoples we hear of were all of Iranian descent and language family - the Scythians, Sarmatians, Massagetae, Sakae, etc. And both Greek and Persian authors describe those peoples as fair-skinned and often red-haired, in fact.
 
Konradleijon said:
It said that their was a portal somewhere in Central Europe not Poland. So why can't their be Asians?
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...did you read the rest of my post above?

/EDIT: Okay, that was a bit short-tempered of me. You are right, the example did say "Central Europe", not "Poland". But even so, the rest of the post still stands: The example also said 2000 BCE, not early middle ages, which is when all the rider people crashed into Europe. You probably wouldn't even yet have nomadic rider peoples. The archeological record shows agriculture throughout Central Europe, not herding. And in any case, the earliest steppe peoples we hear of are described as fair-skinned, often with red hair.

So, in conclusion, no steppe peoples, and even if there were they would not look "Asiatic".
 
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Valmond said:
Like the whole thing with Kingdom Come and white washing the time period thing.
Kinda wish i had not bought the game.
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Well, just from that time period, many images have survived. In any case, there were no significant "black" populations there. Although there should be gypsies (although not all of them are dark, contrary to stereotypes).


Konradleijon said:
It said that their was a portal somewhere in Central Europe not Poland. So why can't their be Asians?
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Let me take on the role - I am from Russia and I have many Tatars I know. There is a nuance here - migrating nomads will inevitably make contact with new populations. And often they mix with them - as a rule, these are either tribes that have entered into an alliance, or slaves captured in raids. As a result, the further, the more they deviate from the stereotypical phenotype. There are "stereotypical Asians" among the Russian Turks. But there are many who are similar to Iranians, or inescapable from the "stereotypical Europeans". I'm not talking about Hungarians, many of whom are descendants of assimilated Slavs, Germans, and others.
 
Comrade Future said:
Well, just from that time period, many images have survived. In any case, there were no significant "black" populations there. Although there should be gypsies (although not all of them are dark, contrary to stereotypes).
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Not what anyone claimed.
The term you are using is considered a slur by some.
There would also have been not insignificant amount of jews.
While the number of black people might not have been "significant" amount of black people, whatever that means, including some would not have been historically inaccurate, so defending the choice of having nobody but white christians in the game with historical accuracy is BS.

And finally, historical accuracy is more often than not nothing but an excuse for authors or developers do what they were already doing anyway, extremely few productions (book, tv, game) actually bother with real in depth research, or follow the results if they are inconvenient.
 
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