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Racist Magic: The Gathering cards banned, removed from database by publisher

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Re: Racist Magic: The Gathering cards banned, removed from database by publisher

#11

Post by hckr_news »

honkycat wrote: post #6
8note wrote: post #2

Paraphrasing, Cleanse removes all black creatures, including foul beats etc This seems to point at a bigger issue where the black creatures are considered foul?

Black creatures are "death" creatures, and are things like "Demonic Tutor", "Dark Ritual", "Rune-Scarred Demon"... Demons and vampires and zombies and things like that. The use of "Black" as a stand-in for nefarious things is its own problem, but it does not refer the the color of skin in any way in MTG.

I don’t play Magic, my co-workers do. But seems a little pedantic? I suppose they’re trying to be more inclusive, maybe focus on outreach and getting the game out to other communities.

Re: Racist Magic: The Gathering cards banned, removed from database by publisher

#12

Post by toyg »

I personally found fairly "revolutionary" to have White players do Jihad. The illustration of Invoke Prejudice does look too Klan for comfort, and similarly Imprison, but the rest (particularly Cleanse) is just silly - you really have to squint very hard to find racist undertones into a color-targeting card during a color-based game.

I don't know, I still think people burning effigies and destroying art tend to be the bad guys. The road to hell is clearly going to be well-paved for the foreseeable future.

Re: Racist Magic: The Gathering cards banned, removed from database by publisher

#13

Post by tsherr »

honkycat wrote: post #6
8note wrote: post #2

Paraphrasing, Cleanse removes all black creatures, including foul beats etc This seems to point at a bigger issue where the black creatures are considered foul?

Black creatures are "death" creatures, and are things like "Demonic Tutor", "Dark Ritual", "Rune-Scarred Demon"... Demons and vampires and zombies and things like that. The use of "Black" as a stand-in for nefarious things is its own problem, but it does not refer the the color of skin in any way in MTG.

I think this is more of black = Night and night=scary.

But it could be seen as tone deaf right now.

Re: Racist Magic: The Gathering cards banned, removed from database by publisher

#15

Post by toyg »

bspammer wrote: post #10

It seems to me that there are two distinct types of cards being banned here: cards that actually have real-world racist connatations (Invoke Prejudice, Jihad, Stone-Throwing devils, Pradesh Gypsies), and cards that have unfortunate wording when read by someone who doesn't play the game (Crusade, Cleanse). I'm glad they're taking a stand on the former, but the latter seems rather silly. I'm no Magic expert, but black…

What is the racist connotation of Stone-Throwing devils?

Btw, if Pradesh Gypsies is racist, we better start torching a ton of Marvel comics - Dr. Doom is a gypsy and all the (often excellent) stories around his background use the exact same imagery, all the way to the cyberpunk Doom 2099.

Re: Racist Magic: The Gathering cards banned, removed from database by publisher

#17

Post by krapp »

8note wrote: post #2

Paraphrasing, Cleanse removes all black creatures, including foul beats etc This seems to point at a bigger issue where the black creatures are considered foul?

>This seems to point at a bigger issue where the black creatures are considered foul?

Likely in part due to J.R.R. Tolkien's influence on Western fantasy archetypes. Almost invariably, his books equate light skin with purity, civilization and goodness, and dark skin with corruption, barbarism and evil. Not to say that he was racist in the same way as H.P. Lovecraft was when writing about fish-men from Innsmouth as a thinly veiled metaphor for race-mixing, but rather that given Tolkien's Colonial British upbringing, he may have been blind to his own cultural prejudice.

Over the decades this has sort of become a trope that has seeped into a lot of fantasy and even science fiction.

Re: Racist Magic: The Gathering cards banned, removed from database by publisher

#18

Post by drewcoo »

toyg wrote: post #12

I personally found fairly "revolutionary" to have White players do Jihad. The illustration of Invoke Prejudice does look too Klan for comfort, and similarly Imprison, but the rest (particularly Cleanse) is just silly - you really have to squint very hard to find racist undertones into a color-targeting card during a color-based game. I don't know, I still think people burning effigies and destroying art tend to be th…

Over-applying lessons learned is a part of learning.

But symbolic/performative change in lieu of meaningful change is a way to dodge lessons.

This seems like both.

Re: Racist Magic: The Gathering cards banned, removed from database by publisher

#19

Post by BoiledCabbage »

krapp wrote: post #17
8note wrote: post #2

Paraphrasing, Cleanse removes all black creatures, including foul beats etc This seems to point at a bigger issue where the black creatures are considered foul?

>This seems to point at a bigger issue where the black creatures are considered foul? Likely in part due to J.R.R. Tolkien's influence on Western fantasy archetypes. Almost invariably, his books equate light skin with purity, civilization and goodness, and dark skin with corruption, barbarism and evil. Not to say that he was racist in the same way as H.P. Lovecraft was when writing about fish-men from Innsmouth as a…

I think you hit the nail here. Racism is broad term, and there is the direct individual Lovecraft style racism, and there is the other which is not as overt but has merit. An example is that idea that black is often time given connotations of brutish, evil, selfish, ...

While white is described as representing "morality, order, community, civilization, ..."

Are they the same, of course not, but we also can't say it has no significance either, as it does to always have those associations.

Re: Racist Magic: The Gathering cards banned, removed from database by publisher

#20

Post by WealthVsSurvive »

Does anyone else feel like maybe corporations should just do this if they want and not make a big corporate statement about it; I feel like it's detracting from the issues at hand, which are frankly much large than luke-warm conceits of micro-aggressions. Macro-aggressions are occurring, let's stay focused on that and not derail the conversation. By all means do it, but maybe don't release a slew of PR about it.
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