I’d say there’s a difference between “systemic racism” and “racism”. The first involves racism within authoritative bodies, such as the judicial system, finances, media or lawmaking, which upholds racist institutions regardless of whether or not individuals within those institutions are racist.
Meanwhile, plain-old racism operates on a more individual level that is backed up and shaped by those institutions. For example, someone who refuses to hire a black person on the basis of their race is actively feeding into a system that is working against that black person. Someone who refuses to hire a white person on the basis of their race is being racially discriminatory, which is still bad, but not necessarily racist, as there are no real systems of racism that are against that white person.
Keep in mind I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just adding further explanation to my position.
EDIT: Note I’ve deleted references to the hirer’s race, as that isn’t relevant to my point.
I agree. I should’ve added more context in my first reply, but ehh, sometimes the temptation for a snappy one-liner that rustles some jimmies is too great.
It is, in fact, possible to discriminate against white people on the basis of their skin color, but (and I am speaking as a white person, FYI) I would still definitely agree that Western society has traditionally held racist practices (so that’s systemic/institutionalized racism) against non-whites—that’s society as a whole practicing racial prejudice and discrimination, vs. a single individual or small group of individuals doing so.
Well, i would say it’s the people in power keeping it going, because the other way implies every single individual in said society is inherently racist, which isn’t true.
I mean, not every single individual, true, but when the “people in power”—or, to be more specific, the most influential individuals in society (so, politicians, business leaders, media personalities, celebrities, etc.)—collectively advocate a certain mindset, it does inevitably become pervasive, to the point of the majority of society advocating it.
We see this kind of thing all the time not just with racism or bigotry, but even with something as “normal” as celebrity worship on social media, for example.
That’s true, I’m just against labeling everyone a racist or bigot. There’s always going to be weak minded inviduals who believe everything they’re told. But I would say the majority of people aren’t either.
I think we agree on this, just not the terminology. I said that white people can be discriminated against on the basis of their race, but that’s racial prejudice, not racism.
We’re just arguing on whether a zebra is white with black stripes or black with white stripes. It’s the same thing.
Sure, I’m against it too, but who’s out here labeling everyone a racist or bigot? And even if they were, why is that such an important problem? It just strikes me as needlessly defensive.
This is a fair assessment (and I missed it the first time all the back and forth going on in the big post it was in). Most people probably wouldn’t actually feel hated themselves if a fictional person they were playing in a video game was hated by another fictional group of people.
Perhaps a better point I should have focused on is not understanding the desire to play a fictional person whose identity is based around being hated.
Eh, my personal view on the theme is that it’d be a time-limited sort of thing, where the story would be about overcoming it in a “person with snake phobia learning that someone’s pet corn snake isn’t going to kill him” way. Maybe hate’s the wrong word for me; apprehension? Then again I’m a big sappy sort whose pipe dream would have involved the faction barrier slackening and coming down at some point.
BFA felt custom-tailored to push it farther apart than ever, though.
I agree, though this sort of also came up with Banuka way back in the beginning of the thread, that we’ve already gone through that at this point. Warcraft III concluded with the factions overcoming their established assumptions of one another and working together. And that has come up time and time again, through Vol’jin, Malfurion, Jaina, and Anduin. The last two even did it all over again in BfA itself. So in the sense, the time has already run out its limit.
Yeah but it just feels pointless and empty now, because like I wrote in my first reply, there’s nothing left to misunderstand. Whatever character flaws they may have had can be safely shed because they’re no longer necessary if (when?) the next conflict rolls around.
It was better when it was just a background thing, a Cold War style conflict when the occasional battle would flare up, but neither side had enough proof to blame the other.
White people can deal with interpersonal racism. Those types, you know the ones, will happily show you really horrific stories where a white person is the victim of an outright hate crime. Usually accompanied with accusations about the media not covering this.
But what those types fail to grasp is in those stories, the perpetrators have been caught, charged and are waiting trial in prison. As they should be.
But when two white men chase down a black man and shoot him dead, it seems to take a thorough investigation to determine that the unarmed man being chased by guys in a truck with shotguns wasn’t killed in self defense.
Literally no race in World of Warcraft—in either faction—was originally based around the concept of “being hated.”
Only recently has that, unfortunately, become the norm, primarily for the Horde. Prior to that, we had, for example:
Lots of exposure on the tauren and their cultural practices: Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos,Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, and The Shattering (novel)
An entire history (prior to the narrative butchery that was Warlords of Draenor) surrounding the orcs, as seen in Lord of the Clans
Lots of exposure also on the Darkspear trolls in “Old Hatreds,” in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne
And of course, even more emphasis on both the positive cultural aspects and the imperfect flaws of these races in Vanilla WoW, on the orcs in Burning Crusade, and on the tauren/taunka in Wrath of the Lich King.
Notice a pattern here?
So when someone starts talking about how their chosen race/people in WoW is so hated, I’m going to say they’re not needlessly complaining about playing a race whose “identity is based on them being hated.”
They are necessarily complaining about having to watch as their favorite race(s), which used to have its/their own cultural identity, be continuously villainized and hated to the expense of everything else.
