Because elves change their skin color by the type of magic they use and the closest thing to black magic on Azeroth is the Void which is apparently a dark bluish-purple.
I would love to see the data to support this claim, because my family, on all accounts, came to the United States in the 20th century, fleeing persecution of the 3rd Reich and Soviet Union. I know that is anecdotal, but its estimated 25 million people immigrated from Europe to the US between 1900 and 1930, and estimated 12% of white Americans of that time were foreign-born.
So, there is a significant problem with homogenizing people into these broad classifications of “White” and Black" especially when attached to those categories is the accusations of collective crime and injustice that they, nor their ancestors, may never have partook in.
So yes, it is the same as equating groups of west Africa’s coast, and it is incredibly racist. It’s taking people on the basis of skin color, and forcing them into these boxes that are ignorantly labeled with your own ill conceived notions of what they are and how they ought to be.
And my whole point is that people are diverse in ethnicity, appearance, nationality, culture and religion, who’s histories are nuanced enough to be romanticized or villainized to whatever degree you would like. Speaking on it is a death spiral, it becomes something little more than a pseudo-moralistic posturing pissing contest that is neither useful or nice.
And at the end of the day, no one is entitled to see representations of themselves in any story in which they do not have any license too. No one is entitled to a self-insert in any story. You can praise it when it happened, but to rage against not having it is childish.
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If your family came from central/eastern Europe, then yeah, there’s a really good chance they also came from a society that was dominated by the direct descendants of people and inheritors of institutions that engaged in West African slave trading/colonization/marginalization. It wasn’t just the English Empire. There were black people in Third Reich Germany, brought over as slaves, and they weren’t having a good time under the regime either. And the US was far less viable as a place to flee to.
But the moment your family arrived in the the US , worked in the US, did business in the US, married in the US, etc, they became members of US society- and judged by their phenotype. Just like mine.
I wish racial theory hadn’t ever been cooked up to justify the marginalization of people who weren’t considered “White”, only for that definition to gradually expand until it kind of just includes “European” as can be roughly determined by your average American based on phenotype. I really wish it hadn’t and didn’t continue to marginalize some groups and favor/assimilate others into the US system based on their “whiteness”. I also wish the US never had to deal with gender inequality. Or transphobia. Or homophobia.
But it did happen. And it does continue to happen.
And now we have to deal with it. Not act like it didn’t/doesn’t happen or try to minimize it so we can act like there’s no meaningful consequences, clear our consciences and not have to examine how we fail to live up to the ideals we claim to have.
See, the problem with just sitting there and not saying anything when you’re one of those marginalized people that the dominant group refuses to even acknowledge they’re marginalizing is that they feel free to continue to ignore your concerns.
There’s not a single advancement made by women, LGBTQ+, or non-white people in this country -whether it’s representation, or civil protections, or social acceptance- that was won without people in those groups speaking out and making themselves known.
If you don’t want to be seen or heard, you’re plenty free to sit down and remain silent and let the things in your life be dictated by others who aren’t. To do otherwise would be childish, right?
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See, this is kind of what I mean. Anytime someone comments on issues related to race, gender or otherwise, it devolves into a pissing match of pseudo-moralistic posturing.
I never said anything about the rights of marginalized groups… I said no one is entitled to insert themselves into a fictional verse of which they have no creative license.
For the record, I am thrilled with all the diversity that is coming in Shadowlands.
I do not see it as some major leap forward in civil rights though. The people who are pretending it is are just silly, and it’s really just social media driven narcissism.
“Look how woke I am, like my post.”
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When you say, “no one is entitled to insert themselves into a fictional verse of which they have no creative license.” you can only really be speaking specifically about groups that are underrepresented. Because the overrepresented groups already got theirs. In a dozen different flavors. With sprinkles! Of course they don’t have to ask for representation in order to get it.
This isn’t even about a major landmark in civil rights. It is a pretty big expansion of WoW’s existing character customization options, though. Something people have been wanting and/or asking for for decades. People are allowed to be excited about it and similar news.
Also, you chose to tackle the issue of race when you came into the thread asking why some instances of racial representation are considered less/more problematic than others and then trying to argue the point! For someone who feels like nothing needs to be said on the topic and that anyone who voices their opinion is engaging in performative virtue signaling, you’re doing a lot of posting about it in order to try and prove how “below you” others are.
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There is no over or under represented groups… there are just the characters in which the author wanted to have.
And the authors now want to have more women, more LGBTQ+ people, and more non-white people, among other things.
And that’s fine…
You seem to think I am making a case against having such people represented in media. I am not making that case. I am specifically making a case against the demands to have or not have such characters made by people whom have no creative license in that media.
Except people often decide what to include/exclude from works what people have expressed a desire to see/not see. WoW is a corporate product meant to generate profit, not a work of pure art created for beauty’s sake.
And?
Blizzard still makes the choice. I think if we as fans had any creative license, we wouldn’t of had BFA.
In the same Lore Q&A that Ion Hazzikostas said “Horde is waiting for you”, he said that the Blood Elves were the “light-skinned elf fantasy”.
In the minds of the developers, there was no such thing as a black elf character. In the minds of fans and creatives, dark-skinned elves have been a popular head-canon for a while. The developers finally decided to incorporate this popular fan-creation, so we’ll probably see them in the future.
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Just to add…
Some are, literally, blue.
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but I am purple
Too late… I already said in another post that I was talking about Tolkin elves from which High Elves are inspired from. Night Elves are Drow inspired.
Slavery of all races is common today. It’s not open & broadly expressed, but nonetheless. That’s not false, but an absolute fact. In regards to sex trade, slavery and more. There is multiple non-for-profit organisations fighting to abolish them, some of which work with the UN in rare circumstances like A-21.
As for the ‘ahistoric part’, that’s a largely invalid statement. There has been people living in bondage in North Africa in the past, along with a massive slave market.
I feel that’s an intriguing statement to point out.
On the subject, I feel WoW touches base on inner-discrimination within races rather well. Such as the Azshara society (10,000 years ago) Highborne race dismay for Nightelves (Now it’s reversed, which can be said for a lot in today’s society in real life), the Highelves dismay for Blood elves, and the Orcs dismay for various other Orc tribes - Mostly out of cultural discrimination.
All this aside, I feel this thread became super political, lol. (I’m just saying, it’s not wrong; but you may want to dial it down a few notches, if it gets too political - Blizzard closes off the thread, as they’ve done with others in the past).
I also see a lot of people trying to shame all ‘White People’ hard, which I’d agree with Terry Cruise stating it wouldn’t really make them any better than those they aim to speak out against of whom discriminate …
They derived from Titanforged, which were from gold, silver, sapphire, onyx and other various elements the Titans coalesced together. I don’t see how Titanforged races can’t have diversity. I mean … by lore standards it literally makes more sense if they do, lol.
No it isn’t.
Nah what he said was completely ahistorical, there was never German based chattel slavery on west Africa, lmao
British Imperial Race Science didn’t consider the Irish White until the early 20th century
Dumb as hell
Cool.
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Yes. It is, my friend had her daughter literally kidnapped and sold into slavery when they docked at Africa for business; of which they were fortunate enough to catch them before they lost trace.
I was touching base on the denial of the factor of slavery present in North Africa with Nordic slaves in the Moorish and Islamic slave trade as late as the late 1700s. The Islamic Slave Trade was ungodly massive.
I was agreeing with stating it was a valid point to be made. Irish got boned pretty hard, and had a lot of the Celtic culture stripped down & lost.
Please, do tell. I don’t mean in general if you don’t like him that’s fair I’m sure you have your reasons, but on that statement - because Morgan Freeman, Samuel L Jackson, Anthony Mackie, and a few other well known people happen to agree with the statement: When you push to simply shame someone based on the colour of their skin due to the past of oppression, directing at those who share similarities in appearance; then they’re no better. Shaming actual racist people is fine, by all means go guns blazing - But if people state they should feel ashamed of being a particular race, colour or having certain ancestors; then that by definition is discrimination. That’s not an opinion; that’s the dictionary.
It is. 
Love whacking the racists who try (And fail miserably) to use lore to smack diversity down, by baseballing it back up to a homerun with lore too.
And I’m the prince of Spain and the former viceroy of Colombia. Post articles or didn’t happen.
This is ahistorical, as I’ve stated, and Tamanii explained above.
Nah it isn’t.
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Well, greetings your highness. As for the friend who informed me of what happened they didn’t go into detail or show the evidence; additionally I simply received it via word. I wasn’t about to request evidence of a traumatising experience they told me of. I mean you make the point of yes, they could had been lying; but that’s not to state similar events don’t happen, which I’ll give insight towards in the next paragraph.
— As for slavery or sex trade around the world happening to other races that don’t appeal to your one-sidedness, you claim to have done research but clearly haven’t. In terms of other articles however, of people being put into sex-slavery and other forms of hell, I’ll simply give you one of many organisations that tackle the matters because it’s such a worldly act - look up the organisation A-21; they’ll give you loads of information. If you think ‘white people’ are untouched by hardship, racism, abuse and slavery then you’re beyond reasoning with.
Definition of Discrimination via Google: "The unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex."
As for a dictionary I hold in my house: "Discrimination happens when a person, or a group of people, is treated less favourably than another person or group because of their background or certain personal characteristics."
So uh. Sorry-not-sorry to disappoint but -
Yeah, it is.
Nah.
/10char