But what I find less pleasent is that many people do not see Nazis as humans and they see themselves in the right to disregard their opinion, threaten them or outright use violence against them.
By labeling someone a Nazi (justified or not) you essentialy dehumanize that person. And I can see people objecting to this kind of treatment.
See all the other dehumanizing insults.
I agree that the word is thrown around lightly but the fact is that people find that insult to be one they can be sensitive to but when other insults are thrown its always hey dont be so sensitive i didn't mean it like that etc.. That people feel strongly about beeing called a nazi shows that not every Insult is the same. And It shows that while you disagree that something is harsh or not always depends on the one who is hit by it.
most of the top pro players were happy to play in tourneys where these cards were in the legal pool.
they could have sat out / protested and brought about the bannings years earlier, but they didnt.
now they are saying 'about time'.
While I do find the Nazi ideology appaling, I was often labeled a Nazi in the past simply because I am German.
That thankfully did become better with the time but in my teenage years that was still common place.
I personally don't find it insulting since I don't think that I should put much value in the opinion of people who put labels on others without knowing them.
But what I find less pleasent is that many people do not see Nazis as humans and they see themselves in the right to disregard their opinion, threaten them or outright use violence against them.
By labeling someone a Nazi (justified or not) you essentialy dehumanize that person. And I can see people objecting to this kind of treatment.
And as I said befor that is not an endorsement of Nazism but to be blunt modern Germany exists because the allied forces created a path to redemption for the German people.
It's unfortunate you were the victim of such verbal attacks due solely to your cultural background which is obviously unfair.
In truth, it speaks volumes about the immaturity of those who would unjustly hurl such insults or stereotypes in your direction without even knowing who you are as an individual.
No man should ever be held accountable for the sins or crimes of their forefathers, nor be made to feel guilty or ashamed for who they are because of where they were born at no fault of their own. Many cultures have done highly inappropriate and immoral things (often to appease their gods, ie: animal sacrifice, burning witches, etc) or at some point conquered (and defended) land which previously belonged to another group in order to expand their territory and harvest resources for the benefit of their own people (and sometimes even to fulfill a self-serving holy prophecy, a highly conveniently justification in and of itself, but that's a whole other discussion). The methods of expansion have often been aggressive, evil, and excessively violent leading to wars when diplomacy has failed, but the motivation to spread has always been a natural need (for all species) to grow, compete, and dominate in order to not online survive, but thrive and evolve. As wrong and unethical as things seem or were, resources have always been limited, and as populations have grown, this has always been the natural course of things, at least up until recently where most people(globally) have begun to cooperate more (regularly), because we finally realize that cooperation (and not simply trade) benefits everyone, because the whole is always stronger than the sum of its parts.
In any event, if you benefited in some way because of where you were born or who you were born to, that's not a privilege which you should be made to feel you don't deserve by others who lack it or got unlucky. It was never a choice to be born white in a world where being white has benefits any more than it's a choice to be born in a wealthy country. Recognize that privilege, acknowledge it, own it, and use it if you can to help others around you who may be less advantaged in order to create equity, but never feel embarrassed or required to apologize for being who you are or for identifying as German because of past events which occurred before you were even born. Just be careful not to get too happy if you happen to win a game of Axis and Allies playing as Germany.
I’m Lebanese and I can’t even keep count of how often that term has been used in a racist connotation against me since 9/11.
Two years ago I declined a date with a white guy who said “that’s not how we do things here in America, if you want to be a dirty sand N***** go back to your country and take your Jihad with you. I hope Allah sends you to hell”
I’m catholic btw and Allah is the Abrahamic god in general...
It just goes to show you how ignorant some people are to assume every Lebanese person is Muslim, or that every Muslim is a fundamentalist extremist.
Is every Catholic a "firebrand preacher"?
God (the one you speak of) has so many names (the true name is unpronounceable because it's actually a number.... for more information look up Gematria and the Tetragrammaton).
I had a Lebanese uncle who was Jewish and migrated to Canada as a young adult because life was difficult for him there, probably the best decision he ever made.
Back on topic...Unfortunately, some people can't differentiate between ethnic background and religious background.
This is the core problem.
They think some groups are ethnoreligious when in fact most are not.
Education is the only way to help the uninformed understand, and if they refuse to learn, they're the ones who continue to sound and act like fools.
See all the other dehumanizing insults.
I agree that the word is thrown around lightly but the fact is that people find that insult to be one they can be sensitive to but when other insults are thrown its always hey dont be so sensitive i didn't mean it like that etc.. That people feel strongly about beeing called a nazi shows that not every Insult is the same. And It shows that while you disagree that something is harsh or not always depends on the one who is hit by it.
I think I already conceded the point that not all insults are the same. I corrected the statement to in the same ballpark.
But the same word can be used as diffrently. Nazi is actually a good example. It can be a factual statement, it can be an insult or it can be an attempt to dehumanize the person to a degree where physical violence can be justified.
This is not a function of the word, but a function of the context.
The n-word is also a good example. When black rapper use this word I doubt that anyone would argue that they their intend is to dehumanize black people. But if a clansman uses the same insult it gets a diffrent connotation.
So insults change meaning depening on who uses them and who is on the receiving end.
The problem is that magic cards lack a good amount of context: art, artist, card text, including flavor. Thst is pretty much all you can go by. Invoke Prejudice is probably the clearest example of a truely racist magic card, given who drew the art what is depicted and what the card does...
Beyond that I can see Crusade and Jihad as controversial topics. The card about Gypsies I can also understand.
The problem is where you have to assume more and more context to the other examples.
The often mentioned off color joke can be made about almost any magic card. You can always create a context im which something is offensive... Stuffy Doll, Stalking Tiger, Wrath of God, etc.
I just don't think that is a healthy path to go down.
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Give a round of applause
For the great Miss Y!
Let's take a quick poll...
Should Paragon of the Amesha and Valeron Outlander be censored next for their use of the word 'heathen' in their flavor texts?
Is the word not offensive to some, inherently xenophobic, and discriminatory towards non-believers of particular faith?
Why is it not considered a pejorative?
Were such individuals not sufficiently oppressed?
Does it not exclude while promoting othering?
Does anyone really care or take offense to this word because it may inadvertently describe them in a negative way and harm their self esteem or feelings of self worth?
Also, what about oppression with that sadistic flavor text?
See how this nonsense could go on forever?
No, what I see is that the fandom continues to have conversations about what does and does not qualify as having racist connotations. No, this isn't a slippery slope, like I mentioned in the last iteration of this thread, we're just in the early days of culture at large adjusting to find equilibrium, just as we did in the first weeks of the #MeToo movement. The MtG community is calibrating and the line will be identified through dialogue like this. It's not realistic to expect slippery slop doomsday scenarios when it comes to social issues and the Overton Window. It would be difficult for marginalized people to swing the Overton Window *that* far to the left (if we're going to consider "cares about offense language to an extreme degree" to be an inherently far left trait, which I don't), especially in America.
So we'll have conversations as a fandom about specific examples. Some will be obvious, others more subtle, some may seem bad but ultimately be considered a nonissue, and suggestions might be a bit much and the community doesn't think the concerns hold water. As one user correctly pointed out yesterday, through conversation we identify the line to be drawn.
Example from popular culture a few years ago.
Black Lives Matter Protested that the LGBTQ flag was discriminatory against black people because it didn't have a black bar on the flag.
It's a rainbow flag. There are no green people. Or any people matching those colors.
You don't pander to people just because they are offended, riot, or claim something to be racist. If you do that. There will be nothing. Everything will be changed and changed again to suit every possible person. Which is a bad thing.
So banning these cards is a bad decision. Throwing a super vague term like racism around to shut down something is a bad thing.
Think about the sentence the mob eating it's own, for a while.
I think I gave you a nice clear example you can understand with the LBGTQ flag.
This isn't entirely accurate. The Pride Flag criticism stemmed from internal issues of privilege, racism, and transphobia. The strategy of challenging our oppression in the 80s and 90s was largely one of assimilation. But not only was that largely only possible for queer people who more closely aligned with the in-group (white, cisgender), the queer community was uncritically assimilating into a racist system as well, which became echoed within our own community. LGBTQ people who were trans and/or QTBIPOC (queer and trans black, indigenous, people of color for anyone seeing that acronym for the first time) often became treated as second class citizens within their own community by individuals and organizations. Pride festivals became about celebrating assimilated cis white bodies rather than the uprising began by and large by QTBIPOC and gender nonconforming people. It was a cultural betrayal that had real effects of marginalization within LGBTQ spaces and movements, prompting QTBIPOC and trans people to push for better treatment - including better representation.
It was, in essence, an internal black lives matter conversation as in QTBIPOC lives mattered less to the community, QTBIPOC causes mattered less to the community, QTBIPOC issues mattered less to the community. And symbolic representation was the first step towards really addressing that. The symbolic first step of "you're right, we haven't been supporting you or respecting you as we should have, we need to demonstrate that we understand that and are committed to rectifying our missteps". Which is exactly what this move by WotC is, a symbolic demonstration. Whether it's just lip service or the first step of a longer journey will come out in the wash when we see what WotC does next.
They could probably start with the accusations we saw in the last thread that they aren't great employers for BIPOC people.
They could probably start with the accusations we saw in the last thread that they aren't great employers for BIPOC people.
Yes. Posting the link again for people to see. We need to be talking about this.
Good news, there's already been some small progress on that front, with Mark Rosewater addressing this concern and agreeing there is room for improvement.
That said, I’ll be the first to say we have room for improvement. We have a lot of work to do to get to the place we’d like to be, especially in employment. I believe we’re moving in the right direction, but we need to figure out how to move faster.
It's a slightly tame wording, he doesn't explicitly address the specific allegations that have been made, and there's no guarantee of meaningful change here, but this is, again, a start.
I just feel the need to share that the most offensive thing about Invoke Prejudice, "Racism; the spell," is that it has a quad blue casting cost. This is reserved for "Big Brain" cards, like Mind Over Matter and Enter The Infinite. Even without Harold McNeill's footprint, even without the (confirmed coincidental, therefore we can laugh about it) Multiverseid=1488, Invoke Prejudice would be a pretty foul card to have exist in Magic, and perhaps it's over-the-topness has actually prevented me from seeing that. Racism in Magic as defined by color pie would be a black card, and certainly not an extensively mind-expanded blue one.
This is not a function of the word, but a function of the context.
The n-word is also a good example. When black rapper use this word I doubt that anyone would argue that they their intend is to dehumanize black people. But if a clansman uses the same insult it gets a diffrent connotation.
So insults change meaning depening on who uses them and who is on the receiving end.
The problem is that magic cards lack a good amount of context: art, artist, card text, including flavor. Thst is pretty much all you can go by. Invoke Prejudice is probably the clearest example of a truely racist magic card, given who drew the art what is depicted and what the card does...
Beyond that I can see Crusade and Jihad as controversial topics. The card about Gypsies I can also understand.
The problem is where you have to assume more and more context to the other examples.
I just don't think that is a healthy path to go down.
I agree that cards have limited context. But context clues aren't read the same by everyone Cleansing is a good example you wouldn't read the context but many people might. What makes that so different from Jihad, crusade, invoke prejudice. Someone might have not gotten the / assumed the context Invoke prejudice has racist undertones so it's ok to make it/leave it be?
This is a guy who uses neonazi dogwhistles like "clown world." Best not give him the time of day.
See, this crap is exactly the point.
Whoever you want to, suddenly is blamed as a Nazi, like its a joke.
If you cannot have any argument at all, and think that making such horrendous claims is doing anything, you will forever breed and increase the hate among people.
If i wanted to i could go on a rampage on how "dare you" and we will blame each other for years.
But giving words that much power over yourself is not helping anybody, at some point you have to grow up and realize that its a lot better to get along than hate each other for the rest of your life (but yea, maybe some are so ignorant that they really have to ostracize themselves to find peace, with others they also ostracize, so they form their little happy group of ostracize people, till they find something to blame each other again for. Its a circle of nonsense and it leads to nothing)
Do you prefer alt-right? Proud boy? 3%?
The fact of the matter is that whoever you picked up that dogwhistle from was very much not a good person. Hopefully you just didn't know it was a white supremacist meme, but if so, you are going to have to reassess who you follow online.
Please, mill me. Mill my important cards. Mill my lands. Mill it all. Because I will still deal 20 damage before you can mill 45 cards most every time.
Censoring ideas only makes people hate you. This is another attempt by wotc to pander to a vocal minority so they can't be named for 'not doing anything' if this weren't going on, it'd be their cringe levels of pride that they do this time every year. Freedom of speech is important, and once you start labeling things as 'hatespeech' you'll eventually be strangled by the very limits you want.
Nothing has really been censored. The cards still exist, are still playable, can still be bought and sold, can still be found out about online. This is just removing any potential promotion by WotC through tournaments and official websites.
'Making people hate you' is also not an easy metric to measure and kinda irrelevant to what's actually ethical.
so they can't be named for 'not doing anything' if this weren't going on, it'd be their cringe levels of pride that they do this time every year. Freedom of speech is important, and once you start labeling things as 'hatespeech' you'll eventually be strangled by the very limits you want.
This is the decision of a private company, and a decision with no real legal authority behind it. It's not a threat to freedom of speech by any means.
They could probably start with the accusations we saw in the last thread that they aren't great employers for BIPOC people.
Yes. Posting the link again for people to see. We need to be talking about this.
Good news, there's already been some small progress on that front, with Mark Rosewater addressing this concern and agreeing there is room for improvement.
That said, I’ll be the first to say we have room for improvement. We have a lot of work to do to get to the place we’d like to be, especially in employment. I believe we’re moving in the right direction, but we need to figure out how to move faster.
It's a slightly tame wording, he doesn't explicitly address the specific allegations that have been made, and there's no guarantee of meaningful change here, but this is, again, a start.
Interesting article that reinforced a LOT of how I feel about their push for inclusiveness or whatever; it's just hollow virtue signalling. I honest to god feel the same way about these bans in a way, they're not changing the problem.
The two things in that note I disagree with are the 7/11 joke and Invoke Prejudice's card number. I highly doubt the latter is intentional (I didn't even realize 1488 was a hate slogan until a few years ago myself), and I can absolutely imagine how the 7/11 joke came about incidentally, not intentionally. I think trying to call them out on those two things without solid proof just makes those claims baseless.
Censoring ideas only makes people hate you. This is another attempt by wotc to pander to a vocal minority so they can't be named for 'not doing anything' if this weren't going on, it'd be their cringe levels of pride that they do this time every year. Freedom of speech is important, and once you start labeling things as 'hatespeech' you'll eventually be strangled by the very limits you want.
There has been and should be reasonable limitations placed on freedom of speech (or freedom of expression in Canada). You can't, for instance, use that freedom to utter death threats without criminal offence. Nor can you (in Canada) or should you (anywhere) use that freedom to promote the discrimination or hatred towards identifiable groups. A just society requires those reasonable limitations because power dynamics exist in our society that render some people vulnerable. No one should need to live in fear because of who they are, and unfortunately freedom of speech/expression without limitations creates that fear and makes some people unsafe because our society hasn't even begun to untangle the many knots of ignorance, hatred, and critical lack of empathy.
(but this move by WotC is not a free speech issue for the reasons DJK3654 outlined)
The two things in that note I disagree with are the 7/11 joke and Invoke Prejudice's card number. I highly doubt the latter is intentional (I didn't even realize 1488 was a hate slogan until a few years ago myself), and I can absolutely imagine how the 7/11 joke came about incidentally, not intentionally. I think trying to call them out on those two things without solid proof just makes those claims baseless.
I think everyone moved on from the multiverse number for Invoke Prejudice after the math showed how it happened. Is it still a bad look for the business because of the room for assumptions it creates? Yes, and they needed to deal with it on those grounds regardless.
With the 7/11 joke, we need to (imo) move away from the "I didn't intend anything by it" defence. Not because it's unfair, it very well could have been unintentionally racist. But that's irrelevant. The joke hinges on racist stereotypes and requires the audience to understand those stereotypes to make sense. That's a racist joke regardless of intent. Moreover, at no point has "oops, I was accidentally racist" worked as a defence. It may inform how people respond to you (education or an ass whuppin'), but it erases none of the impact. I hope MaRo learned from it.
An example from my life, before I came out at work, a coworker routinely used homophobic slurs. She was lovely otherwise and we were friends, but that really bothered me. When I came out, she apologized profusely and swore she'd never say those words again (and she hasn't), but that didn't erase how those words felt. Not because she 'meant' them (whatever that would mean), but because she had no consideration of how those words hurt people. She didn't even question those slurs, and that hurt.
But hatred isn't so easy as slurs, it's not so starkly binary. It's in looks, in exclusion, in homogeneity, and yes in casual jokes that stereotype, dehumanize, and demean. I think the more we only think of hate as an intentional thing, we excuse everything else. Racism isn't just white hoods, lynchings, and slavery - it's a society built on stereotypes, inequality, and a hierarchy of who society bends to. And people don't need to harness racism purposefully for it to be harnessed and hurt others.
They could probably start with the accusations we saw in the last thread that they aren't great employers for BIPOC people.
Yes. Posting the link again for people to see. We need to be talking about this.
Good news, there's already been some small progress on that front, with Mark Rosewater addressing this concern and agreeing there is room for improvement.
That said, I’ll be the first to say we have room for improvement. We have a lot of work to do to get to the place we’d like to be, especially in employment. I believe we’re moving in the right direction, but we need to figure out how to move faster.
It's a slightly tame wording, he doesn't explicitly address the specific allegations that have been made, and there's no guarantee of meaningful change here, but this is, again, a start.
Interesting article that reinforced a LOT of how I feel about their push for inclusiveness or whatever; it's just hollow virtue signalling. I honest to god feel the same way about these bans in a way, they're not changing the problem.
The two things in that note I disagree with are the 7/11 joke and Invoke Prejudice's card number. I highly doubt the latter is intentional (I didn't even realize 1488 was a hate slogan until a few years ago myself), and I can absolutely imagine how the 7/11 joke came about incidentally, not intentionally. I think trying to call them out on those two things without solid proof just makes those claims baseless.
The rest I find myself agreeing with though.
The 14 and 88 slang terms (they used to be separate, but were from the same guy) were only put together in the early 2000s. Gatherer predates it, if I remember correctly.
These are all valid points and I’m glad it’s been well thought out responses and not attacks. Thank you all for sharing your opinions. In the end it’s up to us to make the change regardless of what a card says. But j understand their point by removing all references they might help make that change. I have enjoyed playing magic with anyone that is willing to play with me and I hope that’s the same for everyone as well.
I think everyone moved on from the multiverse number for Invoke Prejudice after the math showed how it happened. Is it still a bad look for the business because of the room for assumptions it creates? Yes, and they needed to deal with it on those grounds regardless.
With the 7/11 joke, we need to (imo) move away from the "I didn't intend anything by it" defence. Not because it's unfair, it very well could have been unintentionally racist. But that's irrelevant. The joke hinges on racist stereotypes and requires the audience to understand those stereotypes to make sense. That's a racist joke regardless of intent. Moreover, at no point has "oops, I was accidentally racist" worked as a defence. It may inform how people respond to you (education or an ass whuppin'), but it erases none of the impact. I hope MaRo learned from it.
Note that I'm very specifically talking about the call outs in the article from the post I quoted; my responses were more to those claims than anything else. Second I'm not arguing against changing Invoke Prejudice's ID, I just don't think trying to use it as evidence as WOTC failing at something is an argument that holds any water. It's the same with the 7/11 joke. It's not like they make these cards with the art and all the flavor and everything there; some guy sat down and needed a power and toughness for their big dumb vehicle. Eventually this blank piece of paper wound up with 7/11, and people probably chuckled at it. This isn't some intentional poke at Indian culture, it's just some guys not fully connecting the dots from 7/11 to indian stereotypes. Without more evidence suggesting otherwise, I think that could just be an honest to god slip. Maybe that's worth a "sorry we didn't make that connection", but raking them over the coals over it doesn't feel right to me.
There's another google docs linked in that google docs that has a bunch of twitter quotes about how "people from Egypt who's skin color is scary" invading and that's just such misleading concept. Christ, I don't even want to defend War of the Spark but I feel like sometimes we really do try to stretch things to fit that idea. Like Teferi being a "Magical Negro" stereotype. He's got Magic powers, in MAGIC THE GATHERING?? Literally EVERYONE has magic! It's the whole point of the game! Maybe I'll get some flak for this but I honestly don't agree with the idea that somebody says something is racist means it's automatically racist. It's not a dialogue if one side of the conversation just has to "shut up and listen". Sometimes we do need to listen; the way the justice system comes down harder on African Americans is one of those areas where I think that experience is important (although you can also just read the scientific literature that backs those claims up too if one were so inclined). There's a conversation between a few judges in one of those docs that I think is telling and important.
I don't wholly disagree with everything they said either. I absolutely think WoTC's push for "inclusiveness" and "diversity" is as shallow as they claim it is. It goes absolutely hand in hand with the other kinda scummy "business" moves they've made like with ultimate secret lairs or 10+ dollar packs.
Ignore things like that google doc. I found it to be almost entirely trash. There is so much absurd entitlement from a vocal minority in this community. I can't even fathom how a progressive company like wOTC taking strides to be inclusive is still met with unreasonable demands that it frankly shouldn't bother to acknowledge. I read a post earlier calling for Maro to step down from his hard earned career as a veteran game designer for someone black to show sincerity in his beliefs. Remarkable. If anything, that's real prejudice right there.
I think this decision by WOTC is fine and many selections are sensible with good intentions. But the rabid fanaticism is owed nothing but obscurity. Just IMO.
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Censoring ideas only makes people hate you. This is another attempt by wotc to pander to a vocal minority so they can't be named for 'not doing anything' if this weren't going on, it'd be their cringe levels of pride that they do this time every year. Freedom of speech is important, and once you start labeling things as 'hatespeech' you'll eventually be strangled by the very limits you want.
Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.
Freedom of speech affects the federal government's ability to legislate your speech. Not really anything else.
Holocaust was a word specifically created as a result of what happened to describe that specific horrific situation and historical event. Genocide may be a similar word, but is not even a synonym as this means something very precise, and it has no other meaning.
I'm not sure what you mean by "specifically created" but Holocaust is an ancient Greek term (holokaustos) specifically describing a "Burnt Offering" sacrifice. Just like the Swastika, it's far older than the Third Reich. Wikipedia
I just feel the need to share that the most offensive thing about Invoke Prejudice, "Racism; the spell," is that it has a quad blue casting cost. This is reserved for "Big Brain" cards, like Mind Over Matter and Enter The Infinite. Even without Drew Tucker's footprint, even without the (confirmed coincidental, therefore we can laugh about it) Multiverseid=1488, Invoke Prejudice would be a pretty foul card to have exist in Magic, and perhaps it's over-the-topness has actually prevented me from seeing that. Racism in Magic as defined by color pie would be a black card, and certainly not an extensively mind-expanded blue one.
Can't let this stand (bolding mine), the artist is Harold McNeill. Drew Tucker has a rather weird art style a lot of people don't like, yeah, but I've never heard anything about him being a Nazi.
I don't think this is the best reaction to the current situation and to systemic racism in general. I view it as problematic mainly in two ways.
It establishes the legitimacy of a thought there might be connection between two different things (colour wheel / groups of people, general names / specific groups of people or specific acts atc.). I know it is a gesture and it comes from good intentions, but it shifts the underlying premise of looking at cards. I n my opinion there is a possibility it will influence game mechanics as designers will be aware ( consciously or not ) that their design (and they) will be judged from the premise of malintent. Part of the players community will also use the presumption of prejudice while judging other players.
The second thing is, it creates a symbol of division. A flag that two extreme groups can unite under. And if we can't resolve this peacefully those two pretty small extreme groups will divide and polarise the rest.
I don't believe in censorship in general, especially in art. It has it's place when there is unique harmful information connected to identifiable people. The "sheltering method" of banning words that someone might find offensive is causing more harm than good. Word is a symbol and symbol has only the power people give it. The same goes for the alteration of history. We should view the history through the optics of progress we made and learn from mistakes we made. And we can find joy in recognising what good moves we made. If we will censor parts of it we will create a cult following of the wrong parts, or worse we will forget and at some point we are deemed to repeat the mistakes.
I understand the appeal of radical action, but cautious steady progress is the way to go IMO. I liked the way more diversity was incorporated in MTG. Similar methods should be applied here. They could remove the art from gatherer or design upgraded cards to slowly push out those they deem problematic. Solution not as sexy as bannings, but better in the long run.
Offtopic: Old log ins don't work anymore? How long?
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See all the other dehumanizing insults.
I agree that the word is thrown around lightly but the fact is that people find that insult to be one they can be sensitive to but when other insults are thrown its always hey dont be so sensitive i didn't mean it like that etc.. That people feel strongly about beeing called a nazi shows that not every Insult is the same. And It shows that while you disagree that something is harsh or not always depends on the one who is hit by it.
My condolence from a fellow Catholic.
And yeah Jihad was one of the cards were I could see the reasoning behind.
Hands to the sky
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For the great Miss Y!
they could have sat out / protested and brought about the bannings years earlier, but they didnt.
now they are saying 'about time'.
It's unfortunate you were the victim of such verbal attacks due solely to your cultural background which is obviously unfair.
In truth, it speaks volumes about the immaturity of those who would unjustly hurl such insults or stereotypes in your direction without even knowing who you are as an individual.
No man should ever be held accountable for the sins or crimes of their forefathers, nor be made to feel guilty or ashamed for who they are because of where they were born at no fault of their own. Many cultures have done highly inappropriate and immoral things (often to appease their gods, ie: animal sacrifice, burning witches, etc) or at some point conquered (and defended) land which previously belonged to another group in order to expand their territory and harvest resources for the benefit of their own people (and sometimes even to fulfill a self-serving holy prophecy, a highly conveniently justification in and of itself, but that's a whole other discussion). The methods of expansion have often been aggressive, evil, and excessively violent leading to wars when diplomacy has failed, but the motivation to spread has always been a natural need (for all species) to grow, compete, and dominate in order to not online survive, but thrive and evolve. As wrong and unethical as things seem or were, resources have always been limited, and as populations have grown, this has always been the natural course of things, at least up until recently where most people(globally) have begun to cooperate more (regularly), because we finally realize that cooperation (and not simply trade) benefits everyone, because the whole is always stronger than the sum of its parts.
In any event, if you benefited in some way because of where you were born or who you were born to, that's not a privilege which you should be made to feel you don't deserve by others who lack it or got unlucky. It was never a choice to be born white in a world where being white has benefits any more than it's a choice to be born in a wealthy country. Recognize that privilege, acknowledge it, own it, and use it if you can to help others around you who may be less advantaged in order to create equity, but never feel embarrassed or required to apologize for being who you are or for identifying as German because of past events which occurred before you were even born. Just be careful not to get too happy if you happen to win a game of Axis and Allies playing as Germany.
I used to be a demigod, but now I'm an omnimage
I like playing the allies much more anyway
Hands to the sky
Give a round of applause
For the great Miss Y!
It just goes to show you how ignorant some people are to assume every Lebanese person is Muslim, or that every Muslim is a fundamentalist extremist.
Is every Catholic a "firebrand preacher"?
God (the one you speak of) has so many names (the true name is unpronounceable because it's actually a number.... for more information look up Gematria and the Tetragrammaton).
I had a Lebanese uncle who was Jewish and migrated to Canada as a young adult because life was difficult for him there, probably the best decision he ever made.
Back on topic...Unfortunately, some people can't differentiate between ethnic background and religious background.
This is the core problem.
They think some groups are ethnoreligious when in fact most are not.
Education is the only way to help the uninformed understand, and if they refuse to learn, they're the ones who continue to sound and act like fools.
I used to be a demigod, but now I'm an omnimage
I think I already conceded the point that not all insults are the same. I corrected the statement to in the same ballpark.
But the same word can be used as diffrently. Nazi is actually a good example. It can be a factual statement, it can be an insult or it can be an attempt to dehumanize the person to a degree where physical violence can be justified.
This is not a function of the word, but a function of the context.
The n-word is also a good example. When black rapper use this word I doubt that anyone would argue that they their intend is to dehumanize black people. But if a clansman uses the same insult it gets a diffrent connotation.
So insults change meaning depening on who uses them and who is on the receiving end.
The problem is that magic cards lack a good amount of context: art, artist, card text, including flavor. Thst is pretty much all you can go by. Invoke Prejudice is probably the clearest example of a truely racist magic card, given who drew the art what is depicted and what the card does...
Beyond that I can see Crusade and Jihad as controversial topics. The card about Gypsies I can also understand.
The problem is where you have to assume more and more context to the other examples.
The often mentioned off color joke can be made about almost any magic card. You can always create a context im which something is offensive... Stuffy Doll, Stalking Tiger, Wrath of God, etc.
I just don't think that is a healthy path to go down.
Hands to the sky
Give a round of applause
For the great Miss Y!
No, what I see is that the fandom continues to have conversations about what does and does not qualify as having racist connotations. No, this isn't a slippery slope, like I mentioned in the last iteration of this thread, we're just in the early days of culture at large adjusting to find equilibrium, just as we did in the first weeks of the #MeToo movement. The MtG community is calibrating and the line will be identified through dialogue like this. It's not realistic to expect slippery slop doomsday scenarios when it comes to social issues and the Overton Window. It would be difficult for marginalized people to swing the Overton Window *that* far to the left (if we're going to consider "cares about offense language to an extreme degree" to be an inherently far left trait, which I don't), especially in America.
So we'll have conversations as a fandom about specific examples. Some will be obvious, others more subtle, some may seem bad but ultimately be considered a nonissue, and suggestions might be a bit much and the community doesn't think the concerns hold water. As one user correctly pointed out yesterday, through conversation we identify the line to be drawn.
This isn't entirely accurate. The Pride Flag criticism stemmed from internal issues of privilege, racism, and transphobia. The strategy of challenging our oppression in the 80s and 90s was largely one of assimilation. But not only was that largely only possible for queer people who more closely aligned with the in-group (white, cisgender), the queer community was uncritically assimilating into a racist system as well, which became echoed within our own community. LGBTQ people who were trans and/or QTBIPOC (queer and trans black, indigenous, people of color for anyone seeing that acronym for the first time) often became treated as second class citizens within their own community by individuals and organizations. Pride festivals became about celebrating assimilated cis white bodies rather than the uprising began by and large by QTBIPOC and gender nonconforming people. It was a cultural betrayal that had real effects of marginalization within LGBTQ spaces and movements, prompting QTBIPOC and trans people to push for better treatment - including better representation.
It was, in essence, an internal black lives matter conversation as in QTBIPOC lives mattered less to the community, QTBIPOC causes mattered less to the community, QTBIPOC issues mattered less to the community. And symbolic representation was the first step towards really addressing that. The symbolic first step of "you're right, we haven't been supporting you or respecting you as we should have, we need to demonstrate that we understand that and are committed to rectifying our missteps". Which is exactly what this move by WotC is, a symbolic demonstration. Whether it's just lip service or the first step of a longer journey will come out in the wash when we see what WotC does next.
They could probably start with the accusations we saw in the last thread that they aren't great employers for BIPOC people.
Archatmos
Excellion
Fracture: Israfiel (WBR), Wujal (URG), Valedon (GUB), Amduat (BGW), Paladris (RWU)
Collision (Set Two of the Fracture Block)
Quest for the Forsaken (Set Two of the Excellion Block)
Katingal: Plane of Chains
Yes. Posting the link again for people to see. We need to be talking about this.
Good news, there's already been some small progress on that front, with Mark Rosewater addressing this concern and agreeing there is room for improvement.
It's a slightly tame wording, he doesn't explicitly address the specific allegations that have been made, and there's no guarantee of meaningful change here, but this is, again, a start.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
I agree that cards have limited context. But context clues aren't read the same by everyone Cleansing is a good example you wouldn't read the context but many people might. What makes that so different from Jihad, crusade, invoke prejudice. Someone might have not gotten the / assumed the context Invoke prejudice has racist undertones so it's ok to make it/leave it be?
Do you prefer alt-right? Proud boy? 3%?
The fact of the matter is that whoever you picked up that dogwhistle from was very much not a good person. Hopefully you just didn't know it was a white supremacist meme, but if so, you are going to have to reassess who you follow online.
Nothing has really been censored. The cards still exist, are still playable, can still be bought and sold, can still be found out about online. This is just removing any potential promotion by WotC through tournaments and official websites.
'Making people hate you' is also not an easy metric to measure and kinda irrelevant to what's actually ethical.
This is about minorities, yes.
Not quite in the way you meant though.
This is the decision of a private company, and a decision with no real legal authority behind it. It's not a threat to freedom of speech by any means.
RUNIN: Norse mythology set (awaiting further playtesting)
FATE of ALARA: Multicolour factions (currently on hiatus)
Contibutor to the Pyrulea community set
I'm here to tell you that all your set mechanics are bad
#Defundthepolice
Interesting article that reinforced a LOT of how I feel about their push for inclusiveness or whatever; it's just hollow virtue signalling. I honest to god feel the same way about these bans in a way, they're not changing the problem.
The two things in that note I disagree with are the 7/11 joke and Invoke Prejudice's card number. I highly doubt the latter is intentional (I didn't even realize 1488 was a hate slogan until a few years ago myself), and I can absolutely imagine how the 7/11 joke came about incidentally, not intentionally. I think trying to call them out on those two things without solid proof just makes those claims baseless.
The rest I find myself agreeing with though.
There has been and should be reasonable limitations placed on freedom of speech (or freedom of expression in Canada). You can't, for instance, use that freedom to utter death threats without criminal offence. Nor can you (in Canada) or should you (anywhere) use that freedom to promote the discrimination or hatred towards identifiable groups. A just society requires those reasonable limitations because power dynamics exist in our society that render some people vulnerable. No one should need to live in fear because of who they are, and unfortunately freedom of speech/expression without limitations creates that fear and makes some people unsafe because our society hasn't even begun to untangle the many knots of ignorance, hatred, and critical lack of empathy.
(but this move by WotC is not a free speech issue for the reasons DJK3654 outlined)
I think everyone moved on from the multiverse number for Invoke Prejudice after the math showed how it happened. Is it still a bad look for the business because of the room for assumptions it creates? Yes, and they needed to deal with it on those grounds regardless.
With the 7/11 joke, we need to (imo) move away from the "I didn't intend anything by it" defence. Not because it's unfair, it very well could have been unintentionally racist. But that's irrelevant. The joke hinges on racist stereotypes and requires the audience to understand those stereotypes to make sense. That's a racist joke regardless of intent. Moreover, at no point has "oops, I was accidentally racist" worked as a defence. It may inform how people respond to you (education or an ass whuppin'), but it erases none of the impact. I hope MaRo learned from it.
An example from my life, before I came out at work, a coworker routinely used homophobic slurs. She was lovely otherwise and we were friends, but that really bothered me. When I came out, she apologized profusely and swore she'd never say those words again (and she hasn't), but that didn't erase how those words felt. Not because she 'meant' them (whatever that would mean), but because she had no consideration of how those words hurt people. She didn't even question those slurs, and that hurt.
But hatred isn't so easy as slurs, it's not so starkly binary. It's in looks, in exclusion, in homogeneity, and yes in casual jokes that stereotype, dehumanize, and demean. I think the more we only think of hate as an intentional thing, we excuse everything else. Racism isn't just white hoods, lynchings, and slavery - it's a society built on stereotypes, inequality, and a hierarchy of who society bends to. And people don't need to harness racism purposefully for it to be harnessed and hurt others.
Archatmos
Excellion
Fracture: Israfiel (WBR), Wujal (URG), Valedon (GUB), Amduat (BGW), Paladris (RWU)
Collision (Set Two of the Fracture Block)
Quest for the Forsaken (Set Two of the Excellion Block)
Katingal: Plane of Chains
The 14 and 88 slang terms (they used to be separate, but were from the same guy) were only put together in the early 2000s. Gatherer predates it, if I remember correctly.
Note that I'm very specifically talking about the call outs in the article from the post I quoted; my responses were more to those claims than anything else. Second I'm not arguing against changing Invoke Prejudice's ID, I just don't think trying to use it as evidence as WOTC failing at something is an argument that holds any water. It's the same with the 7/11 joke. It's not like they make these cards with the art and all the flavor and everything there; some guy sat down and needed a power and toughness for their big dumb vehicle. Eventually this blank piece of paper wound up with 7/11, and people probably chuckled at it. This isn't some intentional poke at Indian culture, it's just some guys not fully connecting the dots from 7/11 to indian stereotypes. Without more evidence suggesting otherwise, I think that could just be an honest to god slip. Maybe that's worth a "sorry we didn't make that connection", but raking them over the coals over it doesn't feel right to me.
There's another google docs linked in that google docs that has a bunch of twitter quotes about how "people from Egypt who's skin color is scary" invading and that's just such misleading concept. Christ, I don't even want to defend War of the Spark but I feel like sometimes we really do try to stretch things to fit that idea. Like Teferi being a "Magical Negro" stereotype. He's got Magic powers, in MAGIC THE GATHERING?? Literally EVERYONE has magic! It's the whole point of the game! Maybe I'll get some flak for this but I honestly don't agree with the idea that somebody says something is racist means it's automatically racist. It's not a dialogue if one side of the conversation just has to "shut up and listen". Sometimes we do need to listen; the way the justice system comes down harder on African Americans is one of those areas where I think that experience is important (although you can also just read the scientific literature that backs those claims up too if one were so inclined). There's a conversation between a few judges in one of those docs that I think is telling and important.
I don't wholly disagree with everything they said either. I absolutely think WoTC's push for "inclusiveness" and "diversity" is as shallow as they claim it is. It goes absolutely hand in hand with the other kinda scummy "business" moves they've made like with ultimate secret lairs or 10+ dollar packs.
I think this decision by WOTC is fine and many selections are sensible with good intentions. But the rabid fanaticism is owed nothing but obscurity. Just IMO.
|| UW Jace, Vyn's Prodigy UW || UG Kenessos, Priest of Thassa (feat. Arixmethes) UG ||
Cards I still want to see created:
|| Olantin, Lost City || Pavios and Thanasis || Choryu ||
Given the nature of the announcement by Wizards, it is obvious that this discussion will have some political features and ramifications, but try to keep the discussion focused on how it pertains to the game.
I would also like to remind everyone that personal attacks are not permitted. Racist, Bigoted, Sexist, Misogynistic, and other similar speech is not permitted. Make sure your discussions remain focused on the positions and not the person. Make sure they remain civil.
Thank you.
Retired EDH - Tibor and Lumia | [PR]Nemata |Ramirez dePietro | [C]Edric | Riku | Jenara | Lazav | Heliod | Daxos | Roon | Kozilek
Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.
Freedom of speech affects the federal government's ability to legislate your speech. Not really anything else.
Can't let this stand (bolding mine), the artist is Harold McNeill. Drew Tucker has a rather weird art style a lot of people don't like, yeah, but I've never heard anything about him being a Nazi.
You really have to trust your audience that they are smart enough to interpret the cards as game pieces.
It's just heavy handed censorship.
As bad and as misjudged as the Dungeons & Dragons Satanism controversy, Video nasties in the UK and Rock N' Roll and Heavy Metal in the 80's.
It establishes the legitimacy of a thought there might be connection between two different things (colour wheel / groups of people, general names / specific groups of people or specific acts atc.). I know it is a gesture and it comes from good intentions, but it shifts the underlying premise of looking at cards. I n my opinion there is a possibility it will influence game mechanics as designers will be aware ( consciously or not ) that their design (and they) will be judged from the premise of malintent. Part of the players community will also use the presumption of prejudice while judging other players.
The second thing is, it creates a symbol of division. A flag that two extreme groups can unite under. And if we can't resolve this peacefully those two pretty small extreme groups will divide and polarise the rest.
I don't believe in censorship in general, especially in art. It has it's place when there is unique harmful information connected to identifiable people. The "sheltering method" of banning words that someone might find offensive is causing more harm than good. Word is a symbol and symbol has only the power people give it. The same goes for the alteration of history. We should view the history through the optics of progress we made and learn from mistakes we made. And we can find joy in recognising what good moves we made. If we will censor parts of it we will create a cult following of the wrong parts, or worse we will forget and at some point we are deemed to repeat the mistakes.
I understand the appeal of radical action, but cautious steady progress is the way to go IMO. I liked the way more diversity was incorporated in MTG. Similar methods should be applied here. They could remove the art from gatherer or design upgraded cards to slowly push out those they deem problematic. Solution not as sexy as bannings, but better in the long run.
Offtopic: Old log ins don't work anymore? How long?