From https://www.facebook.com/groups/435737310222349/permalink/1062585937537480/?comment_id=1065025590626848 (MingYang Lu) I personally disagree with the idea of having pre-generated characters that force an ethnicity upon your player like that. You're mixing problems and theres alot of topic changes here and honestly you're not exactly being productive at this point. First on the topic of "should white people play the role of PoCs in entertainment" You never addressed many of the feedback here, and comparing PoCs playing as White people is a bad faith comparison because the social dynamic isn't reversible. Second on the topic of "should white people play the role of PoCs in convention games." I've told you no, and I further disagree that you should be forcing your players to pick pregens that have an ethnicity attached to them. Pre-generated characters don't need an ethnicity, and putting that tag on there draws the player's attention to it. If you're just playing a game of D&D this is actively harmful because you're giving white people a pass at a public setting to say "yeah for the sake of your entertainment over the next 2 to 4 hours, I permit you to pretend to be a minority and act out whatever you think that minority should behave like." Skin color is not a costume to be played with. This much should be basic, if you disagree with this, you're honestly not at a middle ground where this conversation can be had. Third on the topic of "should white people play the role of PoCs in private games." I've told you that this is not a big issue. This is up to the players to decide. In an enclosed space where everyone is friends, exploring the experiences of others can be powerful and eye opening. This is something that should be explored consensually by people in private, not in the open. Overall, I feel like you are here to tell people that you think as long as what you think is fun is being done, thats all that matters, and that just because you attach race to things it doesn't contribute to racism. Alot of people here have told you otherwise. You can take that and reflect on it, or you can keep on insisting that white people playing as Asians regardless of setting (entertainment, conventions, or private) does not contribute to racism and do as you wish. -------------------------- From https://www.facebook.com/john.h.kim1/posts/10158221519048271 So I've had some recent discussion over playing other races in role-playing games (RPGs). I've played a lot of RPGs over decades. I regularly run games at local game conventions - and a few distant ones. What I love about RPGs is that they're interactive and imaginative. People bring their imaginations, and that goes to amazing places. I enjoy Tolkien and Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), but what is great in RPGs is that they can be so much more. I especially love subverting and twisting genres away from the traditional European fantasy tropes. Many of my games have been in Asian settings, like an extended campaign I ran set in a parallel-reality 1860s Korea, or my long-running Chinese fantasy game at AmberCon NorthWest. However, recently I have been criticized that by allowing white players play minority characters in settings in my games, I am encouraging racism - by giving white players a pass for portraying minorities however they like. It was compared to cases of yellowface in Hollywood movies where white actors play Asian characters - like the Charlie Chan movies. Skin color is not a costume to be played with. --- I think the comparison to live-action movie casting isn't a fitting parallel, though. In tabletop RPGs, players are not expected to look or even sound like their characters. The primary activity in RPGs is decision-making - choosing what the character does. A closer parallel is having white screenwriters or authors include minority characters in their scripts/stories. Some critics will say that if a white author writes a minority character, then that character will reflect their biases, so white authors shouldn't write minority characters. They point to how many white-authored scripts have negatively stereotyped characters, which is a form of oppression. From this view, minority characters should only be written by minority authors - to respect the power dynamic. Now, the claim is correct that white authors will bring their biases and stereotypes into how they write minority characters. And by writing, those ideas will be propagated. But the question, is the situation better if white authors only write white characters? If Asians were erased from all their works, would things be better? Likewise, within RPGs, is it better if white players only play white characters at conventions? --- I believe in encouraging and highlighting stories written by minority authors - especially writing about their authentic experiences. However, I don't see that we would be better off if white writers didn't write any minority characters. Doing so doesn't elevate minority authors. We've had lots of white people writing only about white characters in the past, after all. It doesn't seem to me that doing so made things better. A big part of negative bias is Eurocentrism - thinking that "normal" people are white, and defining minorities by how they differ from normal. Similarly, I don't see that gaming conventions would be better if white players only played white characters. I think doing so would make conventions even more Eurocentric. --- Going further, I think this reflects an issue of perception of racism. To take the example from Hollywood - compare the Charlie Chan films to, say, Hitchcock films. Which shows more racism against Asians? Many people would point to Charlie Chan, because of the yellowface portrayal and stereotyping. As far as I can recall, Hitchcock has never had an Asian character. (If I'm wrong - imagine it's true for the sake of argument.) If we say that Charlie Chan films are more racist, though, that implies that to become less racist, white film-makers should have cut out all Asian characters. I feel that is backwards logic. Charlie Chan is a brilliant detective who constantly outsmarts his opponents. Moreoever, his films also were among the only Hollywood films of their times that starred Asian actors - not as the detective himself, but as his adult sons and daughters who helped him. Yes, these films had many harmful stereotypes, but I think they were *less* racist against Asians than most. --- Similarly, I think a convention where white players played only whites doesn't sound as if it is superior in terms of racism. Or at least, that is my current thinking. I'd be interested in comments.