"Race" in D&D

As a social scientist who studies male-dominated subcultures, I have done research that put me in spaces where I delved into reactions to issues of race in gaming. A key question is this: Given how charged the term race has been, why would games use it to discuss differences that have nothing to do with the way we traditionally use the word? Dungeons & Dragons is not the only game to use the term in this way; so have many other digital and analog fantasy offerings. But the celebrated game...

 Tolkienesque Fantasy is All About Racism

But there was one problem: isn’t traditional “Tolkienesque” fantasy all about racism? Elves are different from dwarves are different from halflings are different from humans are different from orcs and goblins. Yes, orcs and goblins, there’s the rub. Isn’t the notion of a race representing the embodiment of evil a classic definition of racism?

 Race in D&D

Racial bioessentialism is a core design crutch for Dungeons & Dragons. Across fifty years of tabletop roleplaying games, multiple novels, supplements, and additional tie-ins, D&D has continually established monolithic culture building as part of its lore. The alignment charts that Gary Gygax (and many designers) focused on as a method of easy-to-understand character building did not help matters; entire races were designated as Evil using this alignment chart, and Gygax himself can be...

 How Racism Perpetuates Itself by Making White the Default

It is now common—and I use the word “common” in its every sense—to see interviews with up-and-coming young movie stars whose parents or even grandparents were themselves movie stars. And when the interviewer asks, “Did you find it an advantage to be the child of a major motion-picture star?” the answer is invariably “Well, it gets you in the door, but after that you’ve got to perform, you’re on your own.” This is ludicrous. Getting in the door is pretty much the entire gam...

 Why Correlate IQ and Race?

...the question of the relation, if any, between race and intelligence has very little scientific importance (as it has no social importance, except under the assumptions of a racist society) … As to social importance, a correlation between race and mean I.Q. (were this shown to exist) entails no social consequences except in a racist society in which each individual is assigned to a racial category and dealt with not as an individual in his own right, but as a representative of this catego...

 Religion and Racism

A meta-analytic review of past research evaluated the link between religiosity and racism in the United States since the Civil Rights Act. Religious racism partly reflects intergroup dynamics. That is, a strong religious in-group identity was associated with derogation of racial out-groups. Other races might be treated as out-groups because religion is practiced largely within race, because training in a religious in-group identity promotes general ethnocentrism, and because different others ...