Racism in Fantasy
Fantasy rarely depicts any characters of color. White people dominate in fantasy art, games, and films. Often, the best you get is the “token black guy” or the Asian who knows martial arts. Sometimes you get a vaguely Middle Eastern person who is invariably a villain, an assassin by trade, or someone who knows the secrets of science, such as gunpowder. Most people of any race but Caucasian play the roles of background actors, token sidekick heroes, villains, or foreigners.
It’s racism. And it’s deplorable.
So okay, there are plenty of excuses for why it happens:
• Fantasy depicts medieval worlds, and it’s incongruous to have many people of color in such scenes.
• Fantasy is based upon Celtic and Norse lore, which don’t include other ethnicities.
• It’s just the nature of culture right now, like how Hollywood doesn’t produce a lot of movies with minority leads.
• It’s because of the history of fantasy art. People are used to seeing Conan, Gandalf, Merlin, Elric, Bilbo—all white people.
• Elves, dwarves, and halflings/hobbits are all depicted as white, and if there are different ethnicities among humans, it highlights the lack of diversity among the other races.
• You have fantasy races in a fantasy setting that take the place of other human races.
• Minorities are a small minority of the audience for fantasy games and films, so you might lose many white consumers by depicting them.
• Few creators of fantasy come from minorities, so it’s only natural that few get depicted.
• Fantasy art and films focus on a few heroes, and when some of them are dwarves or elves, there’s not enough room for more than a token character of another race.
I could go on, but this mode of thinking disgusts me. All the excuses have racism at their root—if not actual racism on the part of the person making the excuse, at least the passive, pass-the-buck racism of repeating the mistakes of the past because “that’s the way everyone does it” or “that’s what people expect.”
Even the most seemingly reasonable argument based upon medieval Europe falls apart upon closer examination. For one thing, it’s a fantasy world! If you’re assuming there’s a new world with magic and elves, there’s not point in talking about medieval Europe.
I’ve experienced this racism firsthand, not as the target (I’m as white bread as you can get) but as the receiver of racist screed. After the Dungeons & Dragons movie released, I was working for Dragon Magazine and got a letter from a reader who saw the movie and was incensed by the fact that a black actress was chosen to play an elf. To her—a devout worshiper of the Norse gods—elves were clearly described in lore as being light skinned and only the evil ones were dark skinned. Since D&D and fantasy in general was partly based upon her religion, it was an affront to her that Wizards of the Coast would allow an elf to be played by a black person. Of course, she assured me she was not racist in any way; it was merely a matter of principle.
Even if we go to Tolkien, arguably the father of fantasy as a genre, we see more leniency in depictions of skin tone than we’ve come to expect of fantasy. Harfoots are described as ”browner of skin,” whereas the Fallohides are “fairer and taller.” That’s pretty interesting, considering the recent controversy surrounding casting for The Hobbit.
Now think about this. You can probably come up with a black character or an Asian character who was a hero in some fantasy property. Maybe you can even think of an Indian actor in such a role. Can you think of one who appeared to be a Native American or Mesoamerican? How about an Inuit?
So how do we do better? It’s easy.
• Hire people of minority races for jobs in the industries that make fantasy.
• Put people of minority races in art as heroes.
It’s not going to ruin fantasy or drive audiences away in droves. It might even build the audience for fantasy over time.
And it’s the right thing to do.
I like your thinking with regard to the fantasy world as Not Actually Europe. Still, the question is, is the fantasy setting a fantasy America?
In the real world, race/skin color correlate with place, and only after a lot of travel was introduced do we get multi-colored societies. However, fantasy worlds often have just that travel! Tolkien did not, notably, except for the Fellowship and movement of armies, but lots of fantasy has teleportation and airships. And how often, in D&D, do we have to guard the caravan? Clearly there’s plenty of long-distance trade in there that provides opportunity for the development of a multi-colored population of humans, elves and other races.
To those claiming there was no racial diversity in medieval Europe, and therefore there shouldn’t be diversity in Fantasy, please think of this:
Dark-skinned muslims were a major force in Spain for almost eight centuries and the impact of their culture is still felt today. English words like Alchemy, Algebra, Algorithm, Camphor, Cypher, Elixir and many others come from the Arabic through the Spanish Moors.
Catherine of Aragon brought several black attendants to the court of Henry the VII, and Africans started to come to London when trade lines began to appear between England and West Africa.
By 1596, London’s black population increased so much that Elizabeth I, declared that black “Negroes and black Moors” were to be arrested and expelled from her kingdom.
This was not only an issue of racism (although there’s clear evidence of that), but lets remember that, at that time, England was at war with Spain, from which many dark-skinned people came at the time.
(more info here: http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-147059961/too-many-blackamoors-deportation.html)
And on a happier note about Elizabeth, Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud ben Mohammed Anoun was a Moroccan ambassador to the court of England in 1600
The list goes on and on, long enough to dispel the myth of “100% white homogeneity in Middle-aged Europe”
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So, what other reason do you have for not adding people of other skin-color to your fantasy?
Here’s the situation I’m wrangling with right now. I’m working on a more historically-oriented fantasy set specifically in soutwest England circa 1140 AD. As far a milieu’s go, that’s pretty lily white. Is my selection of the setting itself a racist act? Saying to the players “No, you must play white folks” clearly crosses the line, but then I don’t usually set any sorts of hard limits on PC types.
Is populating twelfth century England with anachronistic NPCs of various ethnicities a way of increasing diversity or simply a cheap way of demonstrating I’m not one of those crazy racists? Or would a more sophisticated way of tackling these issues in-game to look more carefully at tensions between Saxons, Normans, Welsh, etc? Am I morally obligated to import some Moorish NPCs?
And now I’m asking myself how often skin color comes up in my games at all. I don’t usually describe the skin color of NPCs. It’s been years since miniatures were a regular part of my games and we don’t have a lot of character art laying around. I’d have to say that ethnicity of most characters in my campaigns is undefined. Just because I’m a moron who pictures all medieval fantasy characters as honkies doesn’t mean the same thing is going on in my players’ heads. Does the campaign gain anything by me setting up an NPC and then saying “Oh, and by the way, Brother Meynard is totally a black guy”? I don’t think it does. That’s just me giving myself a pat on the back for being inclusive. Saying Brother Maynard is played by John Amos circa his work on The West Wing gains me plenty of ground creatively, though. I can do something with that.
(To be clear, my post is talking about published fantasy that’s put before the public, but if you want to take the lesson to heart and us it in your own game, more power to you!)
If you instead set your campaign in Madagascar during the same period, centuries before Europeans reached it, would that seem racist against whites—or for that matter Inuits or Chinese. I think the answer is clear.
Some leeway must be given for settings set on Earth in a specific historical period, particularly if the individuals involved in creating the setting do some research instead of simply assuming racial uniformity. If your fantasy historical setting really is Earth with a little magic and a few monsters, you deserve that leeway too. On the other hand, if you have leprechauns, orcs, and witches, what harm does it really do to include ninjas or black people? Consider that the Roman empire sucked up soldiers from the Middle East to Africa as well as Europe, and then they sent them all over as needed, including the British Isles. The records from that period don’t definitively tell us exactly what race was set down where (race and skin color have not always been so closely associated in the past, in any event), so we can’t prove or disprove such things with any authority.
Also, consider the legends you use to establish your setting. For example, it’s easy to assume that King Arthur and the knights of the round table are all white guys in the stories. But they weren’t. Such an assumption ignores Palamedes, Safir, and Segwarides—three Saracen brothers and princes, the sons of King Esclabor from Babylon, who himself retires to Camelot. These characters appear in L’Morte de Arthur, which is as much a source for Arthurian legend as anything.
Btw…
“the passive, pass-the-buck racism of repeating the mistakes of the past because “that’s the way everyone does it” or “that’s what people expect.” ”
This is what’s referred to as “systematic” or “institutionalized” racism (either term works) and it’s terribly pervasive. I’ve heard all of those excuses so many times that i just expect them now; i’ve become pretty pessimistic when it comes to what gets published. The thing that’s really sad, though, is that this particular line:
“Minorities are a small minority of the audience for fantasy games and films, so you might lose many white consumers by depicting them.”
… Is one i’ve heard more often than not, and it’s a self fulfilling prophecy. If you alienate POCs from the audience by marginalizing or stereotyping them in the ways you’ve described, then POCs don’t want to see that, and avoid the movie/book/comic/game/media of whatever type, and the audience remains pretty much lily white, and then this excuse gets used again. Lather, rinse, repeat. This, in my opinion is the main cycle that needs to be broken, because this is what contributes to and perpetuates systematic racism (of course, you said that, i’m agreeing and adding emphasis).
It’s like learning a word that’s new to you; you practice using it and after a while it’s just part of your lexicon and flows out. POCs need to become part of the fantasy lexicon as heroes. Whether that means that fantasy needs more POC writers, or established writers need to write more non stereotypical POC characters, or casting directors for movie translations need to get the stick out of their collective asses (Earthsea, anyone?), it needs to happen. Personally i’d like for all of the above to occur.
And for the record, I was actually way more pissed about Marlon Wayans’ token character than anything else, because his role as the smiley wise-cracker has been done to death, and then of course he got killed and didn’t really help much before then.
[...] issues of race in Hollywood productions are the same forces at play that I noted in my post about racism in fantasy. It’s pure prejudice. Comment (RSS) [...]
The Lord of the Rings trilogy pissed me off because the blackest, or characters of the most color were the orks and the orukai. This is no surprise to me as a black man born and raised in racist America. Hollywood has always vilified blackness along with other races. These are all roles in which the majority of whites are comfortable seeing blacks cast in. I find it very hard to believe that in all of middle earth there was not one single person of color around. But the fantasy worlds created by whites in movies and television do not include blacks. In fact on a subconscious level I am sure the IDEAL worlds of whites do not include blacks period, real or imaginary. Racism, discrimination, and slavery are certainly no done with black and brown folks in America although the average citizen here would deny that it still exists. Hollywood has never had a problem a depicting blacks as thugs, clowns, servants(to the master), savages, and anything else other than a good upstanding person of morale. But in any case, I am not surprised at all by Hollywood’s continued racism and systematic discrimination. Working in the film industry you find all the more prevalent when you look around at the crew who works on these major motion pictures. The crew behind the camera is just as white as the cast in front of the camera…
The Problem here which many of you seem to fail at seeing is there are not enough black film makers in the genre of Fantasy to make a difference. Fantasy films are often written, directed, cast and even created by white people. Some of them probably only see black people while at work or on TV getting arrested, or in the gangster movies they tend to populate. More often than not whenever a black film maker gets a hold of a camera; they either make comedy, which almost always has a male cross-dresser’s role (A-la Tyler Perry), some drama not unlike how Stella got her groove back, or some movie littered with gangsters, drug pushers and some wife beating uncle who drinks too much. And don’t get me started on the slavery movies, enough already.
In order for the average black person to make to the end of a horror movie, sifi movie, or action flick, outside of being in the lead like lets say bad boys, or Transformers, these films will have to be made by minorities, written, created, directed, produced. It is the only way, because film industry as we know it is run by white people, and so most films that emerge from Hollywood, will more than likely cast white leads and will continue to cast white leads until something changes, a change which many minorities are unwilling to face, we have to make these films ourselves.
Ken, you make a good point, but upon looking into it further. It’s not that there aren’t Black filmmakers who want to make fantasy and SF, it’s that the powers that be in Hollywood don’t greenlight those efforts, particularly if they happen to include people of color in non-stereotypical roles. If you want to make a silly comedy ala Black Knight, you can get funding. If you want to make Homeboys in Space, sure. But a serious fantasy or SF picture is going to be a hard sell in Hollywood. Tyler Perry gets to make the films he does, one because Hollywood thinks it is placating minorities, and second because Hollywood already considers any movie with a minority lead to by default be a minority picture. So what if Blade was a crossover success, doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t have to even be those genres. Look at Lucas and Redtails. A lot of the blame also has to fall on the public that by and large avoid genre pictures that feature Blacks in prominent (read protagonist) roles. For example look at many of the criticisms that you will find on reviews of the film Attack the Block. Many reviews remark about the gang nature of the protagonists as distasteful. You don’t however see this criticism come up much with films such as The Wild Bunch, Goodfellas, The Godfather etc. Do you think The Sopranoes would be nearly as successful if it had been about a LA street gang?
Hey, great post! I’m linking to it on my site.
I’ve started a new project to promote the representation of minorities (not just race but gender & sexual orientation) in sf/f, especially for young adults. I would love it if you would want to make a guest post or simply promote the project.
The project is called the Next Frontier. The address is the-next-frontier.tumblr.com.
Best wishes!
Rachel
Middle-aged Europe, as another poster noted, was not homogeneous. Read some of the literature and you’ll note people of color here and there. Othello wasn’t that far from Shakespeare’s reality and take a look at the Mediterranean.
I grew up on Hayao Miyazaki’s work, and reading lots of works based in feudal Japan and based on Japanese lore. With the exception of some anime and manga, only Japanese people are depicted. Even in anime and manga race is very ambiguous and people could be of any ethnicity. Christian nuns are interpreted as miko from that cultural perspective and that is how they’re portrayed because there’s no cultural equivalent.
People have a natural tendency to depict things from their own point of view, it’s as simple as that.
Rumor has it that there will be a fantasy released this year with a black lead. Sword’s, magic, demons ect.