• PKMKII [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    54·
    17 days ago

    This is so close to making a valid critique, that using different species as a metaphor for race relations is poisoning the well because even if they start getting along and work out their differences, it’s still presenting races as, metaphorically, different classes of organisms. But then he completely disregards that in the last paragraph and weirdly starts conflating sci-fi/fantasy media that’s subversively racist with anti-racist media.

    • KobaCumTribute [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      26·
      17 days ago

      It’s the typical chud thing of looking at hollow and disingenuous liberal messaging and concluding that the problem is that it’s attempting to be better and not that there’s a rancid core of implicit racism underneath it.

      Like the liberal view on race and racism is still fundamentally white supremacist and orientalist, and their concept of anti-racism is like this patronizing thing where the point is demonstrating their own goodness and collecting sufficiently conformist minorities like pokemon out of perceived self-benefit, and not an actual principled opposition to bigotry, cruelty, and the violent consequences of an order built on them. So their messaging is inherently confused and contains this sort of “well yeah the monstrous other is inscrutable and alien, but perhaps a few of them may rise to the status of honorary humans” core to it.

      This is why any sort of fantasy race thing beyond simple aesthetics has to fundamentally make all the sapient species people with competing material interests and inherited privilege, making for a commentary on class or imperial/colonial relations rather than an allegory for race and culture.

    • Belly_Beanis [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      25·
      17 days ago

      Yeah this post was “Had me in the first half” -worthy. There’s a serious problem in media representing racism with superpowers or different species. Especially if it’s just white people with superpowers being discriminated against, because IRL they wouldn’t be persecuted. They would use their powers to do crakkker shit the same way they use military tech.

    • sodium_nitride [she/her, any]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      16·
      17 days ago

      I think it depends. There are really 2 types of “racism”.

      There are racialised class systems created by nation states and imperialist powers to supress wages and fuel industries. This type of racism has literally nothing to do with physical characteristics, and fantasy races poison the well in this case.

      But it is also the type of racism that fantasy mostly ignores. Most media focuses on the liberal theory of racism, in which races with differing characteristics cannot reconcile their differences due to a lack of mutual understanding. In this case, making the different races really be different is not necessarily a bad allegory. It is just an exaggerated presentation of what writers perceive the racial conflict to be.