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[Teneb]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't Redguards basically TES Arabs?

That said, it might not be very relevant.

More like Fantasy Samurai Berbers, but yeah. TES tends to have the majority in each game to be the natives of the area, with small groups of the rest. Also I can't recall any discrimination towards the redguards in TES. Towards others, sure.

[Flying Dice]

Mm, Other M is a perfect example of how to take something good and destroy it intentionally.

Elder Scrolls is guilty of the same old BS that the entire fantasy genre has been spouting since Tolkien, which is using fantasy races as a way to talk about race without actually including any people of color in your story (this is coming from someone who has read a ton of books and like 90% of them were sci-fi or fantasy).  Granted I believe TES does have some PoC but its no significant number, like I'd probably say something like <1% of the characters in the two that I've played.

I dunno, Morrowind's definitely full of black people who occasionally are displeased at foreigners tampering with their culture and age-old traditions.

Um. And, also y'know. Redguards are all dark-skinned humans (and Hammerfell is around the same size as Skyrim). You've clearly never played or heard of the earlier TES games. Arena had all of the provinces, including Hammerfell. Daggerfall was set in High Rock and Hammerfell. Redguard had a Redguard main character and took place in Hammerfell. If you've only played Oblivion and Skyrim, sure, you mostly see Imperials and Nords respectively, because of where they're set. Just like you don't see many Bretons in Redguard or Bosmer in Morrowind.

This could be used as a anecdote to how schools are draconian in their protection of school premises... but as for a case of race. Frankly unless there is another part of the story where they actually tackled him to the ground and beat him with night sticks... I don't see it.

I don't consider race to be the main issue, but I don't think it helped. The main issue is that they still wanted to charge him even after it became clear that it wasn't a bomb. It was just as wrong when the same thing was done in 2007 to Peter Berdovsky (who is white).

This? This is exactly what I was getting at. It's not an issue of race, it's an issue of the school policy/teacher being terrible and the cops on the scene being obtuse assholes. That said, I do think there's a point where he should have stopped being incredulous (it's a clock) and actually explained that it was a project he had worked on and brought in to show his teacher. Assuming that part of the story is accurate, anyways, and it wasn't just "It's a clock-"*handcuffs*.

At least it wasn't school security, they're even worse. I remember in my high school seeing one of our rent-a-cops taze and tackle a special-needs student because he refused to stop and hand over his backpack.

[Harry Baldman]

Um. And, also y'know. Redguards are all dark-skinned humans (and Hammerfell is around the same size as Skyrim). You've clearly never played or heard of the earlier TES games. Arena had all of the provinces, including Hammerfell. Daggerfall was set in High Rock and Hammerfell. Redguard had a Redguard main character and took place in Hammerfell. If you've only played Oblivion and Skyrim, sure, you mostly see Imperials and Nords respectively, because of where they're set. Just like you don't see many Bretons in Redguard or Bosmer in Morrowind.

The main race divide in TES is men/elves/beastfolk. Though it's more pronounced in Morrowind than anywhere else, even if there is that bit where Khajiit aren't technically allowed inside Skyrim's cities (and Nazi Altmer, but I digress). Nobody really cares that Redguards have dark skin, since they, Imperials, Nords and Bretons are all dudes, even if Redguards originally come from a different continent entirely.

In Morrowind the racial divide between native Dunmer and various kinds of outlander is mentioned, and so race is actually a considerable factor (if ultimately without any implications for the MC, since they can just do whatever). So as far as I know Morrowind still has the closest thing to a proper addressing of racial issues that TES currently has, even if you could just as well conflate that with nationalism (which is probably closer to what it is, since Vvardenfell Dunmer don't like outlander Dunmer just as much, if not more so, than they don't like outlanders in general). Truthfully, the statement was entirely facetious (since Dunmer are literally black people), but there's still a grain of truth behind it.

The Redguards are there, and yes, I know that Daggerfall, Arena and Redguard all feature Hammerfell with at least as good a representation of Redguards as Morrowind's 50-50 Dunmer-everyone else ratio. It's just that this doesn't seem to serve as much of a counterpoint since there's no racial issue to be made of it, since nobody cares that Redguards are dark-skinned.

[ArKFallen]

If you want to find the topic of race in TES Skyrim go explore Windhelm and actually dig into its history, old and modern. Plenty of NPCs talk about it and IIRC there is even an event when you enter that brings it to the fore (a dumbass nord being a racist dick).

[Rolan7]

Yeah, racism was actually a major theme in Skyrim.  More accurately, xenophobia - and even more interesting, the xenophobia was justifiable.

I chose the faltering Empire over the provincial uprising, but it was... a complicated issue.  Kudos to Bethesda for that.
(hell of a lot more interesting than the Legion of evil monsters in New Vegas)

also the Thalmor (not Altmer!) are monsters selfish, but I only know that because of Putnam.

[EnigmaticHat]

Mm, Other M is a perfect example of how to take something good and destroy it intentionally.

Elder Scrolls is guilty of the same old BS that the entire fantasy genre has been spouting since Tolkien, which is using fantasy races as a way to talk about race without actually including any people of color in your story (this is coming from someone who has read a ton of books and like 90% of them were sci-fi or fantasy).  Granted I believe TES does have some PoC but its no significant number, like I'd probably say something like <1% of the characters in the two that I've played.

I dunno, Morrowind's definitely full of black people who occasionally are displeased at foreigners tampering with their culture and age-old traditions.

Um. And, also y'know. Redguards are all dark-skinned humans (and Hammerfell is around the same size as Skyrim). You've clearly never played or heard of the earlier TES games. Arena had all of the provinces, including Hammerfell. Daggerfall was set in High Rock and Hammerfell. Redguard had a Redguard main character and took place in Hammerfell. If you've only played Oblivion and Skyrim, sure, you mostly see Imperials and Nords respectively, because of where they're set. Just like you don't see many Bretons in Redguard or Bosmer in Morrowind.

Yeah, the games I've played are Oblivion and Skyrim.  And technically Daggerfall but not for any significant length of time.

I will give you Redguard.  Morrowind still doesn't entirely work though.  Yeah, they're dark...ish, but...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

They don't resemble actual black people.  Nor do they in modern elder scrolls games:

Spoiler: Like Syrim (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Or Elder Scrolls Online (click to show/hide)

In particular look at the ESO Dunmer.  If you had no idea what TES was and someone stole the art and used it to portray a caucasian vampire in a different fantasy universe, would it not work?  They're so light skinned by the standards of black.  They're really more... washed out.  Grey.  Like an undead.

There's also the issue where basically all of them were killed offscreen and all of the games made since have been in generic fantasy settings populated by white people, orcs, and furries with a few token non-whites thrown in.

And please stop talking like I'm not aware of the racism theme in TES.  I addressed it in my original post.  Almost all of it is aimed at fantasy races.  Notice how the primary explicit race conflicts between SPECIFIC races rather than general "foreigners" in Skyrim are Kahjit being a blatant Roma metaphor and the Thalmor trying to commit genocide.  Like I said, they want to talk about race without having PoC characters, just like Tolkien, just like every Tolkien-esque fantasy setting.

[Orange Wizard]

Almost all of it is aimed at fantasy races.

Because it's a fantasy game. You don't expect a fantasy game to depict real-world racism, do you?

[Harry Baldman]

Because it's a fantasy game. You don't expect a fantasy game to depict real-world racism, do you?

I suspect the issue is less that it's not a direct transposition of real-world racism and more that it warps the issue and thus any sort of message that you can generate this way.

For instance, elves, humans and orcs existing together creates a situation that emphasizes otherness to the point where there are highly meaningful physical differences between them, such as for instance each and every orc being a conduit for the divine will of an actually evil god. It distances itself from reality to the point where the same conclusions can't be drawn, which lowers the value of the message and confuses the issue.

This lowers the value of such fantasy works in discussing racism. And while this isn't really a bad thing as such, since racism isn't necessarily an issue you want or need to explore in every work of fiction ever created (the same can be said of virtually any social issue, in fact), it does work against the idea of fantasy being a tool for progressivism. Particularly fantasy games, which strive toward the familiar bits of fantasy (though TES is slightly weirder than most settings lore-wise if not in what you actually see in the games).

Point is, if you want to helpfully explore racism, Tolkienesque fantasy's not the best way to do it. If you want to entertainingly explore racism, Tolkienesque fantasy's as good a way as any, since you further no actual real-world prejudices in doing so (unless you're really blatant about it).

[GiglameshDespair]

It seems... odd? To want real-world racism in there. Sure, fantasy can use other species as metaphors for racism... ok? What's the problem? Metaphors are indeed a thing.

Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because — what with trolls and dwarfs and so on — speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.

I suppose you could have a game where there's active racism between blacks and whites, etc, but if you could join the KKK the game would probably just get banned. If you just want a game where you fight against racists, I dunno, go play one of the billion WW2 shooters where you fight Nazis or something.

[Rolan7]

@Harry Baldman
Yeah, that kinda makes sense.  Fantasy settings such as the Elder Scrolls universe are more an exploration of speciesism, generally.  Races tend to blend together once there are fundamentally different "others" to interact with.

Which is *like* racism, but the scale is so different it's a bad comparison.

[Yoink]

L.A. is like a trainwreck... it's horrifying but compelling to look at.

[Rolan7]

I go on Netflix to look for some series someone mentioned.  "Gotham" gets recommended, haha okay, "It's about young Commisioner Gordon", okay you have my attention
Pilot was pretty dang good.  Second episode is looking good too.  Seems like a dark&gritty tale of police life in the shittiest city short of Ankh-Morpork.
How did I not hear of this earlier??

[Akura]

Customers at work try many different things to try and steal from us, or at least, pay less than the sticker price(which is non-negotiable). One thing I discovered this morning was that somebody put a $29.99 sticker tag taken from a Bed&Bath item onto a fairly decent-looking sports jacket(clothes have hanging tags), obscuring the original price.

The WTF was the jacket's original price. $7.99.

[Rolan7]

Haha I wish you could have charged them the $29.99 without an enormous headache.  That's great.

[GiglameshDespair]

Customers at work try many different things to try and steal from us, or at least, pay less than the sticker price(which is non-negotiable). One thing I discovered this morning was that somebody put a $29.99 sticker tag taken from a Bed&Bath item onto a fairly decent-looking sports jacket(clothes have hanging tags), obscuring the original price.

The WTF was the jacket's original price. $7.99.

He liked it so much he thought it deserved to cost extra?