Racism

This is a risky post to write.  I will start by saying that I don't consider myself a racist.  Yet I came of age in the 1970s, when much of the cultural dialogue about racism held that everyone ~ due to the unfortunate osmosis of culture and media ~ was, to some extent, racist whether they liked it or not.  It was bred into us, hammered into us and preached into us.  However much a white liberal might identify as non-racist, this does not rid us of a dialogue that reaches into our mind as we interact with others of another race.  I will be forever trapped by these thoughts, "Express yourself kindly, speak softly and considerately ... and do all that can be done to assure this person that you, in no way, am treating them differently from anyone else."

Thoughts I would never have speaking with a white person.  Aye, there's the rub.  I've been inculcated with that pollutant; I can only assure myself that I would never support a racist agenda, that I would not deny an individual their rights based on their race and I would not hesitate to lend my support to someone on the basis of race.  We fight racism by being conscious of it; but it is not a fight we win.

To a lesser degree, I can make the exact same argument about culture.  I'm Canadian. I have belief systems and ideals that are regulated by that culture and that were installed in me as a child.  The pollutant of nationalism is rife in my mind also ... though not to the degree of racism.  For many, the two are conveniently intertwined; but as I fight one, I fight the other.  Come live in Canada, come work here.  I welcome you.

For me, race and culture have become pariahs in the global identity because of those who would exploit them for power or for gain.  There are two ways of exploiting either: a) create fear, attack them, gather others who hate them, encourage violence and sell the products that hatred craves; b) create fear, defend them, gather others who will defend them, encourage violence and the products that solidarity craves.

A Russian, living in a Russian neighborhood, spreads fear that others hate Russians, so that Russians must stick together, encouraging us all to believe only Russians, to think like Russians, to have faith in Russians ~ and to believe that everyone who is not a Russian is an enemy.

I grew up hearing that.  I've heard gays talk that way, I've heard union workers talk that way, I've heard Canadians talk that way ... and I've heard a lot of people in the media talk that way.  It is just as racist and nationalist to rabidly defend a thing as it is to rabidly hate a thing.

Okay.  D&D.

Part of the appeal of free-form character systems is that the player is not driven to BE a thing.  Classes ~ and particularly "races as classes" ~ encourage us to buy into a product that we should rightly feel has that familiar pollutant we've encountered before.  Those who sell that product can only see the convenience of it: "See?  Being an elf gives you limitations; and limitations give you boundaries.  You know where you're coming from; it's easier to build a 'character' from that."

It's easier to build a cardboard character from that.  I, me, this writer, am not a collection of limitations and my pushing those limitations.  I have things I believe that are not related to what I do, where I came from, what I am, or what I want to be.  Those things were collected over time and ~ to be truthful ~ a great many of them were gained in the face of being told, "You can't do that" and "Oh, you're just trying to get attention."  Those are the watch-phrases of anyone who has boundaries and pushes boundaries.  We're told what to believe; and we're told that if we try to believe something else, we're either lying to others or lying to ourselves.

I don't want to encourage my players to see "fighter" or any class as a limitation or as something to transcend.  I'll take my own case: I'm a writer.  That is not a limitation.  As an identity, it is what I say it is.  My writing is what I want it to be.  If I want it to be something else tomorrow, that is not "pushing a boundary."  Every kind of writer I could ever want to be is well within the field of what I am.

Were I a soldier, and self-identified as a soldier, I feel pretty much that I'd describe it the same way.  I've known a lot of soldiers and I never hear any of them speak of the life or the mindset as a limitation.  I feel that most people who appreciate and obtain an identity in their profession can identify the same way.  A profession is not a limit.  It is a freedom to act.

A race, on the other hand, IS a limit.  I can be any sort of white man I want, sure ... but what does that mean, "Be a white man?"  White man isn't a profession.  It is a color.  It's a surface template.  It's not a process, it's not an ideology.  It's an obsession with a particular abstract effort at sorting me from others.  It means no more to me than the sort of hair follicles I have, the size of my pores or the width of my eyeball.  When I look at the back of my hand, the only thing that's interesting about it is the number of scars and cuts that accumulated over decades of cooking and heavy labor ... things I did.  I don't give a damn about the hands themselves ... except that it's convenient for writing that I still have all my fingers and that I've learned to ignore my arthritis.

We think of character classes as limits because we habitually slot what we do into the same category as what we are or where we're from.  That's a mistake of our upbringing.  We were abused by people with professions long, long before we began to understand anything about those professions.  The teacher, the doctor, the police officer, the sports star, the performer ... these were all fronts to us as children, just things people decided to be.  We saw them as surfaces, just like the color of my skin and the flag I saluted when I sang its anthem.  Many of us still see them as surfaces, when we're pulled over, when we see our hero do a car commercial, when the doctor is arrested and pushed into a squad car.  We have a terrible, awful habit of seeing everyone except ourselves as surfaces, just as though the soldier is a different race than we are or that the feminist is from a different country.  That's easy for us; that doesn't challenge what we think or what we believe; we don't want to see deeper.  Hell, most of us don't even want to BE deeper.

But a profession is not a race.  It is not a nationality.  Being a druid, a bard, a ranger or an illusionist is an opportunity, not a limitation.  I can appreciate how a lot of people can't see that, given their limitations as people.  It seems obvious to me.