Racism in Skyrim

[phantomneko]

Just out of curiosity - what does this have to do with "racism" anyway?

 

Racism isn't always hate-towards-race. It's claiming differences in race, or differences in race matter. This kind of racism isn't malicious or even intentional at times, but it's noticed because it leaves someone with a short straw for no other reason than their race. In this case, black people don't have a heart.

 

and I don't think anyone is seriously upset, but it's kinda funny and bothersome at the same time. The amount of "Skyrim is for the Nazis!" crap inside of the game does get a little unnerving, especially since there's no "THATS RACIST!" option to most of it.

[Dragten]

The 25 hearts mini quest is added by the Black Sacrament armor mod. It has nothing to do with the vanilla Skyrim and Bethesda.

If it really bothers you, take it with the creator of the mod.

It's likely that he/she just forgot to include Redguards in the droplist.

[Hersir666]

Just out of curiosity - what does this have to do with "racism" anyway?

 

Racism isn't always hate-towards-race. It's claiming differences in race, or differences in race matter. This kind of racism isn't malicious or even intentional at times, but it's noticed because it leaves someone with a short straw for no other reason than their race. In this case, black people don't have a heart.

 

and I don't think anyone is seriously upset, but it's kinda funny and bothersome at the same time. The amount of "Skyrim is for the Nazis!" crap inside of the game does get a little unnerving, especially since there's no "THATS RACIST!" option to most of it.

 

"Skyrim is for the Nazis"? I think you are letting you imagination/paranoia run wild by combining some innocent in game content with some of you personal problems/insecurities.

 

Also, since the concept of racism is a rather modern construct, while Skyrim/TES and its lore are more based on ancient/medieval times, it would not really make sense to have an option like "Thats racist". Maybe "thats prejudist", but thats about it.

[Rennn]

Racism isn't a modern construct, that's just a modern name for it.

 

I agree about the first part though. Making the Nords racist at times doesn't make the whole game racist. That's like saying that life is racist because there are some racist people in the world. The Dunmer in Morrowind mostly thought that their ancestors were sacred, that doesn't mean Bethesda was trying to tell you to worship your ancestors.

[Hersir666]

Racism isn't a modern construct, that's just a modern name for it.

 

Being prejudist against someone/something for the color of their appearence/culture/etc is not new. It's to some degree a normal human trait and as such it has been around for a long time. But "racism" as we define and look at it today, which is primary characterized by the color of ones skin or appearence, is a modern construct/notion(by modern I mean no more than 4centuries old), which emerged around the same time as the modern notion of nationalism and is defined as the following:

 

"The Oxford English Dictionary defines racism as the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races and the expression of such prejudice,while the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines it as a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority or inferiority of a particular racial group, and alternatively that it is also the prejudice based on such a belief. The Macquarie Dictionary defines racism as: "the belief that human races have distinctive characteristics which determine their respective cultures, usually involving the idea that ones own race is superior and has the right to rule or dominate others."

 

This specifc notion of "race/skin color/superiority-based on that" is quite modern.

Edited May 4, 2012 by Hersir666

[Georgiegril]

400 centuries = 40000 years. Just saying.

 

It seems to me very likely that "the idea that one's own race is superior" can explain homo sapiens helping to remove the Neanderthal from the planet. While the modern idea of racial classifications may be relatively recent, the belief that humans have specific characteristics based on appearance and culture, and the use of that to justify imposing suffering on others, is very old. The English used differences of culture and appearance as justifications to persecute the Irish for hundreds of years. Norman English did the same to justify social and economic discrimination against the Anglo Saxons. These are all peoples we would now assign to the same racial category; a fact that would probably be of little compensation to the victims.

 

I agree the terminology "racism" is modern, but the problem is an ancient one. Whether or not it is inherent in human psychology is debatable, but the suffering that is caused is not.

[RedRavyn]

I think that Hersir666 meant "400 years" and had previously typed that, but decided to change it to "4 centuries", and did a bad job of editing. Note that it came out "400centuries", all run-together.

 

Georgiegril is correct. The term "racism" is modern, but the phenomenon isn't. One only has to look to the past to prove this, and most authorities on such things are convinced that some degree of racism is instinctive, inherited from our pre-human (and even pre-hominid) ancestors. There is an in-built mechanism in most animals to distrust, fear, and/or dislike anything which is not "them". It's one of the main ways to shore up what biologists refer to as "genetic isolation", since it prevents interbreeding (most of the time) between incipient species, furthering the process of speciation.

 

However, Georgiegril, I must disagree that any concept of "superiority" that Homo sapiens had over the Neanderthals had much, if anything, to do with the disappearance of that group. Something that is becoming more and more accepted among modern paleoanthropologists is that the Neanderthals were not a separate species from modern man, but merely a subspecies of it (Homo sapiens neanderthalis). They were subject to two different processes. One is that "modern man" (Homo sapiens sapiens) could simply out-compete the more technologically and socially primitive Neanderthals where they came into contact. The other process is that modern man was "absorbing" the Neanderthals into its own gene pool through interbreeding. There are no Neanderthals because they are us and we are them -- at least partially.

 

Not that any of this is related to racism in Skyrim, but there was really little point to this thread from the beginning, anyway.

[Hersir666]

400 centuries = 40000 years. Just saying.

 

It seems to me very likely that "the idea that one's own race is superior" can explain homo sapiens helping to remove the Neanderthal from the planet. While the modern idea of racial classifications may be relatively recent, the belief that humans have specific characteristics based on appearance and culture, and the use of that to justify imposing suffering on others, is very old. The English used differences of culture and appearance as justifications to persecute the Irish for hundreds of years. Norman English did the same to justify social and economic discrimination against the Anglo Saxons. These are all peoples we would now assign to the same racial category; a fact that would probably be of little compensation to the victims.

 

I agree the terminology "racism" is modern, but the problem is an ancient one. Whether or not it is inherent in human psychology is debatable, but the suffering that is caused is not.

 

Well, I do apologize for the typo.

 

Well, as I said, prejudice based on cultural and any other differences is nothing new. It is human nature to differentiate oneself and project what is normal/familiar to one to judge the rest/others. I was specifically speaking in regards to our modern notion of "racism" as it evolved a few centuries ago from around the time of European Imperialism, which placed a much higher notion one physical traits, especially the color of ones skin. While the English/French Normans discriminated against the Anglo-Saxons in many ways, it was not in the form of a modern "Apartheit", but much more on simply a cultural, political and mostly class base. The Norman,Anglo-Saxon,Scandinavian etc nobilities and royalties were all pretty much intermarried and idenfified much more with eachother than their countryman from a lower class.

[Georgiegril]

I am sure our understanding of the Neanderthal will continue to develop. And I wasn't there, of course, so I am hardly the last word (or the 3000th to last). I based my assertion on archaeological evidence that humans killed ate, and even made jewelry from Neanderthals, which suggests to me that the competition was, at least at times, more direct. This was probably a bad example on my part, as it is an example of a real rather than imagined distinction.

 

And I absolutely agree with that royalty in Europe intermarried. Hard to avoid when your bloodline has been ordained by god to wield absolute power, and you've figured out that its not so great to marry your sister. Basically they were marrying cousins, though. If anything that is just a different face on the problem-- a group proclaims itself superior and maintains that by discriminatory behavior.

 

Interesting to me is that we think of modern racism to be about skin color, but in the American south, until very recently the 1-drop standard was law. That is, if you had even a single drop of African blood in your family tree, you were classified as a Negro and subject to the laws restricting your legal rights, (and of course economic and social stature.) This is still the prevailing view for some: I know, because I grew up in the South. Someone who "passed" absolutely for white was still considered Negro (though never the other way around). To me this suggests that the "modern" construct of racism is still really about groups with power attempting to maintain it by creating artificial and arbitrary distinctions--whether it's "noble blood" or "race", it's really about justifying the imposition of suffering on others.

 

I also think it is fantastic that Skyrim does have racism/ discrimination included (the whole Skyrim belongs to the Nords thing, preventing Kajiits or Argonians in the city, etc.) Because instead of painting a Disneyesque world where everyone is happy, it provides opportunity for discussions like these, and maybe reflection upon the real world and our choices in that. Or maybe it's just a game and I'm working really hard to justify playing it so much!