TAdamson said:
Therumancer said:
Showing a bunch of primitive and backwards people AS primitive and backwards people is not in any way, shape, or form racist. Calling a guy who literally walks around and throws spears because that is the cutting edge of his availible technology a "spear chucker" isn't racist either.
Oh. You're racist as well as homophobic huh? Nice to know.
I usually go through your posts looking for when you make the suggestion that every homosexual man is a potential paedophile, but this time you come up with this.
The term "spear-chucker" is an epithet directed towards Africans. It's a racist term. Exactly like "Jungle-Bunny". Exactly like ******.
And while there is a difference between overt racism (Which is analogous to your overt homophobia) and unconscious racism, media where all the heroes are clean cut white people and the antagonists are brown people depicted as savages still has worrying subtext.
Comparing this to games like this to games made by the KKK is like comparing the films written by Goebbels to those written by Hitler. The racism/anti-semitism in the former is subtle while the racism in the latter is clumsy and blatant. The fact that the racist subtext in Revelations 2012 *might* not be intentional is irrelevant.
Actually it is irrelevent, because racism is by definition is not subtle. Racism is the belief that a group of people are intristically inferior and cannot ever be as good as another group of people. Or conversely that a given race of people are better than all others who simply cannot ever achieve that level of intristic abillity. Anything else is not racist.
Showing a bunch of tribals living like tribals is NOT racist, especially if people really do exist that way. It only becomes racist if you try and say that those people are that way because that's all they can achieve, and will never be anything more due to innate genetics, that's racist.
To be brutally honest I'm probably one of the least racist people out there, simply because I believe humanity actually is equal accross the board, which also means that everyone can be held to the same intristic expectations and standards. Being black, hispanic, etc... is not an excuse for failure, nor do such people need any kind of special treatment to be equal, it's all up to them because they can do the same things. I actually find liberals to be incredibly racist despite their pretensions because their efforts to "help" in most cases come from what amounts to a belief that the people on the receiving end cannot be expected to help themselves. What's more I think too much charity on this level removes the motivation for one to succeed, and actually fuels cultural divide. I actually think a lot of the aid we send to the third world, and even racially themed domestic outreach programs in the US have actually gotten to the point where they have become counter productive. Liberals hate points of view like that, but the bottom line is the world sucks, and sometimes being a bastard is the best for everyone involved. Attempts to call me racist usually come down to people flailing around and trying to find ways to re-define the label "cleverly" to fit because they don't like the point.
Also the whole "invisible knapsack" thing is complete garbage, and has been debunked a long, long time ago. There have been entire threads on this subject here already. The bottom line is that any group encountering a larger group not like them or is more prominant is going to run into the same kinds of issues. Sure, in the US you ask to see the guy in charge, and odds are it will be a white guy, as whites are the majority. That's not unintentional racism, you go to say Africa, Spain, or whatever else and do the same thing an African or Spanish person will tend to be in the same position.
When it comes to media, and the whole "great white hero" thing, again there is no real racism intended, it's simply how things are. Like it or not when a less developed people run into a more developed one, the results are not pretty unless they receive outside aid. Right now the so called "first world" happens to largely be populated by whites, who as a whole are the most advanced, best educated, and best trained. As a general rule most of the world simply cannot touch the training od special forces groups like the SEALS, Spetznatz, Royal Marine Commandos, and other similar groups, never mind CIA, MI6, KGB, and whomever else you want to mention. The infrastructure doesn't exist throughout most of the world to produce people like that. Indeed most countries hire people trained by these organizations to try and train their own military forces/terrorists/gueriellas, and one of the big hot button issues has always been nations like the USA or Russia sending in special forces dudes under the table to train insurgents to fight against guys we don't like from within, or conversely to train a goverment we do like so it's troops have an edge against insurgent movements we don't like. A lot of the nastiest wars we've had (like say the original Afghani conflict) basically involved first world "white" nations fighting by proxy, with American trained Taliban fighting Russian trained goverment troops for example.
As a result games, movies, etc... tying to be realistic (or contain a grain of realism) base themselves on real trends and occurances. Should global balance shift, so will this. It's also interesting to note that as things have shifted you are seeing increasing numbers of asians coming to the forefront in the media accross the board.
Also, it should be noted that whites are a minority globally (a severe one) like 1/3rd of the human race is chinese, 1/3rd of the population is Indian (about to replace China in a few years as the most common ethnicity supposedly), Blacks overpopulate Africa and outnumber whites by a large margin, ditto for hispanics/latinos thoughout south and central America (with a lot of speculation that soon Latinos will also outnumber whites in the USA, and Canada shortly thereafter). Seeing people that are minorities within the USA or other first world countries presented as enemies and such (often based on real politics) is hardly shocking by the numbers since that's how things break down. That said fantasy does seem to be an equal oppertunity portrayer of who gets to wear the snively whiplash mustache. The Russians (other whites) get plenty of screen time as villains, as do other Europeans, the USA is really fond of a bunch of self-critical analysis, portraying itself as the bad guy (something very few other countries do with their media, you generally don't see China doing movies where the thero fights the Chinese goverment). In short complaints about fantasy being "a bunch of white guys terorizing minorities" is complete bunk, it only comes up when someone wants attention in dealing with a work where the sides break down that way, oftentimes without really looking at the story and whether it seems remotely plausible (enough so for fantasy).
At any rate, the point here is that showing people as they are is not remotely racist. It doesn't become racist until you go beyond simply showing things that way and start getting into long-term prospects, genetic destiny, and other assorted things. You might decry the way the world is, but that doesn't mean people who live in the real world and accept it are some kind of racist.
Besides, on the actual subject, how would you have portrayed the return of the ancient Mayans? I means seriously, have them all show up in business suits, and fling lattes? The problem with you and Jim is that this is pretty close to how the ancient Mayans looked, and the ceremonial dress those trying to revive the traditions use when performing rituals.
Likewise, if you happened to be basically invincible for the moment and could throw fireballs and such, would you bother to insist on running around wearing say Kevlar and carrying an M-16 for lulz? "Sorry guys, our ritual worked, but I really think I should go home and change into a suit instead of this ritual garb, I know we're about to destroy everything, but man... what if someone actually sees me like this in the meantime. These other guys, the ones carried through time... yeah someone should at least take them through K-mart or something before we actually get aorund to this whole blotting out the sun thing..."
Stop and REALLY think about what you and Jim are saying here.