Warhammer 40k Observation

[ShakyFt Slasher]

I have noticed something a little strange just from my surface perception on the 40k universe and I would like to have a question about it answered. I have noticed that ALL citizens of the Imperium of Man have been white European looking fellows. I guess I just find it odd that there is not one black, asian, hispanic, indian man anywhere. Maybe I'm just a Warhammer 40k noob (I did just get into the universe) but is there really only white Europeans inhabiting the Imperium or have I just not looked far enough into the universe?

Edit: Thanks for the answers guys I appreciate it. I'm not really complaining, I was just a little confused is all. I am starting to get deeper into the universe and am considering reading some of the books and possibly starting to play the actual game

 

[Thaluikhain]

There are many planets with different cultures. Tallarn is basically the middle east. Its just that many portrayals rely on white males because of laziness. There is a lot of diversity, but its rarely shown outside of books. Miniatures and game models are expensive.

More or less, yeah...though you can't really show much in teh way of ethnicity on 35mm models (excepting how you paint them).

And...it's a certain sort of white male who tends to run GW, portrayals of anything other than other heteronormative white guys tend to be rare, or rather clumsily handled.

Same as videogames and so on, lots of white male creators and audience means lots of white male characters.

 

[SnakeoilSage]

It's a bit of a pain, eh? Especially considering the White Scars Space Marines are by and large Mongolian in ethnicity.

 

[Thaluikhain]

It's a bit of a pain, eh? Especially considering the White Scars Space Marines are by and large Mongolian in ethnicity.

It's easy to make ethnically diverse marines, though...if they are all wearing their helmets, you can say they are any ehtnicity you want.

 

[Mr Thin]

It is mostly, yes. But there are pockets of diversity.

The Salamanders, for example, are black. You just don't see it very often because Space Marines have this annoying tendency to wear helmets.

 

[Ordinaryundone]

There are lots of different races and colors of people out there, but for the most part the art depicts them as being white, European guys because that is what the miniatures looked like.

 

[Thaluikhain]

It is mostly, yes. But there are pockets of diversity.

The Salamanders, for example, are black. You just don't see it very often because Space Marines have this annoying tendency to wear helmets.

Interestingly, though, all that started with one picture of one model in the Armageddon codex. Every other model with visible skin in those pics was white...or a greenskinned ork.

Caused quite a stir, and from then on, all Salamanders (and presumably the planet they recruited from) were black.

Until they ruined that by making them jet-black with glowing red eyes, because one chapter of black black marines was one too many, presumably.

 

[ChupathingyX]

Inquisitor Mordecai Toth from Dawn of War is black.

Why is it that nearly all complaints about the 40K universe seem to come from people who have very little knowledge of it? Not all of them of course, but a lot, especially lately...

 

[Sovereign _909]

The poster children for the hobby are the Ultramarines (Space Marines) and Cadians (Imperial Guard)who are mostly white, that is probably where that impression comes from. When you start to dig deeper, different ethnicity starts to emerge.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Clegane]The Mortificator's are described as all having black skin as well, the normal kind, not the demonic. I sorta wanna get back into 40K, so many good memories, if only it wasn't so expensive.

Yeah, I know what you mean...though I left when they dumbed the fluff right down...ruined the franchise for me.

Inquisitor Mordecai Toth from Dawn of War is black.

Why is it that nearly all complaints about the 40K universe seem to come from people who have very little knowledge of it? Not all of them of course, but a lot, especially lately...

Admittedly the OP specified "all" people being white, which isn't true, of course, but the proportions of non-white people is quite noticeably small.

...

I would point out, though that some stories totally avoid the issue at all. Grey Knights by Ben Counter (one of his better ones, early on, before he ending up pumping them out for GW to stick their logos onto), for example, doesn't ever give physical descriptions of any Grey Knights at all, IIRC (beyond the "big, even for a marine" one, and some of notable age).

Now, that's not the same as including PoC, but it's a step up from everyone being specified to be Caucasian.

 

[Therumancer]

I have noticed something a little strange just from my surface perception on the 40k universe and I would like to have a question about it answered. I have noticed that ALL citizens of the Imperium of Man have been white European looking fellows. I guess I just find it odd that there is not one black, asian, hispanic, indian man anywhere. Maybe I'm just a Warhammer 40k noob (I did just get into the universe) but is there really only white Europeans inhabiting the Imperium or have I just not looked far enough into the universe?

Lol, you know I was watching some Anime set in the far future and it seemed like just about everyone was Japanese. I think something is wrong here...

In short, the troll is obvious, this kind of thing only becomes an issue when you pick on whites, and it's being done for that reason.

-

That said, it's been a while and there is a lot of contridiction about things over the years, but as I remember things way back in the distant pre-history before chaos messed up humanity's warp travel and it was colonizing worlds and such, humanity had itself come out
of a massive war that had almost wrecked earth, a war which pretty much pitted the East against West, with the US pretty much allowing itself to be absorbed into Europe in order
to fight a Pan-asian alliance. This ended with genocides being mentioned, though it never said which peoples were wiped out entirely with any specificness we can probably make some guesses based on the artwork.

A very basic version of what happened from then on was that humanity expanded after this dark age, accidently unleashed chaos (well actually it was the Eldar, but that's not supposed to be widely known) it tainted the warp and travel between systems, and most importantly destroyed FTL communications bringing about a "long night" situation where all of the millions of worlds occupied by humanity lost contact with each other and developed seperatly. Then due to heavy genetic engineering a superman was eventually created who was to other supermen what they were to regular humans, this guy was the emperor who pretty much started to turn the tide against chaos due to innate psychic baddassery before chaos turned another equally powerful superman on him (Horus), they pretty much kill each other, with the Emperor continueing to exist more or less as pure mind with enough lingering power to prevent chaos from totally sweeping everything away, and to allow people to continue to navigate the warp.

There is a lot more to it and a lot of "yeah buts" but that's basically it. The Space Marines were basically humanity's elite warriors who were descended genetically from the fighters who ended the warring on old Earth which is why many of the chapters can trace their lineage back to earth. If 99% of the Space Marines look caucasian, well that's where the gene seed is from, and also who is going to have colonized most of the planets.

I'm not a Warhammer 40k fan, mostly having read some of the books, and played the PnP game a bit (never been much into minatures). I have however been given a crash course in some aspects of the pre-history through the arguements of people who have been FAR more into than I have. Among them arguements about why you wouldn't see a high-tech samurai-themed Space Marine Chapter no matter how "kewl" it would be, just as why with the hatred of Nazis in Europe you'd never see a Nazi-themed one, which seems to be a recurring theme for a lot of people's personal minature armies for some bizzare reason. Basically if there ever were "Super Samurai Marines" they would have been on the other side, and thus died when humanity was united, and certainly never would have continued as a chapter.

Some people might be wanting to say "yeah... but" due to how politically incorrect this all sounds, but really I don't think there was anything paticularly vicious behind it to be honest. I mean when I look at a lot of Anime stuff (even if I'm not a huge anime fan anymore) I'm casually handed backstories where the entire Western World is trivialized or wiped out during the backstory, sometimes due to our own bumbling stupidity... if the creators even bother to try and justify the ethnic breakdown of the far future. Truthfully given the events of World War II, and the current rather unapologetic attitudes of the modern Japanese (which are incredibly racist and based on cultural superiority) that's probably far more disturbing than when you see it in western fiction with a culture that has tried to promote tolerance. I'm more willing to give western writers credit for something intended to be dark, or simply going with a concept, than expressing some kind of wish fulfillment fantasy via backstory.

The point here being that in the end it doesn't matter, and anyone who does care probably has issues they need to sort well beyond Warhammer 40k, or is intentionally trolling. Not being politically correct enough in fantasy is the most ridiculous thing there is.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Spoiler: snip

Lol, you know I was watching some Anime set in the far future and it seemed like just about everyone was Japanese. I think something is wrong here...

In short, the troll is obvious, this kind of thing only becomes an issue when you pick on whites, and it's being done for that reason.

-

That said, it's been a while and there is a lot of contridiction about things over the years, but as I remember things way back in the distant pre-history before chaos messed up humanity's warp travel and it was colonizing worlds and such, humanity had itself come out
of a massive war that had almost wrecked earth, a war which pretty much pitted the East against West, with the US pretty much allowing itself to be absorbed into Europe in order
to fight a Pan-asian alliance. This ended with genocides being mentioned, though it never said which peoples were wiped out entirely with any specificness we can probably make some guesses based on the artwork.

A very basic version of what happened from then on was that humanity expanded after this dark age, accidently unleashed chaos (well actually it was the Eldar, but that's not supposed to be widely known) it tainted the warp and travel between systems, and most importantly destroyed FTL communications bringing about a "long night" situation where all of the millions of worlds occupied by humanity lost contact with each other and developed seperatly. Then due to heavy genetic engineering a superman was eventually created who was to other supermen what they were to regular humans, this guy was the emperor who pretty much started to turn the tide against chaos due to innate psychic baddassery before chaos turned another equally powerful superman on him (Horus), they pretty much kill each other, with the Emperor continueing to exist more or less as pure mind with enough lingering power to prevent chaos from totally sweeping everything away, and to allow people to continue to navigate the warp.

There is a lot more to it and a lot of "yeah buts" but that's basically it. The Space Marines were basically humanity's elite warriors who were descended genetically from the fighters who ended the warring on old Earth which is why many of the chapters can trace their lineage back to earth. If 99% of the Space Marines look caucasian, well that's where the gene seed is from, and also who is going to have colonized most of the planets.

I'm not a Warhammer 40k fan, mostly having read some of the books, and played the PnP game a bit (never been much into minatures). I have however been given a crash course in some aspects of the pre-history through the arguements of people who have been FAR more into than I have. Among them arguements about why you wouldn't see a high-tech samurai-themed Space Marine Chapter no matter how "kewl" it would be, just as why with the hatred of Nazis in Europe you'd never see a Nazi-themed one, which seems to be a recurring theme for a lot of people's personal minature armies for some bizzare reason. Basically if there ever were "Super Samurai Marines" they would have been on the other side, and thus died when humanity was united, and certainly never would have continued as a chapter.

Some people might be wanting to say "yeah... but" due to how politically incorrect this all sounds, but really I don't think there was anything paticularly vicious behind it to be honest. I mean when I look at a lot of Anime stuff (even if I'm not a huge anime fan anymore) I'm casually handed backstories where the entire Western World is trivialized or wiped out during the backstory, sometimes due to our own bumbling stupidity... if the creators even bother to try and justify the ethnic breakdown of the far future. Truthfully given the events of World War II, and the current rather unapologetic attitudes of the modern Japanese (which are incredibly racist and based on cultural superiority) that's probably far more disturbing than when you see it in western fiction with a culture that has tried to promote tolerance. I'm more willing to give western writers credit for something intended to be dark, or simply going with a concept, than expressing some kind of wish fulfillment fantasy via backstory.

The point here being that in the end it doesn't matter, and anyone who does care probably has issues they need to sort well beyond Warhammer 40k, or is intentionally trolling. Not being politically correct enough in fantasy is the most ridiculous thing there is.

Not exactly true. Firstly, the Emperor was around long before all that...as in, you could bump into him "now".

Secondly, the terrible wars didn't occur until humanity had left the solar system and spread across the galaxy.

Thirdly, marines were created on Earth/the moon, by the Emperor as he began re-unifying humanity, but they recruit from planets all over the galaxy.

Fourth, you can have eastern themed chapters. The White Scars, as mentioned above, are mongolian themed.

Now, if the backstory had ever said that only Europeans had survived, that'd be fair enough, if perhaps hard to justify.

But it didn't. Humanity went out into the stars, all sort of existing (and new) ethnic groups have lived on their own isolated worlds before being brought back into the fold. It's stated in the fluff that humanity is extremely diverse...it's just that the writers almost always restrict depictions of the diversity to people who happen to be white, which is an unfortunate trend.

 

[Don Savik]

Salamanders are not african american, but yes, they are black skinned. They live on a volcanic planet.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Salamanders are not african american, but yes, they are black skinned. They live on a volcanic planet.

Be difficult to be African American when the US no longer exists as a political entity.

 

[funksobeefy]

The poster children for the hobby are the Ultramarines (Space Marines) and Cadians (Imperial Guard)who are mostly white, that is probably where that impression comes from. When you start to dig deeper, different ethnicity starts to emerge.

and the Ultramarines are more based off Mediterranean cultures.

OP: You have to look beyond skin color as being the bases of race, many defining cultures are represented in the 40k universe. Just because the skin is white doesnt make them all Anglo-saxon origin.

Cadians are based off contemporary military, that being British French American German etc etc. While the Space Wolves, also having white skin, are obviously based of Nordic traditions and Mordians (is that right?) are based off a Napoleonic style of dress and culture. The Vostroyan, are based of Russian and Eastern European cultures, while also being of white skin.

There is more to diversity then just skin color. Just look beyond skin color and you can see a rich diversity (if not all cliched) that is the 40k background

 

[eclipsed_chemistry]

Hey, since we're talking about Warhammer 40k anyways, can you guys recommend me some of the books from the Warhammer 40k universe? I'm trying to get into the series and I heard some if not most of the books are pretty good. What's a good starting point/better books in the series?

 

[ScreamingNinja]

I have noticed something a little strange just from my surface perception on the 40k universe and I would like to have a question about it answered. I have noticed that ALL citizens of the Imperium of Man have been white European looking fellows. I guess I just find it odd that there is not one black, asian, hispanic, indian man anywhere. Maybe I'm just a Warhammer 40k noob (I did just get into the universe) but is there really only white Europeans inhabiting the Imperium or have I just not looked far enough into the universe?

Lol, you know I was watching some Anime set in the far future and it seemed like just about everyone was Japanese. I think something is wrong here...

In short, the troll is obvious, this kind of thing only becomes an issue when you pick on whites, and it's being done for that reason.

-

That said, it's been a while and there is a lot of contridiction about things over the years, but as I remember things way back in the distant pre-history before chaos messed up humanity's warp travel and it was colonizing worlds and such, humanity had itself come out
of a massive war that had almost wrecked earth, a war which pretty much pitted the East against West, with the US pretty much allowing itself to be absorbed into Europe in order
to fight a Pan-asian alliance. This ended with genocides being mentioned, though it never said which peoples were wiped out entirely with any specificness we can probably make some guesses based on the artwork.

A very basic version of what happened from then on was that humanity expanded after this dark age, accidently unleashed chaos (well actually it was the Eldar, but that's not supposed to be widely known) it tainted the warp and travel between systems, and most importantly destroyed FTL communications bringing about a "long night" situation where all of the millions of worlds occupied by humanity lost contact with each other and developed seperatly. Then due to heavy genetic engineering a superman was eventually created who was to other supermen what they were to regular humans, this guy was the emperor who pretty much started to turn the tide against chaos due to innate psychic baddassery before chaos turned another equally powerful superman on him (Horus), they pretty much kill each other, with the Emperor continueing to exist more or less as pure mind with enough lingering power to prevent chaos from totally sweeping everything away, and to allow people to continue to navigate the warp.

There is a lot more to it and a lot of "yeah buts" but that's basically it. The Space Marines were basically humanity's elite warriors who were descended genetically from the fighters who ended the warring on old Earth which is why many of the chapters can trace their lineage back to earth. If 99% of the Space Marines look caucasian, well that's where the gene seed is from, and also who is going to have colonized most of the planets.

I'm not a Warhammer 40k fan, mostly having read some of the books, and played the PnP game a bit (never been much into minatures). I have however been given a crash course in some aspects of the pre-history through the arguements of people who have been FAR more into than I have. Among them arguements about why you wouldn't see a high-tech samurai-themed Space Marine Chapter no matter how "kewl" it would be, just as why with the hatred of Nazis in Europe you'd never see a Nazi-themed one, which seems to be a recurring theme for a lot of people's personal minature armies for some bizzare reason. Basically if there ever were "Super Samurai Marines" they would have been on the other side, and thus died when humanity was united, and certainly never would have continued as a chapter.

Some people might be wanting to say "yeah... but" due to how politically incorrect this all sounds, but really I don't think there was anything paticularly vicious behind it to be honest. I mean when I look at a lot of Anime stuff (even if I'm not a huge anime fan anymore) I'm casually handed backstories where the entire Western World is trivialized or wiped out during the backstory, sometimes due to our own bumbling stupidity... if the creators even bother to try and justify the ethnic breakdown of the far future. Truthfully given the events of World War II, and the current rather unapologetic attitudes of the modern Japanese (which are incredibly racist and based on cultural superiority) that's probably far more disturbing than when you see it in western fiction with a culture that has tried to promote tolerance. I'm more willing to give western writers credit for something intended to be dark, or simply going with a concept, than expressing some kind of wish fulfillment fantasy via backstory.

The point here being that in the end it doesn't matter, and anyone who does care probably has issues they need to sort well beyond Warhammer 40k, or is intentionally trolling. Not being politically correct enough in fantasy is the most ridiculous thing there is.

MAy want to re-check on that whole 'The Eldar made Chaos' theory again, brah.. Also, go on the wiki and read up if you want to know moar stuff. Because alot of your points aren't correct.