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Lack of ethnic minorities in Roleplay

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Lack of ethnic minorities in Roleplay

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby boultinator93 on Tue Jun 17, 2014 4:20 am

Has anyone realized the lack of ethnic minorities (I say minorities because I live in the UK, it might be different for you). I've noticed over the past year that I have been roleplaying that there has been a large lack of asian, arabic an black characters in roleplays, expecially black and arabic. I've just wondered why that is especially because in the world we are in now ass most of the roleplays are set in either the USA or UK (unless in a fantasy setting) where both nations have hugely diverse populations where every ethnicity is represented yet the roleplays set in these countries tend to never have a black guy in it. The other strange thing is not just the fact that you dont see these minorites, its the fact that latino characters always make it into roleplays. Im not complaining about it, im just curious to know people thoughts on the matter and whether there are reasons behind it or if anyone has specific reasons personally you as a GM has chosen not to include those characters.

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Re: Lack of ethnic minorities in Roleplay

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby LawOfTheLand on Tue Jun 17, 2014 4:05 pm

Yes. Yes, we have.

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Re: Lack of ethnic minorities in Roleplay

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Saarai on Tue Jun 17, 2014 6:40 pm

What QB said, and as you'll see in that thread and others like it, boils down to stereotypes with a lot of users. They don't know how to write "black culture" or "Arab culture" or "Asian culture". What they mean is they don't want to write stereotypes, but the stereotypes are what they know.

Often they aren't the reality, which is something I don't think many of our users really understand. A black character doesn't have to "act black" no more than a white character has to "act white".

An Irishman can be sober, a Russian doesn't have to be a communist.
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Re: Lack of ethnic minorities in Roleplay

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Aniihya on Thu Jun 19, 2014 6:44 pm

Heh. And the funny part is I normally play either what I am related to (I am a mix of nearly everything except black or eastern Asian) or Japanese characters, yet everyone sort of makes black jokes around me because of me and everyone asks if I was really black. But I do not understand how I act black and if I really do then it is totally unintentional.
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Re: Lack of ethnic minorities in Roleplay

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Athena's Assassin on Fri Aug 08, 2014 8:20 pm

It's not just roleplay. It's the general culture that surrounds metal music and genre fiction - at least, that's how I see it. I became conscious of the trend a few years ago myself, and have since put effort into actively placing people of color and other 'minorities' into roleplays. Doesn't take much. :)

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Re: Lack of ethnic minorities in Roleplay

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Maestro on Fri Aug 08, 2014 11:38 pm

I'm not going to go into detail in this reply, but I just wanted to say that I HAVE noticed this. It's actually rather funny you bring that up because I was writing the other day and noticed someone created a character who was black. I was kind of awestruck because so very few people do that anymore. It really does seem like 99% of the characters are white. Some very interesting psychology going on here.

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Re: Lack of ethnic minorities in Roleplay

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby broheim on Sat Aug 09, 2014 1:24 am

You write what you know about.

Also, it's easier to just throw whites at everything, i just avoid that thing completely and make DEFINETILY not human characters.
I'm by no means a good player, i'm a bastard in every aspect. And i can't write for shit.

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Re: Lack of ethnic minorities in Roleplay

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Saarai on Sat Aug 09, 2014 3:51 am

People know about other ethnic groups and nations. I don't think that's a very good justification, or excuse, whatever you want to call it. We have RPs where people are playing Roman Legionaries, and samurai, and mythical creatures, ninjas, etc.

I don't think it's a stretch for someone to play an American who just happens to be black. Or a white guy who happens to be from Russia.

The kind of personality you want for a character or the role you want them to play in a story does not have to be tied to their ethnicity.

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Re: Lack of ethnic minorities in Roleplay

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby almostinsane on Thu Aug 14, 2014 12:47 pm

It all boils down to what you feel comfortable writing. I know someone who plays exclusively black female characters because she is a black female, though, she might play an Asian now and then.

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Re: Lack of ethnic minorities in Roleplay

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Marchie on Sun Aug 17, 2014 7:06 pm

To me writing is all about getting out of your comfort zone, though. I'm a white guy but I've played characters from all over the world and its led to learning a bit about different cultures too by researching how they'd act. It's just fun to me to play someone outside the norm for typical roleplays.

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Re: Lack of ethnic minorities in Roleplay

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby ibecameinsane on Sun Aug 17, 2014 8:10 pm

Marchie wrote:To me writing is all about getting out of your comfort zone, though. I'm a white guy but I've played characters from all over the world and its led to learning a bit about different cultures too by researching how they'd act. It's just fun to me to play someone outside the norm for typical roleplays.


almostinsane wrote:It all boils down to what you feel comfortable writing. I know someone who plays exclusively black female characters because she is a black female, though, she might play an Asian now and then.


Though it may seem like a biased response, I agree with the aforementioned posts. Personally, I'm more comfortable playing male roles despite the fact that I'm female. However, being that I am Caucasian, most of my characters are that way as well. It's almost a double-edged sword portraying a race that isn't your own. No one wants to offend anyone. It's also a Catch 22, if you think about it. If you're a Caucasian writer it's considered biased if you portray majorly Caucasian characters but if you're a writer of another race that plays majorly Caucasian characters then it's fine. Not to mention, it's very difficult to find minority FCs with gifs. If you're portraying a setting where gifs are necessary, Caucasian characters are just easier.

As of late, whenever I make a roleplay, I try to put minority face-claims in my cast and set a rule that the minority face-claims cannot be exchanged for Caucasian ones. Unfortunately, those characters don't get reserved as quickly as the others and are often times taken as a last resort or made into an NPC just to get the roleplay started. However, I think Saari has a point.

Saari wrote:What QB said, and as you'll see in that thread and others like it, boils down to stereotypes with a lot of users. They don't know how to write "black culture" or "Arab culture" or "Asian culture". What they mean is they don't want to write stereotypes, but the stereotypes are what they know.

Often they aren't the reality, which is something I don't think many of our users really understand. A black character doesn't have to "act black" no more than a white character has to "act white".

An Irishman can be sober, a Russian doesn't have to be a communist.


In my opinion, it boils down to why you're on the site. For me, I'm here to hone my writing. Do I take it seriously? Yes, I do. I invest a lot of time into my characters. When putting a character together, I don't look at his race, I look at his personality and history, things of that nature. He just turns out to be Caucasian because that's just what I'm used to. No person is defined by their race but there are differences in each one whether we want to regard them or not. No two races are exactly the same regardless of racial equality. As of right now, I'm writing for fun. Race is the last thing on my mind. So naturally I slip into my comfort zone.

Basically all I'm saying is this: my characters are Caucasian because I'm Caucasian and I got other shit to worry about than what race they are‏.
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Re: Lack of ethnic minorities in Roleplay

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Caged Bird on Wed Aug 27, 2014 12:43 am

Eloquently said ibecameinsane. I, myself, have no problem playing characters of another race/ethnicity, the stereotype thing actually doesn't concern me because logically you'd just play them as you would any other character, but what does make it difficult is the FCs and the amount of gifs that accompany them(For those of us who are gif crazy and love to see our characters in action). I may not be biased, but Hollywood sure is.

If I could divert from the racial example for just a moment, most of my characters are men, when I am, obviously, a girl. The reason for that is, whether we like it or not, society has a biased against women too(Don't even get me started on women of color because that's a double whammy). We have been conditioned to believe that men are the doers. They get things accomplished, so any driven or strong character to further develop or drive/push the plot should be a guy in our minds, and a white guy to boot.

When we create strong women, outside of Divergent or the Hunger Games themed RP's, we tend to see them as bitchy. The real world always infringes upon our thinking, pressures us, even when we don't realize it, against our own personal philosophies and beliefs. It's the same difference with minority characters.

So you get perfect Barbie girls, the white washed kind that Hollywood loves, but I digress male characters are victims of this too to a degree. Anyone ever see the Caucasian deadpan snarker badass deus ex machina trope being over used? I have, too many times. Always attractive and always very white.

Now we have come full circle. The problem here isn't people being uncomfortable playing characters of other ethnicities, the real issues is that we, along with the rest of society, are used to seeing one thing represented in books, media, or our favorite movies....attractive white people. People can't help it sometimes I think, or if they can get passed not being able to gif a character or not be influenced by everything Hollywood puts out, the other players almost always can't so they end up alienated or ostracized in the roleplay...which does not motivate them to produce more characters of the same persuasion.
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Re: Lack of ethnic minorities in Roleplay

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby kidcopious on Sun Aug 31, 2014 12:43 pm

I think its fun to play a different race, it just takes a lot of research to fill in little details that you would probably know off the top of your head if the char/ was based on your own background.

I like to open a bunch of wikipedia pages of inspirational cultures/ types of people/ weapons and tools when fleshing out a character

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Re: Lack of ethnic minorities in Roleplay

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby dealing with it on Sat Sep 27, 2014 7:09 pm

What needs to be censored? Would a "Book of Negroes" fan RP be copacetic?

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Re: Lack of ethnic minorities in Roleplay

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Aniihya on Sat Sep 27, 2014 7:12 pm

How about I make a roleplay involving ethnicities other than whites and asians? I don't want people saying that they would take part and then not take part. I need people who are really willing to participate and do it. I am not familiar with the "Book of Negroes" however, so I can't really do much with it.

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Re: Lack of ethnic minorities in Roleplay

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby dealing with it on Sat Sep 27, 2014 8:55 pm

Aniihya wrote:I am not familiar with the "Book of Negroes" however, so I can't really do much with it.
It's a book about slavery. I might also recommend Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" and Booker T. Washington's "Up From Slavery". I hunted my university's bookstore looking for history books about Africa, and there was almost criminal level of silence. I also looked for books about the Native Canadian experience, and it's the same. People can't or won't write about it.

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Re: Lack of ethnic minorities in Roleplay

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Saarai on Sun Sep 28, 2014 2:28 am

I've wanted to do RPs where most of the characters would have to be black or latino, but I kind of have doubs if I'd draw anyone based on that alone. It might be somewhat cynical to think that people would be turned off by having to play a black person, but...

I kind of think people would be turned off by that.

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Re: Lack of ethnic minorities in Roleplay

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Aniihya on Sun Sep 28, 2014 7:17 am

And since most on here are Caucasian, Latino (for me they count as white) or Asians, it might be hard to find someone who would actually play a black person

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Re: Lack of ethnic minorities in Roleplay

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Sara Whitley on Thu Oct 09, 2014 9:24 pm

Well, a lot of roleplaying comes from an older D&D kind of subculture, which deals primarily in medieval fantasy. This genre is generally meant to be understood as a medieval European subculture that embraces to a large extent its local mythology. Because high fantasy is so widely used, it's easy to relate to.

Another huge factor is probably that in Japanese cartoons, which provide a wide array of illustrations for character subsets to choose from, typically portray characters with Caucasian colors and features.
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Re: Lack of ethnic minorities in Roleplay

Tips: 0.00 INK Postby Saarai on Thu Oct 09, 2014 9:30 pm

People of color existed in Medieval Europe, more than you'd think, actually. As for Japanese cartoons, they aren't portraying characters with Caucasian colors and features. It's an aethstetic thing, most of the characters are explicitly Japanese unless otherwise stated or if the story is set outside of Japan.

For instance, Black Lagoon has white, black, Chinese, South American, Russian, etc characters. And they're drawn more realistically than characters in Pokemon.

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