WotC bans cards for racism

[Pittplayer]

So I guess, you cant target or destroy black cards anymore? As a Pox player, I am actually fine with that. Carry on WOTC.

[Rune]

Is there something specific people refer to when they talk about racism in WotC? I’m not aware of the context there.

It's a Twitter thing. I think it started out with the recent BLM protests, and then WotC engaged in some cringy tokenism by showing off the few black employees/players they have. WotC's BS got called out and people were generally pretty angry. These tweets are probably the biggest ones that should explain it

https://twitter.com/zbeg/status/1269962379925708801

https://twitter.com/LawrenceHarmon/s...55676150820872

These recent bannings are basically WotC being in full damage control.

I don't know about WotC being "an unequivocally racist company", as Zaiem Beg says. It seem like quite a stretch, unless there's some hard evidence I missed. The most damning thing I noticed when skimming those documents was Invoke Prejudice with card id 1488 being left up for so long. All the other stuff seems very circumstantial.

[Fox]

I can't agree with this. Bad art is still art and deserves the same protections, even iif it was in poor taste at the time of creation.

Watch Song of the South. Yeah the song “Zipadee-do-dah...my oh my what a wonderful day” is kinda catchy, but we remind ourselves not to sing that b/c that movie is racist. Michael Jackson has some catchy songs too, but you really shouldn’t be playing those in public either - certainly not around children.

Magic’s age recommendation isn’t 18+, it takes time for children to develop complex [adult] views. Some card names and/or art is inappropriate for minors, and it doesn’t look great for the game when a parent sees their kid playing with a card whose art features Klansmen or the title Disruptive Student with a clearly racist caricature.

While banning Cleanse in a fantasy setting with Paladins is kind of a stretch, the embarrassing thing here is the timing coinciding with the mass BLM protests. The timing puts this somewhere between cowardly and insincere, regardless it’s long overdue.

[Purple Blood]

I applaud WOTC for making an effort to be involved in social justice, it's awesome. I think they are smart enough to realize they know where the line is for being offensive.

How is this worth of applause? How is this doing anything to further social justice? None. It's pandering / virtue signaling at its finest. This does nothing for anyone other than as an advertisement by Hasbro saying "look how woke we are guys! Now please ignore the fact that we seem to have racist hiring policies."

[phonics]

I feel like this is incredibly silly but I guess WOTC believes this sacrifice will satisfy the angry mob.

[Purple Blood]

I feel compelled to point out that bigotry and racism are different though commonly overlap. The reason destroying all white creatures is not racist is because the dominant cultural force is designed and enforced to benefit white people.

Hating white people could be considered bigotry, but a system of oppression that benefits whites is racism against all people that don't fit that box.

I hope you understand the difference between the MTG colors and racial groups. I'm really trying to understand what you wrote but it almost reads as satire to me. Is your position that moving forward WOTC shouldn't print black hate cards? I just truly don't understand. If that's your position then lets just errata all white cards to yellow and all black cards to purple and be done with this.

Even though I may not agree with censorship, I can at least understand banning a card that appears to depict the KKK and is apparently drawn by a Neo Nazi. And sure, ban the cards with racial slurs in their name. Anything beyond that is just nonsensical.

[Tobitzki]

Banning Invoke Prejudice was way overdue. I've been avoiding Harold McNeal art in general (which I used to love before learning about him) and wouldn't mind WotC removing all of it. An avowed Neonazi is still on a different scale from, say, Terese Nielsen's rightwing/pro-Trump statements.

The above conversation about pro-white or white-on-black hate cards vs. tribal hate is interesting to me. The former shouldn't be dismissed too quickly. I agree e.g. that in Cleanse, enough divergent factors converge to make the association fairly commonsensical. On the latter point, a card like Plague Engineer makes me pretty uncomfortable: that's a dude working towards genocide with some kind of gas dispenser, in the name of "progress." That probably shouldn't see print in 2019.

[Pittplayer]

Banning Invoke Prejudice was way overdue. I've been avoiding Harold McNeal art in general (which I used to love before learning about him) and wouldn't mind WotC removing all of it. An avowed Neonazi is still on a different scale from, say, Terese Nielsen's rightwing/pro-Trump statements.
The above conversation about pro-white or white-on-black hate cards vs. tribal hate is interesting to me. The former shouldn't be dismissed too quickly. I agree e.g. that in Cleanse, enough divergent factors converge to make the association fairly commonsensical. On the latter point, a card like Plague Engineer makes me pretty uncomfortable: that's a dude working towards genocide with some kind of gas dispenser, in the name of "progress." That probably shouldn't see print in 2019.

Absolutely. They should really get rid of any suggestion of death, violence, evil, war, etc. Maybe make the game...idk...more about catching creatures and training them to compete in sports! The Planeswalkers could be the trainers, and you go to different worlds and train different creatures to compete in different sporting events!

[Whoshim]

On the latter point, a card like Plague Engineer makes me pretty uncomfortable: that's a dude working towards genocide with some kind of gas dispenser, in the name of "progress." That probably shouldn't see print in 2019.

I think that some evil creatures and spells are going to have to be accepted in order to play a game involving conflict. We have demons and such in this game. There cannot only be good guys. (In a universe like Warhammer 40k, everyone is a bad guy.) This sort of issue also comes up in wargaming. When playing a game about WWII, some player is going to have to play as the Nazis or Imperial Japan. Axis and Allies will have 3 players on the Allies (though there will be fights about how many are good). 2 players will be playing the Axis powers. I, personally, find the actions undertaken by Germany, Japan, and the USSR abhorrent, and there are a number of problems with the UK and USA (Dresden, for example). However, I can play and enjoy the game, even when I am the bad guys. I can be happy when I win as the Axis, even though that would have been horrible had it occurred in real life.

I guess we all have a different place where we draw the line. I do not want the KKK in MtG, but a random evil non-human creature bent on genocide is fine with me.

[Humphrey]

Absolutely. They should really get rid of any suggestion of death, violence, evil, war, etc. Maybe make the game...idk...more about catching creatures and training them to compete in sports! The Planeswalkers could be the trainers, and you go to different worlds and train different creatures to compete in different sporting events!

Sounds great. Magicmon(ster), the wokening

[Mr. Safety]

This was a good read:

https://mobile.twitter.com/merfolkma...jWTYtHT2JEkano

[jmlima]

This is a monumental can of worms.

'Culturally offensive' is even dicier ground. The depiction of demons and magic rituals is culturally offensive to some. Are they going to ban them?

Are they going to ban every single card that mentions 'dwarf'? There's 13 cards with the mention of slave, enslave or slaver. Are they going to be banned? ('Enslaved dwarf' is the archetypical example of this)

There's 3 cards called 'conquistador'. For some cultures they were genocidal maniacs. Are they going to be banned?

Problem with this things is that, if you are doing it seriously, you cannot pick and choose what's offensive, but take a broad approach at the subject. If you get to pick and choose what you as a company think is offensive, then you are not doing it seriously.

[Barook]

The above conversation about pro-white or white-on-black hate cards vs. tribal hate is interesting to me. The former shouldn't be dismissed too quickly. I agree e.g. that in Cleanse, enough divergent factors converge to make the association fairly commonsensical. On the latter point, a card like Plague Engineer makes me pretty uncomfortable: that's a dude working towards genocide with some kind of gas dispenser, in the name of "progress." That probably shouldn't see print in 2019.

The whole black people = black creatures = demons/foul beasts association is rather questionable in itself.

The problem with the Cleanse ban is that it's a slippery slope. We have had the argument in this thread about an ethical cleanse. That's fair and worth a discussion. But no matter how people spin it, all arguments that can be applied to Cleanse can also be applied to Purge. I'd love to hear how an ethical purge (targeting black) is any better an ethical cleanse.

Now show this card to an outsider who doesn't play the game and ask if this card is racist:

[Whoshim]

I agree with Barook about Cleanse, and, to me, it looks like the arguments against Jihad and Cleanse mean that the following card should be banned:

[Humphrey]

rip him for sure

[mistercakes]

I don't think that WotC is on a mission to ban every card that can be referenced in a negative way. Cleanse is easily the troublemaker of the group as it is the most difficult to understand why the banned it, and they should very likely provide some kind of reasoning why this is banned and not X other cards.

If they want to make a hard stance on separation of religion and magic, this is also fine by me and likely most people. When I was young I really liked all the cards that at times gave it less of a fantasy tone, but Hasbro is trying to open the market to as many people as possible, not limit it. That's always going to be a consequence of big business. That twitter thread has a good explanation of why cards like Crusade are selected and Honor the Pure are not.

I would have liked to see Tempest CoP: Black banned over Cleanse. In any case, banning these cards has little to no impact and if they want to remove the cards from gatherer that is up to them.

If there are cards impacted by these decisions that see a large amount of competitive play, then this will require some additional considerations as it will actually impact how much product is being purchased.

-rob

[Mr Miagi]

I find this whole situation all intresting, worrying, baffling and to a degree repulsive. In current times we have far more political (racial) corectness (which often times itself is using opressive tools), we we do every thing (even leaning to nonsensical) to avoid offending somenbody/some group, we try to be as neutral as wel can, yet the reality we live in is far more psychotic than the world of 90s where people were much more robust and relaxed in attidude, humor, depiction, communication to others (/other groups). A lot more has been said, depicted that would just not be acceptable by today's norms but people and whole climate was a lot more chill. It's almost like living in space where overall anxiety rules the world creates more problems than some questionable art from the 90s MtG card.

Crazy world

[jmlima]

I don't think that WotC is on a mission to ban every card that can be referenced in a negative way. ...

Then they are not being serious in their intent. This is not a matter of grades, you are either doing it, or you are not doing it. Irrespective of people's feelings about this, there are very clear cut standards set-out by governments worldwide on these matters. If at some point you decide, ok, I'm no longer comfortable with the content of the game I'm selling and I'm going to ensure that racial or culturally offensive cards are out, then you need to take a broad brush and remove all of them. I go back to cards like the 'conquistador'. They are very specifically culturally offensive figures to millions of people. I mean, they erased whole civilizations from the face of the planet for racial and religious reasons. Why are they staying? This is the slippery slope that doing an half-arsed attempt to look good can lead you to.

[Humphrey]

Well i guess wotc is just overly cautious to not risk a pr desaster if some random leftist pulls a stunt with those cards. Also there was not much public interest of that topic up until recently, so i doubt conquistador gets the axe anytime soon, unless some native american get choked to death by officials. rip anti red cards then?

[Humphrey]

I find this whole situation all intresting, worrying, baffling and to a degree repulsive. In current times we have far more political (racial) corectness (which often times itself is using opressive tools), we we do every thing (even leaning to nonsensical) to avoid offending somenbody/some group, we try to be as neutral as wel can, yet the reality we live in is far more psychotic than the world of 90s where people were much more robust and relaxed in attidude, humor, depiction, communication to others (/other groups). A lot more has been said, depicted that would just not be acceptable by today's norms but people and whole climate was a lot more chill. It's almost like living in space where overall anxiety rules the world creates more problems than some questionable art from the 90s MtG card.

Crazy world

That was before the echo chambers of "social" media