# Is this the beginning of the end?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-the-beginning-of-the-end/947060>\
**Category:** The BBQ Pit\
**Created:** [July 22, 2021, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-the-beginning-of-the-end/947060 "2021-07-22T15:36:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 29

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**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\
**Post date:** [July 23, 2021, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-the-beginning-of-the-end/947060/29 "2021-07-23T15:28:59Z")

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> [@mikecurtis](#):
>
> You don’t treat these people with respect because _they_ deserve it; you treat them with respect because _we_ deserve it. The rest of us deserve a place were ignorance is fought in a respectful manner.

Maybe, but I’m not sure that’s ever been this place. Whether a view deserves respect is, I think, on a continuum. [Someone hangs a noose on a construction site](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/07/22/noose-construction-industry-racism/), I don’t feel the need to show a ton of respect to their statement of their views. Someone lays out a case for why a specific approach to phonics instruction will result in superior teaching, even if I disagree, I’ll respect their views.

Similarly, _how_ someone expresses themselves matters. I got in some arguments with folks about whether old depictions of monsters in D&D had racist undertones. Compare these two posts, both of which disagreed with me. The first was disagreeing that orcs, in a specific painting, were drawing on traditions of racist depictions of Black people.

> [@D & D got woke and that's good because you should have all been playing that way (or not if you didn't prefer))](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-d-got-woke-and-thats-good-because-you-should-have-all-been-playing-that-way-or-not-if-you-didnt-prefer/933114/336):
>
> Coincidence? Not entirely. Fantasy art is very Eurocentric so it wasn’t by happenstance that the woman is white. That also means that most antagonists are going to fall darker than her on the spectrum.
> 
> The orcs are painted to look brutish. The Page natives are designed to make African natives look brutish. This doesn’t reverse engineer into “orcs must be Black people”, it just makes the Page artist a dick.

The second is disagreeing with me that the person who wrote about orcs was doing so in a racist fashion:

> [@D & D got woke and that's good because you should have all been playing that way (or not if you didn't prefer))](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-d-got-woke-and-thats-good-because-you-should-have-all-been-playing-that-way-or-not-if-you-didnt-prefer/933114/373):
>
> No one who knew him thought so. You read _one_ description of _one_ fantasy monster and conclude that he is racist. It is to laugh.

Both posters disagreed with me. I corresponded at length and courteously with one of them. The other one I pitted. Can you guess which was which?

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