"You're just as bigoted as they are!"

In My Humble Opinion
1

I realize this may turn into a discussion about liberals, tolerance and intolerance toward intolerance. That’s not what this thread is about - not that application of it, anyway.

I’m a nerd. I’m a pro wrestling fan. As a nerdy pro wrestling fan, I e-fed - that is, I participate in a completely imaginary wrestling promotion in which I create a fictional character, decide how he wrestles and participate in his storylines by writing what he says and does.

E-feds often draw two types of writers - 12-year-olds and fiction writers of various talent levels. The fiction writers tend to be more interested in the character development than in the wrestling. As such, e-feds see a lot of characters that are interesting or that attempt to be edgy. Occasionally, someone who’s either very talented or under the impression that he is will attempt to write a racist character in a way that he deems “tasteful” (generally attempting to make him out to be a face [“good guy”] in his own mind).

This never goes well.

Occasionally, when discussing the rule that most e-feds have against racist characters and storylines, someone will step up to try to defend allegedly-tasteful racist characters. These generally follow the same lines every time - “Racism happens in real life, and art is supposed to imitate life”; “OMGZ FREE SPEECH”; and, inevitably, “If you won’t allow racist characters, you’re a bigot. You’re just bigoted against bigots.”

This bothers me, because it accomplishes exactly what they want it to - it makes me doubt the actual reasoning behind my support of the rule. It’s generally true, yes, that it’s impossible to do a tastefully-racist character, and doing a character like that will turn off a lot of people who see e-fedding as more a place to screw around for fun than a place to try to create art. ::raises hand:: However, we do allow other types of potentially offensive characters, and really, the support of the no-racists rule tends to be based on grounds of “racism is bad, mkay?” As a guy who helps run an e-fed, I have to say that I’d be very, very reluctant to allow a racist character, though it’s hard to say on what grounds.

But I’m babbling. My question is, is there a compelling way to get around the argument that prejudice against bigotry is by definition still prejudice? I realize that not all prejudices are necessarily bad, and that as one of the guys promulgating the rules I don’t really owe anyone an explanation, but in dealing with something so significantly less than cosmic than e-fedding, is there a simple way to break down why racism being Bad means that we leave it out of the fed when we allow other somewhat-bad personality quirks to be the basis of a character?

2

If everything within a group has attribute X then it is not predudice to say that the group has attribute X.

If every “story with a racist character” has attribute “this story sucks and annoys people” then there is no preduice in saying that “stories with a racist character suck and annoy people” .

I’d say for particular hot topic subjects allow writers to provide them to some moderating group for appraisal, but let that group be arbitrator of whether the story is distributed to a larger group, or at least distributed with warnings over contents. I would have issue if racist characters were dissallowed in a carte blanche ruling, whilst rapist/paedophile/necrophiliac/gay-bashing characters were allowed without constraint, just because that would seem lop-sided.

3

To show the point I tried to make a little clearer. I don’t think it would be racist to say that “black people have darker skin than I have”. Since generally albino suffering people have darker skin than me :wink: it is a statement that is true in vastly majority of if not all cases and so can’t be considered bigoted (which would require some incorrectness and or missrepresentation to exist within the statement).

4

It’s a matter of skill. A good writer can write a bigoted character; a bad writer won’t be able to, even if the character is supposed to be a parody of a bigoted character.

The big problem is recognizing skill (don’t ask the writer – bad writers always think they’re writing is good.

If you want it easy, just make a rule against bigoted (including gay bashing, etc.) characters and stereotypes. If you want to make a judgment call, though, you’ll have to do it for every instance, and will always be questioned: “Why did you ban my character and not his?” No one writing will like to hear the answer: “Because his is better written.” Still, it would give more variety to your simulation.

5

I’d just make a rule that characters that cause disruptive trouble to the actual point of the activity are not allowed. If you have to ban all bigoted characters in order to enjoy your game, then so be it. People who want more freedom may start their own e-fed.

Yes, you are prejudiced towards prejudice. How is this bad? Societies have rules, and things that they have to judge. Total non-judgmentalism does not work if you’re trying to run a society. In general, we have judged racism (along with stealing, murder, sexism, and other things, often but not always of a criminal nature) to be a bad thing. You have to draw the line somewhere, and that is the place. Many people draw their lines in slightly different places, which is why we have an argumentative society IRL, but in your mini-world, those are the rules.

6

“Prejudice against bigotry”? What, like “biased against sour”?

Prejudice is a (pre-judgemental) behavior that is applied to things (nouns). “Prejudice against bigotry” doesn’t make sense, IMO. And claiming “you’re bigoted against bigots” works only if you apply bigotry against all bigots, regardless of their behavior. If a bigot follows the same rules of decorum as everyone else, and you treat him the same as everyone else, then the charge is false.

The simple solution would be to draft a list of what is/isn’t unacceptable behavior/traits/characteristics for your fictional wrestlers. Characters violating those rules get booted, no ifs, ands, or buts. On the other hand, if someone wants to write a racist fascist hero around those rules, then you’re bound to let them stay – which is a good motivation to make those rules ironclad and umambiguous.

Alternately, go with the GameMaster rules – “What I say, goes.” :smiley: Just be prepared to stick by your rulings.