You're kidding - orcs and trolls are "racist". How do they get connected to blacks?
In Tolkien, orcs and trolls were made to mock the races of Elves and Dwarves.
Among these races are the orcs, who are often characterized as a savage horde of creatures who lust for battle, and the drow, an evil dark-skinned subrace of elves who dwell in a subterranean matriarchy. Wizards of the Coast specifically addressed these two groups in laying out recent and future changes to D&D products:
We present orcs and drow in a new light in two of our most recent books, Eberron: Rising from the Last War and Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount. In those books, orcs and drow are just as morally and culturally complex as other peoples. We will continue that approach in future books, portraying all the peoples of D&D in relatable ways and making it clear that they are as free as humans to decide who they are and what they do. [...]
Later this year, we will release a product (not yet announced) that offers a way for a player to customize their character’s origin, including the option to change the ability score increases that come from being an elf, a dwarf, or one of D&D’s many other playable folk. This option emphasizes that each person in the game is an individual with capabilities all their own.
Wizards of the Coast also said it’s adjusting material that maligns or stereotypes real-world ethnic groups like the Roma. The company has revised the adventure
Curse of Strahd, which includes a people known as the Vistani that “echoes some stereotypes associated with the Romani people in the real world.” In addition, the publisher said two future books will be written with a Romani consultant so as to characterize the Vistani “in a way that doesn’t rely on reductive tropes.”
Curse of Strahd was one of two adventures, the other being
Tomb of Annihilation, in which the company changed “racially insensitive” text in recent reprintings. “We will continue this process, reviewing each book as it comes up for a reprint and fixing such errors where they are present,” said Wizards of the Coast.
Wizards of the Coast concluded by stating that it will work with a variety of “sensitivity readers” on future content and continue relying on “experts in various fields to help us identify our blind spots.” The publisher added that it is “seeking new, diverse talent to join our staff and our pool of freelance writers and artists.”
“ORCS ARE HUMAN beings who can be slaughtered without conscience or apology.” This damning
assessment of one of fantasy’s most ubiquitous villains comes from N. K. Jemisin, titan of modern fantasy and slayer of outdated genre tropes. As “kinda-sorta-people,” she writes, orcs are “fruit of the poison vine that is human fear of ‘the Other.’” The only way to respond to their existence is to control them or remove them.
What is an orc? To their creator, J. R. R. Tolkien,
they are “squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types.” More than half a century after Tolkien wrote that description in a letter, here is how Dungeons & Dragons describes the orc in the latest
Monster Manual, where all such demi-humans are relegated: “Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces.” Half-orcs, which are half-human and therefore playable according to
Player’s Handbook rules, are “not evil by nature, but evil does work within them.” Some venture into the human-dominated world to “prove their worth” among “other more civilized races.”
Genetic determinism is a fantasy tradition. Dwarves are miners and forgers. Half-orcs are rampageous. Elves have otherworldly grace and enjoy poetry. Dark elves, known as Drow, have skin that “resembles charcoal” and are associated with the evil spider queen Lolth. As both a ruleset and a fantasy backdrop, D&D is in the business of translating these racial differences into numerical scores: Dwarves get extra points when they try to hit something with a battleaxe. Elves get plus two dexterity. Half-orcs’ “savage attack” lets players reap extra damage off a critical hit. All because of their race.
Monkey's Paw Games creator Nicholas Masyk wants more racism in The Witcher TRPG after claiming orcs are racist.
boundingintocomics.com
A 2016 passage from a Dungeons & Dragons rulesbook has fans once again talking about a longstanding problem with how orcs are depicted in the tabletop game and other pieces of fantasy lore. Earlier today, the term “Orc” started trending on Twitter in the United States, as D&D and fantasy fans...
comicbook.com
A 2016 passage from a Dungeons & Dragons rulesbook has fans once again talking about a longstanding problem with how orcs are depicted in the tabletop game and other pieces of fantasy lore. Earlier today, the term "Orc" started trending on Twitter in the United States, as D&D and fantasy fans debated the issues surrounding the classic fantasy creature. The conversation started when Quinn Welsh-Wilson criticized a passage found in Volo's Guide to Monsters that noted that orcs could only develop a "limited capacity for empathy, love, and compassion." Welsh-Wilson prefaced their post with a "casual racism" trigger warning, which set off a heated debate over how orcs (and other fantasy races) are depicted in modern fantasy tales. This weekend's discourse surrounding orcs isn't exactly a new conversation, but it's one that's always worth discussing. There are two distinctive problematic elements to orcs: one that dates back to their origins in J. R. R. Tolkien's work, and one that reflects the wider issues surrounding race and ancestral origins in Dungeons & Dragons and similar fantasy games.
While orcs have their roots in goblins and other fairy tale creatures, the modern concept of orcs in tabletop games largely originates from Tolkien's
Lord of the Rings. As depicted in
Lord of the Rings, orcs are inherently evil humanoid creatures, and Tolkien described them in a letter as "degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least-lovely Mongol types." Coupled with the fact that Tolkien depicted entire cultures as being representative of good or evil, many viewed orcs as a reflection of the "Other," a philosophical concept used to paint entire cultures as being somehow inferior or evil because they were different.
Now, Tolkien noted in other letters that orcs were not meant to be representative of a particular culture of people, and that "orcs" could be found on both sides of any conflict along with genuinely good people. However, his depiction of orc culture as a monolithic society of evil, human-like creatures became a standard element in epic fantasy. Over time, various artists and authors used elements of various real-world non-European cultures when depicting orcs in books and other media, thus solidifying the idea that orcs were a reflection of non-European races, which is incredibly problematic.
While the above couple of paragraphs only summarizes why many people take issue with the depiction of orcs in general, it also touches on why many dislike how Dungeons & Dragons and other fantasy tabletop games deal with race in general. Dungeons & Dragons and many other fantasy games tend to describe races as monolithic entities that all share the same physical characteristics and cultural beliefs. This is reflected both in the racial attribute scores bonuses that each race gets in D&D as well as how they are described in passages like the one criticized by Welsh-Wilson. Many people see games like Dungeons & Dragons as codifying and normalizing the use of racial stereotypes, which leads to both racist situations in the gaming table and encourages racist attitudes getting adopted by some players. For instance, a player using the orc race found in Volo's Guide to Monsters means that they take a -1 penalty to their Intelligence score, which means that the smartest Level 1 orc will always be less intelligent than the smartest Level 1 human. When translated to real-world discussions about races and cultures, it can be easily argued that this pushes an incredibly racist and outdated viewpoint.
