This is going to be a post about Race in Fantasy media.
I just wanted to get that out there, right off the bat, so we’re clear.
If you would like to get yourself a glass of wine, maybe a hot chocolate, and open your browser to a Wikipedia tab, I’ll wait.
I’ve been inundated with various questions, reasons, and exclamations on the topic of race and race relations in fantasy media. Mostly by people who – in my humble opinion – forgot to check themselves, and subsequently got wrecked.
I thought I would answer some of the most burning questions here. So buckle in, Marty, because we’re about to go back to the past.
“The author clearly intended for all of these characters to be white, based on the traditional mythology of the land”
Well, dust my buttons. Not unlike fictional characters, deities are intangible; they are also not human, and thus not at all bound to look like any one of us. Of course, you wouldn’t believe that if you consider classical depictions, like ancient sculptures and mosaics, a source. Keep in mind that most of classical canonical works in Rome and Greece were built on commission from the ruling class, that class mostly being White. Ergo, most of the depictions of legendary persons/deities, regardless of ethnography, were also as White.
Consider the following: as more and more scholarly research is conducted, it is being found that Roman based Madonna worship was actually founded on the assimilation of the Egyptian worship of the goddess Isis. Many Renaissance images of Mary with child harken back to Egyptian representations of Isis and her infant son, Horus. This may also be why Pre-Renaissance depictions of the Madonna sport dark pigmented skin.
Let’s also consider historical people of legend. Jesus, who is believed by many to have been very real and very human, was from a very specifically documented part of the world. Those of the class Jesus was purported to belong to (working class) had a very specific ethnic background, and it was certainly not John Tesh, or whoever that blonde Jesus is supposed to be hanging out in chapels across America. I mean, come on, folks, no one ever argues about Mohammed’s ethnicity.
Sixth and lastly, there is this thing called “whitewashing”. Unfortunately, a lot of our Western forebears were what we’d call racist imperialists. That means you, me, and everyone we know have to work extra hard to set right all that has been set wrong, protecting and keeping intact as many as possible pieces of cultures they tried to destroy.
Idris Elba (and his beautiful, perfect face) didn’t get cast as Heimdall just to come after your Greek, Roman, English, and Norse mythologies; those aren’t going anywhere, so don’t you go foaming at the mouth with worry. Besides, Fake Made Up Person I’m Addressing, there have been Black people in Scandanavia for as long as there have been Black people AND Scandanavia. And no, that doesn’t mean you can go and do a retelling of the Anansi tales with White people.
I know the Moors existed, I have seen ‘Black Knight’, but there weren’t any POC [People Of Color] in NORTHERN Europe during Hobbit Wizard Dragon times.
If you read further, you’ll get even more of a taste of how far and wide the African presence in Europe reached. There is also a vast amount of work written on the African presence in Europe during the Renaissance . The same goes for the Asian presence in Europe over time. Granted, part of this is just logic: the three continents are not very far apart, they all had advanced means of transport and resources, and if the Vikings can do it why not everyone else? Moors, Ottomans, and the spice trade didn’t just drop out of the sky one day – there had to be a foundation for all of their influences. We’re talking about real life, not The Sims Medieval Party Play Expansion Pack 5.
And let’s also remember, we’re talking about Hobbits, wizards, dragons, and magic. If we can suspend disbelief for that, I think we should be able to accept something that actually has some factual context.
Ok, fine Moxie, People Of Color were all over Europe during these times, but they COULDN’T have been part of a privileged class because RACISM.
"The Moorish Chief" Eduard Charlemont
False. The world is very old. Race, as it is seen now, (and the class issues that come with it) is a relatively modern concept. Inter- and intra-racial relations more than likely weren’t viewed the way we see them today. In fact, it is very possible that in ancient history there were times when race was not a sociopolitical issue at all. The Moors of Iberia, of course, are the most popular example. Moors did not signify a particular ethnic group; they were a diverse mix of Black Africans and Arabs, most of whom for several centuries made up the upper class of what are now Spain and Portugal. There is also scholarly evidence of and African presence among the papal line.
So no, Fake Made Up Person, having a POC at the round table, or even as queen, is actually more envelope-pushing now than it would have been when it actually happened.
Well, aren’t you going to say something about POC who actually are depicted in Fantasy media?
Granted, she's treated like a plot device and not an actual character. But, baby steps, I guess.
This post could be longer, but I’ve grown tired of discussing examples of ‘mysterious tradesmen from The Orient’, ‘tricksy street smart magicians from The Southern Continent’, slaves, and muscle men with swarthy skin who know nothing but how to rape murder and pillage. It’s boring, it’s false, and it’s been done.
Any more questions? Throw them in the comments.
Oh, and here’s a JSTOR style reading list in case you think I made all this up:
- African Presence In Early Europe
- Black Africans In Renaissance Europe
- Courtiers And Christians: The First Japanese Emissaries To Europe
- Africans And Asians: Histiography And The Long View Of Global Interaction
- Black Women In Antiquity
- “Black Rulers Of The Golden Age”: Egypt Revisited Vol. 10
This is so delicious. Thank you for posting, imma keep it bookmarked for future use against the types you’re schooling here.
Yeeesssssssssssssssssssssss, I would like to cosign the above and say this is indeed a delicious post, and one I will be directing people to in the future when they go all whiny at me for pointing this stuff out. <3
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I cannot love this post more.
Indeed Norse and Germanic paganism is no more “Norse” or “Germanic” than the Roman gods were “Roman” or the Greek gods “Greek,” and so on back and back to the beginning of civilization.
The Aesthir, the Vanir, and the whole bit reek of the anthropomorphic pantheons of the Mediterranean empire cultures. You might find Hilda Davidson’s work fascinating, which carefully pulls apart the threads of our modern sensibilities regarding Norse and Germanic paganism.
As a white, half-Scandinavian (Frisian) woman with no surviving spiritual tradition to turn to (only the the most scant archaeological scraps), I’ve been seeking out the pre-Roman threads of native European culture and let me tell you, it’s pretty damned difficult. When you get back to pre-Roman times, there’s very little to go on. Someday I hope to go to Sweden to visit those monuments that pre-date Romans and Christianity.
I think the only thing I can say is please be gentle. White people have been lost without a “mother” indigenous culture to look back to for over 2000 years. It’s exactly *why* “white culture” has been the primary tool of empire culture for the last 2000 years, acting like children having a temper tantrum, grasping for everything they can get a hand on, acting out their self-hatred and spiritual wounding on “others.”
Our ways are dead. Dead dead. Dead dead dead dead. Imagine the late 19th century for Native Americans and extend that on through centuries of bloodshed, spiritual repression, cultural morphology, and religious intermixing. What would the Native Americans have left? It’s only been a few hundred years, and only 180 years since things got REALLY bad.
So when you have white people trying to grab on to myths and ideas that are supposedly “theirs” (as much as Egyptian culture is “yours” or Roman culture is “Italian”), they just want connection with something higher, some kind of ancestral spiritual tradition. We all just want connection to Spirit, whatever that is (for atheists its usually just nature).
Wy binne alleman besibben,
We are all related,
Ora Uzel
That was a really long-winded way of saying you missed the point completely.
Ora,
To be honest, I did not see any unwarranted aggressiveness in Moxie’s tone in this post. I’d go as far as to say that I’m surprised at her restraint, even.
It was grossly unfair to bring up the systematic slaughter and genocide of Native Americans (and the systematic oppression they are still facing today), mostly due to the nature of how their culture was lost – forcibly taken, instead of being lost as in the case of white people.
While white people do not have a mother indigenous culture and spiritual tradition they can hearken to, they have been – and still are – the majority. In our modern day myths – comics, television, film, literature, and other media we consume, white people do not ever have to ponder why they have been rejected from participating, be it in fandom or in the making of these myths.
To be frank, this attitude of “please think of white folks’ feelings” is just as harmful as outright racism because it’s dismissive of a POC’s attempts at contribution and conversation and oblivious to privilege.
We at Geekquality try to understand our own privilege and look at things through the lens of those who are not in the majority or have the luxury of being in the default (sexually, racially, physically, etc). Thank you for voicing your perspective and bringing your experience to our conversation. We hope you also listened to ours as well.
Hi Ora!
Thanks for your apology downthread, and thanks also for your viewpoint. I do understand your feelings, as a Black American POC I run into much of the same issues re: not having a mother culture to look to. The African continent is a vast place with no two cultures sharing the same background, and unfortunately due to triangle trade and the ensuing diaspora, many Black identifying people across the world don’t have the first clue as to where they come from in a more ancient context, so many of us don’t even have the privilege of saying we know we are of German, Norse, or Swedish decent, because we simply do not know, and cannot know because for most of us there are no written records or true oral tradition due to our difficult history. And I don’t think this is something that many people consider when thinking about the topic. In fact, you brought up here the idea of Egyptian mythology being “ours” whereas in more recent history depictions of the Egyptians of myth and legend have been overwhelmingly whitewashed. For many of us, this shared global mythos is the only one we have, and I think we deserved to be represented in it as much as anyone. Fortunately in many cases for White identified individuals they can pick out their ancient familial bonds, and from these they can seek out and learn of ancient traditions be they cultural or religious that have still been kept alive (most, but of course, not all), sadly yes some of them have faded away, however, I think there is a big difference in knowing that those traditions have evaporated over time vs. knowing those traditions were forcibly taken away from a culture, and any remnants of such were denigrated for centuries afterward (which is the case for many POC in Western cultures, unfortunately). And since the mythologies used now in modern media are globally consumed, I think it is beneficial for them to represent their more diverse viewing audience, especially since many of those choices can also be supported in historical fact, as we see here. But, thanks again for your input, and I hope you keep reading and commenting! ~M
So, let’s recap: you used an ill-informed analogy about the systematic cultural and physical genocide of Native Americans by white people…to plea for sympathy for white people…on an article discussing the erasure of POC by white people.
I think you may have missed the part early on in the article discussing checking yourself so as not to wreck yourself, on account of you just wrecked yourself.
Sorry, I guess my point got off topic and moved to European history and religious/spiritual traditions rather than keeping to the main topic, as Moxie clearly put it: “This is going to be a post about Race in Fantasy media.” It’s about modern myths and the under-representation of POC in them.
Apologies for going off topic.