Here are the cards in question for reference. So the consensus among the Magic community I've seen around this has mostly been mixed. The modal opinion seems to be "Huh?" which seems appropriate...
So the consensus among the Magic community I've seen around this has mostly been mixed. The modal opinion seems to be "Huh?" which seems appropriate to me. I really don't get what this is supposed to accomplish. This is something nobody was asking for--banning a bunch of old cards (mostly commons at that) that don't even see regular play--rather than addressing any of the staffing, hiring, or workplace/community culture issues people have been complaining about..
Most of these I have to strain pretty hard to see what's even problematic about it. Invoke Prejudice is definitely a "YIKES!" And I realize that "gypsy" has become understood to be something of a slur as well. Personally, I always thought that card was dumb because "pradesh" means "state" or "nation" in Sanskrit, which is kind of antithetical to the whole "gypsy" vibe. It seems like they pulled a word by looking at a map of India and didn't bother checking out what it meant, which is just lazy.
The rest don't seem specifically racist to me. I can imagine Crusade, Jihad, or Cleanse being props in a racist themed deck, but IMO that's on the deckbuilder moreso than the cards. Imprison I can see as it depicts a black man in chains, but I always saw that card art as being evocative of a style that is typically used to highlight the brutality of slavery rather than valorizing it. I have no idea what the deal with Stone-throwing devils is. It's supposedly an anti-Arab slur but I've never heard it before. I assumed I've had just about every anti-Arab/anti-Muslim/anti-Brown slur out there thrown at me by now, but I suppose it could be an archaic one?
My read on this is that it's something that happens when you don't actually have a diverse staff or people who even make a habit of listening to diverse perspectives. When they try to care, they end up reaching for fluffy symbolism or they overemphasize the perspectives of the most extreme POVs from random corners of the internet rather than thinking holistically or going through any kind of introspection.
It's similar to the Simpsons reaction to "The Problem with Apu." Apu was just a rhetorical device to point out how all-White writers rooms create otherizing and offensive depictions of minority groups and this ends up creating and reinforcing tone-deaf, disrespectful, or stereotypical views. But nobody was asking for them to get rid of Apu! They were asking to fix the underlying problems that created what was bad about the character. So it is with these cards. They're not that hurtful on their own, they're only hurtful or offensive insofar as they're a reminder that you guys suck at hiring or listening to people who don't look like you. If you would fix that nobody would care about the cards!
I know from talking to an Algerian friend that both Jihad and Crusade rubbed him the wrong way, because they way the power and the imagery are framed seem to fairly clearly suggest it's not just...
The rest don't seem specifically racist to me. I can imagine Crusade, Jihad, or Cleanse being props in a racist themed deck, but IMO that's on the deckbuilder moreso than the cards.
I know from talking to an Algerian friend that both Jihad and Crusade rubbed him the wrong way, because they way the power and the imagery are framed seem to fairly clearly suggest it's not just using the word as shorthand for something else (like you would with Frank Herbert's Butlerian Jihad), but rather is very specifically referring to the religious wars of old. And so it very much feels like continued misrepresentation or appropriation of something that holds a lot of important meaning to him and to others, for seemingly no good reason.
I think the stone throwing devils thing is supposed to be a reference to executions by stoning. It's also disappointing to see Crusade, Cleanse, and Jihad make this list, people have done the...
I think the stone throwing devils thing is supposed to be a reference to executions by stoning.
It's also disappointing to see Crusade, Cleanse, and Jihad make this list, people have done the orzhov color based race puns forever though. Maybe they should just remove white and black all together (says the RDW and izzet player).
The artist of the "Invoke Prejudice" card is apparently a neo-nazi and credited artist for more than a handful of Magic's early cards Ending quote from the first link: Sad that this was written in...
One could suspect that WotC would try to put this behind them, or maybe not keep assuring that it references white supremacy. Or at the very least not jokingly insert a neo nazi reference in Gatherer search today. Well, they certainly did. Invoke Prejudice has Multiverse ID 1488. Because of course it has. http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=1488. So there you have some unsettling old school trivia from the days when Magic was seen as an unhealthy influence because of the demons, and to say the least a baffling easter egg to still keep on the mothership.
Sad that this was written in 2018 and it took over 2 years for any action to be made.
The 1488 thing is just a coincidence. The card predates that number becoming a meme. The guy definitely was a White supremacist, however, though he wasn't out about it at the time.
The 1488 thing is just a coincidence. The card predates that number becoming a meme. The guy definitely was a White supremacist, however, though he wasn't out about it at the time.
For those questioning whether it's a coincidence - I believe Invoke Prejudice was created (and thus had its card ID created) in 1994. As far as I know, the 14/88 was released in 14 Words Press...
For those questioning whether it's a coincidence - I believe Invoke Prejudice was created (and thus had its card ID created) in 1994. As far as I know, the 14/88 was released in 14 Words Press which didn't even start until 1995.
For those interested in reading about what this 14/88 thing means and where it came from: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/david-lane...
My personal sense is that these actions are largely superficial, and low effort on the part of WotC. It borders on virtue signaling in the sense that the majority of these cards are irrelevant to...
My personal sense is that these actions are largely superficial, and low effort on the part of WotC. It borders on virtue signaling in the sense that the majority of these cards are irrelevant to 99.9% of those who still play MtG regularly today. For the 0.01% who own these cards and play with them, an even smaller subset of that population plays with them in sanctioned tournaments where the banning of these cards would be enforced. For those who want to play with these cards in unsanctioned play, they likely will continue to do so. In fact, for those who are overtly racist, or who choose to be edgy, WotC couldn’t have done a better job to empower such individuals than to identify a specific card pool that would be more valuable to them in perpetuating bigotry. For a segment of the population, these cards just became more valuable collector’s items.
But to that point, it should never have been published nor placed in the Gatherer. And for that we are sorry.
As far as taking down the card images from Gatherer, that seems like whitewashing to me. Is Invoke Prejudice a Magic: the Gathering card that was published by WotC? Yes. Is Gatherer intended as a comprehensive database and search engine for MtG cards? Yes. So, should it have been placed in Gatherer? I think the answer is clearly yes. If you think that you are somehow furthering the cause of justice and equality by expunging records of past racism, I’m not sure you really understand the current social and political issues that are the basis for the current protest movement. It makes me think that you are disingenuously exploiting the situation for PR purposes.
I’m always of the opinion that if you identify a mistake, it’s better to keep a public record of it so that others can see the mistake and see the correction, if any. Attempting to erase or hide the mere record of your mistakes makes it seem like you are more concerned with your image than with your actions. If the record shows you haven’t made the same mistake repeatedly, that is something you can let the record show. And I think that WotC’s record does show improvement as far as art direction. They’ve largely improved on this front with regard to representation of minorities in MtG art over time.
What would be a substantive decision that WotC could take that would go beyond virtue signaling and whitewashing Gatherer? Well, maybe make some real policy changes? Maybe initiatives that would address their company and community diversity? Maybe something beyond low-effort, PR stunts that shine a light on potentially problematic game pieces that most MtG players have never seen, and those who have had largely forgotten.
Yup! I was kind of trying to get at this with the Apu analogy. It seems very much like a company with problems incorporating diverse viewpoints decided they cared deeply about racism, gathered...
My personal sense is that these actions are largely superficial, and low effort on the part of WotC. It borders on virtue signaling in the sense that the majority of these cards are irrelevant to 99.9% of those who still play MtG regularly today.
Yup! I was kind of trying to get at this with the Apu analogy. It seems very much like a company with problems incorporating diverse viewpoints decided they cared deeply about racism, gathered their mostly White colleagues around a table, and tried to do their best impression of an SJW. It feels very much like what White people who never actually listen to other groups assume those groups might care about. And the fact that they always seem to default to these really superficial things suggests to me that, in their hearts, they probably think complaints about representation or diversity are fundamentally superficial and petty.
They're not really interested in incorporating these viewpoints of understanding what people are trying to say. When people bring up how tone-deaf or offensive cards like Invoke Prejudice are, the issue isn't that the card hurt them. It's that it's a tactless and shitty card that they wouldn't have printed if they did a better job of incorporating other viewpoints in their design process. The offensiveness of the card is a clue as to everything that was wrong or defective leading up to the creation of the card. Erasing the cards doesn't fix the problem, it just hides the clues.
Here are the cards in question for reference.
So the consensus among the Magic community I've seen around this has mostly been mixed. The modal opinion seems to be "Huh?" which seems appropriate to me. I really don't get what this is supposed to accomplish. This is something nobody was asking for--banning a bunch of old cards (mostly commons at that) that don't even see regular play--rather than addressing any of the staffing, hiring, or workplace/community culture issues people have been complaining about..
Most of these I have to strain pretty hard to see what's even problematic about it. Invoke Prejudice is definitely a "YIKES!" And I realize that "gypsy" has become understood to be something of a slur as well. Personally, I always thought that card was dumb because "pradesh" means "state" or "nation" in Sanskrit, which is kind of antithetical to the whole "gypsy" vibe. It seems like they pulled a word by looking at a map of India and didn't bother checking out what it meant, which is just lazy.
The rest don't seem specifically racist to me. I can imagine Crusade, Jihad, or Cleanse being props in a racist themed deck, but IMO that's on the deckbuilder moreso than the cards. Imprison I can see as it depicts a black man in chains, but I always saw that card art as being evocative of a style that is typically used to highlight the brutality of slavery rather than valorizing it. I have no idea what the deal with Stone-throwing devils is. It's supposedly an anti-Arab slur but I've never heard it before. I assumed I've had just about every anti-Arab/anti-Muslim/anti-Brown slur out there thrown at me by now, but I suppose it could be an archaic one?
My read on this is that it's something that happens when you don't actually have a diverse staff or people who even make a habit of listening to diverse perspectives. When they try to care, they end up reaching for fluffy symbolism or they overemphasize the perspectives of the most extreme POVs from random corners of the internet rather than thinking holistically or going through any kind of introspection.
It's similar to the Simpsons reaction to "The Problem with Apu." Apu was just a rhetorical device to point out how all-White writers rooms create otherizing and offensive depictions of minority groups and this ends up creating and reinforcing tone-deaf, disrespectful, or stereotypical views. But nobody was asking for them to get rid of Apu! They were asking to fix the underlying problems that created what was bad about the character. So it is with these cards. They're not that hurtful on their own, they're only hurtful or offensive insofar as they're a reminder that you guys suck at hiring or listening to people who don't look like you. If you would fix that nobody would care about the cards!
I know from talking to an Algerian friend that both Jihad and Crusade rubbed him the wrong way, because they way the power and the imagery are framed seem to fairly clearly suggest it's not just using the word as shorthand for something else (like you would with Frank Herbert's Butlerian Jihad), but rather is very specifically referring to the religious wars of old. And so it very much feels like continued misrepresentation or appropriation of something that holds a lot of important meaning to him and to others, for seemingly no good reason.
I think the stone throwing devils thing is supposed to be a reference to executions by stoning.
It's also disappointing to see Crusade, Cleanse, and Jihad make this list, people have done the orzhov color based race puns forever though. Maybe they should just remove white and black all together (says the RDW and izzet player).
Don’t this means that there is no consensus? Don’t mind me, I’ll see myself out...
The artist of the "Invoke Prejudice" card is apparently a neo-nazi and credited artist for more than a handful of Magic's early cards
Ending quote from the first link:
Sad that this was written in 2018 and it took over 2 years for any action to be made.
I was on the fence about this, but this is some real wack stuff. I'm glad they pulled Invoke Prejudice now.
The 1488 thing is just a coincidence. The card predates that number becoming a meme. The guy definitely was a White supremacist, however, though he wasn't out about it at the time.
For those questioning whether it's a coincidence - I believe Invoke Prejudice was created (and thus had its card ID created) in 1994. As far as I know, the 14/88 was released in 14 Words Press which didn't even start until 1995.
For those interested in reading about what this 14/88 thing means and where it came from:
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/david-lane
https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/1488
My personal sense is that these actions are largely superficial, and low effort on the part of WotC. It borders on virtue signaling in the sense that the majority of these cards are irrelevant to 99.9% of those who still play MtG regularly today. For the 0.01% who own these cards and play with them, an even smaller subset of that population plays with them in sanctioned tournaments where the banning of these cards would be enforced. For those who want to play with these cards in unsanctioned play, they likely will continue to do so. In fact, for those who are overtly racist, or who choose to be edgy, WotC couldn’t have done a better job to empower such individuals than to identify a specific card pool that would be more valuable to them in perpetuating bigotry. For a segment of the population, these cards just became more valuable collector’s items.
As far as taking down the card images from Gatherer, that seems like whitewashing to me. Is Invoke Prejudice a Magic: the Gathering card that was published by WotC? Yes. Is Gatherer intended as a comprehensive database and search engine for MtG cards? Yes. So, should it have been placed in Gatherer? I think the answer is clearly yes. If you think that you are somehow furthering the cause of justice and equality by expunging records of past racism, I’m not sure you really understand the current social and political issues that are the basis for the current protest movement. It makes me think that you are disingenuously exploiting the situation for PR purposes.
I’m always of the opinion that if you identify a mistake, it’s better to keep a public record of it so that others can see the mistake and see the correction, if any. Attempting to erase or hide the mere record of your mistakes makes it seem like you are more concerned with your image than with your actions. If the record shows you haven’t made the same mistake repeatedly, that is something you can let the record show. And I think that WotC’s record does show improvement as far as art direction. They’ve largely improved on this front with regard to representation of minorities in MtG art over time.
What would be a substantive decision that WotC could take that would go beyond virtue signaling and whitewashing Gatherer? Well, maybe make some real policy changes? Maybe initiatives that would address their company and community diversity? Maybe something beyond low-effort, PR stunts that shine a light on potentially problematic game pieces that most MtG players have never seen, and those who have had largely forgotten.
Yup! I was kind of trying to get at this with the Apu analogy. It seems very much like a company with problems incorporating diverse viewpoints decided they cared deeply about racism, gathered their mostly White colleagues around a table, and tried to do their best impression of an SJW. It feels very much like what White people who never actually listen to other groups assume those groups might care about. And the fact that they always seem to default to these really superficial things suggests to me that, in their hearts, they probably think complaints about representation or diversity are fundamentally superficial and petty.
They're not really interested in incorporating these viewpoints of understanding what people are trying to say. When people bring up how tone-deaf or offensive cards like Invoke Prejudice are, the issue isn't that the card hurt them. It's that it's a tactless and shitty card that they wouldn't have printed if they did a better job of incorporating other viewpoints in their design process. The offensiveness of the card is a clue as to everything that was wrong or defective leading up to the creation of the card. Erasing the cards doesn't fix the problem, it just hides the clues.