Nah, your analogy about the song company is way off. The song company equivalent would be getting accused of poor hiring practices then banning a bunch of offensive songs. Which would of course lead to a long discussion about those songs...AvalonAurora wrote: ↑3 years agoThe reason I used the word 'ashamed' is because WotC seems to have done this in reaction to a twitter post that called them out for various racist practices, particularly in hiring, and showed just one of the cards at the end, likely not so much as to complain about the card as to make a point that they were pointing out prejudice, and the card was Invoke Prejudice, and had that questionable gatherer number.robertleva wrote: ↑3 years agoWhy is it appropriate for WOTC to be ashamed but not the song companies that sell hate filled songs?
Art is SUPPOSED to be allowed to be offensive, it is one of our fundamental principles. We can dislike the art and condemn it as awful garbage, but you do not censor it.
Wizards then quickly responds by banning a bunch of cards including Invoke Prejudice, and it's unclear if they plan to adjust their other practices, or if this was just a panicked effort to appease a twitter mob to avoid negative press.
In the equivalent song company analogy, it would be the song company being called out for refusing to hire non-white staff for %$#%$#% reasons, then hiring white staff that were less qualified that proved those %$#%$#% reasons %$#%$#%, and and constantly tokenizing their relatively few black musicians they publish the music of while mistreating them, and then when called out on twitter, they respond by ending their contracts with maybe a third of their most obvious white artists who are known racists, who don't work directly for the company, but are licenced and such through them to make songs, and make a general, vague statement against racism and no real promises to treat black people better in hiring practices or treatment of their licenced artists, and do so in hopes of avoiding negative press and a twitter mob, and only because the timing involved large protests in general against racist stuff.
Art is certainly able to be offensive, and should be allowed to be, that doesn't mean all companies will consider it good policy to keep connected to it. Art can be a statement, and a statement can be made by rejecting art as well. Of course, if it was the government rejecting it, like, say, some country saying X-card is banned because it encourages or teaches Y to the populace, then that would be censorship and bad, or saying companies can't make anything (not just card games) that involve Z subjects, again, bad.
Unfortunately, in Wizards' case, while they're theoretically in their rights to do this and might be doing a possibly good thing in some situations, such as making it clear to racist players that they don't have their backs and want them out of mainstream magic play so that more minority players feel welcome there, it seems more like they're doing this as cover for other racist practices, and not even doing it completely or fairly, just throwing out minor example choices to make it seem like they are doing it, and leaving the option open to do more of it if enough of a twitter mob accrues regarding such.
I don't think many people really approve of what they are doing, but if they are, I, at least, think they should either do it all the way and fairly to all minority groups, or not at all, and either way, they should actually change their real problems like racist hiring practices.
Regarding the bolded part above. Just fyi the govt IS doing this right now by dismantling any statues / insignias / icons deemed offensive to whatever group. Be afraid.
