Cards Banned for Depicting Racism

[Outcryqq]

Announcement today (6/10/2020) from Wizards:
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2020-06-10

Announcement bans the following 7 cards in sanctioned play for depicting racism, whether via their art or card text. Also removes their images from Gatherer.

• Invoke Prejudice
• Cleanse
• Stone-Throwing Devils
• Pradesh Gypsies
• Jihad
• Imprison
• Crusade

In addition, the multiverse ID number for Invoke Prejudice will be changed.

[AvalonAurora]

So are these going to be banned?

Goblin Brigand
Goblin Bookie
Goblin Racketeer
Goblin Settler
Goblin Smuggler
Rummaging Goblin
Hoarder's Greed
Lethal Vapors
Arms Dealer
Agent of Horizons
Audacious Thief
Bane Alley Blackguard
Boggart Forager
Corpse Hauler
Goatnapper
Harbor Bandit
Noggle Bandit
Noggle Ransacker
Stinkdrinker Bandit
Thieves' Fortune
Treasure Nabber
Warren Pilferers
Tivadar's Crusade

Because, yeah, certain negative stereotypes and horrible events and such...

Edit: Adding more context on request:
A lot of these cards involve greedy large nosed beings, including goblins and thieves and the like, which ties into antisemitic stereotypes and are used by antisemitism to make theme decks that poke fun at Jews in particular. Goblin Settler rather than so much greed focus as the 'justifying' things based on Israeli settlers. Corpse Hauler related to stuff blaming Jews for the death of Jesus and conspiracy theories about them stealing Christian corpses. Tivadar's Crusade with pretty obvious connotations if you consider goblins a euphemism for Jews. Lethal Vapors because of gas chambers from the Holocaust and acting like it was a good thing. This stuff wouldn't normally have caught my attention if it weren't for stumbling upon this kind of misuse. Prejudiced people tend to read their own prejudices into hobbies and screw things up for everyone, or in some cases push it in more blatantly, like what has happened with Invoke Prejudice among the actual bans from Wizards.

Honestly, a lot of the historical prejudice against Jews has been tied into actual goblin legends, but I won't blame Wizards for having goblins at all because of that, even if I'd prefer at least that they could avoid the large nosed and hooked nose types of them more, but some of the more blatant examples of goblins with more Jewish sterotype sort of noses involved with negative Jewish sterotypes tend to be an issue. If you went as far as go against all goblins for association with negative Jewish sterotypes, you'd probably have to do stuff like ban all orcs for whomever you decide Tolkien was basing them on in the context people like tying into LotR with the World Wars, or a lot of other fantasy races whose origins are tied into racial sterotypes and fear of foreigners and stuff, or things like the barbarian type due to the history behind the term.

Still, I think the low hanging fruit like I listed here should have a better eye kept on them and be considered for similar treatment as Wizards recently did linked in the OP.

Along with some other stuff related to mistreatment of other minorities and displays of real world prejudices of course.

[The Fluff]

this is a surprise. These cards have been around for a long time already.

why only now?

[AvalonAurora]

this is a surprise. These cards have been around for a long time already.

why only now?

They got called out bad for racism on twitter with lots of proof and things like a MaRo quote where he's being racist against Indians in regards to a Kaladesh card and rumors of racism in hiring practices and stuff, combined with current events.

[The Fluff]

thanks for the info.

although I'm still a bit surprised. How mecha world of Kaladesh even related to indians? I don't remember someone in the story looking like an indian.

[AvalonAurora]

thanks for the info.

although I'm still a bit surprised. How mecha world of Kaladesh even related to indians? I don't remember someone in the story looking like an indian.

It was about a vehicle with P/T 7/11, and Maro making it clear that it was a reference to Indians working there, which was a major racist sterotype that people used to use a lot towards immigrants from India in the US, to the point there's even a Simpsons character Apu built around the sterotype. Kaladesh had fantasy India themes, including some of the naming conventions and the features of some of the characters and some of the art design.

[The Fluff]

oh, I see now, it's people from India Misunderstood at first, I thought the word "indian" referred to indian tribes in america.

at least now I know Consulate Dreadnought is offensive to some people.

[AvalonAurora]

oh, I see now, it's people from India Misunderstood at first, I thought the word "indian" referred to indian tribes in america.

at least now I know Consulate Dreadnought is offensive to some people.

People thought it was a coincidence at first, but then MaRo opened his mouth and made the connection to the store clear, I can't remember if it was in an article, or in Blogatog.

[rudejohn]

Complete nasty %$#%$#%. Invoke Prejudice is supposed to be a cautionary tale AGAINST racism. Banning the card is a measure of cowardice and takes away the intention of the card. Fear-mongering should not rule this world, and Wizards of the Coast is pandering to a garbage demographic.

[AvalonAurora]

Complete nasty %$#%$#%. Invoke Prejudice is supposed to be a cautionary tale AGAINST racism. Banning the card is a measure of cowardice and takes away the intention of the card. Fear-mongering should not rule this world, and Wizards of the Coast is pandering to a garbage demographic.

Not from the perspective of the artist of that card, you might want to look up some of the other threads and info about that. They don't seem to recognize that prejudice is supposed to be a bad thing.

[freelunch]

I always thought Invoke Prejudice was meant to be social commentary about the evils of racism, particularly since the hooded men are wearing black instead of white.

That said, I also didn't know anything about the artist up until a few days ago. My first impression was clearly wrong given the additional context. I'm happy to have been proven wrong on it too. Shame about losing the effect of the card, but it really should have been ousted long ago (especially given that this card seems to have been pretty well known for its content and creator).

[Card Slinger J]

Kinda surprised no one brought up Waylay since the artwork and flavor text are both racist toward Native Americans.

[robertleva]

This is the worst possible move they could have made. Invoke Predjudice image was a stretch but ok fine delete it and ban it if you have to, But Crusade and Cleanse have NOTHING WRONG WITH THEM! By banning them you MAKE them racist in a way they were NEVER intended to be. Now you have actually added a racial component to the magic color pie. WHY WHY WHY would you EVER imply that black creatures means black men???

And what does this mean going forward, are we not allowed to have certain buffs to white creatures now? Crusade is gone but Bad Moon is fine because White Creatures have it had too good for too long??

[folding_music]

This is the worst possible move they could have made. Invoke Predjudice image was a stretch but ok fine delete it and ban it if you have to, But Crusade and Cleanse have NOTHING WRONG WITH THEM! By banning them you MAKE them racist in a way they were NEVER intended to be. Now you have actually added a racial component to the magic color pie. WHY WHY WHY would you EVER imply that black creatures means black men???

And what does this mean going forward, are we not allowed to have certain buffs to white creatures now? Crusade is gone but Bad Moon is fine because White Creatures have it had too good for too long??

that's not what they're saying; it's not the mechanical effect of the card, but what it represents.

The Crusades are a deeply terrible period of history with a lot of religious persecution, the art depicts western knights having just burnt a settlement in a valorous way, these things shouldn't be celebrated.

Bad Moon just means omen lol

[robertleva]

They have opened Pandora's Box. Since art is subjective to the viewer, they will now have explain themselves for every piece of art that someone decides to get offended by. And since when was art not allowed to be offensive? In fact I thought being offensive and provacative was one of the main things art was supposed to be allowed to do? You know freedom of speech protects art too, or at least it supposed to.

The real truth is, freedom of speech, the spirit of it at least, really is dead. You cannot say offensive things anymore If you do, you will be socially prosecuted to the fullest abilities of the internet (the new law). I have no idea who is in charge of deciding what is and isn't offensive but whoever it is they are nothing like me.

Censoring art is one of the hallmarks of tyranny people wake up! The only thing difference now is that what ever group is in charge of deciding what should be censored isn't an elected body. It's just a mob of voices on social media who are all singing the same song...

[JovialJovian]

Tivadar's Crusade overtly depicts a crucifixion, is a direct reference to the real-world Crusades, which is the reason for Crusade's ban, and once again villainizes the already questionably antisemitic depiction of goblins. Far more egregious than Imprison.

[robertleva]

This is the worst possible move they could have made. Invoke Predjudice image was a stretch but ok fine delete it and ban it if you have to, But Crusade and Cleanse have NOTHING WRONG WITH THEM! By banning them you MAKE them racist in a way they were NEVER intended to be. Now you have actually added a racial component to the magic color pie. WHY WHY WHY would you EVER imply that black creatures means black men???

And what does this mean going forward, are we not allowed to have certain buffs to white creatures now? Crusade is gone but Bad Moon is fine because White Creatures have it had too good for too long??

that's not what they're saying; it's not the mechanical effect of the card, but what it represents.

The Crusades are a deeply terrible period of history with a lot of religious persecution, the art depicts western knights having just burnt a settlement in a valorous way, these things shouldn't be celebrated.

Bad Moon just means omen lol

For the sake of argument I will give you Crusade, but what about Cleanse? There is nothing offensive about the name, the picture or the card. The only reason to ban cleanse is you think black creatures implies black men. Nowhere else in magic where we see black creatures do we think black people so why does WOTC see it here?

The answer is that realistically they are human being who are caving to the pressures of society right now because they are scared that doing otherwise will endanger their business and livelihoods. Most companies will have to start falling in line, deleting old content that is no longer deemed acceptable for adults living in a free country to consume.

[folding_music]

Tivadar's Crusade should definitely go too, no question

I dunno, I understand wariness of art censorship but this is illustration on a social game medium; the only confrontation that can be elicited from Invoke Prejudice is whipping the card out in the presence of people who are gonna be uncomfortable about it and, sure, freedom of speech, but what are you actually saying in that situation?

[robertleva]

Tivadar's Crusade should definitely go too, no question

I dunno, I understand wariness of art censorship but this is illustration on a social game medium; the only confrontation that can be elicited from Invoke Prejudice is whipping the card out in the presence of people who are gonna be uncomfortable about it and, sure, freedom of speech, but what are you actually saying in that situation?

Not just Tivadar's Crusade, he made a good case for a BUNCH of cards that could be deemed offensive. But those cards will ONLY get removed if the social mob makes enough posts about them on Twitter etc. Until then, they are just fine.

That should scare the %$#% out of you people.

[robertleva]

I also notice that no one dares to challenge my point that art is ALLOWED to be offensive and that we should be very protective over these kinds of 1st amendment rights. You don't just give away rights, you never get them back without a fight.

[SecretInfiltrator]

I like the approach Disney had with Song of the South that will apparently also be applied by HBO to Gone with the Wind: Own the racism and explain it, discuss it and distance yourself from it, but also allow people to look at the problematic work so that they can actually look at these things critically, see, experience and understand the issue with these illustrations.

I prefer to live in a world where we are still able to look at these illustrations after we have been made aware of the issue, because that's how education works. But some days you just have to be happy that companies do support these movements through symbolic and monetary action, no matter their intent and quality of execution.

People thought it was a coincidence at first, but then MaRo opened his mouth and made the connection to the store clear, I can't remember if it was in an article, or in Blogatog.

Except in the original source it appears that he was making a connection from "7/11" to "convenience store" without taking "Kaladesh is inspired by India" into consideration. The source is this article ("Aether Way, Part 1").

The whole thing is racist only if you connect the p/t (which appeared on two cards previously that just didn't happen on Kaladesh) with both the convenience store and India and then make the connection to Indian workers at that store.

If you are sensitive to that connection your alarm bells may ring immediately, but reading that article, not assuming the worst of people and taking into account the pun-based humor that Maro puts out (you have just multiple sets of silver-bordered cards as sample), there is an alternative explanation.

He literally writes in the same place that he was unaware the p/t wasn't unique, implying in his head it was the first opportunity to make that obvious pun. (And reading the original quote Maro even thought that connection obscure enough to explain to the non-American audience.)

It seems there should be made a difference between "not having been sensitive to a an issue of racism against a people" and "being racist against a people". That's why you don't put the guy that calls that one bright-colored crayon "skin-colored" not in the same category as the guy who uses said crayon to explain what kind of people can go home to their home countries.

Researching this claim against Maro I have yet to find any further statement by him that is more racist than unaware (maybe something about how "this is only funny on Kaladesh"), but the blogs/tweets and similar discussion has a horrible time providing sources or actually quoting the supposedly racist statement, which might actually be a large factor in people talking about it at all.

Maybe the claim is that there are not enough Indian editors working at Wizards.com that would have immediately caught the probably unintended subtext (and the hiring practices of that company seem more like what you want to look at), but describing Maro's article as "being racist at Indians" seems reaching.

p.s.: If there's more than that article to look at, I'd love to know. I was forced to do a lot of research myself and the amount of paraphrasing and vague description reads very much like a cautionary tale about getting information from social media.

[robertleva]

Since we are censoring art that is offensive, how about we stop selling any songs that have lyrics with homophobic or racial slurs in them? What about the songs that speak about raping and abusing women? Why are these things allowed to not only exist, but (gasp) be sold to the common consumer for a profit?!?!?!

How could the adult human have ever lived without a social mob to tell him what to think?

[AvalonAurora]

Since we are censoring art that is offensive, how about we stop selling any songs that have lyrics with homophobic or racial slurs in them? What about the songs that speak about raping and abusing women? Why are these things allowed to not only exist, but (gasp) be sold to the common consumer for a profit?!?!?!

How could the adult human have ever lived without a social mob to tell him what to think?

Um, it isn't the government telling Wizards to stop selling these cards and ban them or anything like that. It's Wizards being embarrassed and banning them and hiding the art on their official site's search tool.

The songs and stuff that have that kind of offensive stuff are still able to be made by the people who want to make them. This is more like someone who made a song like that when they were younger and realizing it's kinda messed up and refusing to sing it anymore and putting a cross-out line through it on their list of songs on their personal website with a small disclaimer about how they realized it was offensive, and telling people they can't call it an official band event if the band has organized music events with pre-recorded music or hiring the band in person and play that song. The people can still play recordings of the song they already have for personal reasons, and still trade CDs or records or whatever physical media they might have of it and stuff like that. It isn't the government saying those songs can't be played.

You could certainly still create a super-offensive card game that is almost entirely made up of offensive stuff, and even have it be popular, Cards Against Humanity comes to mind, even if it's not the same context as MtG.

Wizards just wants to sell more cards to the 'social mob' in question and encourage having a diverse and accepting customer base so that people who go in to play cards at LGSs aren't driven off from the game and spend more money, regardless of race or religion or whatnot.

[robertleva]

Since we are censoring art that is offensive, how about we stop selling any songs that have lyrics with homophobic or racial slurs in them? What about the songs that speak about raping and abusing women? Why are these things allowed to not only exist, but (gasp) be sold to the common consumer for a profit?!?!?!

How could the adult human have ever lived without a social mob to tell him what to think?

Um, it isn't the government telling Wizards to stop selling these cards and ban them or anything like that. It's Wizards being embarrassed and banning them and hiding the art on their official site's search tool.

The songs and stuff that have that kind of offensive stuff are still able to be made by the people who want to make them. This is more like someone who made a song like that when they were younger and realizing it's kinda messed up and refusing to sing it anymore and putting a cross-out line through it on their list of songs on their personal website with a small disclaimer about how they realized it was offensive, and telling people they can't call it an official band event if the band has organized music events with pre-recorded music or hiring the band in person and play that song. The people can still play recordings of the song they already have for personal reasons, and still trade CDs or records or whatever physical media they might have of it and stuff like that. It isn't the government saying those songs can't be played.

You could certainly still create a super-offensive card game that is almost entirely made up of offensive stuff, and even have it be popular, Cards Against Humanity comes to mind, even if it's not the same context as MtG.

Wizards just wants to sell more cards to the 'social mob' in question and encourage having a diverse and accepting customer base so that people who go in to play cards at LGSs aren't driven off from the game and spend more money, regardless of race or religion or whatnot.

Why 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.

[AvalonAurora]

Why 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.

The 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.

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.