We hope that no one will accuse us of trivializing the very real harms suffered by victims of racism and xenophobia, simply because the victims in our case (the Goblin race) suffer from the unfortunate drawback of being fictional.

In no way do we wish to minimize the effect (e.g., deaths of millions of innocents) that the demonization of “the Other” has caused throughout history. However, we do wish to call attention to the disturbing and fascinating parallel between how this particular sentient race came to be depicted in D&D, and how “the Other” (whether it be another race or citizenry) is depicted throughout human history. The pattern is relatively consistent – if you want to make acceptable mistreatment of “the Other”, you depict them as (filthy) stupid animals; if you want to make acceptable the killing of “the Other”, you depict them as violent animals or demons.

This leads us to the Scary Germans in WWI; propaganda was created claiming that dead allied soldiers were being turned into soap.

 

And, of course, there were those Chinamen immigrating to the US, and we all know how terrifying immigrants can be.

 

 

“Luckily” (to those of us using Google Image) many cartoonists in the Middle East have little problem following in the footsteps of the American press of 50-100 years ago; anti-Semitic cartoons are rampant. The image below shows just how useful gorillas are in the process of depicting the Other, as they are both animals, and big and scary.

In the interest of fairness/completeness, we were going to continue this research and show similar images for the depiction of African-Americans, Muslims, Arabs, Native Americans, Indians, etc., but at the moment we find the task too depressing to continue.

We conclude with a knee-slappingly disturbing history of racism in cartoons of the 1940s. Most internet-savvy readers are aware by now of some of the more disturbing Bugs Bunny cartoons of a half-century ago, but much of what is there is new to us.

We conclude with a suggestion. Given the ease in which we (as a race) can treat those of other races, countries, or beliefs as less than human, it might not be the best idea in the world for anyone – including a gaming company -- to encourage the wholesale murder of what is depicted as a sentient race, with the defense that it’s okay because, hey, they’re ‘evil’. Especially when we get down to discussing putting the women and children of the warriors of this race to the sword, because, well, what else should you do with them? It is the “goblin home invasion” aspect of low-level adventuring that is most disturbing to us, and we hope that 3^rd edition is the last we’ll see of it.