Characters don't need a good reason to be black. "Black people have healing potions" isn't a real world stereotype or reference to a real life atrocity so I don't think there is anything racist about it. If there is a strong correlation between black characters and clerics over the course of multiple settings, that could be an issue.

Some people talk about virtue signalling like it is a bad thing but (especially for corporations) I consider it to be a slightly good thing. Don't get me wrong it can be used to distract from something bad. If you say "The M&M company started a conversation about women's fashion because they didn't want the top news story about them to talk about the child slaves that harvest their cocoa" or "Blizzard is talking about the diversity of their characters to distract from the ongoing harassment charges" I can see the problem. But if you just say "WotC is denouncing racism" you need to figure out what they are trying to distract us from before I will consider that a bad thing. Words have a lot less value than actions, but a small positive is still a positive.

The underlined part is what I want to emphasize as it is what I will be referring to here. See, 'moral correctness' implies that there is a right and wrong answer as far as morality goes, and that just isn't the case; sentience does not automatically negate the fact that people are animals with complex habits and instincts that will conflict with others, with the results just being what they are. We just attribute the concepts of right and wrong to help justify our choices and reactions.

That said, while there isn't a correct __moral__ answer, there is an optimal __societal__ answer: that is, a solution which is satisfactory to the most members of a given society.

(No degree btw, just observation and logical deduction)

So your problem is that because one half of an arbitrarily worded definition doesn't agree with your personal worldview (because moral relativism is not universally accepted as true, either among philosophers or scientists), you decide the thing which was being defined is wrong. And then you slightly change the wording of the definition in a way that doesn't actually change the practical use of the term, and say that is acceptable. Your argument seems like a fairly pointless exercise in semantics, to be honest.

What is universally accepted as true then? Tell me: I would like to hear something that everyone agrees on no matter the context or circumstances. Even facts that have been proven for millenia, such as the form of the Earth, are being debated to this day.

As for the 'slightly changing the wording ... in a way that doesn't actually change the practical use of the term', that suggests you believe that society is equivalent to morality, which is not always true since, if morality is absolute as you imply given your aforementioned criticism of moral relativism, then societies with conflicting morals will have one in the wrong and the other in the right.

Anyhow, my argument was that 'virtue signaling' is little more than to appease the greatest number of people that the signaler is interested in; in hindsight I should have quoted TPmanW's earlier post about how D&D conceded to then poltically correct criticisms and are now facing current ones. In other words, it is an insincere and empty gesture of good will that does not help anyone but the signaler; it may not be a bad thing as doing nothing isn't inherently negative, but it isn't a good thing either.

If that is the case I wish people would just say "I think it is bad that WotC denounced the racism in their past because I like racism." They could then talk about why they like racism instead of making people guess what exactly they dislike about virtue signalling. As far as philosophy goes I don't think there is "One true moral" or whatever but I do have my own personal opinions about how life could be better or worse. I think less racism is better so I think it is a good thing when someone with a large platform denounces racism.

This is the part I disagree with. It doesn't do much but I think it is a very slight improvement for millions of people. (Or more accurately, a significant improvement radiating out from a few "random" people that were near a tipping point) If one impressionable teenager questions the viewpoint of their racist parents because the creators of their favorite game made an "empty gesture", that's an improvement.

Meh, improvement for millions seems quite a stretch. I’ve been around MTG off and on since the 90s and I hadn’t seen most of those cards until they were removed. Thousands may still be a stretch, assuming everyone who retained memory of them found them to be offensive. I can’t even remember all of them since looking when this thread was started, but have a vague recollection that ~half were tenuously connected to racism and prob wouldn’t be offensive to most peeps.

If anything the Streisand Effect of banning their old product made them more visible to more peeps than if they had just quietly made more effort to be “better” about their product going forward.

Ah is that what it is called: Streisand Effect?

I believe I made a point similar to that before when this thread first started (two years ago? I'm pretty sure this was all in response to the police misconduct that led to the death of George Floyd), but yeah: this seems more like sweeping their past mistakes under the rug instead of acknowledging them and striving to do better, and people have a tendency to notice when things are different (or even seem different but aren't, as is the case with the Mandela Effect; guess we are kinda trigger happy with that).

Plus these cards will still be on the secondary market, and while WotC could implement a product 'embargo' for brick-and-mortar stores that display and/or sell them, that is neither feasibly enforcible or all-encompassing (players trade, and there is a target demographic for anything unfortunately).

Eh ... kinda rambling at this point (heat exhaustion plus head cold), but from my perspective it just feels like a hasty decision to try and save face; actually I kinda wonder, had the artists for some of those cards were still staffed, would they have been fired now for what was a corporate-approved decision back then?

That's the point (mostly). They aren't trying to make racism less visible. They are denouncing racism. They are acknowledging that the structure had some racism built into it rooting out the worst of it so that the system can be less racist going forward. The visibility is good.

The number of people who play in sanctioned tournaments where those old cards were legal is small and almost none of them cared about playing these specific cards, but about 10 million people actively play arena. (I don't have a number for non-arena players, I'm guessing another several million) The actual cards aren't as important as the amount of people seeing WotC denounce racism. And again I'm not saying this is a high bar, but it is good that they cleared it.


If you just talk about the things that everyone already understands to be racist, you are only teaching the lessons that everyone already knows. If they are willing to get a little ahead of the curve that's a good thing.

Get ahead of the curve?

If the curve is heading to a place where a card like Cleanse is offensive because MTG players can’t tell the difference between the the word black as it applies to the magic color in context of the game and the word black as it applies to people in a socio/political context, I’d say the curve is going in the wrong direction. They should change black color to purple or something, cause there’s a metric ton of “racist” baggage hiding in the color attributes if that’s the case (black murders your creatures, steals from your hand, is in bed w demons and brings rot and ruin to all it touches, yikes! - it’s like the klan invented this game!).

The changes pleased you and that’s fine in itself. I have a different philosophical take on whitewashing the past, and I’d guess most magic players didn’t care that much one way or the other (millions of players on arena where none of the cards existed and most prob never even saw the press release). I also think symbolic gestures like this are essentially meaningless and do nothing to improve the material conditions of under privileged peoples, primarily serving to make privileged people feel better about themselves through low effort actions (would have been much more impressed if their press release wasn’t about removing old cards and instead was about donating a % of profits to fight homelessness and poverty and/or providing resources to underserved communities) but it’s WoTC’s product and they can do as they please with it.

There's "whitewashing the past" and "probably shouldn't have klansmen and knights templar on a card game that has nothing to do with that."

Also, you look at anything long enough and you are gonna make connections of any kind. It's how conspiracy theories work.

Thank you for the information.

In related news Weakness and Earthbind have been cut from the 30th anniversary edition. The pentagram of Unholy Strength is in.

The real reserved list is building up.

I know this should be a separate thread, but 999$ for booster packs containing cards that are illegal in tournament play leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Invoke prejudice is the most egregious violator of the batch. I only knew that card existed because Encyclopedia Dramatica had it in their article making fun of MTG. Specifically I’d say the issue is the obvious nod to a clan hood. KKK in fantasy setting is off base. The card mechanically seems fine enough in a game that has cards like murder. We understand cards that feature dark aspects of life aren’t endorsements of the activity, right?

I disagree about crusade. Knights are pretty standard in fantasy settings, and it’s a big enough creature class it has lords. 6th edition and Elspeth versions of the card don’t have the cross in their arts but their images are wiped from gatherer too. And there’s a lot of cards that reference crusade in their names that didn’t get touched so let’s not pretend it’s wildly out of bounds in the game.

At any rate I reject that framing. It wasn’t an organic re-evaluation of their body of work and how cards fit the game universe. It was a response to a call out. They painted over parts of their history to address criticism of it. Fair to dub whitewashing. Perhaps whitewashing is defensible in situations, maybe things need fresh paint on occasion, but let’s recognize what it is.

I'm not really comfortable with this. It feels like the "Removal" of demons in the Weatherlight Saga era, but more revisionist.

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you can object to knights templar being depicted without objecting to knights in general. The issue with that specific art for crusade was that it was a historical depiction of a real military regime that was complicit in religious genocide. If they had just been generic knights i doubt it would have been an issue. Knights templar don't look out of place on a magic card but thats mostly because people don't have the historical literacy to identify them immediately. Someone from a non-american background might also not be able to differentiate a klansman from a generic cultist character.

This thread is immortal, isn't it?

yes

Religious genocide? The Templars were formed after the first crusade to protect Christian pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem, who were being routinely slaughtered. Their concern was for domination, not extermination. Control, not genocide.

Poor Templars. First they were betrayed and scrubbed by the Catholic Church after they outlived their usefulness, then by WotC