I guess there's two parts of this, the context surrounding the ban, and the act itself, and I'm not that fond of either.

It seems pretty evident that they did this now not because it's something they've contemplating doing for a long time, but as a reaction to being labeled racist by a twitter mob. The post by Zaiam Beg is 5 days old on reddit, which is probably about when I first remember seeing it making the rounds on the internet as well, and then it took about two days I guess for wotc to ban a slew of cards accordingly. I think it shows a willingness to use the banlist as a political tool to an extent that I think is unhealthy. Players invest time, money and passion into making decks with the cards wotc supply, something that is increasingly being ignored throughout the last couple of years (more so because of design trends).

Then there's the topic of banning and erasing cards from gatherer that are deemed racist, or even more ridiculous to me, them being unlisted from online marketplaces like tcgplayer. I assume the gameplay positive here is that you don't play a match of magic and someone plays a Jihad and triggers you, is my assumption. I will admit to being pretty insensitive to this concept as a whole, and while I think that some of these examples have unnecessarily strong associations to the real world, I don't really understand how they are more offensive than cards like Widespread Brutality or Murder which can probably be a lot more personal to people of the modern era than Ku Klux Klan members or wars that happened during the medieval period, even if they operate on a layer of abstraction. What erasing the images from gatherer is supposed to accomplish, however, I don't understand. Hiding away your own history feels to me like a pretty immature way to go about it, scryfall at least lets you look at the card. And finally, there's the point to be made that these are all obscure cards that most people aren't aware of, and you just put a massive spotlight on them. Banlists will forever be graced with "you can't play racist cards", and now that banning cards on political grounds is open for discourse, people will increasingly attempt to look through cards with the intent of finding politically incorrect content within it. For the most part, I think this move only serves to momentarily appease an online movement, without serving any long-term benefit to the game. It also makes me question if alt-right movements who often mobilize behind memes will try to identify their discourse behind cards in the slippery-slope category and force wotc to ban cards because they have gained racially insensitive connotations.

As a spin out to this, has anyone seen some of the articles that cropped up in the wake of this?
Because there was one with a list of demands that I find genuinely abhorrent for a number of reasons.

Slept on it. Made a thing. May share it elsewhere. Summarizes my response.

~~~

To: Mark Rosewater & Whomsoever Else It May Concern

About the response to "Depictions of Racism" in Magic: the Gathering -- An Open Letter

Regarding the recent announcement, there may be many complicated feelings. Certainly, it is good to attempt to move forward without real racism. However, I also feel that the actions taken were the wrong response, and represent a myopic knee-jerk reaction that undermines confidence in the integrity of the game.

I can understand, to an extent, removing the image of "Invoke Prejudice" from the online Gatherer database, and especially scourging or reassigning a Multiverse ID so as to avoid the unfortunate confluence that occurred. That said, Magic: the Gathering is no stranger to disturbing iconography. The card "Crusade" has been banned and delisted for what I can only assume to be its mechanics since its art, over many printings including the modern-frame Duel Deck printing, is essentially tame, or else its name. This is strange when "Tivadar's Crusade", which contains the crusade concept in its name and depicts in its art the crucifixion of a humanoid being found 'undesirable' by a species-motivated mob, remains untouched. Imprison, similarly, is among those cast out while "Enslave" (and with it, a variety of other similarly-flavored effects such as "Slave of Bolas", "Cabal Slaver", "Cateran Slaver", and "Enslaved Scout") remains. And this does not even begin to approach the innumerable depictions of murder (including the card with that name), torture (again, including a card with that name), ritualistic sacrifice, cannibalism, gore, and numerous other human and inhuman evils as fits a game centered around conflict in an often dark fantasy world. I find it difficult to imagine that someone would be horrified or offended at the existence of "Crusade" and not "Famine" or "Village Cannibals". This makes most of the selected targets, all except perhaps "Invoke Prejudice" for its art and "Pradesh Gypsies" for its name, somewhat questionable as individuals singled out of a massive and diverse game depicting a vast spectrum of acts both fair and foul.

But, in a sense, I digress. To my main point, it does not really matter which cards were selected to become ghosts, stricken from record, nor precisely how many. The act itself represents an extremely poor response for the health and sanctity of the game as a whole.

I am reminded, somewhat, of the problem that Demons had early in the history of the game. From after Fifth Edition, until their return in Onslaught, the Demon type was forbidden. The reasoning for that then was essentially similar to the reasoning for this now, that there was a group of people, some subset of everyone that Magic: the Gathering might reach, that would or could be offended by the presence of such material. Because of that, no new demons were printed in the period where such thought held and unless I am badly mistaken old ones were not reprinted, with monsters that might have been demons presented instead as beasts or horrors. Wizards of the Coast poked fun at that decision in Unglued and eventually reversed it. But, I would argue, it was a more proper response than the one being taken now. In the period of no demons, "Lord of the Pit" was not forbidden, its existence denied, its status as a game piece revoked. New values were written in new tablets, and the game moved forward with a direction that was viewed as more acceptable. In every sense, the past was left in the past. It was neither carried onward nor expunged.

In this recent action though, a bad precedent is set that the game is to be shaped not by the concerns of the game, but rather by the political whims of those who make noise in social media. That, I feel, is a very bad approach. None of the seven cards banned in this action were banned because they were bad for gameplay. Their status in the game was redetermined by factors outside the game that should not be allowed to decide what would be done with them. Previous classes of black-border card lost to the otherwise eternal Commander and Vintage, such as Manual Dexterity, Ante, and Subgame (all one subgame card) were banished because of what they were as game pieces, not what an influencer took them to be as statements. With this latest move allowing the court of opinion rather than the health of the game to determine the state of the game, a frankly shocking lack of integrity in the management of the game has been shown.

Thus, I personally find that as long as politics and not gameplay should decide what belongs in Magic: the Gathering, censuring and censoring what has already been made in obeisance to arbitrary mob demands, I cannot conscience myself being a continuing supporter. I am aware, somewhat, of both the irony and futility of this statement. It is ironic in that I am myself attempting to advise change as a nobody on the internet when I say that such influences should not create game policy reaching backwards, and this I acknowledge and answer with the hope that my arguments up to this point have been well-reasoned. It is futile, in that I know I am not personally worth particularly much to Wizards of the Coast. For most of my life I have attended tournaments, but only a hand full each year, and as an adult I do regularly purchase sealed product, including booster boxes, but only on the level of an individual who collects and builds a few decks now and again, not en masse.

I know it is also futile because it is likely to be dismissed out of hand. Even if this letter finds its intended recipients, and is read, I suspect that judgment will have been made as of the first paragraph. All subsequent arguments, regarding the arbitrary nature of the targets, the tone of the game as a whole, and the integrity of game rules independent of political issues, are highly likely to be disregarded by many readers. These are my full and honest opinions, but I am crushingly aware that they may not be taken as such, and that I may, by the expression of a final conclusion opposed to the recent action, be painted with an unflattering brush and easily dismissed as not being of value.

But whether or not the unlikely event that this letter should be carefully considered occurs, I feel that it is important to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak, and that it lends what little what I have to my statements to append that I intend to cease attending sanctioned tournaments and cease purchasing sealed product. And as this letter is also to be presented in the open wilds of the internet, I would encourage others who feel that the wrong thing has been done here to do the same.

Thank you for your time.

~~~

I'll be staying on these forums, though. WotC doesn't make a dime from me having fun down in YMTC.

Seconded.

I might've added that this pure show of lip service is in fact an insult of ours alls intelligence (not necessarily for the benefit of whoever with a brain/conscience may yet be left at WotC, but the fellow community members/signatories of the open letter), but other than that, good showing.

I also hope that more people realise what this **** is ultimatively about and how use- and worthless of a response this will prove to be so that it may blow up in all their faces, but pessimism has taught me otherwise. Tyrants usually do get away with tyranny, after all.
But I digress, too. Having a link to the preceding ****(s) as context/education for the unaware may be a good idea too.

I think it's still a bit early to come to these conclusions. Some of these cars really did need to be addressed, and I don't think the ones that were unnecessary make a big difference. We shouldn't assume that we are on a slippery slope after a single data point. Most likely they will never do anything like this again. If they do, then this conversation will be important.

Likewise, I would give them a little more time to figure out their response to the bigger issues plaguing the company. If we are so displeased with a quick and half-baked response to problematic card flavor, imagine the potential backlash at a half-baked response to the structural issues of the company. Don't get me wrong, they need to respond to those issues, and soon, but I'm willing to give them a few more days to make sure they don't do it as clumsily as they did this thing.

Additional point: racially motivated violence is in most places considered, by law, to be a worse offence than other violence. As someone who has never been at serious risk of either, I don't know if I'm the right person to comment on that (in fact, I'd be curious to know if anyone discussing this topic here is a POC, but I'm not going to ask you. Only share if you feel comfortable doing so). The point being, our society has collectively decided long ago that Murder is in a different, less serious category than the issue they are trying to address here.

As someone who is mexican and jewish I think something like this should have happened years go. These cards I've seen people ask wizards to address for years. That said it seems like a all show no action on their part to pretend like they did something but then ignore the internal issues that actually effect people, so I'm saving my kudos.

Cato pretty much sums up why each card is banned and as said for years people have voiced dislike over these cards and for wizards to address it.

Invoke Prejudice, ok cool.
Cleanse and Crusade are a **** joke lol. So anything that hits black creatures or buffs white creatures is gonna be deemed "racist" now. Guess we can only reference red blue and green now lmao.

I'd probably rather WotC run a moral if less mechanically good game than an immortal and more mechanically good game. There's probably a balance between how many concessions they should make to the strength of their game in order to avoid acting in an immoral capacity.

I can respect that you care more about the strength of the game than on the game's potential impact on society though.

Also on the topic of debating whether wizards was being inconsistent or hasty in judging any individual card as being offensive, its probably not feasible to make that judgement without wizards providing their own reasoning for removing cards. I've seen a lot of people suggesting "crusade" was removed because it buffs white creatures, but i feel like it probably has a lot more to do with the artwork on the original printing than anything else.

Nope. Angelic Voices is still around. As is Blinding Light and Crovax, Ascendant Hero. I'm pretty sure both cleanse and crusade could have stayed if they had different names, and cleanse ironically probably could have stayed if it had different rules as well, but now the combo makes it very easy to jump straight to "ethnic cleansing". It is still a bit of a stretch, but not completely unmotivated.

Honestly, removing the art was the wrong way to make amends. It demonstrates a lack of accountability for past mistakes by sweeping history under the proverbial rug.

EDIT: in fact a prefacing disclaimer claiming that WotC no longer tolerates such intolerance would have been much better stance on the matter imo

is it really "sweeping history under the rug" if whenever anyone looks up one of those cards they get a message explaining what happened? unless by history you mean exactly in what ways the cards were racist and not just that there were racist cards so wizards removed them. In that case, I'm not sure that information is relevant enough to the average person browsing cards on gatherer that its worth preserving. Not wanting to host a painting of the KKK on their websites is reasonable.

You do realize Magic is also played with physical cards and that while WotC supported vendors may be inclined to hide the paper versions in a vault or even destroy them, the secondary market also consists of traders and collectors who don't have to do as such? Not to mention Google exists and can provide images for all the cards not shown on gatherer?

Also, the message doesn't explain anything other than "it has no place in our game" ... disable comments so trolls don't piggyback on this lack of accountability, and, again, put a disclaimer saying "we were wrong and no longer tolerate stuff like this."

Yes. what's your point? I'm not arguing that the images should be erased from reality or something. I'm just saying WotC shouldn't be obligated to act as a record keeper for the images. Its a good thing that records of the images exist.



It explains that the card was racist and that wotc removed the image from their website because it was racist. Information about the original card image and a more detailed post by WotC and other people about the banning of the cards are available all over the internet. If you want more information about the history of the cards and the bans, then its available. I don't know why gatherer has to be the place to have this information.

is it a copout? I feel like that's basically what tevish's post boils down to. He's right that banning cards for reasons related to social justice will have a negative effect on the gameplay on average. The only real basis with which to disagree with tevish's argument is to hold that you care more about mtg behind a vehicle of social justice in at least some contexts even at the cost of its strength as a game.

whether or not its virtue signalling is irrelevant to the argument probably

What purpose does removing the images serve then?

Not exactly just a WotC problem, hence why I am more fired up; there is no viable way to get rid of intolerance, but the big issue is the world (or at least what little I'm familiar with) is more opposed to open intolerance than active intolerance. Accountability is a big deal, and essentially ignoring past mistakes does not make anyone better; addressing them does.

To clarify what I mean:

Passive+open intolerance: "white people" memes, Charlie Hebdo (specifically the Pope comic)

Active+open: Separate but equal; slavery in US

Passive+subversive: That little blip of a thought one may have before they subconsciously call themselves out

Active+subversive: KKK, Neo-Nazi, any other hate group that is somewhat hidden but also more prominent. Could also include Jim Crow laws here as well, though not sure how transparent they were at that time.

removing the images in this case is primarily a way for wizards to address their prior mistakes and communicate to people that they regret their past actions.

I can agree with that. My apologies.

np

i think there is a real issue sometimes with people "sweeping history under the rug" and i can see why this sort of response from wizards would remind of that

i didn't report it

my feelings are probably pretty papery compared to most people's

you are free to value whatever you'd like