Like I said I know the word was commonly used. It wasnt till the civil rights movement did the word become taboo, much like reffering to a black male as boy. The new incarnation of the word with the 'a' ending is a product of pop culture.

And if that word was so popular among blacks forever and has always been used by them with such lack of care why do the older blacks hate that word and they in general smack their own children today for using it. Almost every black person I have meet over 50 years old, generally kids during the civil rights time hates that word, despises it and hate the 'a' ending version as well. To me that says it wasnt a commonly used term by all blacks as casually as it is today. I routinely watch my brothers neighbor beat there kids for using the word and the kids never play rap music whent he parents are home.

And if Pop Culture Historians dont do any research why is it considered a specialization of comminuications studies and univeristies are offering degress in POp Culture studies?

Why must we try to bring facts into a discussion of the culture of a sci-fi/fantasy rpg?

I've called a teamate who was an ork an under-biter before. I found it to be funny.

Well. This all went somewhere weird and uncomfortable.

So here's the terms I've gathered from this discussion that might work: Humans get called "smoothies". Dwarves get called "halfers" sometimes. I still don't have a word that I feel really works for elves, but I'm going to work with "dandelion muncher". You know who the bad guy is because he uses the word "trog".

So these are the stereotypes I'm going to try to work with: the poor ork from the streets, who drinks hard, fights hard and gets a lot of women. That's our hero. The rich human corper, who is doing something that will directly harm the ork, his neighborhood or his family. He's the big bad guy. The snobby elf mage, who works for the human. He's a lackey who talks big, does flashy magic, and can't handle one good punch to the face. The dimwitted but goodhearted troll. He's sort of a sidekick. The crazy dwarf. He's an ally. He gets our hero guns or whatever else, but you don't want to get too close to him. He's not all there.

That's what I'm looking at. It doesn't quite follow the blaxploitation formula, primarily because I'm not very familiar with the genre. I'm working with secondhand information. So I'm also drawing from the "stupid action movies from the 80s" genre.

I remember that dragons get royaly, frettingly, ill-eat-you-alive pissed if someone hints that their hatchlings look exactly like wyvern. Propably because it's totally true .

If someone chooses to be an elf in my game the other players usually resort to a very racist behaviour as if it was a natural thing, at least if it's a male elf. They call him fairy and other things, but the most annoying and degrading thing they do is that they frequently put their index fingers by the side of their heads—like they were pointy ears—and wink with them, as they make ugly faces at the elf when he tries to say something. It's not easy to be an elf in my gaming group .

The other debate that's going on is a bit specific to americans. There's plenty of blacks in Sweden too, for instance, and the word "nigger" I guess is used both offensively and otherwise here too—but it's not by any means as big an issue as it is in America. And that's not because people are less racist here. It's because in Sweden, like most european countries, the focus of racist hatred is immigrants no matter were they're from (or how many generations ago they immigrated, strangely). Whether it's a black man from Nigeria or a white man from Serbia, they seem to get the same discrimination and scorn. I've heard from some blacks that their problem is two-fold, though. It seems people's fear of the unfamiliar is hightened if the difference is more visible. Still, I think the media image or the public image is important when it comes to racial bias. And in Sweden (and Europe as a whole as far as I know) it's not black people that are portrayed as the cause of all crime and badness in society, it's immigrants. And so there's a few catch-all slurs for foreigners in this country that are frequently used. Interestingly enough they don't seem to refer to foreigners from any of the so called western countries...

I know people who take more offense to 'the N word' then the word 'nigger' itself. The problem stems from the fact that there are no good names to call white people. You can call me 'Cracker', 'Honkey', and 'Red Neck' all day and I really don't mind. But if you call a black guy a 'nigger' or a mexican a 'wetback' or whatever they flip out.

I think collectively we should all come up with something to call white people, then it's all equal, and we can all go back to hating people from the middle east again, like REAL Americans dammit. (Unless your not from the U.S. like many people on this board.)

(kinda off topic, when did 'queer' stop being a naughty thing to call people?)

From the Compact Oxford English Dictionary: "a series of dots[…]". In contrast, the entry for Full Stop references an explicit punctuation mark, which it does not describe as a "dot".

~J

What does the dictionary say on the original subject?

Its inbetween the comma and the backslash. Good hunting.

ALT+0133

…


I do remember one post where I attempted to make a point by retelling a joke containing a racial slur. To ensure that I did not unduly offend anyone I then proceded to use every other racial slur I could think of, at least one for every distinct ethnic group.

If you hate everyone equally without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or political belief then you aren't racist or sexist or homophobic you're just a misanthrope. There is nothing politically incorrect with being a misanthrope so they can't reasonably fire you use slurs indiscriminatly.

Yeah, that's why no one minds white supremacists.

Slang for Ork - Tusker.

I didn't see that one brought up yet - Obviously in reference to the fact that Orks have tusks. I believe it surfaced as a derogatory term to remind Orks that while they are less 'changed' than Trolls, they're still a far cry from human. Though, I can vaguely see Orks slapping eachother low-fives, and going: "What up, my tuskah?"

Suite yourself. I think the sterotype for Orks in Shadowrun is Inner City types. And I think the modern inner city demographic is generally minority, with a sterotyped reputation for slang. And since 'Tusker' sounded closer to 'Niggah' than 'Vato', it didn't seem that far off the mark. Though it very well may be a combination of Honky, Spic, Twinky, Wop, Wetback, and Chink all in one.

Which, drawing from sterotype, is why I insinuated that I could vaguely see that exchange of dialogue, rather than insisting that exchanges as such immediately be changed to canon.

Would 'Good day, my fellow Tusker?' have been a more appropriate show of intraspecies comraderie?

I half-agree with knasser about this. However, there are metahuman subcultures in Shadowrun, and it makes sense that these would form, especially in urban environments and more especially in poor urban environments. So it's not that all orks would have a certain speech pattern. But you might see a lot of inner city orks with that speech pattern. Rich Joe Ork the corper sellout would talk like most other corper sellouts. But an ork street gang might actually call each other tuskers.

That said, I don't tend to equate the various metahumans with certain races or other types of minorities. But I allow parallels between them and modern groups. Blending familiar concepts makes everything easier to understand, so it feels a bit more real.

So in the case of Orxploitation, the ork does get equated to a particular black american stereotype. But this is not because orks are the black people of 2070. This is because, like the Blaxploitation genre, Orxploitation feeds off of certain stereotypes. Thus, ork = street tough, human = rich bastard, etc.

In general, though, orks are a minority with a lot of unique characteristics that distinguish them from modern minority groups. The fact is that racists in Shadowrun do have something to back up their beliefs: "those people" (whichever group you hate) really are different from us. It doesn't make them right, but it makes the whole argument more difficult, more complex. That's why I like to touch on this stuff in my game.

Tusker was listed in 1st Ed. as a derogatory term for Orcs. It could certainly be part of modern day (2070) orcs terminology for themselves.

In your movie, the orcs could refer to elves as:
"Slim Jims"
"Bonies"
"Long Fuses"
"Batons" or "Baton Boys"
"Snappers" (as in you'd snap them during intercourse)
"lakars" (deriv. from the Urdu for "stick")
"Pretties"
"Skittles"

Dwarves as:
"Short Fuses"
"Bowling Balls"
"Stand-up Blowjobs"
"Elbow-Resters"
"Butt-sniffers"

Humans as:
"Shortears"
"Smoothies"

Hope this helps. I trust there will be some orcs with sociology degrees on hand to bemoan the derogatory nature of the orxploitation films and protest the pandering to modern social stereotyping. They can still get a six in Logic, you know.

Blaxsploitation isn't the only form of exploitation film. There are plenty of different types of exploitation film. Orxsploitation doesn't ahve to be equivilant to blaxsploitation. It is, but it doesn't have to be.

I imagine that Orkula; Orkenstien; and Ork Mama, Elf Mana are more about appealing to orks than they are about emulating the blaxploition film genre from an IC perspective.

Don't forget Neil the Ork Barbarian.

I can't wait 'til 'Ork to the Future' comes out.

"You outta time, chummer!"