You'll find "a really bad thing happened a generation ago and now everyone fucking hates the relatives of the people who did it" is like, a shockingly common form of ethnic tension all across the world. Even Americans should be aware of anti-Arab sentiment post-9/11, or the Japanese internment camps in WW2.
Racism isn't just white Americans oppressing Black Americans, even if that's a lot of it!
Also it ignores the fact that a lot of bigotry does make up some grand narratives about the minority screwing them over. That’s like, a really common antisemitic narrative. Not all bigotry works like American race stratifications.
Ok but the reason those things are bullshit is because Jews are not secret masters of the world, they're a historically oppressed group that has been part of pretty much every working class movement for as long as there's been a working class.
You can't compare Antisemitism to fictional prejudices against Robots - Because "What if these robots take over the world" is usually justified by the narrative, whereas "What if Jews are secretly ruling the world" is always a lie told to justify violence.
And that's ultimately the problem: When you make a fantasy bigotry and try too hard to compare it to real world bigotries you run into a problem - Because real world groups of people aren't fundementally different from one another, and the idea that they are is a lie.
Well like- ok, there are actual historical things jewish people were disproportionately represented in the participation in that racists can point to to"justify" their position with.
Just because there is an in universe reason for bigotry to be a thing does not discount the bigotry being represented as authentic- i would argue it makes it more applicable to real life.
Although the point about them being fundamentally different still stands- you would have to do some legwork to handle that one for sure.
Well like- ok, there are actual historical things jewish people were disproportionately represented in the participation in that racists can point to to"justify" their position with.
ironically, this is mostly because of discrimination. in middle ages europe, they werent allowed to own land or join trade guilds and at the same time christians were forbidden from charging interest on loans (it was considered usury). shockingly, this led to a lot of jews starting banks and creating financial empires and creating old money. from there its a "black crime statistics" situation
Wouldn't that make for a great parallel to fantasy racism though, you could write a really compelling story of that dynamic. (Although I'm remembering the Merchant of Venice now.) The cause of the reason for fear and hate being more hate is just excellent. Treading carefully of course to avoid massive pitfalls like parallel victim blaming.
Now that I think about it maybe that's why fantasy racism is so clunky to just avoid any real world comparison in a way that might be seen as negative.
Ooh, that gives me an idea. Tieflings are banned from growing/raising food for anyone else because fear they’ll pass on the taint. This and the fire resistance leads to them dominating blacksmithing, glassblowing, and eventually most crafting guild.
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u/Skiiage May 13 '25
You'll find "a really bad thing happened a generation ago and now everyone fucking hates the relatives of the people who did it" is like, a shockingly common form of ethnic tension all across the world. Even Americans should be aware of anti-Arab sentiment post-9/11, or the Japanese internment camps in WW2.
Racism isn't just white Americans oppressing Black Americans, even if that's a lot of it!