Human ethnicities in worlds with non-human races

[akma]

I don't think I've ever saw any world or story with common humanoid races that showed any significance of human ethnicities. I guess it makes a bit of sense, as differences between humans will seem trivial in comparison so it might seem silly to dwell on them (although in the real world people can show racism towards people who are objectively very similar to them).

For various reasons, including an idea of a story in which it will be relevant, I've become curious about media representations of that subject. Are there any shows / books / whatever that deal with such issues that you can recommend for me?

[Xyril]

I don't think I've ever saw any world or story with common humanoid races that showed any significance of human ethnicities. I guess it makes a bit of sense, as differences between humans will seem trivial in comparison so it might seem silly to dwell on them (although in the real world people can show racism towards people who are objectively very similar to them).


I don't think there's such thing as "objectively similar." Objectively, humans have something like 99.9% of DNA in common with each other, which I suppose is an objective measure of similarity, but even if you use this (or another objective metric) to measure similarity, there is no such thing as an objective threshold for what is "objectively similar" and what is "objectively no longer similar."

I actually think what you're saying makes sense in that it's how we think we would behave--just see the speculative sci-fi where racism fades away because we meet aliens. However, it really doesn't make sense in that, as you point out, it's pretty inconsistent with how we have actually behaved. Sometimes the enemy of my enemy effect will push people into putting aside there differences in order to form an alliance, but rarely does that last. Great Britain was an enemy right up until the turn of the century, but after a war fought largely as allies of necessity, we were largely able to coexist as great powers thanks in large part to cultural affinity. I point this out to contrast with the Soviet Union--under similar circumstances, we went from enemies to allies out of necessity, and I think there was some genuine positive feeling between our countries as we wrapped up the war, but that soured quickly. We've been willing to share the world stage before, so this wasn't merely the natural course of relationships between two world powers. Rather, without the immediate of Hitler keeping us working together, we quickly remembered that we still cared a lot about those small cultural and ideological differences we had temporarily put aside.

In a world of orcs and elves, otherwise ethnicity-conscious humans will only forget about color so long as the orcs are actively trying to eat people of all races. The mere existence of non-human sentients generally won't cause people to forget their prejudices or let go of long-held clan grievances. If anything, if the non-humans are different enough, then there may be forces that tend to make intra-human strife more problematic. For example, if you may only interact with the mer-people when you're at the shore, trading land-made goods for exotic goods from beneath the waves, but you might be competing directly against new immigrants from the Northern regions for jobs in the city. You might regard the religion of the merfolk as an entertaining oddity, bizarre and misguided, but largely harmless and completely irrelevant to your life, but you take direct offense that the new immigrants claim that Zabu, the Three-Headed Monkey God, in fact only has Two Heads, and rules from atop the Neverending Banyon, and not the Sacred Coconut Palm. Historically, even if you take into account the Crusades and make incredibly generous estimates for modern Islamic terrorism, I suspect that you'd count more deaths from Christians killing other, slightly different Christians, and Muslims killing other slightly different Muslims, than you would from the two major religious groups going after each other.

From a narrative perspective, it doesn't bother me that in most fantasy adventure stories, racism of that sort isn't a major issue. One, it's nice to escape it once in a while. Two, most adventures tend to mirror the sorts of real life situations where racism is, if not forgotten, at the very least pushed beneath the surface for the sake of working together. As for ignoring human ethnicity altogether, I'd chalk that up more to making the author's life simpler than anything else.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I don't think I've ever saw any world or story with common humanoid races that showed any significance of human ethnicities. I guess it makes a bit of sense, as differences between humans will seem trivial in comparison so it might seem silly to dwell on them (although in the real world people can show racism towards people who are objectively very similar to them).

For various reasons, including an idea of a story in which it will be relevant, I've become curious about media representations of that subject. Are there any shows / books / whatever that deal with such issues that you can recommend for me?

Pratchett, despite his quote below, does do an examination of racism between humans occasionally, most obviously in Jingo.


Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because—what with trolls and dwarfs and so on—speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.

Otherwise, Eddings does have non-humans (although seldom in prominent roles)m and his various human cultures do tend to have individuals who will look down their noses at others for not being part of the same culture.

Grey Wolf

[Kato]

Pratchett, despite his quote below, does do an examination of racism between humans occasionally, most obviously in Jingo.


Damn you for beating me to it... Though I guess it's not really racism because it's more a matter of culture than anything else.


Well, I guess you could take a tab at Tolkien for the evil people from the east/south... But otherwise... I can't think of anything. Maybe because a lot of (high) fantasy focuses on a certain kind of humans who tend to be not too diverse or because these stories usually deal with other things.

And if we go into scifi robots and aliens are always better targets than someone with larger ears.
The best thing I can think of iff the top of my head is an episode of Rick and Morty where a hive mind has consumed a planet where people used to hate ech other based on their nipple shape. Does that count?

[Reddish Mage]

The mere existence of non-human sentients generally won't cause people to forget their prejudices or let go of long-held clan grievances.

You forget that, in fantasy situations, humanity is usually depicted as having always existed beside these other "races" of non-humans. Humanity, in these worlds, is something defined as being "not-elf, not-dwarf, not-orc" etc.

[akma]

I don't think there's such thing as "objectively similar." Objectively, humans have something like 99.9% of DNA in common with each other, which I suppose is an objective measure of similarity, but even if you use this (or another objective metric) to measure similarity, there is no such thing as an objective threshold for what is "objectively similar" and what is "objectively no longer similar."


What I meant by objectively similar is relatively very similar when you consider human diversity, and indistinguishable to a foreigner. Let's say that in country X there are people of race Y and race Z, and many of them hate each other, but almost everyone who lives in a far away country couldn't tell by looking if someone is from race Y or Z. I'm trying to avoid giving specific examples as I'm afraid it might derail the thread, but I will edit the original post with one if my point is still unclear.



Well, I guess you could take a tab at Tolkien for the evil people from the east/south... But otherwise... I can't think of anything. Maybe because a lot of (high) fantasy focuses on a certain kind of humans who tend to be not too diverse or because these stories usually deal with other things.


I never heard about Tolkien having evil people from the east/south... I didn't like lord of the rings so I probably won't check him, I might check Pratchett and Eddings.



And if we go into scifi robots and aliens are always better targets than someone with larger ears.
The best thing I can think of iff the top of my head is an episode of Rick and Morty where a hive mind has consumed a planet where people used to hate ech other based on their nipple shape. Does that count?

I saw that episode, and not really.

[JeenLeen]

On a similar note, many fantasy settings do have intra-species racism within their own fantasy race. Elves hate drow, for example, or wood elves verses high elves. Noble mountain dwarves looking down on flat-landers. And such.

I reckon if one were building a well-established setting that had heterogeneous humans (by which I mean multiple races, in the common meaning of the word), it would make sense for racism to exist in some way. I think some D&D setting books I've read refer to it, although it is generally cast as bias against folk of a particular nation, not race. But that nation might have a different culture and skin tones, so saying you hate those louts from Neverwinter isn't much different from saying you hate Human Race #3 that is predominantly in Neverwinter. (I'm choosing Neverwinter as a random D&D city I know the name of. Or, at least a term I think is a city. I don't know if there's bias against Neverwinterians.)

I think the Pathfinder setting of Golarian had some racism built into it, but I forget the details.

The Exalted (at least 2nd edition) setting had some racism, but generally the humans being biased against were magically augmented in some way, so not sure if it really counts or not. (And that's ignoring the beastkin, Wyrd mutants, etc.) And often the racism was hand-in-hand with folk from different regions, that is, rarely humans of different skin who lived in the same city-state.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Damn you for beating me to it... Though I guess it's not really racism because it's more a matter of culture than anything else.

IIRC, there is sufficient mention of darker skin tones by Lord Rust and his ilk that I think racism is a descriptor that can also be added into the mix (although of course there is cultural considerations as well. One is hardly exclusive of the other).

GW

[Kitten Champion]

Centaur no Nayami is interesting in this respect. It's set in a world composed entirely of non-human races - centaurs, imps, satyrs, angels, and more - who are integrated into a modern civilization which is largely reflective of our own world. While there's a long and violent history between these sapient races - to the point that the setting's Japan have fairly heavy-handed anti-discriminatory laws and practices in all levels of their society - there's also ethnic, religious, and nationalistic conflicts of which we're familiar in our world that don't neatly fit conventional racial lines... though that's always in there somewhere.

It's a weird, complicated universe with a lot to it. One mostly filtered through how it's perceived and internalized by a few Japanese high school girls, though when it peaks around that pink-hued world it can get much odder and far darker.

[Aotrs Commander]

I never heard about Tolkien having evil people from the east/south...

To be strictly accurate, the human nations in the south/east of Gondor and Mordor were controlled by Sauron, thought they were not, strictly, "evil" in that sense (though their leaders likely were).

(In the books, Sam Gamgee witnesses a fight between Men, and even wonders if one of the Haradrim casualties was really evil, or if he'd just been forced into the war against his will. That whole scene, actually, is depicted in a slightly different tone to the battles against, say the orcs, who were inherently evil, I think perhaps to at least show some semblence that the two were not equated.)




I think the Pathfinder setting of Golarian had some racism built into it, but I forget the details.

Part of the southern nation of Sargava's narrative "thing" is racial tension between the native Mwangi and the northern Chelaxian colonists (basically, a set-up for the sort of colonial tension akin the British Empire), which is I think what you're thinking of.

[Xyril]

You forget that, in fantasy situations, humanity is usually depicted as having always existed beside these other "races" of non-humans. Humanity, in these worlds, is something defined as being "not-elf, not-dwarf, not-orc" etc.

Not really. The examples I raised were all "suddenly, aliens" or "suddenly, orcs" because I thought they were reflective of how humans see ourselves responding to such a situation--in the best possible light. Everything I have to say about fantasy in general is even more true if--much like the real world--we "always" knew about people very different from us. For most of recorded history, Europe knew about the men from Africa with dark skin, entirely different customs, strange languages, even noticeable differences in facial structures--yet that didn't stop them from focusing on the difference between fair skinned, German-speaking Christians and fair skinned, German-speaking other kind of Christians.

[Xyril]

What I meant by objectively similar is relatively very similar when you consider human diversity, and indistinguishable to a foreigner. Let's say that in country X there are people of race Y and race Z, and many of them hate each other, but almost everyone who lives in a far away country couldn't tell by looking if someone is from race Y or Z. I'm trying to avoid giving specific examples as I'm afraid it might derail the thread, but I will edit the original post with one if my point is still unclear.


No, your point was entirely clear, I simply objected to you calling it "objectively similar." My point was that, for pretty much any situation you describe, you can zoom out further and find another group that can't tell the difference between country X and the far off country.

If you're at all a fan Looking for Group at all:

Sooba is a girl.

Cale is a male.

[Man on Fire]

Pratchett, despite his quote below, does do an examination of racism between humans occasionally, most obviously in Jingo.

I cannot really agree with this quote. I don't want to bring real-life politics but you don't need to look far to find how some forms of bigotry and opression cause other such forms to rise. I'd say the same would be the case if he had aliens, fantasy races or superhumans in the world.

[Donnadogsoth]

Are there any fantasy worlds where the other species like Orc, Troll, and Elf are portrayed as having the same range of human racial differences humans display? Black Orcs, Yellow Orcs, and so on? For that matter does the green skin and look of Orcs ever get applied to Humans, so there are Green Humans?

[Xyril]

Dragonlance I know has made national/racial conflicts between subgroups of elves and dwarves substantial plot points. IIRC, hill dwarves left the mountains long enough ago to have not only their own nations and their own distinct culture, but also visible differences in the predominance of certain physical traits, and when they were forced back to the mountains by a coming war, the mountain dwarves from who they split off long ago considered them unwelcome outsiders. Among the elves there were Qualinesti and Silvanesti--I think both could be described as "high elves"--who had a deep-seated conflict that I can't really remember in detail, as well as Dargonesti, wild elves who were looked down upon by both and did their own thing. I can't say whether humans were broken down into races--there were several major, human dominated states, each having a distinct culture. For example, Solamnia whose citizens were often easy to recognize, with distinct fashion and their own language even though most races also spoke Common (or Basic, or whatever the series called it.) These differences often became major plot points.

The Elder Scrolls also technically fits this criterion--of the games' many "races," most are actually subgroups of either humans ("men") or elves ("mer.") Even dwarves and orcs are consider highly distinct races of mer, and these two main species stand apart from three "beast" races who appear very distinct from both men and mer. I can't really think of interbreeding between different subtypes of men or of mer being talked about explicitly at all, but I assume it's possible because a few sources within the games specifically spoke of successful breeding between one of the beast races and one of the human races as "something that is only rumored to have happened." In terms of appearance, human Redguard are basically black people, Nords largely have the range of Scandinavian features, Bretons and Imperials have generically European features as far as I can tell (Imperials are Roman inspired.) Among elves, Dark elves are very distinct from other elves typical skin color, which is reddish gray. I want to say you can adjust it to be light enough that it reaches roughly the same appearance as the darkest option for the other elves, but it's been ages since I played with character creation, so I can't say for sure. Catfolk largely have a range of colors matching real life cats--anything from snowy white to beige or brown to dark gray. Lizardfolk can be green, blue, gray, I think maybe red--in other words, lizard colors.

[Khedrac]

Are there any fantasy worlds where the other species like Orc, Troll, and Elf are portrayed as having the same range of human racial differences humans display? Black Orcs, Yellow Orcs, and so on? For that matter does the green skin and look of Orcs ever get applied to Humans, so there are Green Humans?

Glorantha has white, green/blue, brown, and black humans (and probably others though I don't recall them), also the "black humans" may not actually be human, though that is another debate.
It also has more than 3 'colours' of troll (dark, ice and 'hot' trolls), though I don't recall their skin colours other than "dark" (actually because there multile types of the normal "dark coloured" trolls - trollkin, great trolls, mistress trolls and dark trolls - there is a lot of what could be considered racisim with the troll culture).
There are also multiple types of elf, but these more relate to their base plant type (Gloranthan elves are humanoid plants - the deciduous ones literally sleep thorugh the winter).
Dwarves are more uniform (hertics and non-heretics) and there are no orcs in Glorantha.

[LibraryOgre]

I don't think I've ever saw any world or story with common humanoid races that showed any significance of human ethnicities. I guess it makes a bit of sense, as differences between humans will seem trivial in comparison so it might seem silly to dwell on them (although in the real world people can show racism towards people who are objectively very similar to them).

For various reasons, including an idea of a story in which it will be relevant, I've become curious about media representations of that subject. Are there any shows / books / whatever that deal with such issues that you can recommend for me?

While not real-world ethnicities, both Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms made varying degrees of hay out of ethnic differences, with Greyhawk have explicit white supremacists as a major antagonists in the setting (the Scarlett Brotherhood emphasizes the superiority of the Suel race, especially over Oeridians or Flan). You also have the various barbarian cultures of the north.

Forgotten Realms really got into with Races of Faerun, noting out the various human subraces... Chondathan, Northman, Ffolk, Mulhourandi, Rashemi, Thayan, plus a number of others I can't recall off the top of my head. Again, some of the earliest material emphasizes such a conflict... Darkwalker on Moonshae is about a conflict between the Ffolk and the Northmen, with a Cali****e thief making an appearance.

Dragonlance does some of this, but it seems to be mostly a civilized/barbarian split... there's not as much that I recall clearly differentiates a Solamnia from a Nordmaaran from the folk of Goodlund and so on.

Kenzer's Kingdoms of Kalamar has a number of different human ethnicities, including the fairly broad "Dejy", which covers a lot of ground, while the Fhokki, Kalamarans, Rennarians, Svimovish, and Brandobians are most of the nation-builders.

Depending on the edition and the author, Shadowrun will touch on this. Of course, one of the early conflicts was against primarily Japanese megacorps, with some Anglo megacorps in there, and the conflict between the Anglo-led United Canadian and American States and the Native American Nations. That political difficulty led to a degree of racism, especially as cultural differences manifested in magic.

Star Wars occasionally mentions different human ethnic groups... the Mandalorians are a good example of a now-primarily human group, but KOTOR2 also had the Sirocco refugees coming into conflict with non-Sirocco refugees.

Star Trek, true to form, has indications of different races having different cultures (Picard was French, Sisko and his family were Louisiana Creole, IIRC), but, as it is Star Trek, there's "Infinite cultures in infinite diversity."

[Kish]

"Infinite diversity in infinite combinations."

[2D8HP]

Are there any fantasy worlds where the other species like Orc, Troll, and Elf are portrayed as having the same range of human racial differences humans display? Black Orcs, Yellow Orcs, and so on? For that matter does the green skin and look of Orcs ever get applied to Humans, so there are Green Humans?.
Closest I can think of is the Barsoom/Mars stories by Burroughs (also the author of the Tarzan books).

It starts with Red and Green Martians in "A Princess of Mars", and adds more in subsequent books, in time it starts to seem less fantastic and otherworldly, and more just dropping in typical early 20th century racial stereotypes and tropes, but then the fantastic pops up again.

It's a bit like some Howard (Conan, Kull, etc.).

[ben-zayb]

Bright features a setting where racism applies to an enture race of Orcs and to a particular Human ethnicity.


Are there any fantasy worlds where the other species like Orc, Troll, and Elf are portrayed as having the same range of human racial differences humans display? Black Orcs, Yellow Orcs, and so on? For that matter does the green skin and look of Orcs ever get applied to Humans, so there are Green Humans?
I would think so, yes, but the distinction and/or the term associated to it may not necessarily be based on color. Isn't that what D&D does all the time with the elf/dwarf/gnone/halfling/orc subraces?

World of Warcraft also features this. For example:
Trolls: Dark Trolls, Forest Trolls (Amani) Jungle Trolls (Gurubashi), Ice Trolls (Drakkari), Desert Trolls (Farraki), Island Trolls, Zandalari Trolls, not too mention the multitudinous tribes within these ethnicities
Elves: Night Elves, Nightborne, Highborne, High Elves, Blood Elves, the Void Elves, and arguably Naga

[random11]

What I'm about to write obviously has exceptions and not always true, but more often than not, races in fantasy are pretty much racist to begin with.
It's not hurting anyone since there are no elves to offend in the real world, so no one really cares, but think of how diversity works in most fantasy stories:
Humans can have different countries or cultures, but other races have the general same traits regardless of where they are located on the globe.

So you can have a human nomadic country next to medieval-Europe, take a boat to a place where everyone shouts "honor" every second word, and pretty much be sure that if you enter a jungle you'll meet some primitive tribes of humans, but elves will most likely be tree huggers with longbows regardless of which countries are around them.
And if there IS a different elven kingdom that decided to live in caves or stone houses? Well, they will be a different sub-race of elves because god forbid if they can't be easily recognized.
First edition of D&D even had other races as classes, it couldn't get more generic than that.

[Giggling Ghast]

Well, the Rogues of the Republic series by Patrick Weekes - the lead writer on Dragon Age - does have a period in the backstory where white humans enslaved black humans. The black protagonist ends up visiting a museum where various tools of endlavement (collars, whips and the like) are displayed. Also, the white humans warred with a ‘fantasy Asian’ civilization.

That setting has dwarves, elves, ogres, daemons and various kinds of fairies.

My recollections are a touch fuzzy because it’s been a while since I read the first book. I tried the second but never finished it; I felt there was a sharp drop in quality (and the first book wasn’t super great to begin with).

[S@tanicoaldo]

To be strictly accurate, the human nations in the south/east of Gondor and Mordor were controlled by Sauron, thought they were not, strictly, "evil" in that sense (though their leaders likely were).

(In the books, Sam Gamgee witnesses a fight between Men, and even wonders if one of the Haradrim casualties was really evil, or if he'd just been forced into the war against his will. That whole scene, actually, is depicted in a slightly different tone to the battles against, say the orcs, who were inherently evil, I think perhaps to at least show some semblence that the two were not equated.)





Part of the southern nation of Sargava's narrative "thing" is racial tension between the native Mwangi and the northern Chelaxian colonists (basically, a set-up for the sort of colonial tension akin the British Empire), which is I think what you're thinking of.

It's been years since I was a super fan of the setting but I'm sure that some Númenóreans went evil on their own seeking power and black magic and end up creationa whole evil nation that is not a racist stereotype. Can't remmber their names now But I'm sure they were a thing.

[Dr.Samurai]

I don't think I've ever saw any world or story with common humanoid races that showed any significance of human ethnicities. I guess it makes a bit of sense, as differences between humans will seem trivial in comparison so it might seem silly to dwell on them (although in the real world people can show racism towards people who are objectively very similar to them).

For various reasons, including an idea of a story in which it will be relevant, I've become curious about media representations of that subject. Are there any shows / books / whatever that deal with such issues that you can recommend for me?
Wasn't there a black elf in the D&D movie? I don't remember the movie itself but I remember there being a controversy. Is that what you're asking?

[Eldan]

Dragonlance I know has made national/racial conflicts between subgroups of elves and dwarves substantial plot points. IIRC, hill dwarves left the mountains long enough ago to have not only their own nations and their own distinct culture, but also visible differences in the predominance of certain physical traits, and when they were forced back to the mountains by a coming war, the mountain dwarves from who they split off long ago considered them unwelcome outsiders. Among the elves there were Qualinesti and Silvanesti--I think both could be described as "high elves"--who had a deep-seated conflict that I can't really remember in detail, as well as Dargonesti, wild elves who were looked down upon by both and did their own thing. I can't say whether humans were broken down into races--there were several major, human dominated states, each having a distinct culture. For example, Solamnia whose citizens were often easy to recognize, with distinct fashion and their own language even though most races also spoke Common (or Basic, or whatever the series called it.) These differences often became major plot points.

The Elder Scrolls also technically fits this criterion--of the games' many "races," most are actually subgroups of either humans ("men") or elves ("mer.") Even dwarves and orcs are consider highly distinct races of mer, and these two main species stand apart from three "beast" races who appear very distinct from both men and mer. I can't really think of interbreeding between different subtypes of men or of mer being talked about explicitly at all, but I assume it's possible because a few sources within the games specifically spoke of successful breeding between one of the beast races and one of the human races as "something that is only rumored to have happened." In terms of appearance, human Redguard are basically black people, Nords largely have the range of Scandinavian features, Bretons and Imperials have generically European features as far as I can tell (Imperials are Roman inspired.) Among elves, Dark elves are very distinct from other elves typical skin color, which is reddish gray. I want to say you can adjust it to be light enough that it reaches roughly the same appearance as the darkest option for the other elves, but it's been ages since I played with character creation, so I can't say for sure. Catfolk largely have a range of colors matching real life cats--anything from snowy white to beige or brown to dark gray. Lizardfolk can be green, blue, gray, I think maybe red--in other words, lizard colors.

Actually, the Elder Scrolls goes much further than that in the background.

Khajiit are cat people, but not all of them. They have sixteen varieties, based on which moon phases they were born under. They may look like house cats, furry humanoids with cat heads, jaguars, cats the size of horses or indistinguishable from wood elves.

The lizardfolk are similar in that regard. Their rules are actually thinking trees and it's implied they can breed different kinds of lizardfolks with different body plans. The humanoid lizards we see in teh games are their best attempt to breed something humanlike to interact with men and mer.

Bretons are several times mentioned to have elven blood. That implies the existence of half-elves. There's also several mentioned affairs between humans and elves and I'm fairly sure the Septim bloodlines had elves a few generations back.

The Dwemer are not dwarves, as such. It's mentioned ingame that a possible source of confusion may be a possible translation of "Dwemer" as "Dwerrow", the old english word for "dwarf". The Elder Scrolls do things like in-game translation errors. The more correct term for Dwemer is "deep elf" and probably means deep as in "philosophical and contemplative". Though they do live underground sometimes, they aren't actually any smaller than other elves.

The dark elves are another special case. They have dark skin, but they used to be golden-skinned like the high elves, until they were cursed to have "ashen" skin. Some of the older elves even remember when their skin colour was different. Vivec, their mortal-born god, is dark on one side of his face and golden on the other, though that is of course also largely symbolism for how "two-faced" he is.
What their actual skin-colour is varies by game. From what I remember, in Daggerfall they were dark brown. In Morrowind and Oblivion, they were blue with a grey tint. In Skyrim, they are a very dark grey.

[Eldan]

It's been years since I was a super fan of the setting but I'm sure that some Númenóreans went evil on their own seeking power and black magic and end up creationa whole evil nation that is not a racist stereotype. Can't remmber their names now But I'm sure they were a thing.

The corsairs of Umbar. Numenor defeated Sauron and built various colonies on the Middle-Earth coast. But then Sauron corrupted them and they started worshipping evil, so the gods sank their island. The only survivors were a few nobles who remained loyal to the good gods and founded Gondor and Arnor, and a few of the evil-worshipping colonists, who became Umbar. They've been at war with Gondor for centuries on and off, conquered a few times too. It's also where rebels and criminals from Gondor usually run to.

[JeenLeen]

Bright features a setting where racism applies to an enture race of Orcs and to a particular Human ethnicity.

What human-vs-human racism was there in Bright? I thought it was kinda neat how race seemed to play no effect in the setting, highlighting how the tension between species was the real concern and, to me at least, implying that humans weren't racist against humans of different skin. Will Smith's character seemed fairly buddy-buddy with white cops during the opening scenes when they are hanging out in the locker room and such, and I think (though couldn't tell for sure) that his wife was white.
Although different races are shown (at least Asian, black, and white), it doesn't come up or seem to be an issue, much like the OP says is seen in most media.

Or if I misread you and you mean the racism applied to orcs is a stand-in for real-life racism, then... yeah, agreed.

[S@tanicoaldo]

The corsairs of Umbar. Numenor defeated Sauron and built various colonies on the Middle-Earth coast. But then Sauron corrupted them and they started worshipping evil, so the gods sank their island. The only survivors were a few nobles who remained loyal to the good gods and founded Gondor and Arnor, and a few of the evil-worshipping colonists, who became Umbar. They've been at war with Gondor for centuries on and off, conquered a few times too. It's also where rebels and criminals from Gondor usually run to.

No, I'm talking about this guy race (http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Mouth_of_Sauron) Or something like that.

[Xyril]

The Dwemer are not dwarves, as such. It's mentioned ingame that a possible source of confusion may be a possible translation of "Dwemer" as "Dwerrow", the old english word for "dwarf". The Elder Scrolls do things like in-game translation errors. The more correct term for Dwemer is "deep elf" and probably means deep as in "philosophical and contemplative". Though they do live underground sometimes, they aren't actually any smaller than other elves.


Honestly, I didn't want to bother going into that much detail, but also I have no problem regarding them as the Elder Scrolls version of dwarves because 1) the misnomer is so deeply ingrained in the culture that dwemer weapons are called dwarven weapons, and in previous games, IIRC, dwemer artifacts were called dwarven artifacts, 2) I don't recall any actual race of dwarves to be confused with the dwemer, so there aren't any buffalo around to be offended that we're calling a bison a buffalo, 3) with this exception of the short and stocky stereotype, the dwemer fit the fantasy trope of the steam-punk/mechanist underground dwarves known for their exceptional metalwork.

[Eldan]

No, I'm talking about this guy race (http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Mouth_of_Sauron) Or something like that.

Yes, that would be them.

[S@tanicoaldo]

Yes, that would be them.

Really? Are you sure?

[Eldan]

Pretty sure, though it's been years since I've read the books. The Wiki you linked at least confirms he's a Black Numenorean, though it doesn't say whether he's from Umbar. Umbar is the largest Black Numenorean settlement, though.

[S@tanicoaldo]

Pretty sure, though it's been years since I've read the books. The Wiki you linked at least confirms he's a Black Numenorean, though it doesn't say whether he's from Umbar. Umbar is the largest Black Numenorean settlement, though.

That's cool. Thanks.

[Ravian]

Shadowrun had it so that the fantasy races were a different thing, metatypes, and while certain metatypes might be more common in certain parts of the world (usually derived from local folklore influences. So there are a lot of Elves in Ireland and Dwarves in Germany for instance.) but one can conceivably be of any race and metatype.

But while Metatypes are a more obvious difference, they're still fairly new, so racial prejudice is still a definite factor. So while you have your human supremacist groups in America and Japan and your elf supremacists in Ireland, but you also just have tensions with the Native Americans (who leveraged their comparable resistance to the VITAS plague that took out alot of the population elsewhere as well as their early access to magic to take back much of their homelands in the American West.) and the Japanese (because this is classic cyberpunk and the Japanese control three of the world's biggest mega corporations and are flexing their imperial muscles in the Pacific again.)

Granted metatype does often seem to take precedent in the world over race in many cases. Generally if you're an elf you're just going to get on top based off of their natural beauty and charisma (society just loves pretty people.) regardless of racial background, while orcs and trolls end up near the bottom because of society's distaste for all the tusks and horns. (Not to mention they have larger dietary needs and need things built larger and more resilient for them, which means they spend more on living expenses and they actually grow up faster so many people associate them with the bullies they had in school that could compensate for their crappy home life with the fact that they were practically fully grown (and 6-8 feet tall by the fourth grade.)

[akma]

What I'm about to write obviously has exceptions and not always true, but more often than not, races in fantasy are pretty much racist to begin with.
It's not hurting anyone since there are no elves to offend in the real world, so no one really cares, but think of how diversity works in most fantasy stories:
Humans can have different countries or cultures, but other races have the general same traits regardless of where they are located on the globe.


I wanted to write something about how much I agree with you and how much I avoid doing that, but then I realized that one of the ideas that made me post this thread is actually like this. Awkward. But some
of the races have very good reasons to be mono-cultured and the rest are barely fleshed out, so I guess it is excusable. I'll keep your comment in mind anyways.


Wasn't there a black elf in the D&D movie? I don't remember the movie itself but I remember there being a controversy. Is that what you're asking?

I'm asking about stories in which there is significance to the relations between different races of humans, when there are non-human races in the world. I watched the D&D movie a long time ago, and I don't remember anything about a black elf. Is it one of those things when people complain that a brown person was hired to portray a character they think should have been portrayed by a white person, or something else?

A list of names dropped, for future reference:

Pratchett
Eddings
Lord of the rings
Centaur no nayami
Golarian
Greyhawk - something about white supremacists
Forgotten realms
Kenzer's kingdoms of Kalamer
Shadowrun
Rogues of the republic

[JadedDM]

I watched the D&D movie a long time ago, and I don't remember anything about a black elf. Is it one of those things when people complain that a brown person was hired to portray a character they think should have been portrayed by a white person, or something else?

I don't blame you for not remembering anything about that movie, but there was an elven woman in it (Norda), and she was played by a woman of color (Kristen Wilson).

https://i.pinimg.com/474x/68/1a/96/681a96e4697c64dc9c85a15deb746239--dungeons-and-dragons-fantasy-women.jpg

[Tyrant]

Pratchett
Eddings
Lord of the rings
Centaur no nayami
Golarian
Greyhawk - something about white supremacists
Forgotten realms
Kenzer's kingdoms of Kalamer
Shadowrun
Rogues of the republic
[/SPOILER]
I know the Forgotten Realms was already mentioned due to their being specific human races. But here is an in-universe example. The ruling race in the nation of Thay are Mulhorandi and they are fairly racist towards non-Mulhorandi humans as I recall. Specifically the Mulhorandi in Thay are racist, not Mulhorandi people in general, to be clear. They openly practice slavery, including other humans (such as their neighbors, the Rashemi). The Mulhorandi themselves were also former slaves of the Imaskari, another human empire. So there are a few more specific examples from the Forgotten Realms.

More generally there are also several instances of novel characters noting the racial background of other humans, though there usually isn't a racist tone to this.