A thought on race and RPGs

[benlehman]

Since there is so much discussion of it recently.

So, my people in Polaris are explicitly (rather than implicitly) white.

"The people that live in the memory of Polaris are tall, thin, and beautiful. Their hair is silver and gold and all the colors of the sky at night and their skin is so thin that you can see their pale blue veins beneath it."

Now, anyone who is white and reading this, please do me a favor and turn over your arm. Note that you can very clearly see the blue blood in your veins through your skin. It's a pretty standard trait of white people.

Nonetheless, almost everyone who has talked about these people with me makes the assumption that they are, you know, albino, or translucent, or in some other way super-white, or that they are magical elves (they are neither), or in some other way different in appearance from, you know, skinny northern Europeans.

I wonder if this is because whiteness is so much the assumed default that, if the writer takes the time to describe the skin of a character, that character must be divergent from the norm somehow.

Or it could just be that I'm an unclear writer.

Comments

[evilmagnus]

It was the use of the word 'thin' to describe the skin that changed the image for me. I say this as a genuine pasty North Euro with blue veins that elicit cries of joy from phlebotomists. Change that last bit to "their skin is so pale that you can see their blue veins beneath it" and I get, well, North Euro stock.

But I didn't go as far as albino space pixies.

[denyse.livejournal.com]

I see blue veins in most caucasian people and some east asian people all the time. evilmagnus occasionally tells me to stop eyeing his veins like I want to pop an IV into them (they're so big and blue, an intern couldn't miss 'em!) But mostly, it's the wrist and that sort of area.

Y'all pale whities to me. Except those of you who aren't.

[l-the-fangirl.livejournal.com]

I agree that it's the word 'thin' throwing people off.