Warning to dark mode users: This post consists of images with white backgrounds.
Disclaimer: By no means is this just a rant, there is a question at the end, the rest of the post is just a method to convey this question more effectively.
Definitions of Racism
Racism, by definition of google is
Wikipedia's definition of racism is
the belief in the superiority of one race over another.[1][2][3] It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against other people because they are of a different race or ethnicity.[1][2] Modern variants of racism are often based in social perceptions of biological differences between peoples. These views can take the form of social actions, practices or beliefs, or political systems in which different races are ranked as inherently superior or inferior to each other, based on presumed shared inheritable traits, abilities, or qualities.[1][2][4]
Putting all of these together, in my own words, we get that racism can be:
- The belief that members of different races are inherently different due to their race having an impact on their qualities, characteristics and abilities.
- (Because of the above belief) the belief that your race, and members of your race, are inherently superior to that of other races and their members.
- Because of both of these beliefs, prejudice, antagonism and discrimination are targeted at members of other races, whether made apparent in their actions towards them or being unknown to others not affecting the fact that it’s racism.
This post isn’t about the definition of racism, and hence, the purpose of the aforementioned d is to express under what “grounds” what this post written.
Roblox’s Community rules, under Section I, Part 5 and Part 12:
I personally find that the above part of the rules are irrelevant to this post, though they are put here for reference sake. What we want to look at is Section II, parts 2 and 3, with the appropriate parts related to this post in bold.
The actual post
Now that all the reference content is above, it’s time for the actual post! Let’s begin with an analogy towards racism. Say that Person A attack Person B, whom they never met before, specifically due to their race, and openly admits to it. This would be called racism. Say that Person C ran after and kicked Domestic Animal A, whom was doing nothing towards the person, specifically because of its species. This wouldn’t fall under racism, but be something more akin to “Speciesism” (Which is a thing according to Wikipedia, but not a thing according to auto correct) or animal abuse.
I’m neither American nor well-informed on laws in the first place, combining these two facts, I can’t make inferences related to creating legal content on Roblox that abides by American laws. However, what I will infer is that by racism, it’s referring to races in the sense of humans and not races in the sense of biology. Correct me if I’m wrong on this point, not much clarification is giving towards this on the community rules page. Going by this, we can disregard the parts in Section I related to discrimination for this post. Now, I’ll finally phrase the scenario behind the creation of this post before going into Section II.
The situation
I’m planning to work on a project where the player is given the ability to, amongst other things, customise their race (as in species, such as Human, Beast-(wo)man (depends on gender choice), Elf, etc. I.E, all those good generic races in a generic fantasy RPG). The choice of their race will not just impact their characters abilities, but also the dialogue they receive from different NPCs of different races. Regardless of what race they choose, they will start in an area tha
(Note the following example is just an example and not actually going to happen, but suggestive towards what may happen)
E.g, say that the player chose human as a race, they would originally be placed in a village that practices equality. They’ll have the ability to travel to other places, which may practice equality, or specific race-supremacy. If they go to a country that practices human supremacy, seeing as they’re a human, their experience would be equal to that of it of an area that practices equality. If, on the other hand, someone of demi-human race, such as beastman, their dialogues would be passively abusive towards the players unless they have done something to prove that they aren’t “like others of that race”, such as building up a positive reputation via completing quests & requests from NPCs successfully.
Further along the spectrum, if someone like a demon/devil would even approach an area that practices human supremacy, NPCs would attack, or prepare to attack, said demon/devil unless, similar to the prior case, they are different to others of their race.
Each race would have in-depth backgrounds to describe why they are treated in such a way by certain races, but favoured by other races, with the final result of how NPCs act towards them based on their actions (e.g. a Human NPC in a human supremacy country may still abuse a human player due to theft).
Let’s link this back into Section II, part 2.
I would argue that this does the opposite to encourage inappropriate behaviour, encouraging people to act towards people based off their actions rather than their race/species.
But then there’s part 3:
At most, it would fall into hate speech
, but even then it wouldn’t. Roblox explicitly states in regards to another content type that Content that implies or makes an avatar appear naked or in underwear/undergarments. This includes solid color avatars without clothing.
, however, at most, the dialogue wouldn’t directly be able to be cast as (by my view) “hate speech”, being more along the lines of… something else. To give an example, rather than open abuse towards other races, the abuse would come out more “easily”, compared to those of the same race, if they make mistakes. In the example of a demi-human breaking the cargo of a human that they were employed under, remarks such as “Tch, as expected of a demi”, or “I shouldn’t have hired a (filthy) demi!”, would be the closest in resemblance towards hate speech.
What are your thoughts on this matter? Don’t know if what I even wrote makes sense to other people, so ask if more details are needed. My examples probably weren’t the best in the first place.