Them's fightin' words.
MGT Only: The problem with Mongoose Traveller?
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Nope, they are the reality. William Keith did most of the artwork for CT & I haven't seen a single illustration of a black person in his art portfolio.
Traveller Artwork didn't get it's first black human until the MT Era (Rebellion Sourcebook). The 6th black human showed up in GURPS. They averaged 2 black humans in interior artwork per product supplement. MgT can't manage that.
At some point, RPG publishers need to stop making our hobby look like its "whites only".
That would be: "Belief in the superiority of a particular race leading to prejudice and antagonism towards people of other races, esp. those in close proximity who may be felt as a threat to one's cultural and racial integrity or economic well-being." - OED
Pretty wild accusation. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. waiting...
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In the era of line art, it was far easier to render light skin than dark, simply due to no need to halftone-screen or hash. Some games of the 70's and early 80's do have afro-american males in them - but you have to pay attention to nose and hair to catch it. Many line art drawings of Uhura don't indicate her dark complexion, despite accurate hair and nose.
And, in TTB, there are several images that are NOT classic caucasian looks.
Now, TTB p11, the guy in the center is halftoned on the face, has a wide nose, and short, apparently fuzzy, hair. I always thought it was a black male.
TTB p 31 - Capt. Jamison - not african, but doesn't look caucasian, really. Looks rather eastern mediterranean - arabic or coptic.
TTB p. 71 - hairstyle is samurai, epicanthic fold is pronounced. Head shape elongated slightly. Ainu or meso-american aboriginal?
TTB p. 102 - Looks mexican. It's Jettrick, so it would be no stretch to be a non-white. I've seen a very similar Jettrick in color - and it was of a medium-dark skin tone.
TTB p 120 - woman has strong epicanthic folds. Actually looks SE Asian to me - Thai or Laos. Spitting image of a Hmong student of mine from 5 years ago, BTW. And it's a bill keith image.
TTB p. 124 - Danforth image. Guy on left looks eskimo. Guy in middle has a strongly sloped forehead and sharp nose - meso-american? Guy on right looks rather caucasian. I could ask Liz...
TTB p. 128 - Shawna - always looked like a light-skinned afro-caribbean to me. (And looked rather like a light-skinned black classmate of mine - Tawnda .). It's another Jettrick.
TTB p. 144 - guy on right COULD be black - he's strongly halftoned, while the 3 others are not. unsigned, but bill keith sketch style.
AM 6 Solomani - Back cover - woman looks hispanic to me.
Vladika
SOC-14 1K
I guess that makes nearly every classic artist throughout history a racist?
If you look for it, you'll find it.Please let us all know exactly the politically correct mix of races required to avoid that label?
Page 6 attributes the image to D. J. Barr.
See that this discussion would only have sense where we're talking about pictures of Solomani humans, as for the rest there may be races we don't know about right now, and I don't know enough of their features to give my oppinion.
I guess that makes nearly every classic artist throughout history a racist?
Please let us all know exactly the politically correct mix of races required to avoid that label?
I am guessing by "classic", you mean Western European? Thanks for making my point.
If being "politically correct" means being accurate, well what can I say? I am striving for accuracy.
Most of the ethnic breakouts for Earth I have run across give this:
Asian (Including Indian Subcontinent) 60.6%, Black 14.1%, White 16.7%, Latino 8.5%
Ref: http://www.prb.org/pdf06/06WorldDataSheet.pdf
Unless, of course you want to make the argument that only Western Europeans and North Americans went to the stars and everyone else stayed home. The MT Virus has more believability than that.
I think that humans = Caucasians over 99% of the time in Traveller art is a bit much.
Accuracy in what? How people looks THOUSANDS of years from now in different parts of the galaxy? Please elaborate so I know that you are thinking before typing...
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
Perhaps a seperate thread?
Racism in Traveller artwork is not confined to Mongoose alone. Further, the thread is clearly derailed.
Racism in Traveller artwork is not confined to Mongoose alone. Further, the thread is clearly derailed.
Vladika
SOC-14 1K
You could always write, illustrate and market your own stuff. As for me I'll keep buying it, racist or not. lol
Hmmm No Droyne, Zho, Aslan, Hiver, etc. Crewmen (opps "persons"[double opps. that is too xenophobic] lol ) on my 200dton ship. Guess I'm a racist and need to be barred from this site before I contaminate other members?
What are you looking for anyway? I'm going to have to pull out my "PC Patrol Cruiser" for sure...
Vladika
SOC-14 1K
No, I didn't "make your point". Most EVERY culture on the face of this Earth represents what and who are in their immediate locality.
Western Europeans depicted mostly Western Europeans as did Mayans and Aztecs their own, Chinese depicted Chinese, Japanese other Japanese, Africans other Africans...etc, etc, etc... So, who ISN'T a racist by your reckoning?
Garyius2003
SOC-13
I did a world for my PCs once on the edge of the Marches where they (pre the sessions) described their characters as white. They shared the same type as "Pure Earthers" who were organic and very close to mennonite farmers, while the rest of the world was a generalized asain and REALLY wanted to go from TL8 to TL12.
The Pures were blamed for the lack of progress. We ended up in a cold sleep version of the Holocaust, after many encounters where the PCs escaped a beating or attack by showing TL14 or 15 tech. They decided to be the good guys.
I used a Mega to fund the camp of cold sleep, where they wanted the fertile land to grow a mild drug that tastes best when grown there
Supplement Four
SOC-14 5K
Check out page 13. She doesn't look classically caucasian to me. She looks to me like one of the races of the Mediterranean.
Egyptian, maybe?
Spanish? Could be.
Could go caucasian as a Greek or Turk, I guess.
Not in GURPS Traveller artwork. All different ethnicities shown, including many that just look "mixed" as one might suppose in the Far Future.
You could always write, illustrate and market your own stuff. As for me I'll keep buying it, racist or not. lol
Hmmm No Droyne, Zho, Aslan, Hiver, etc. Crewmen (opps "persons"[double opps. that is too xenophobic] lol ) on my 200dton ship. Guess I'm a racist and need to be barred from this site before I contaminate other members?
What are you looking for anyway? I'm going to have to pull out my "PC Patrol Cruiser" for sure...
As I have gotten into 3d art, I have been paying a lot more attention to Traveller artwork than I have for the prior 30 years or so.
Writing and illustrating my own stuff is what brought this on. I have been retypesetting the MT manuals so I could add all of the errata and other content that for whatever reason, didn't make it from CT to MT (along with anything else I found interesting). As I was rearranging the location of the artwork, I was noticing how in the OTU artwork, human = Caucasian.
I think that in the 21st Century it matters, you obviously don't.
Let me mess with this some more:
If the ancients were taking humans off the Earth 300,000 or so years ago, which version of archaic humans were they taking? All of the following were around in that time period:
Homo neanderthalensis, Homo rhodesiensis, or possibly Homo erectus?
They weren't taking Homo sapiens (i.e. modern humans) because they weren't around at that point. We didn't show up until around 200,000 years ago.
They were taking Homo sapiens, because 300,000 later many of the descendants of the various separated populations were able to produce fertile (and stable) hybrid offspring. That's an irrefutable fact in the universe of the Third Imperium setting.
35 years ago paleontologists believed that archaic Homo sapiens did show up about 300,000 years ago (or perhaps it was merely one unrefuted theory among several). Indeed, I strongly suspect that GDW chose the date for the Ancients shenanigans from that theory. Theories have changed over the years since then. I don't think that there's any proof (as opposed to evidence) that the 200,000 years ago theory is correct, though I could be wrong (DNA analysis?).
But even if there is proof, it doesn't matter, because the TU and the Real Universe are not identical. They have a lot in common, but they're not the same. And one difference is (or may be) that in the TU there is actual proof that the Ancients picked up specimens of Homo sapiens (known to Imperial scientists as Homo sapiens antiquus). And some of these populations evolved into Homo sapiens vlandensis and Homo sapiens zhodotlas and Homo sapiens darrianus and Homo sapiens geonensis and others. Meanwhile, the ones left behind on Earth evolved into Homo sapiens sapiens.
So unless you wish to propose that these subspecies started out being separate species and then all evolved by convergent evolution until they were interfertile, the conclusion is inescapable that they started out being the same species and didn't diverge enough to become separate species in the 300,000 years they were apart.
In the TU, that is.
Incidentally, if one can believe Wikipedia then there is an existing controversy about whether Neanderthals were a separate species or a subspecies of Homo sapiens. So apparently there is still some ambiguity in the existing body of evidence.
Hans
Could be any northern mediterranian. Could also be Romani.
Have you done cover art that doesn't show a mix of "races" on it? That could be seen as being just as "racist". Heck, making an issue of this in the first place makes one question your mindset.
Most Spanish are caucasian, as are most people in the North shore of the Mediterranean.
Last theories I've read suggest Homo Neanderthalensis and Homo Sapiens were interfertile, and the Homo Neandertalensis was in most part absorbed into the current Homo by intermarriage, instead of disapearing.
In any case, if the Ancients took Human (or proto human) samples about 300000 years ago, it's quite easy to believe they have evoluted into other ethnic groups (even without Ancient intervention) just because the environmental factors were different tan in Earth.
If in Earth, with more close environmental conditions we have divided in the many etnic groups we have today, I cannot imagine how could me ndiffer if they evolutioned in different planets, under different suns (with different light wavelengths), etc...
I won't discuss those numbers, of course, but that does not mean all moved to stars keeping in them. Traveller was written in the late 1970's, when most space exploration (and so the ones seen as more likely to move to stars) were Western World or Russian, while the Asians (60% of population, as you say) were below them in space tech.
Also, the fact that the language envolved from the Solomani taling the Vilani empire is Galanglic, so evoluted (mainly) from English, not from Mandarin (as would be logical if the Chinese led the move, as numbers would suggest). That makes me think most of this taking (and so the move to stars) was by Western (mostly caucasian) people.
And even so, I guess most Imperial people will be more evolutioned from Vilani tan from Solomani, as the Vilani had already a quite more large population base, having been in the stars for about 2000 years when the Terrans began its move.
As an example, remember that the Sword Worlds (one of the major expeditions/colonizaions that went farther) are told to be mainly from the Nordic/Germanic etnic group (caucasian)...
EDIT: I'd say more a Western bias and product of its time (about 35 years ago) that racism
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