I've found that the race-essentialism in media like D&D is popular amongst white people because it lays out a simplistic black and white of who is right and who is wrong. If you are inherently good and others are inherent evil, your actions are forever justified.

This reflects how many white people treat modern society. Storming the capital is an act of patriotism that they never thought they'd be punished for, because it was done under the banner of "good". Why would you punish the righteous? Its unthinkable to them.

Moral conflict is a choice in both situations, because the rules dont apply the same way to either group. The hierarchy of privilege is systemic. Creatures within the game arent autonomous. They're caricatures of real cultural entity, simplified down to what you need them to be.

The same game is played on a larger scale in this country. QAn*n take anti-semitic rhetoric, alters it to fit modern "issues", and then plays out this fantasy evil before the eyes of those who desperately need the world's problems to be A -> B, defeat the evil.

They need it to be this way, "they" being those who facilitate white supremacy socially and structurally, because people want to feel righteous. They dont want to face the fact that they live atop stolen land filled with the blood of BIPOC. That their privilege comes from evil.

That's why white supremacy is so strong. It's for the same reasons that white fantasies have to portray white people as eternally justified. Admitting wrongdoing is an exposure to justice and white people know what that justice would look like. Equity. And that breaks the system.

There is no "maybe you're the bad guy" in white media. Some may trick you into believing so, but it's not true. At best, they will show that a white person who is wrong is so much not like you, that they're easy is disassociate from. You are centered as righteous, always.

That's why when we PoC bring up that orcs are tied to Asian and Black stereotypes, there's pushback. Why we still have anti-semitic depictions of Jewish people in gnomes and goblins. No matter how much direct evidence, it cant be true. Because that would strip away righteousness.

Black people MUST be doing something wrong to be killed by cops so much. If that's untrue, then cops are no longer righteous and my support of them and the fact that they work for me is wrong. So it has to be the Black people. Someone give me reasons to make me feel better.

Gygax wrote orcs to be evil and you're just making a big deal out of nothing. There's nothing wrong with wanting to kill off an unintelligent "barbaric" race of violent hypersexual beasts that live in a poor and simplistic society. Nothing wrong with that. I'm a paladin.

I'm picking on D&D but it's really everywhere. In everything. It's why, no matter how directly we want to point at a problem and break it down to its fundamental truths, which are that white supremacy is the foundation of their "success" and comfort, they will relent.

Anyway. Thought of that while brushing my teeth this morning.

I'm gunna have some orange juice. The replies to this will be a lovely meal to match, I'm sure.