Advent Calendar, Day -23: Stepin Fetchit Conquers the Universe
Posted by Richie on December 3, 2008
I’ve written about the probematic depiction of race in Warhammer 40,000 before, which ranges from common-or-garden thoughtlessness (according to the previous edition there are about four coloured guys in the entire universe, raising the question of where they came from, since the universe is quite comprehensively mapped out for us and it’s all white) to crassness (two of these four were a shirtless savage called “Axe Man” and a guy who looked exactly like Mr T) to surprisingly decent (there aren’t any aliens modelled on foreign stereotypes, the closest thing being the Tau, who have Anime-lookin’ robots and sort-of-samurai shoulderpads). The biggest positive, though, were an army of Space Marines called The Salamanders, who were depicted as dark-skinned without any associated baggage. We had stereotypical Space Marines in The Thousand Sons (sort-of-Egyptian, so they’re either undead or mysterious sorcerers) and the White Scars (sort-of-Mongolian, so they all ride bikes and their leaders are called Khans), but The Salamanders… The Salamanders were expert blacksmiths who had access to superior equipment and specialised in using flamethrowers. Their skin colour wasn’t, for once, the be-all and end-all, and wasn’t even remarked upon in anything other than the painting guide.
They were the biggest positive. Because a few moths ago, the latest edition of the Space Marine army book retconned them:
Yes, now they start off looking “normal” before radiation mutates them into black people. And not just black people, “daemonic” and “terrifying” black people. Now, aesthetically I can understand the reasoning behind making a bunch of fire-obsessives look like they’re made of volcanic rock. I don’t think you could ever entirely get rid of the dark skin = monster baggage, but I can see this working out with minimal fuss in a universe that also has non-monstrous black people in it. But… The Salamanders are the only consistent portrayal of dark skin in Warhammer 40,000, and now – for no good reason – they’ve been retconned into mutated space minstrels.
We shall return to these pastures shortly, when we discuss the relationship between colonialism and giant lizards.
violent_rabbit said
Your last line line made me LOL, just sayin’.
franzferdinand2 said
Do you still keep up with 40K communities online? I just wonder, because if any group would be insular and shout you down for mentioning race or gender it seems like it would be that one.
Or, at least, the wargamer half of them. From my experience, while everyone who plays on some level enjoys the board game mechanic, there are also a good chunk of people who enjoy the fantasy elements, the story, and build and customize their armies to fit into that grand scheme.
Then you have the people who couldn’t give a rat’s ass about any of that and just want to beat people at the game. I don’t imagine such people are particularly receptive to any form of criticism.
Richie said
I try to keep up with rumour sites like Warseer because it stops me building things that end up being invalidated by the next update, but I don’t really interact. There was some grumbling about the Salamanders retcon, but it was of the “They have no respect for the LORE!” variety rather than anything political.
Speaking of the creative / storytelling aspect, the whole Salamanders thing has inspired me to fill the void by doing a Mesoamerican chapter, using parts from the fantasy Lizardmen.
Thaluikhain said
Before I got banned from the Black Libraries website, issues of race and gender popped up alot. I was always of the opinion that race didn’t really come into it, as it is set in the future where humanity has evolved several subspecies anyway. In most of the books, skin colour isn’t even mentioned, though some would rant that because Greek and Roman names were common, they’d all have to be white or somesuch.
My own interpretation would be that Cadians (say) aren’t supposed to be white as such, despite seeming so…it’s just that the models are too small for us to be able to see the otherwise obvious differences between them and ethnic groups around today, or some such…though, admittedly, I am sort of clutching and straws and trying to stick some variety in where it probably isn’t.
As for the Salamanders…well…when was the last time that GW changed the background in a way that didn’t suck? Personally, I’m not that worried about whether or not GW has “official” black chapters, my chapter’s are (or rather were, before GW revved up the level of suck in everything) of some as yet unknown ethnic group. Though, yeah, having to drop the only black group they (tentatively) had is a bit of a worry.
Though, they did have the Tallarn, the BA are reformed when made into marines and don’t resemble the people they recruit from, the Night Lords came from a world where extreme paleness wasn’t uncommon etc.
Richie said
My issue with the lack of “official” coloured regiments / chapters is that it’s got a knock-on effect, whereby if they only ever depict white dudes and give painting tutorials for white dudes, people are going to create nothing but. It’s especially ridiculous when you consider the imperial guard, because they’re meant to be conscripted from all over the universe, given basic military training and used as cannon fodder (as opposed to the genetically-altered Knights Templar / Ubermensche Space Marines), but every regiment depicted has been aesthetically Western-looking, bar the Tallarn. And even then, the model range is almost entirely Cadian / Vostoyan / Catachan, so the Tallarn don’t really register unless you’re a completest.
Patrick J McGraw said
“In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war. And white people.”
I do feel the need to point out that GW’s fiction writers do much better on the race issue, especially Dan Abnett.
The thing with the Salamanders really bugged me, and was one of the elements prompting me to make my green-armored, dark-skinned Space Marine chapter successors to the Dark Angels rather than the Salamanders, despite their similar paint scheme and fondness for flamers and melta-weapons. My Marines are black because they’re from a planet with lots of black people, not because of some mutation.
(Plus, Deathwing Assault is freakin’ awesome.)
Richie said
I might end up treating mine as Salamanders successors, if only because that’ll get me Vulkan He’Stan, whose twin-linked flamer / melta ability is – unless they FAQ it later – applicable to all units in your army, not just marines. If I load up on Battle Sister allies, that’s a lot of fire.
Alva said
And warhammer again…. *sighs*
Warhammer, and fantasy/SF as a whole is such a spider web of postcolonilism and androcentricism its hard to know even where to start untangling it. It’s quite symptomatic that these issues are more or less impossible to discuss on Warseer, since hypocritical blindness is more or less needed to be able to play and engage in these games without feeling slightly nauseated. I manage with quite a lot of sarcasm, and by re-writing the canon in my head.
Thank you again, for a text well worth the read!
Richie said
The other big issue for me is the Lizardmen, because if you look at the way they’ve integrated European cultures into the fantasy setting, it’s all quite rigorously researched and internally consistent, even if it’s totally fantastical. But then with the Lizardmen, they’ve just mashed every single culture south of Mexico into one and given the characters random collections of syllables for names. It’s like calling the Nordic barbarians Bork Borksen or something.
Alva said
Well, being a swede, the norse marauders are one of our more common laughs around the table. Where do they come up with these names? Are GW having a secret lovestory with Harlequin? (Which is another source for truly crappy representations of norse myths) Still, I agree that the lizardmen are the worst, by far, but at least they’re not overly sexualized. It seems, with GW you can chose between post-colonialism and ladism soaked sexism.
I’m still trying to swallow down the bitter taste of the titty-sizes on my wood elves. I have already gotten the explanation that they are there so we can see the difference between male and female elves, but…. why? Why do we need to see the difference between male and female magicians in an army of so-called-equal elves? Are we gonna fuck them? No, we’re not! We’re gonna stage a battle! We’re gonna stage a battle with small model representations of a species known for their slender build and androgynous appearance, presumably not that easy to determine gender on even if seen in full scale. Explain to me again why we need big tits on the models?
I never even tried to rise this issue on Warseer, though. I just felt it wasn’t worth the trouble.
Richie said
There was also that huge blowup over the new Daemonette models, when they went from topless hawt chicks to the more androgynous looking design with only one breast. I think there are *still* petitions going about it.
I also remember House Escher from Necromunda, which had a description like “strangely, House Escher is composed entirely of women”, except… every other house was entirely male, as if that’s somehow not strange.
Elukka said
I agree that it’s silly that the vast majority of people in the galaxy are white. It makes no sense.
However, I don’t see a problem with the Salamanders. High levels of UV radiation would indeed make a population dark skinned (provided strong enough selective pressures). In real life, radiation (or the lack of it) caused black people to mutate into white people. If you look at the world, the more UV radiation a certain region gets, the darker skinned the indigenous peoples.
Richie said
I don’t have an issue with the Salamanders in isolation, it’s just that, in the context of the overwhelmingly white 40k universe, they make the lack of racial diversity even worse by retconning away one of the only consistent portrayals of non-whiteness as a form of scary mutation. Yeah, black people live in areas with high UV on Earth, but that’s the result of natural selection over a huge timescale; they’re not born white and then turn black (and since we started off in Africa, it’s white skin that’s the adaptation in the first place).
Happy said
They must be doing it on purpose, I have been playing 40k since 1987. Other than the first Lizardmen army (Slann) more like Frog-men; they had slaves, pigmies that the Slann drugged so they would fight with out any fear. Grots fought better than they did. These were the only AFRO-CENTRIC races that were produced by {at that time} Citadel/GW. Oh! There was one Zulu Warrior model and the one Black Imperial guard with a M16, and you only know he was black because they painted him like that in the White Dwarf. This is a big joke to them (GW), and WE (Afro-Americans) still buy their products.
Richie said
And even the fantasy Amazons, who are explicitly meant to come from a South / Central American area, are depicted as light skinned and blonde.
Patrick Phelan said
I was going to avoid posting here, because it was so long ago, but hey! Post on April 12th! I AM FULLY JUSTIFIED.
I remember getting the severe ughs at that. Yes. I’ve been attempting to paint my own homebrew chapter as a mix of cultures and ethnicities, that sort of thing, but it’s… yes. There is the fact that the Salamanders are depicted in Codex: Space Marines as being the truly heroic ones, the ones who fought the Battle of Armageddon for the people of Armageddon, and that kind of thing, so at least they’re transformed into DAEMONIC BLACK MEN WHO ARE SCARY which are… also noble? But, yes, that might be even worse, since at least they were probably white before they became SCARY DAEMONIC BLACK MEN.
I also remember an article in a later White Dwarf, that I presented to a bunch of random people as evidence of how GW seems to be genuinely attempting to reach the Tolerance door but keep forgetting to step around the trapdoor that says either “BOOBS” or “SCARY BLACK MEN” depending on context; sooner or later you have to wonder why they don’t just mark out where the trapdoor is. The “painting faces” article had how to paint various skin-tones, and while there were only three examples, one was genuinely black and modelled on – I think – an Empire warrior. I was impressed.
Two pages later… “painting female faces”. I don’t remember the exact terms, but: “Makeup should be applied sparingly. For evil females, the makeup can be applied darker and more heavily.” Really, GW? Really? You can tell them evil chicks ’cause they wear a lot of makeup, whereas them good chicks have naturally perfect skintones? Wow.
Richie said
“Remember, all evil women are whores, and vice versa”
Salvin said
I see it’s been a while since someone posted here, dunno if anyone will really see this but hey, just gonna get my view out there.
I’ve currently got a fairly large ammount of imperial guard and have recently started collecting space marines and settled on the salamanders chapter due to Vulkan’s special rules about fire using weapons, perfect for planetstrike games. I’d say around 95% of my imperial guard army is ‘White’. This is purely because white skin is easier to paint and give more detail. With white faces you can get more depth to the face as you can build up from brown in the recesses, progressing up to lighter ‘white’ flesh highlights. With the darker skinned people there are less stages you can go through to add depth, highlighting and other minor details. Therefore in my case its purely down to the standard of finish on my models.
As for the gender side of this, nobody mentions the fact that there are few or no females in the imperial guard or space marines or that there are no men in the sisters of battle. Therefore why should people bring up the point that in necromunda there is one gang that is solely made up of females and the other gangs don’t have any? Surely its the same principle as with the imperial guard and the sisters of battle for example.
Besides, why should people create about race and gender (not seen any mention of religion yet) in a tabletop wargame? In my honest opinion this is political correctness being used to judge fantasy. I’ve never seen anyone complain about a book because it has no black people in it etc…
Richie said
In order.
1. “Light” skin *might* be easier to paint, but “light” and “white” aren’t synonymous. There are “black” people with skin that isn’t actually any darker than the white skin of an Anglo person; it’s just got a brown colouration rather than a pink one. But the issue here isn’t the skin of your models, it’s the skin of the models GW choose to display in the books, painted by some of the best, if not the best, miniature painters in the world. The occasional black dude isn’t beyond them, and since we’re supposedly dealing with a empire that covers the whole of humanity, they could do worse than to actually include some.
2. I’m not entirely sure what you mean here. The lack of female Guard models is notable because the background explicitly says stuff like “On Cadia, the birthrate and recruitment rate are synonymous”, yet all the Cadians we see are male. The lack of women in the Space Marines makes sense because they’re supposed to be monks, the lack of men in the Sisters makes sense because they’re supposed to be nuns, and I don’t think anybody’s bothered by it. The reason the line about House Escher is ridiculous is because of the word “strangely”; on the basis of the models, all the houses are restricted to the one gender, but they only bother pointing out how strange it is when it’s an all-female house rather than all-male one.
3. People care about race and gender in tabletops wargaming because they care about race and gender in everything, and happen to like tabletop wargaming as well.
THAT’S US GAMERS :D « Crimitism said
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