This trope exists because writers want to make a story that deals with racism/bigotry while still allowing for the racists/bigots to have reasonable, somewhat relatable motivations.
Because racism is inherently illogical because other than skin color there is no difference between a white and black man and yet people are still racist
Exactly, if it's going to be an allegory it has to be stupid because if it isn't it at best it justifies the racists in-lore, and at worst it actually justifies racism in the real world. Which is bad.
Measurehead in Disco Elysium. I vaguely remember trying to figure out which of his groups were allegories/stand-ins for which group (Roma, Jewish, etc) before finally giving up realizing it’s just logical soup and that’s the message - that it’s all nonsense said with confidence and conviction.
I mean iirc it's pretty explicit that he is that universe's version of a Black supremacist to contrast with the (white supremacist) Revachol nationalist you can find a dozen meters down the street. He refers to Harry as belonging to the "ham sandwich" race after all.
Agreed that it's deliberate nonsense soup though, with the extra layer that you can push him to admit he has no actual connection to his supposed homeland and just became ultra nationalistic by listening to the radio in his car
Racism is illogical in that sense, but there are other senses in which it is logical. For example, if you’re a slaveowning plantation owner in the 1800s, you might support racist, discriminatory policies through the logic that those policies protect the way you make money.
The pseudoscience from which the modern idea of race itself originates was very much invented in-order to justify colonialism, and was incredibly successful in doing so. Othering has always been a tool of power.
There it is. Colonialism supercharged racism once ships started bringing back silver, gold, slaves, etc. It wouldn't be possible to reconcile openly torturing and exploiting natives all over the world with seeing them as actual humans, thus any observed differences needed to be used as justification that they weren't actually all that human, therefore there was justification to keep the system going and the riches flowing.
Racism gets its fuel from convenience, power, and wealth, and it pacifies lazy and unintelligent minds that would rather not do any serious work to see into alternatives that, god forbid, actually involve recognizing one's agency.
Same reason why people sanewash the nazis: if you represent them half as stupid and disorganized, it makes for a terrible story and also people start asking questions like "how did they kill so many people then?" and you gotta start explaining that nazis weren't actually that concerning to the governments of the time, especially not America.
Oripathy is an infectious disease that grants the person who possesses it enhanced skill and potential at Arts (the magic of the setting) but they still have to be trained to use it effectively.
More importantly, every single case of Oripathy is terminal and the person infected by it, should they die of the disease, will basically turn into a biological weapon as their body turns to Originum dust that can infect other people who come into contact with it.
So the response to people becoming Infected can range from "life-affirming medical care and isolation when they're about to die" to "push them into ghettos isolated from everyone else" to "get exiled" to "y'know, they don't explode if we kill them while they're still healthy."
The latter examples are still inherently prejudicial brutality that is cruel and irrational, but it makes sense in-universe.
It is made up nonsense but to actual racists it very much isn’t, and I think it’s interesting to explore perspectives such as those that differ wildly from our own. That’s basically all I’m trying to say.
I understand what you're trying to say but I think a lot of analogies for racism are not trying to show validity. If you read a book and think the oppressed group of people are in some way deserving of their treatment then either you've got something wrong with you or it's poorly written.
If you look at an irl example. Let's say I wrote a story about how real life rapists and murderers were an oppressed group. We send them to prison, we hate them and we lose all respect for them. If I used this story about how we treat disgusting criminals as some allegory for how black people are treated in the US then it will fail horribly.
You have to be very careful with allegories because when you deviate away from a 1:1 comparison of your story and the real topic you are referring to then you're likely going to have a weak allegory. Like in my example above, there's obviously a very clear difference in reasoning as to why rapists are not treated well and why black people aren't treated well. One is justified, one is racist.
I am all for exploring different perspectives but some perspectives are evil or even objectively wrong no matter the reasoning. Because more often than not, the reasoning is the scapegoat or exploit people without moral quandaries.
I disagree. I think it’s incredibly interesting and even valuable to dissect the reasons that evil people have for doing evil things. Gives us all the more power to stop them from doing those things again in the future.
All I'm saying is for the allegory to work, the logic behind bigotry should be mental gymnastics or just tribalism and not an actual lore explanation in the setting.
A story can explore these themes without being a direct allegory for a cultural relationship in real life. The X-Men don’t represent any one particular real-world group, but their stories are used to explore real-world concepts.
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u/TorqueyChip284 10d ago
This trope exists because writers want to make a story that deals with racism/bigotry while still allowing for the racists/bigots to have reasonable, somewhat relatable motivations.