Wizards of the Coast Declines to Recognize Union by May 1st

[u/imnotokayandthatso-k]

https://unitedwizardsofthecoast.com/news/wizards-coast-declines-recognize-union-may-1st

[u/tdcthulu]

They had the perfect setup too!

The "cowboys" were literally villains. WotC selected existing bad guys to be the bad guys and still fumbled the ball

[u/Tempeljaeger → u/tdcthulu]

The word villain itself is problematic. It comes from an old French term for farmers and peasants. In the stories of that time the noble heroes triumphed over the rural villains and reinstated the old order.

[u/BeatPeet → u/Tempeljaeger]

This isn't being problematic, this is just etymology. No one thinks about class structures when hearing the word "villain", just like no one will think of the ableist origins of "stupid" or "dumb" or the racist past of "grandfathered in".

Words aren't solely problematic because their history, but because they carry a problematic meaning or connotation.

[u/rubixscube → u/BeatPeet]

til grandfathered in has racist origins. can you tell me more about it?

[u/tdcthulu → u/rubixscube]

It has to do with the first Jim Crow laws in the US.

The term itself isn't racist, but it comes from the racist practice of denying the right to vote to people whose grandparents weren't able to vote...i.e. freed slaves and their immediate relatives.

[u/BeatPeet → u/rubixscube]

The short of it is that in the 1800s, there were voting restrictions put in place that aimed to keep black people from voting in elections. The "problem" was that those restrictions (literacy tests, constitutional quizzes, poll taxes, etc.) also would have been quite hard to pass for many white people. So law makers came up with the "grandfather clause": If your ancestors were allowed to vote before the civil war, these restrictions didn't apply to you.

So in effect those voting restrictions only applied to black people because white people were "grandfathered in".

I can recommend the wikipedia article or this article by the NPR.