Quote from: Omega;1087967Otherwise they treated foreigners willing to be "american" as anyone else.

This omits so much historical evidence as to be at the very least extremely misleading but more likely outright false.  

Perhaps it would be fair to say that depending on where you were from, fitting in was not possible.  Maybe in a generation or two if your skin was the right color, but no matter how much you personally loved America and the American dream, not everyone was willing to accept your right to be here.  

This is true if you were Irish or if you were black or if you were Indian.  Or Chinese.  

I don't think it makes sense that you can demand that every immigrant accept American culture as it is in this moment and completely forget their culture - American culture requires the blending of different cultures - that's what American Culture is.

Quote from: Omega;1087967And this is the other thing that gets overlooked ALOT. There were really two opposing factions at the time. One wanting to enforce divisions and one wanting to encourage integration and acclimation. There were many a place that did not care where you were from as long as you fit in. Learn the language, learn the local customs. What these folk did not like were those who did not want to join in. Otherwise they treated foreigners willing to be "american" as anyone else.

This is very generic and even given generalities seems inaccurate. Notably, black people who learn the language and local customs still aren't treated the same as everyone else.

The 1920s was the time of the second resurgence of the Klu Klux Klan. The new Klan had a much wider demographic rather than being concentrated in the South, and targeted both blacks and immigrants (especially Catholic and Jewish immigrants). It had a peak of over a million members, and had thousands of members march in Washington. The KKK per se were still a minority, but plenty of the racial attitudes were very broad. Segregation was common throughout the country. KKK members and sympathizers won't necessarily treat you better if you blend in and are successful. They could be quite hostile to successful Jews, for example, despite speaking perfect English and learning local customs.

Among those opposed to the KKK, treatment could be much better - but could still be very patronizing. I'm a fan of the 1920s Charlie Chan books, and they were quite progressive for the time, but they could still seem quite patronizing - and did not reflect a lot of the reality. The Chinese Exclusion Act was still in force until the 1940s, for example.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1088025This omits so much historical evidence as to be at the very least extremely misleading but more likely outright false.  

Perhaps it would be fair to say that depending on where you were from, fitting in was not possible.  Maybe in a generation or two if your skin was the right color, but no matter how much you personally loved America and the American dream, not everyone was willing to accept your right to be here.  

This is true if you were Irish or if you were black or if you were Indian.  Or Chinese.  

I don't think it makes sense that you can demand that every immigrant accept American culture as it is in this moment and completely forget their culture - American culture requires the blending of different cultures - that's what American Culture is.

Only by taking the quote out of context.  If you go back and read the context, you'll see that Omega was talking about a subset of people.  I have observed the behavior he describes in action many times.  

There is one qualification to that:  There are also people for whom "Not From Around Here" is the operating principle of dislike.  There are places not 50 miles from where I'm typing this that have that dynamic.  If I went there, I look like the locals, I talk like the locals, and I have a great deal of understanding of their attitudes.  All that would get me compared to someone with different skin or different dress is a little more time before they realized that, you are "Not From Around Here."  Boom!  I'd be in the same bucket as all those with more exotic appearance or speech.    

And of course any given place is going to have a collective sort of default attitude about who is in or out, and the people without any strong opinions on the subject one way or the other are going to go with that attitude.  Thus you get places with characteristic prejudices.  But even with such dynamics, there are still fault lines.  To this day, the most discriminatory thing I ever saw was directed by a mix of White/Black students against Malaysian students, and it was very much cultural in nature (or at least cultural on the surface, but overtly driven by resentment).

This is why "cultural appropriation" is not measurable and is a meaningless concept, in games or otherwise.  (I mean, it's an inherently divisive and stupid idea for other reasons, but even at the raw logic level, it does not parse.)  I've got characters in a game.  They exist in a setting.  They are people, with all the range of good and bad traits that indicates.  Then they group many different ways, and those groups overlap in other many different ways.  Default attitudes form around groups but are fluid and subject to change over surprising fault lines.  Isolated groups don't like strangers because they are strangers.  They don't need another reason.  In real life, culture is organic, and too complicated to get right in a game (or a novel or whatnot) without some rounding off of corners.

Quote from: jhkim;1088034This is very generic and even given generalities seems inaccurate. Notably, black people who learn the language and local customs still aren't treated the same as everyone else.

Yes, Black people were the extreme exception, but they also got it from everyone.

This is a topic which I discussed at length with my (late) father, who grew up in the 1920s-30s in Portland. There was a Chinatown at that time, but the Asian population of Portland tended to live wherever it could afford. His blue collar neighborhood was predominantly White, but within a few blocks were plenty of Asian families and he had both Chinese and Japanese American friends. Of places that had racist restrictions on property deeds, that seemed to get applied to Blacks but not much to everyone else, so they lived in only a few parts of town.

I guess my point here is this - well dressed Chinese, (obviously) Jewish or Native American investigators may draw eyes and maybe some mixed responses, but in many places could operate rather freely. Black American investigators would have a far more difficult time including entering a Synagogue, Chinatown or an Indian Reservation.

Quote from: Lynn;1088055Yes, Black people were the extreme exception, but they also got it from everyone.

This is a topic which I discussed at length with my (late) father, who grew up in the 1920s-30s in Portland. There was a Chinatown at that time, but the Asian population of Portland tended to live wherever it could afford. His blue collar neighborhood was predominantly White, but within a few blocks were plenty of Asian families and he had both Chinese and Japanese American friends. Of places that had racist restrictions on property deeds, that seemed to get applied to Blacks but not much to everyone else, so they lived in only a few parts of town.

I guess my point here is this - well dressed Chinese, (obviously) Jewish or Native American investigators may draw eyes and maybe some mixed responses, but in many places could operate rather freely. Black American investigators would have a far more difficult time including entering a Synagogue, Chinatown or an Indian Reservation.

That sounds reasonable. I know that San Francisco did have greater racist restrictions on property deeds applied to Chinese, who were intentionally kept to Chinatown more than it sounds like Portland was. In general, discrimination seems roughly inverse to how common the minority is - though with many exceptions. So near an Indian Reservation is most likely where an Indian character would get the most discrimination, while a well-dressed Indian in a big city might just be treated as odd. Likewise, it would be worst for blacks in the South, and probably worst for Chinese in San Francisco or Los Angeles.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1088025This omits so much historical evidence as to be at the very least extremely misleading but more likely outright false.

For fucks sake I did not say this was so EVERYWHERE. Kats and my own great grandparents both lived this sort of thing and others I've talked to had relatives who did as well.

I don't think you've made a compelling argument that it was so anywhere.  

Do you want to pick a place that didn't have racial/ethnic/religious divisions that sometimes erupted into violence?  I think if you could find one that went a decade without a lynching, church burning, or property crime that appeared to be motivated by hate, I'd find it at least PLAUSIBLE, despite my own knowledge of history being pretty clear that hate and oppression are pretty universal.  

I'm reminded of a line from Kurt Vonnegut's 'Breakfast of Champions' about Sundown Towns.  

If you can find one, I'd bet dollars to donuts it's because it was EXTREMELY exclusionary.  Hard to have hate crimes when the people you hate aren't allowed to live next door.

Quote from: Lynn;1088055Yes, Black people were the extreme exception, but they also got it from everyone.

This is a topic which I discussed at length with my (late) father, who grew up in the 1920s-30s in Portland. There was a Chinatown at that time, but the Asian population of Portland tended to live wherever it could afford. His blue collar neighborhood was predominantly White, but within a few blocks were plenty of Asian families and he had both Chinese and Japanese American friends. Of places that had racist restrictions on property deeds, that seemed to get applied to Blacks but not much to everyone else, so they lived in only a few parts of town.

I guess my point here is this - well dressed Chinese, (obviously) Jewish or Native American investigators may draw eyes and maybe some mixed responses, but in many places could operate rather freely. Black American investigators would have a far more difficult time including entering a Synagogue, Chinatown or an Indian Reservation.

Yes. I think the most important thing to understand about the past of the USA was that the black experience was different from everyone else, different from other minority groups, and different from the rest of the world. That this racism was a specific and unusual US institution, and that it only applied to one race.

Quote from: S'mon;1088118Yes. I think the most important thing to understand about the past of the USA was that the black experience was different from everyone else, different from other minority groups, and different from the rest of the world. That this racism was a specific and unusual US institution, and that it only applied to one race.

In a recent public TV documentary, several people with Black and Native American ancestors in New Orleans said that their ancestors, including pureblood Native Americans, identified as Black when they got to the city (in the period 1880-1930) because Native Americans were treated worse and there was no large Native American community to act as a support group.

Quote from: WillInNewHaven;1088204In a recent public TV documentary, several people with Black and Native American ancestors in New Orleans said that their ancestors, including pureblood Native Americans, identified as Black when they got to the city (in the period 1880-1930) because Native Americans were treated worse and there was no large Native American community to act as a support group.

OK, I will make an exception for New Orleans. And Hawaii, for that matter.

Quote from: S'mon;1088223OK, I will make an exception for New Orleans. And Hawaii, for that matter.

Native Americans were feared and hated throughout the south and attacks on reservations in the Carolinas, repulsed by armed Native Americans, occurred when I was old enough to  read about them.

Let's make sure to keep this on the RPG topic, please.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1089507Let's make sure to keep this on the RPG topic, please.

In a wild west campaign, setting somewhat like Lonesome Dove, modified Glory Road rules, I ran in the 1990s one player chose to play a Pawnee scout. The other player-characters, including one Black character played by a Black player, were kind of rough on him verbally and he was really burned up about it. He urged me to have NPCs mistreat the Black character, in the name of realism and because he was so annoyed. I told him that most NPCs weren't likely to get too salty with the Black character or with him because they and their companions were really bad dudes.

Eventually, they all died in the Staked Plains. Glory Road is a deadly system without magical healing and with Comanche.

Well, from what I've seen of the historical record, black folks were treated less poorly than Indians in much of the west for much of the period. Which is not to say that they did not encounter racism on a frequent basis, of course.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1089852Well, from what I've seen of the historical record, black folks were treated less poorly than Indians in much of the west for much of the period. Which is not to say that they did not encounter racism on a frequent basis, of course.

The level of ignorance in America about the treatment of the Indians by the British is pretty enormous. That said, my Indian friends who fully admit to not being big fans of the Brits of that era (and in general from my own perspective of their clear biases) - they maintain that the framework of the British colonial laws that India adopted post-British rule, have been the scaffolding upon which has allowed India to rise (admittedly with a long way to go). Naturally this has all come at a price to their own culture.

I think that's a subtle gaming nuance that could be delved into - a culture that has hybridized its own distinct culture with another, with implicit game-impacting results for the PC's to engage in. I think that's the real issue that gets dodged with using analog cultures. They plop them down in-coherently rather than assuming some levels of assimilation on various levels has actually occurred and start the game-setting from that point forward.

Edit: Of course the Usual Idiots(tm) will still call it racism-via-cultural appropriation. But you know... reality.