Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Las wrote:
I'm getting trolled, right? Is anyone else seeing this garbage or am I having a fever dream?

I think many might think your the troll trying to start something by posting these posts.

 Yarium wrote:
Just paint people of different ethnicities. And I have no idea where the "dark skin tone is harder to paint!" argument comes from. I actually started with painting dark skinned folks for my Space Marines because I found it easier.

Well, there are a bunch of paints for specifically white people skin, but haven't seen any for others, seems you'd need to mix your own.

 Psienesis wrote:
The Salamanders are not African-black, they are asphalt black. They are white dudes with jet-black skin and glowing red eyes because of an environmental reaction in their geneseed.

That's basically my issue with them, would be totally fine with the Salamanders if they just happened to be black people but as it is... They're basically a whole chapter of blackface minstrels, and it's basically scared me away form playing them for fear of being called a racist...

I find it amusing that people seem to get so rilled about this subject, paint your army in whatever skintone you desire. And if you feel that GW is being racial ignorant well then thats your point of view, and a point you are entiteled to.

Asterios wrote:

 Las wrote:
I'm getting trolled, right? Is anyone else seeing this garbage or am I having a fever dream?

I think many might think your the troll trying to start something by posting these posts.

Do you really believe that white people can't paint black people? Do you really think contracting art is just someone submitting whatever they want to a company and the company has to use it, with no input or control over the depiction? Do you really believe there are no black people painting because they're all too busy "in the music scene?"

No. No, you must be fething with me.

 Trondheim wrote:
I find it amusing that people seem to get so rilled about this subject, paint your army in whatever skintone you desire. And if you feel that GW is being racial ignorant well then thats your point of view, and a point you are entiteled to.

Right, and this is a thread specifically about that hence were letting that opinion be known and discussed. Why is this blowing your mind?

 Las wrote:

Asterios wrote:

 Las wrote:
I'm getting trolled, right? Is anyone else seeing this garbage or am I having a fever dream?

I think many might think your the troll trying to start something by posting these posts.

Do you really believe that white people can't paint black people? Do you really think contracting art is just someone submitting whatever they want to a company and the company has to use it, with no input or control over the depiction? Do you really believe there are no black people painting because they're all too busy "in the music scene?"

No. No, you must be fething with me.

then tell me how many painting artists you know are black? how many artists who do drawings of GW stuff are black? would you rather I say sports or basketball? or such? most people only paint what they know, and the world being politically correct the way it is, people are afraid to paint what they do not know and disrespect someone.

GW's input is SM's thats it.

 Trondheim wrote:
I find it amusing that people seem to get so rilled about this subject, paint your army in whatever skintone you desire. And if you feel that GW is being racial ignorant well then thats your point of view, and a point you are entiteled to.

No.
If it's true, that's a problem that needs to be solved.
If it's not, saying that is basically slander.

 CrashGordon94 wrote:

 Trondheim wrote:
I find it amusing that people seem to get so rilled about this subject, paint your army in whatever skintone you desire. And if you feel that GW is being racial ignorant well then thats your point of view, and a point you are entiteled to.

No.
If it's true, that's a problem that needs to be solved.
If it's not, saying that is basically slander.

Oh really? And what proof do we have that GW is a company run by some gaggle of racial ignorant people? Personaly I just put this all down to people looking for problems where there are none

Then refer to the last sentence I posted.

 Las wrote:
I'm getting trolled, right? Is anyone else seeing this garbage or am I having a fever dream?

To be honest you just sound like you are trying very hard to care.... about skin colour art... to the point you are frothing at the mouth (not really, but dude you are lashing out).

Did you know there is a Sci Fi trope where pale white (usually British... but sometimes southern American) males are commonly depicted in a an evil regime.

Starwars has white British men oppressing Aliens and Americans which, due to screen time, look like minorities. Avatar has Southern White men edging to slaughter Natives which include women (the bad guys have women until the killing starts). It is a really common theme in Sci Fi to have the bad guys a lot whiter than the good guys and if all are white then the bad guys turn into Southerners or (usually posh) British.

It is likely the Imperial Guard was created with this Trope in mind because... all the humans look like pasty white British people who happen to be apart of the most oppressive regime they could think of. In my opinion this is why most of them are portrayed as white, because we westerners respond well to thinking only X group of white people are bad.

Of course, you are correct. The Art portrays mostly white dudes, which is hardly surprising, an oppressive regime needs a lot of soldiers and in order to look oppressive they tend to have to look white for some reason.

So maybe you will feel better knowing it's because of "reverse racism" or something...

Way back 8 or so years ago, a white Dwarf came out talking about this. The guy got Tallarn Models because he wanted to show black people in 40k a bit more (maybe the guy was black, I can't remember his reasons) and so he had a cool feature showing off his army of darker skinned models, with how to paint it. This was the first time I saw Tallarn models and as a result I see them as tanned and black whenever I remember them directly because of that article. But I doubt GW will ever do something like that again because they like Cadians so much.

Something to be upset about? Maybe. Should you be angry few people care? Probably not. But it doesn't have to be Black People. In fact the bit where you mostly talk about black people lacking makes it hard to take you seriously. Id rather see lots more cultures like the old GW used to have.

I have an old Imperial Guard book that had Arabic Tallarn art (black and white) and mongol soldiers on horse art (black and white) and it also has about 56 different and culturally diverse Guardsmen in there. It used to be the vision the guard would be a coalition of cultures all forced together in the struggle for survival. But that's not grim dark enough maybe? I know before hand they where white and like the Starship troopers, but this changed in like 3rd edition to lots of cultures, then reverted back to what we have today.

 Las wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
It is just a result of white, British artists painting/drawing what they are familiar with. The Imperium is a very diverse Empire with a wide variety of environments within a wide variety of planets. There are people of every skin tone.

This is the laziest, shittiest excuse for GW's weird reluctance to paint black people. As if there aren't any black folk in Nottingham and no one at GW has ever seen someone who isn't white. Yes, it's the UK but its the Uk in 2015 not 1910.

Nottingham only has a 7.5% Black Population according to the demographics on wikipedia. In that kind of environment, and growing up in the 50's, 60's, and 70's when that statistic was even lower, it's understandable to not really have many black characters in 40k. It just doesn't pop into their brains, and GW is probably correct in that their consumer base is predominately white.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Asterios wrote:

 Las wrote:

Asterios wrote:
the imperium is as diverse as you paint it.

Yeah, everyone knows this. The problem is GW's refusal to include non-white people in their make believe space fantasy. It's weird enough that there are almost no women in the game, do they all have to be white too because "reasons?"

actually the Dark Angels I always considered dark Skin (either that or they have some serious tans), plus there are the mongol riders and so forth, to say there is no diversity is, well not thinking, me thinks.

furthermore I have never seen GW refer to a certain skin color on any of the characters, to insinuate that would be racist in and of itself.

ever hear of the sisters of battle?

furthermore just because some artists paint their peeps white does not make it so.

Wuuut.

Dark Angels are white dude. The Native American fluff (thank the emperor) stopped being a thing a veeeeery long while ago.

Your Dark Angels are white. His might be NatAm. Mine are Orange. Like, for real for real. Orange.

I am now considering a Sistas of Battle army that marches with the hymns of Saint Franklin....

Well yeah, you can paint them whatever you want, but by canon they're Anglo Arthurian Knights with Catholic and Hebrew names. The Codex doesn't leave much up for imagination at all.



Also, orange? Your Dark Angels are the offspring of Donald Trump?

 Wyzilla wrote:
Also, orange? Your Dark Angels are the offspring of Donald Trump?

As it turns out, the Dark Angels were hiding something much worse than some of their kin falling to Chaos.

 Wyzilla wrote:
Well yeah, you can paint them whatever you want, but by canon they're Anglo Arthurian Knights with Catholic and Hebrew names. The Codex doesn't leave much up for imagination at all.

Spoiler:

Also, orange? Your Dark Angels are the offspring of Donald Trump?

No, no.

It's *much* worse than that:

As has been said countless times before-- there is racial diversity... within the lore. When painting and having art done, however, GW is just so full of lazy old white men who don't really think about what it is they produce. It's not malicious racism of someone who hates or dislikes, it's the thoughtless subconscious racism of someone who doesn't really pay much attention to what they're doing and just produces things that look like them.

tl;dr: it's not a conscious decision. It's laziness.

I paint my Crimson Fists with dark tan skin tone, brown eyes, and dark brown hair. They are Hispanic in fiction, so I am running with it. My Blood Angels are all blond hair, blue eyes, because that is the fiction. If I had White Scars, I would paint them with an obvious Chinese/Mongolian bent. If I had a successor chapter I wanted to look African, I would paint them with dark brown skin, Brown eyes, and dark brown hair (not sure if I could model the curled hair many Africans possess). If I made a White Scars successor, I would actually model them to be Arabic in appearance, because that would be awesome. I also kinda want to make a stereotypical Irish successor in green armor with red hair and green eyes, because it would be pretty cool looking. Hmmm.

Honestly, much of the Space Marine art is pretty diverse, it just doesn't happen to be African in nature. I wish there was more, but just because there is not does not automatically make it racist.

 Las wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:

 Las wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
It is just a result of white, British artists painting/drawing what they are familiar with. The Imperium is a very diverse Empire with a wide variety of environments within a wide variety of planets. There are people of every skin tone.

This is the laziest, shittiest excuse for GW's weird reluctance to paint black people. As if there aren't any black folk in Nottingham and no one at GW has ever seen someone who isn't white. Yes, it's the UK but its the Uk in 2015 not 1910.

Well, when you live in a white majority town with whites being the majority in practically all mediums in the place you live white skin tones become the "default" with darker skin tones being an "exception". This is hardly unique to GW at all. It plagues fantasy as well. All Elves/Dwarves are white while humans are predominately white except for some minor factions. Fantasy fiction with a ethnically diverse set of characters are rare.

Oh, please.

Are there many tyranids in Nottingham then? Orks? Evil space daemons?

What? What are you talking about? Do you pay attention to the world around you or do you just enjoy grossly oversimplifying racial issues so that you can get offended?

As someone else said, this fictitious universe is as diverse as you paint it to be.

However,

Keep in mind that the cultural elements of the Imperium play off western civilization a lot. There may be fringe elements, but in sum, they don't weigh out the mainstream, overly oppressive intentionally racist/xenophobic overtones (that makes up the mood of the imperium). Furthermore, this universe is bent on the notion of eugenics, which is, the thing that leads to crap like Nazism - thus it makes sense we get something like the Imperium.

I'd wager that the Imperium's view on equality would probably be much more oppressive when it comes to skin tone and gender - it just makes sense that they'd be that 'pragmatic'; the more categories/classifications you have of people, the more you can control them.

The subtle absence of this logical course within the lore probably has more to do with the perceived offense it would make for those overly sensitive though.

In essence, the imperium is a bunch of Roman Space Nazis. I'd imagine 'white' would be the super majority in that train of thought.

 kveldulf wrote:


In essence, the imperium is a bunch of Roman Space Nazis. I'd imagine 'white' would be the super majority in that train of thought.

I disagree, heres a story about a bunch of fanatics who go off on crusades destroying the heretic, and torturing them, worshiping a dead man like hes an immortal god, and torturing and killing all those who do not worship him how they are supposed to, and they have warrior monks and priests who go about enforcing their laws and worship, oh wait thats not this game thats the catholic church around the middle ages during the Spanish inquisition and crusades

Asterios wrote:

 kveldulf wrote:


In essence, the imperium is a bunch of Roman Space Nazis. I'd imagine 'white' would be the super majority in that train of thought.

I disagree, heres a story about a bunch of fanatics who go off on crusades destroying the heretic, and torturing them, worshiping a dead man like hes an immortal god, and torturing and killing all those who do not worship him how they are supposed to, and they have warrior monks and priests who go about enforcing their laws and worship, oh wait thats not this game thats the catholic church around the middle ages during the Spanish inquisition and crusades

*Tips Fedora...

You can worship the emperor any way you want as long as worship is to the emperor. I could behead every 3rd daughter in the name of the emperor on my planet and it would be fine.

again good sir, *tips fedora, carry on enlightening the world!

 Melissia wrote:
As has been said countless times before-- there is racial diversity... within the lore. When painting and having art done, however, GW is just so full of lazy old white men who don't really think about what it is they produce. It's not malicious racism of someone who hates or dislikes, it's the thoughtless subconscious racism of someone who doesn't really pay much attention to what they're doing and just produces things that look like them.

tl;dr: it's not a conscious decision. It's laziness.

I wouldn't even say it is subconscious racism. It is PURE laziness. No one wants to take the time and effort to make each soldier look individual when there are just so many of them.

I do agree that there should be more diversity - and not just current-day Earth diversity, but 40,000 CE Galactic diversity - for official painted example models.

However, I've been thinking that there may be a reason why so many Imperial Guard/Astra Militarum squads are painted alike. From what I've read, most regiments are recruited from a single planet, so its members would of course reflect a single [or two] environment, and the resulting physiology and appearance.

Mixed-homeworld regiments or even squads are comparatively rare. The only official example is Schaeffer's Last Chancers, which is the only example I could find on the current GW website for diverse humans. [Of course, there'd be more examples for older official models, like the Attilan Rough Riders].

This would tie in to it being easier to paint a regiment of entirely lighter-skinned guys, than a regiment entirely of any other skin color or mutation.

As if clogging the internet with professional victimhood isn't bad enough SJWs continue their crusade into fictional sci-fi settings. Onward Sarkeesian soldiers!

Asterios wrote:

 kveldulf wrote:


In essence, the imperium is a bunch of Roman Space Nazis. I'd imagine 'white' would be the super majority in that train of thought.

I disagree, heres a story about a bunch of fanatics who go off on crusades destroying the heretic, and torturing them, worshiping a dead man like hes an immortal god, and torturing and killing all those who do not worship him how they are supposed to, and they have warrior monks and priests who go about enforcing their laws and worship, oh wait thats not this game thats the catholic church around the middle ages during the Spanish inquisition and crusades

So you're saying the Imperium has more to do with the spanish inquisition and crusading mentality? I don't disagree entirely; that's a big part of 40k, but that's also two different elements of history amongst other borrowed historical things compiled in the 40k universe. I guess I could have pointed this out?

There is the matter as to what part of the setting in the dark future we're talking about. I prefer 30k over 40k more so, and so, that's usually where I'm coming from - my bad. Though with either setting, it doesn't subtract the fundamental points that I made: they're built upon ideals akin to elitism - which utilizes things such as racism/bigotry.

 jonolikespie wrote:
I wouldn't even say it is subconscious racism. It is PURE laziness.

Subconscious racism and laziness are quite well intertwined.

MarsNZ wrote:
As if clogging the internet with professional victimhood isn't bad enough SJWs continue their crusade into fictional sci-fi settings. Onward Sarkeesian soldiers!

It's only a matter of time before each boxed set has every ethnicity, disability & gender combination available.

It'll indeed be a sad, yet funny sight to see guardsman in motorized wheelchairs - at least the orks can have their grins once they loot em.

Nobody cares what you think about "SJWs", whatever that might mean this particular minute to you. That's not the topic of discussion.

 kveldulf wrote:

MarsNZ wrote:
As if clogging the internet with professional victimhood isn't bad enough SJWs continue their crusade into fictional sci-fi settings. Onward Sarkeesian soldiers!

It's only a matter of time before each boxed set has every ethnicity, disability & gender combination available.

It'll indeed be a sad, yet funny sight to see guardsman in motorized wheelchairs - at least the orks can have their grins once they loot em.

No one wants this. People want appropriate representation of other types of people besides white men. A more inclusive 40k is a better 40k.

 Melissia wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:
I wouldn't even say it is subconscious racism. It is PURE laziness.

Subconscious racism and laziness are quite well intertwined.

Uh, subconscious rascism? intertwined with laziness?

Whatever happened to the matter of racism (which is a product of irrationality) being a matter of choice than being classified as some mental illness?

I guess I don't 'believe' in subconcious racism. I do believe that there is a cultural imprint, and that there is a propensity to lean on items that identify you with that. In natural terms this infers skin colour and, there is nothing wrong with preferring one culture over another, though, it is wrong/illogical to judge a culture or person of skin colour alone.

Preferring one skin colour over another isn't bad if its associated to cultural/sociological preferences (which i suppose it inherently is).

Pluralism can be good, but shaming those who don't agree with it is counter to its own mission/logic.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TheCustomLime wrote:

 kveldulf wrote:

MarsNZ wrote:
As if clogging the internet with professional victimhood isn't bad enough SJWs continue their crusade into fictional sci-fi settings. Onward Sarkeesian soldiers!

It's only a matter of time before each boxed set has every ethnicity, disability & gender combination available.

It'll indeed be a sad, yet funny sight to see guardsman in motorized wheelchairs - at least the orks can have their grins once they loot em.

No one wants this. People want appropriate representation of other types of people besides white men. A more inclusive 40k is a better 40k.

What is appropriate to some isn't appropriate to others. As to who's more correct is a matter of belief but they can't both be right.

Being progressively inclusive isn't selling the fiction, its selling a product.

True great works are not determined by a majority.

becuase it doesn't matter, all that matters is that you are a non-mutant human. Alternatively, they are your models, paint them however you want. White scars are Mongolian, Salamanders are technically black (literally), you chapter can be whatever you want, it's really a nonissue unless someone is looking for a reason to get offended.