In an announcement this evening, Wizards of the Coast has announced that 7 cards have been banned from tournament play. They have been banned due to depictions of racism.
In addition to these bans, which we'll get to in a moment, Wizards has stated they are going through a review of all cards that have been printed and will be taking action on similar cards in the future. The cards have been replaced on the official gatherer site with text stating why the images have been removed.
These are the cards that have been removed.
- Invoke Prejudice
- Cleanse
- Stone-Throwing Devils
- Pradesh Gypsies
- Jihad
- Imprison
- Crusade
Here are the cards for historical sake as we know there are likely many people not in the loop and will be unaware of what they look like.
I realize this doesn't have an effect on Arena, at least currently, but it is a very important piece of news to highlight. All I ask is that you have nothing good to say, you leave it out of the comments.
Wizard's Statement on Racism in Magic
Quote From Wizards Today, we will be changing the multiverse ID and removing the Gatherer card image for the card Invoke Prejudice, originally printed in 1994. The card is racist and made even worse by the multiverse ID it was unfortunately codified with years ago. There's no place for racism in our game, nor anywhere else.
But to that point, it should never have been published nor placed in the Gatherer. And for that we are sorry. The events of the past weeks and the ongoing conversation about how we can better support people of color have caused us to examine ourselves, our actions, and our inactions. We appreciate everyone helping us to recognize when we fall short. We should have been better, we can be better, and we will be better.
To that end, we will be removing a number of images from our database that are racist or culturally offensive, including:
- Invoke Prejudice
- Cleanse
- Stone-Throwing Devils
- Pradesh Gypsies
- Jihad
- Imprison
- Crusade
Replacing those card images will be the following statement:
"We have removed this card image from our database due to its racist depiction, text, or combination thereof. Racism in any form is unacceptable and has no place in our games, nor anywhere else."
Additionally, these cards will be banned in all sanctioned tournament play.
There's much more work to be done as we continue to make our games, communities, and company more inclusive. Know that we work every day to be better and that we hear you. We look forward to sharing more of our plans with you as our games and organization evolve.
Comments
Devoted Crop-Mate. A card that isn’t banned with a blatantly racist name and card art. I ain’t mad it at it tho, it’s pretty childish when you think about it 😆
I don't really care about the changes (guess they are ok if people feel degraded by these cards). As a non-US citizen I did not get most of the racial references anyways (certainly would not have realized the KKK one, which is clearly not acceptable for a mainstream card game). I am just slightly worried that they may push this too far in the future (i don't want any racism in my game, but i also don't want it to be totally PC).
Side note: The discussion here is thankfully pretty civilized, over in the MTGA forums some people are freaking out a bit and the tone is not very nice (another proof that this is a really good community and well administrated site). Thanks for that.
I enjoy online MTG way more than in real life. It attracted some very loud, angry, fragile men. When I was collecting and playing I moved to 3 different cities and the results were always the same. I didn't like going to events because these guys dominated everything by shouting and being generally creepy. I think the moment I quit playing was when I played a card this other guy didn't like. He started screaming (in the middle of a college cafeteria) about how OP'd the card was and was literally spitting on my cards while doing so. After he calmed down he proclaimed that the elf on the card was at least very f#$*-able.
Long story short, the MtG crowd isn't exactly pleasant from my personal experience.
Are some people really being bothered because Wizard is removing cards they probably didn't even know they existed? Does removing those cards you never played and heard of hurt you so much to complain that they are being removed?
If for some reason you do have those cards getting dust in your collection they will surely increase in value, so this is not the reason you are bothered; which means the reason you are bothered is because they are removing some racist cards, which is absurd.
Just because you aren't offendend by those cards doesn't mean other people aren't, is in Wizard's power to remove something they think is offensive (and really, it does make sense when you look at those cards).
I don't have an opinion on whether the cards are usable or not since I'm not a MtG player.
What I really don't like is politics being shoved into what I'm sure many actual MtG players use for enjoyment, and maybe even for destressing/deescalating from the distressing news about what is being done to people.
I feel it is essential to stand up for injustices against human beings, but at some point you need a breather where you can say "Stop. I need a little time to disengage from the intense emotional and social back-and-forth", and do this in a way that is positive, productive, and/or enjoyable.
When you start shoving politics into something that wasn't advocating to be political (ie the MtG card game) it just puts it back in to people's faces at a time when maybe they've grown tired of depressing news stories, fights back and forth between people, etc. It isn't healthy to continually stay engaged and charged up by everything going wrong in the world (this is not to say don't care about it or advocate for it, but mental health is a real thing and there are times and places for everything).
If Wizards, as a company and apart from the cards in their game, wants to advocate for human and racial rights such as by donating to important groups, or another worthwhile means of support then I think that is a positive thing, but trying to connect dots of racism where the dots don't even exist? That is something that bothers me.
My point was simply that those card being removed aren't important at all for the game (they are all pretty bad and old, so they are legal only in few formats).
If they removed them without informing anyone it would take months to someone notice it, if at all. What i mean is that there is no one that is hurt by them being removed, not a trauma. Hell, it shouldn't never be a trauma, even if it changed the entire game, but for a change like this seeing people complaining is just absurd. Like i think racism causes a lot more mental health problems than 7 cards (that no one gave a shit about) being removed in a game with a ridicolous amount of cards, or am i wrong?
Wizard felt that those cards give a bad message, and they just want to dissociate with such messages. Are they doing it because they truly believe it? Are they doing it to make some publicity? Are they doing it just to not have problems in the future? We don't know. Maybe all those reasons togheter, maybe some completely different ones. The important thing is that they are removing them for the reason they stated, people can't be hurt by this choice, no way, it's absurd.
Saying that there isn't a racist component in these card is just being blindfolded (KKK? Cleanse? Jihad?)
I can see why people have issue with Jihad. However, the KKK reference is confusing because that is very different than the religious christian crusades of european history, which destroyed entire communities of color and termed 'barbarous' white european pagan tribes people.
Cleanse is an absolute projection of social tensions on a card that is not racist whatsoever. Hell, the card art depicts nothing humanoid looking whatsoever, and the black reference is because black is one of the five core colors of the game. People are not "creatures". Black refers to much more than race or skin tone. And the fact that they are cleansing monster illustrated creatures is much more likely it is referring to "cleanse" in a more religous/spiritual sense (ie cleansing demons/devils/monsters) of evil and corruption. Or in other words, think of cleanse like exorcism.
You also missed my point about mental health. I was not saying losing 7 cardstock cards in a card game was what would cause stress and mental health stresses, but that people who enjoy card games might use the card game as a way to take a break from the constant stream of distressing stories bombarding the news constantly about how people are being treated, or constant fighting on both sides of the human rights/police behavior arguments. Trying to make "black creatures"="black humans" in a card game is akin to shoving politics into the card game. Not everybody wants politics shoved into their entertainment when we have more appropriate mediums to support or argue against the recent social tensions.
This is getting in total overdrive territory... Racism must be to fight off but with intelligence and education, not with guts and violence!
I am baffled that a fantasy game publisher of 5 colors card game (Black symbolize death in this game, not people) thinks that "destroy all black creatures" is racist. Does this mean that colors are now politically charged (Red? white?) and must not use in context of destruction? Why is "destroy all white creatures" not banned then, amongst others?
They are not saying 'Destroy all black creatures' is racist. They are acknowledging MtG is not free from the wider social context in which it exists, and in that context having something called 'Cleanse' with the command to destroy all black creatures is dangerously close to real racist activity.
It is also not possible to say "Oh, but it's just a card game. No one interprets it that way." because subliminal messaging exists, so even if no one ever takes offense or treats it as a call to racist action, there will still be subconscious effects further cementing racial prejudices. When this is unintentional, it is a failure of card design to not account for this. When it is intentional it is outright racist. In both cases the card should be changed.
This move does make sense. Outside of invoke prejudice these cards are practically unplayable, and invoke prejudice only sees play in EDH, which doesn’t really have anytournament play. Some of these I don’t understand, but I’m probably missing some cultural context on these.
Yeah, White and Black shouldn't really be MtG colors IMO. I know it's probably too late, but Yellow and Purple could be good reps of Light and Darkness (like in Hearthstone) without any accidental racial implication. I'm pretty sure Cleanse and Crusade did not intend to be racist (unlike most of the cards in the ban list), but it is what it is.
Regarding the bans in general, I don't get the racist implications of all of them, but good riddance in any case.
The thing is we can't keep tip toeing around all of the conflict of the real world. People have a good point about not wanting real world problems shoved into our games, which is understandable, but at the same time when you can't even dare put simple colors like black and white in a competitive game, that also is akin to forcing real world problems into games.
We assign all sorts of abstract meanings to color, it's a part of who we are as humans. However, people start getting really weird ideas that make huge assumptions about what they think or feel color in a card game 'really means' (ie that a card saying "Destroy all black creatures" is akin to "[Harm] black people", or that it is some inside meaning to racial cleansing. I can't even fathom how somebody could make such a jump because it is such an unbelievable jump in logic. Imo you'd have to have a pretty sick mind to even think a card game is trying to tell you that.
What happened to colors in a game, or art, or entertainment meaning something other than race dynamics and contention? Somebody else mentioned earlier in a brief post if we are supposed to get rid of chess because it uses polarazing opposite colors.
It also speaks volumes that cards like Cleanse are suddenly a problem. Nobody talked about the card until today. Why now? Did it suddenly decide to become offensive and violent, or are social issues being projected onto it?
Never played MtG so I'm coming at this from an outside perspective not based on any interest in the cards themselves, and if the original art is what is depicted in the above 7 cards the claim there's racism going on here or hate towards anyone is really baffling to me, and seems to be reaching a lot.
Without reading most of the comments here yet so that I don't bias myself before posting and have to really go far out there to be able to say a knight or some demons (monsters?) getting sucked into some nether portal thing, or two dudes, a horse, and a woman are racist I think that is pretty telling over the whole argument.
I've seen old racist propaganda posters, comics, or just grotesque and cruel literal or symbolic pictures/imagery, and these look nothing like any of that. Agree to agree, or disagree, but this really seems to be reaching.
Most MtG news.... 1-4 comments. MtG announces it's banning cards with problematic art or names: Deluge of complaints. Ok, these are mostly 30 year old cards that no one plays. This is like when Disney went back and said, "Song of the South... not really something anyone is itching to watch but we should acknowledge there are problems here."
None of these are popular cards or ones that I've seen played. Crusade was a good beginner card when I started for people learning the ropes. So what's wrong with taking this moment of social movement to acknowledge mistakes of the past? For the people that own the cards... congrats this actually increased their value. You weren't playing them anyway and now the odd social context makes them relevant to collectors.
WotC have been dealing with a diversity problem. This is something they acknowledged. So while working on that they have found some immediate items they can address. If these bans are the only action they take then it's an empty piece of lip service. If they continue to pursue the issues our times have brought up they'll be a better company for it and perhaps find a new and more diverse player base.
To those defending the cards... what are you defending? A tortured black slave? KKK imagery? Real life racial slurs? How many of these cards do you own, do you play with? What sort of fragility are you operating on that banning things you never heard of in a game you don't play creates anger toward a company you don't support?
I agree with everything you said.
It's unbelievable you are being downvoted, and sad too
It's not about whether the cards are good or bad, it's about the principle. This was nothing but a PR stunt done only for opportunistic reasons, not out of the goodness of their hearts. And all of these except Invoke Prejudice are barely racist. Just unfortunate combinations of names, text and/or art. No one ever thought Cleanse meant kill black people for example, it obviously refers to one of the colors of the game.
So barely racist is good enough for you? And yes they did. I know your school glanced it over but look up the Redemption movement in American history. The movement that laid the groundwork for the KKK and other racist groups to seize power. "Cleansing the Black Scourge" is literally a rallying cry of the times.
And don't tell me a hooded figure in a card called 'Invoke Prejudice' isn't exactly what it's meant to be. These cards aren't randomly assigned art, this wasn't a mistake.
I'm all for sensible, fair and reasonable changes to things which are unnecessarily unfair or offensive - racially or otherwise. Of course this is a tricky thing to get right on a case by case basis with the context being very relevant.
I don't play this particular game (saw the article linked on twitter) but it got my attention.
I would hope though that calm cool measured heads prevail with any protesting, changes to policies, laws, card games and anything else. Knee jerk reactions amid hysteria won't help anything and likely make things worse in the long run. They don't tend to be changes for the best.
I am not implying any specific example here including these MTG changes. But let's not ban chess because it's white vs black for example.
Treat everyone respectfully and fairly would be my default position and I'd encourage everyone to do the same.
I'm sorry, but this reaks of marketing and propaganda to attract more revenue through some players.
You can't possibly think that a fantasy universe equates to the real world in any way. It's just silly and childish.
Also, look at that Imprison card. Did they ban it because it depicts a humanoid with a metal mask on its face? Then why don't people just ban most horror movies, Frankenstein, 50 shades of gray, and so on?
Once again this is stupidity (i.e. more $$$!) at its best and some people are falling for it.
Do you want to support the cause and end racism? Go do something then! Playing/creating/developing a video game that has or doesn't have certain cards it's going to do anything.
Also, good luck. The idea of slavery and such has been around for several millenia and that was "normal" until the 20th century. Changing mentalities for good will probably take at least that long.
Imagine having a racists in a fantasy world where creatures of different species, races and confessions are constantly killing each other. That sounds crazy!