and no one in the design phase thought that was racist?

Are you a bit stupid?

Why would that be racist? At any rate, Redguards aren't the only one with athleticism as an ability. In Morrowind, for instance, they get +5 to their Athletics skill, but so do Dunmer and Khajiit. Argonians get +15!

All the racial bonuses are racist. Why are all nords axe wielders? Who says argonians pick locks? It's just a game play mechanics to add substance to the race options.

I think it was in pretty poor choice to take a known racial stereotype and put it in the game. More so in morrowind when it was literally increased jump height and running speed.

Redguards do not equal "Black people" on Earth

You do realize it's not a "racial stereotype", but an actual scientifically proven fact that black people have slightly differing body and muscle structures (longer limbs, etc.) that give them an advantage, right? Black athletes outperform everyone else time and time again. I'd like to see you explain how "racism" factors into basic biology.

wait why is that a bad thing? Am I missing something? Since when was being physically capable considered insulting?

This part of the lore was written in 1994 when they first released Arena, and introduced all of the different races. If you look at the artwork and writing for that game and Daggerfall, you'll notice Elder Scrolls was pretty knee-deep in quasi-racist/sixist fantasy tropes, as well as just being a pretty generic fantasy universe to begin with. It wasn't until Morrowind (or more specifically, Redguard) that they moved in a new direction to make the series more unique and flee from those tropes, although they tried to avoid retconning most of what the first two games established. So no, no one making the gladiator game turned Tolkienesque/DnD-esque fantasy RPG from 1994 realized they were perpetuating a stereotype, although I'm sure they picked up on that later on.

Although if you actually play the games and observe all of the Redguard characters, they pretty much run the gamut of character types and personal ability - one of the advantages of the modern Elder Scrolls games having so many different NPCs is that there's never a token black/female/whatever character, and they can avoid those stereotypes pretty easily. The lore around Redguards also paints them as the most clever of the "warrior" races, as well as masterful artisans, craftsmen, and seafarers. It's a shame the Redguard adventure game never got much traction, I can't think of any other fantasy adventure games with a primarily black cast of characters.

The "black people = more athletic" stereotype actually isn't supported by science, although it's got an ugly origin in slave-era pseudoscience, and it's managed to persist ever since. It's kind of super-complicated, and this isn't the forum to go into that discussion. The only thing that really upsets me about how Redguards are portrayed in the modern games is that Skyrim used mostly white voice actors to play the Redguard characters - I mean, Jason Marsden is great, yeah, but what's up with that.

As mentioned above, these kinds of statements tend to originate more in prejudice inspired pseudo science than real biology. I would be more dubious of such "facts" if I were you. Anyway, back to Elder Scrolls. I don't think the redgaurd athleticism bonus was ever intended to be based on real life physical stereotypes, but rather a reflection of their warrior culture. i.e. Redgaurds tend to be more athletic because they put more emphasis on physical training than, say, High Elves. It's still a generalization even in that context though.

Redguards are the same as real world "Black People" only in the coloring of their skin. To say the two groups are the same is like saying some darker skinned people from India are the same as African Americans or Aboriginal Australians. They are not, they are all of them completely unique groups. Races of Nirn shouldn't be disregarded as simply representatives of some of Earth's various racial groups. None of the rules that apply to Earth about racial stereotypes apply to Nirn. If these were games set on Earth during a mythic age that used races easily identifiable as our modern racial groups, and gave them stereotypical stats and skill predispositions, then yes, there would be a BIG problem there.


Now, some of the games tell us, yes, this race is predisposed to have affinities for certain skills or have certain attributes greater or lesser than another race. Bethesda created the races in TES and the particulars thereof so that we as gamers can either work with those particulars or against them. We can be individuals that break the racial predispositions. We are supposed to be able to, it's designed into the game because Bethesda knows this diversity of characters is more interesting than if everyone simply played characters that stay within the confines of said predispositions. Break predispositions or be confined by them. It's all just part of the game folks, and neither option is right or wrong.

I think when people see "racism" everywhere like this, it says more about them than the things they're actually critiquing.

The Redguards are known for their aversion to magic and their sword-fighting prowess, so it makes sense that their racials are centred around physical ability rather than, say, resistance to or affinities with certain magics.

It get far worse, Argonian and Khajiit has tails no others, this is pretty visible.

There is no race on earth known as Redguards. There is some racial generalizations that are apparent in Nirn. We get into trouble here when mixing up earth and Nirn. One easy way to ensure you realize this is not earth is to notice the two moons that orbit Nirn and the beast races. Here on the forum we tend to get into trouble when trying to compare this fictional place with it's fictional races to earth.

So we don't do that, I think this thread is best just closed. It's important to keep real world politics, religion and prejudices out of our discussions of Nirn and it's inhabitants.