Talk:Minorities in the Imperium of Man

Would semi-protecting this page be a good idea? It's attracted a lot of vandals in the last few days.--Newerfag (talk) 19:04, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

this is a very odd page to have in the wiki, and in all honesty its SJW and /pol/ bait. Also, 40000 years in the future, pretty much anything could have happened to explain this fluffwise.

It's no odder than the 8 pages you made about mermaids. Now quit complaining.--Newerfag (talk) 14:13, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

"Why are there not more people who are not white" is a criticism/complaint which has come up numerous times in regards to Warhammer 40,000--A Walrus (talk) 04:10, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

"Why aren't more people who aren't white" is a question that can be easly solved. You know, giving the Emperor geneseed to anyone half important should have probably screwed the racial distribution. And no, this article isn't just about "Why aren't space mareehs white", it even says that you can just PAINT them, you know, not White. Infact, the whole article is just placing false social issues, nobody is upset that you can paint statues black or asian you gits.--201.69.24.79 23:48, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Solving this Issue

It seems strange that there are barely any non-white people in the fluff. This opens the door to accusations of racism. For all everyone except the higher ranking people in Games Workshop knows, they could be racist and deliberately excluding non-white people from the setting (only a theory). The page said Games Workshop was called out on it, but they didn't make any changes. Also, the latest Imperial Guard codex "Astra Militarium", removed the few non-white people from the previous codex and didn't add any new ones in either the artwork or the painted models. For the above suggestion that maybe something happened within the thousands of years prior to the 40k setting to explain why so many humans are white and so few aren't, why didn't Games Workshop come up with an explanation in-universe? Is Games Workshop racist? (which, while unconfirmed, is starting to sound plausible)

IMO, they're just blissfully ignorant of the unfortunate implications of their failure to remember that white people are not the only humans in the galaxy. Don't attribute to malice what can be better explained by incompetence. --Newerfag (talk) 06:34, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

• Thank you, though I respectfully disagree about them being ignorant. Games Workshop, as mentioned in the article, has been called out on these unfortunate implications and acknowledged the criticism but did practically nothing to fix it (eg; it could be as simple as giving some of the guardsmen in the artwork dark brown skin); If they did anything it was "just throw in a few token minorities" (eg; Al-Raheem of the Tallaran Desert Raiders, who was left out of the 6th Ed Imperial Guard codex). Yet GW can also be lazy, and you have a point with that good saying. by the way, what does IMO mean?

It's short for "in my opinion". I am in no position to explain why GW acts the way it does, but I would assume removing Al-Raheem was done for the same reason all those Tyranid units were cut from their codex: he has no model, which means GW can't stop other companies from making models for them. Their "solution" for this is to cut the rules out until they can make new models for that unit/character (and judging by their track record, that could take years, if they bother with it at all). Obviously they once again failed to see the unfortunate implications of cutting the token minority character out of the codex. For all we know, GW might just be assuming that if we wanted an IG army with non-white people, we could just paint them as being non-white. Plus, you have to keep in mind that they're getting lazy enough to recycle art from the RPGs now- they don't really care what people think of them as long as they save every single penny that they can. I doubt that they are actually racist, but it's pretty clear that they don't care what people think of them as long as the money keeps coming in. The only way I can see that changing is a full boycott of their stuff until they change it, but there's no way enough people would agree to do so for that to even work (not to mention the general dislike of SJWs on 4chan- most fa/tg/uys don't give a shit about gender or race and just want to play the game).--Newerfag (talk) 16:56, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

• It was not my intention to be confrontational in the second paragraph, I was just explaining my views. With the release of the new IG codex, I decided to start an Imperial Guard army, and I'm painting an ethnically-diverse force. The idea for this discussion came about when I couldn't find anyone at the shop I visited who could help me highlight the skin tone on my models with the paints (I was painting a few guardsmen in the regiment as Chinese people). On a whim I looked through a copy of the new codex and saw that everyone in it was white. When I mentioned that to the person I was talking to a few others who overheard got uncomfortable. Curious and disturbed I did a little research when I got home and found out about this. Thank you. I appreciate your patience and your detailed explanations.
  • By the way, people having that attitude is why somethimes nothing gets accomplished. People complain about these sort of things, but when someone tries to do something about it, the community slaps them with labels such as "Social Justice Warrior" (which is supposedly a bad thing according to /tg/, some of those "SJW's" do genuinely believe in the ideas they're promoting and want to help) and pretty much tell them "shut up", "don't rock the boat" that sort of nonsense. These SJW haters should either stop complaining (I know that's what some of these sites are for, just saying there's more productive options) or back those trying to make changes.
  • They chose the much simpler option of never caring about the issue in the first place. Honestly, how hard is it to paint your Imperial Guardsmen as black people? You'd think that GW has to specifically instruct you to do it. --Newerfag (talk) 06:18, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
    • Good point, I just meant the problem is that Games Workshop hasn't caught on to the fact that they could, for example, paint some of their display guardsmen as black people. The days of segregation in these parts of the world are long gone (thank God).
    • As we've learned, they're so fixated on their profit margins that there's a chance that they don't even understand it is a problem. Granted, it's not like they explicitly have a rule saying "show no non-white display guardsmen", so maybe they simply don't see what the big deal is and assume that their fanbase is making a mountain out of a molehill. As I have mentioned here, the only remotely effective way of fixing this problem (although calling it a "ptoblem" is itself debatable) is to boycott all GW products and make it clear that the reason for the boycott is GW's racial insensitivity. Good luck trying to actually make that happen, though- even if it does pick up steam, it takes just a few rich kids asking their parents to buy those new models to make it all for nothing. --Newerfag (talk) 19:45, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
    • You're right, Newerfag. I wouldn't say it's a major problem, just a minor one at worst; the reason for that is it's something that's so easy to fix but Games Workshop hasn't done so despite being called out on it. This leads to unfortunate implications.

It's not just there aren't any non white people...there will be no extant races 40 000 from now

I'd like to talk a little bit about ethnography. Modern "white" people, that is to say Germanic peoples, descended from an Indo European ethno-linguistic group with origins what is today known as Denmark and Sweden, and through several great migrations, settled most of Europe. This happened around the time of the Roman Empire, 2000 years ago. Back then they counted as just another a minority within the multi-ethnic Roman Empire. After the fall of the Empire, they interbred with the local population, giving rise to the nations from which modern Europeans claim their descent.

So in other words, the ethnic groups that existed 2000 years ago do not exist in the present day. The Italians of today are not ethnically the same as Romans of Antiquity, just as Ancient Greeks weren't modern Greeks, and the peoples of Egypt weren't ancestors of modern Egyptian Arabs, and Bible Hebrews weren't modern Khazar/European convert Ashkenazis. Celts, once nearly ubiquitous in Europe, are now confined to Ireland, Scotland, small parts of England, very north of Spain and Brittany. The Emperor himself, if you subscribe to the Rogue Trader Era background, was not Turkish, since Turks settled Anatolia in the 1000's, but rather a member of a very long lost tribe that likely died out in the waves of migrations before recorded history!

Point is, and I'm sure some of you /pol/ goers won't like what I'm about to write, but most of those ethnicities that existed back then intermixed and culturally assimilated into a greater whole within a settled locality.

Now swallow that, and imagine what will happen 40000 years from now, when humanity is interspersed all across the galaxy on thousands of different planets, with highly variant culture, climate and level of civilization.

Bawl your eyes out, but it's safe to assume that WILL BE NO WHITE race. Just as there will be no blacks, chinese, indians etc. People would have intermixed to such an extent in the void of time, space, prosperity and decline that afflicted Mankind's history in the Warhammer timeline since the days of now, that it's almost certain that none of the current Terran ethnic groups would exist in even remote genetic quantities.

And beyond certain there would be new races and distinct ethnic identities that don't exist today. We can only speculate what these people look like. Perhaps they have so many bionics, aesthetic implants or genetically engineered bodily features, that they won't even appear recognizable as human to modern eyes.

It could be that the average person of the 41st millenium, especially from Terra, might loosely resemble someone of uncertain black, chinese or indian ancestry, but with pale skin due to horrendous nutrition, genetic engineering and lack of sun exposure.

So any people who might appear similar to modern eyes, and be recognized as what we now call "white", aren't so much white because of GW's racism, but rather due to environmental factors. They may be utterly unrelated to modern "Germanic" whites. Conversely, "black" people may not have a drop of Terra African ancestry in them. Their skin pigment may contain large amounts of melanin due to their home planet being close to a star.

Basically what happens is that humanity intermixes, spreads all over the fucking place, and depending on the star system climate, evolves into an infinite amount of separate ethnic groups over the 10 000's of years it occupies said planet. But don't feel down, dear /pol/ fags, rest assured there will still be plenty of opportunity to wage a holy blood war against liberal race denialists in the 41st mellenium, as any form racism or ethnic prejudice that exists today will almost certain be magnified 100x by then.

Salamanders

The Salamanders were never black black. Back in Rogue Trader they're were white and blonde 1 because the gene seed condition wasn't introduced back then. Forward a few years into the mid 90s and the Salamanders were depicted as black but with blonde hair 2. The Salamanders have always been black but morphologically Caucasian. This is true on the miniatures and the illustrations. Ask on /tg/ and someone might post the artworks.

This is a silly article and should never have been made. A classic case of Americans bringing their racepolitic shit where it's not wanted; Terra isn't Earth so leave your race baggage behind. The article exists now and the effort has been put in, so leave it, I guess. -- Yu-gi-oh ! (talk) 01:45, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Minority Definition Spiel

It can be assumed that for a company which does 90% of its business in North America and Britain would consider non-whites minorities, unless you lack even the most basic knowledge of demographics. The article doesn't require explanations of whether whites are the most prevalent on the planet, as it is entirely irrelevant to the topic of GW, and is instead semantic fucking about. Nor does it need whining about "why doesn't GW open more stores in non-white regions," seeing as the profitability of such a venture is rather questionable, especially when GW is in a financial pinch as it is. --Boss Ballkrusha (talk) 02:17, 4 February 2015 (UTC)