So, today, I got my very first inflammatory hate mail. If you look at the character drawing thread I started, you'll see that my sister of battle character is black. I didn't think it was that big of a deal. Apparently, someone did, because I woke up with this in my inbox this morning:

"Why the Hel do you have your characters black? Take a close look in the 40k books, manuals, etc...blacks are mostly absent from the genre.
Are you trying to assuage your guilt complex or something?

You can roll your eyes and spam the racist button. It's not going to work here. I'm not advocating whites are superior. I would be equally
aghast if I saw whites in a Japanese Medieval game.

You can also claim there are no races except for humanity in the 41st century. I would direct you to the official GW art and tell you you're wrong.

You might ask why I care?

I care because it's annoying. Trying for force something that does not fit into the genre is disturbing.

Do you have have a things for black people something? If you're black, that would make sense. I highly doubt you are."

Now, I went into a long winded explaination as to why I depicted her that way, why I think he's wrong, and why I think he's an inflammatory jackass, and I did it all very politely, I think. I'm not sure where he saw my artwork, whether it be on these forums, or on my blog, or on my deviant art site.

Now, my question to the community:

Why the hell would anyone think that an imperium of infinite planets would contain only white people? Is anyone else here that crazy and want to explain yourself?

If this gets out of hand, mods, please smash it to bits, but I was so flabberghasted by receiving this e-mail that I had to share it.

How strange

There are many and varied races in the 40K universe - yes the majority of the figures are depcited as white - IMHO just habit/ and perhaps related to who has historically played the game rather than any Direction from on high that the universe has no black or asian people.

In addition to the vaired skin tones of this planet here and now - there are much more exotic ones - especially in some Space Marine Chapters.

Characters of different colours have turned up in many novels at all levels of society, even occassionally in painted figures.

IMHO The Imperium is unlikely to be bothered about skin tone (unless it strays into Chaotic colours perhaps) - although some planetary societies may well have varied levels of discrimination against all sorts of things - skin colour, sex. etc. Also a planet made up of people of one skin tone may react to another "strange" coloured person - must be a mutant/ etc but then thye probably ract the same to some one with red hair if they are all dark haired or blonde or whatever.

look forward to your image

Black people in my 40K? You can't even roll people of that colour for Dark Heresy!

Wait, you can. Sororitas, even. Hell, we have people with gray, blue or even dyed colours depending on planetary origin. It's certainly not exclusive, aren't the Salamanders all dark skinned? Don't we have any planets where an increased ammount of melanin is a valuable thing to have? Oh yes, I think we do. That guy is just weird, let him be.

I can only imagine what his response would have been to "The Tale of Two-Heads Talking", a short comic from Warhammer Monthly about about a Deathwing Terminator clearly descended from Native American stock. If he writes back to you and continues his belligerence, I would recommend ignoring him. You've produced wonderful art celebrating the game you love. He writes lengthy missives because he believes that in the grim darkness of the future there is only white. You're clearly the winner here.

The assassin on the cover of the main book looks asian to me.

Then you have Tallarn and Atilla, which seem to be not of the caucasion race. Salamanders are black skinned, though that is more from their gene-seed then any ethnicity.

I have a whole Imperial Guard army that is dark skinned, the Numenorian, based on Tolkien's Black Numenoreans. Commissar Karif from Rebel Winter seems more Turkish in skin tone then "white".

And Im sure there are more examples.

The first sign someone is a bigot is right after they say something bigot like and then they say "but Im not a bigot".

The imperium is an equal opportunities oppressor.

Its one of the reasons I like it so much when I can point at the universe (with the possible exception of the space marines) and say no matter what age, sex, colour, dis-ability the imperium will gladly use you as cannon fodder.

Everyone is equal under the emperor.

...and correct me if I'm wrong but I was always under the impression that the Emperor himself was actually born in what is now turkey.

I will address the point though that the majority of players are white males. This is just historically the demographic but things have changed over the years and will continue to change. One of my female players did complain that the setting and core rule book was sloppily done when it came to representation of women. Not bad but lazily done. Take note FFG! Potential demographic could open up there

anywho. To address your point the chap who wrote that little septic tank of a message I would gladly characterize as very much in the minority...and should remain so.

The guy's an idiot, ignore him. Next thing you know he'll be complaining that a non-Sororitas character is female.

Glad everyone here is on my side. My point was that there are black catachans on the cover of the deathworld codex, the salamanders used to be black before they had red eyes and stuff in the new book, the white scars are clearly mongolian, the tallarns are middle eastern, etc, etc, etc.

I also explained to him how to properly critique someone's work without being hostile and aggresive. And I didn't call him a single name. =]

I don't remember in which novel, but I'm fairly sure that there was at least one Adepta Sororita depicted as dark skinned.

I think that that guy must have some issues with whatever his life might be, as even if we all have a precise and personnal way to picture the Warhammer 40k universe, those sorts of rude comments are utterly unacceptable.

Anyway, all I wanted to do in intervening here (as I usually do my utmost best never to let hate, biggotry and all those kinds of bad vibes get under my skin) was to share an extract taken from the latest blog entry of one of the Emperor's Apostles, Dan Abnett himself:

theprimaryclone.blogspot.com/2008/12/christmas-with-tanith-accent.html

"I’ve enjoying the wild and varied posting that has been going on since the last blog, and, of course, I’m delighted to see you all on Facebook. The subject of accents is an interesting one that I probably shouldn’t get drawn into, as my personal theory is that it should be up to the readers to decide what works best for them.

This is certainly my policy when it comes to pronunciation of names (Nik and I even argue about how certain character names ought to be pronounced, and you wouldn’t believe how many variations there are for Ravenor, for example. My policy is that the correct way to pronounce it is the way you pronounce it).

Having said all that, I thought I’d volunteer the following: I have always imagined the Tanith to be, essentially, a Celtic regiment. In my head, that places them more Welsh or Irish, but there’s just as much justification for them being a little Scottish or even Cornish, or something more exotically Celtic. To me, the Verghast have a very strong Russian or Polish vibe going on: Vervunhive was a very Stalingrad city in my mind and there was an awful lot of mining and smelting. Gol Kolea is a great big bear of a miner. The Belladon, I don’t know about. There’s something quite dashing about them in a French way. The Belladon have a very particular personality in my head, but it doesn’t translate ethnically in the way that, say, the Tanith do. I would have to cast an actor in the role of a Belladon, rather than a national type. Wes Maggs, for instance, is Hugh Jackman playing Wolverine.

Interestingly, as I’ve just been discussing with Nik, I’ve realised that I have no idea what Baskevyl looks like, or who I would cast in his role. He’s become such an important character and he has an extremely strong personality that comes through whenever I think of him, but I have no idea at all what colour his hair is. I mention this as an oddity because other characters have left indelible visual impressions in my mind: Gaunt, obviously, Rawne, Larkin, Corbec, Tona Criid, Varl, Ban Daur, Hark etc.

Several of you were spot on when you suggested that the Roane Deepers are ANZACs, and the Vitrians are, indeed, black. As for the Narmenians, I did rather imagine them to be Russian too, and the Volpone were just very aristocratic and haughty, so they could have been French or German, or English. They had that old regimental tradition thing going on."

Back of PtU. The Betacores, Glavians, were 'Ebon SKinned'.

<--back of Purge the Unclean

Wu Ming said:

She and her father look kind of Mediterranean. The son, on the exact some cover, however, looks rather English.

Ordo Hydra said:

Agreed on all points - I was just saying I think thats why it has appeared that way historically

Plus I guess most of the "how to paint people" have been aimed at a certain look?

as said - doubtless it will change

I actually shared that exact same quote from Dan Abnett's blog with the person in question. I hope he gets back to me, but I doubt he will.
As a matter of fact, I think I will share this with Lord Commander Solar Abnett, and thank him for giving me ammunition for my righteous flamer of Shut Up, Racist.

You can read my reply to him at my blog.

The old "I'm not a racist but..." and ...But I'm not a bigot." lines.

Tallarns have always looked like they were from Persian/ Middle Eastern regions. Most pictured Death Cultists look Oriental. etc. Race is very represented in 40k, at least in fluff.

Sounds like you're handling it maturely, even if this individual is not.

I always find that being incredibly polite and non-confrontational throws off people who are being incredibly rude and aggressive. Particularly over the internet.

gotta love someone who thinks there's a galaxy's worth of people decended from utah.

Sounds like you delt with him the right way.

I remember quote from one of the Discworld novels: "White and black pacts together against the green" (orks). it suits Imperium well. Ignore that guy, for a/ he seems to be an idiot and for b/ he obviosly even don´t know Warhammer 40 000 universe well, when he write such statements, there are many good examples above ,)

I never thought that race would be an issue when several of the Imperium's external threats are of Xenos origin. I really can't comment on anything that hasn't been mentioned in the previous posts but from personal experience (I'm Filipino, born and raised in South Carolina USA) just ignore it. I can remember in my youth, I was discouraged from playing Pendragon at my local game store for lacking the appropriate European heratige. Yet I could not find one asian/pacific islander that was playing AD&D's Oriental Adventures! One really cannot argue with ignorance. Just as a fun side note, oriental implies middle east (the famed Orient Express only traveled to Instanbul after all), not that I am one to split hairs lol!!

What a ******* jackass that guy is!

Look at the 40k core books as far back as Rogue Trader! Salamander Marines are black! White Scars are asian! Glavians are black! Tallarn desert raiders are arabic!

There are numerous pictures of Catachan and other Imperial regiments who display non-white colouration.
This guy is clearly a massive ass and closet racist.

It's kind of hard to be a closet anything when you send emails to people you don't know expressing your discriminatory tendencies. At best, I would give him "passive racist" where he is so out of touch with reality, he doesn't actually know that he's totally racist and rediculous. If I had to guess, I'd say that this was a learned behavior, not something he arrived at on his own.

whisperer in the vault said:

I agree completely, myself a mutt. Apt observation regarding the hobby though, most are of european persuation, although I've never had an experience simmilar to yours, although I and another mate of mine who, himself is black, have been asked sometimes why we don't 'ever' play 'ethnic PCs' which does seem odd, as as you've pointed out, 'exotic themed' games (like Al-Qadam, OA, Lot5R -- which I loathe) aside most europeans tend not to play the 'ethnic' character when RP in games with european settings so why then should we?

As an additional fun side note oriental like its counterpart occedental is an adjective that is specificaly and technicaly meant to refer to inanimate things (like antiquities.) 'The Orient' was a broad hodgepodge term that refered to the near, far and middle east, which also at varying times include the formerly Ottoman occupied eastern europe. Most tend to think of far east asians (Chinese, Koreans, Japanese) when this term is used, but its original berth was much wider.

If I remember right wasn't the Inquisitor in the orginal Dawn of War dark skined? Also, I remember seeing a pic of Seraphim with dark skin.

Oh, well. Some people are well just bloody idiots.

Evilscary said:

Although, interestingly, with the exception of Captain Al'Rahem, all the models and the art are caucasian. They were going for more of a Lawrence of Arabia feel, I think. Which does make you wonder why their names and titles are so obviously Arabic.

Colonel-Commissar ManBeast said:

Inquisitor Toth from Dawn of War is indeed a man of color, with a similar accent to the Persian messanger for 300. And remember folks, the Death Spectres chapter of the Adeptus Astartes are all bald albinos. Whether that is a product of their gene-seed, or a condition of the planet(s) they recruit from is never clearly stated; though I would wager a bit of both.

I think it was expressed rather well in Shadowrun; "who cares about the guy over there with the 'darkish' skin; when the thing standing next to you has fists larger than your head." IMO ethnicity and/or skin tones don't much matter in 40K except for on the occasional backwater or extremely superstitious worlds where anything new or different may be viewed as Chaos-spawned mutation.

Caio

-=Brother Praetus=-

Ordo Hydra said:

Personally, I was very pleased to see the little blurb on page 30 of the core rulebook about gender, which begins "The wartorn 41st millenium is not always an encouraging place to be for a female."

I thought it was a very bold stance to have, but both realistic and in keeping with the setting. Sororitas aside, you see far more important male characters than female (as previously suggested, probably a nod to their demographic). Also, it seems entirely likely with much of known civilization regressing in so many ways well.. women's rights might regress as well.

Sorry, slightly OT reply, but I think enough people have chimed in on good evidence for ethnic variation in 40k that I don't field the need to echo it.