I can't think of a culture that treated all plants and animals as sacred and apologized to them for killing them for food like in Avatar. That's a bullshit stereotype. Some indigenous American groups used to drive herds of buffalo off cliffs, harvest the meat they could carry and then leave the rest to rot. And that's just one of plenty of examples.
Nobility is on an individual scale, trying to say a whole race is "noble" and "certain traits", even positive ones, is racism. Racism is specifically trying to define someone based solely on " observable traits" from their race.
I'd like to think I'm a pretty stand up guy, but I know some fellow Indians who are real pieces of shit, that's just how society works.
You have fallen for the myth of the noble savage. A racists mischaracterization of non-western human groups born from the very heart of slavery and colonialism that is used as a justification for dehumanizing others as wild or natural state humans, distinct and separate from civilized domesticated humans. It invites a tacit sanctioning of treating “primitives” or “savage” people as different and non-human, “not like us”. It's the basis of several centuries of abuse, oppression, appropriation and destruction.
this is what humans were like for thousands of years, how is it racist to make characters based on that?
I can't think of a culture that treated all plants and animals as sacred and apologized to them for killing them for food like in Avatar. That's a bullshit stereotype. Some indigenous American groups used to drive herds of buffalo off cliffs, harvest the meat they could carry and then leave the rest to rot. And that's just one of plenty of examples.
Indian here, can confirm this is true.
Nobility is on an individual scale, trying to say a whole race is "noble" and "certain traits", even positive ones, is racism. Racism is specifically trying to define someone based solely on " observable traits" from their race.
I'd like to think I'm a pretty stand up guy, but I know some fellow Indians who are real pieces of shit, that's just how society works.
You have fallen for the myth of the noble savage. A racists mischaracterization of non-western human groups born from the very heart of slavery and colonialism that is used as a justification for dehumanizing others as wild or natural state humans, distinct and separate from civilized domesticated humans. It invites a tacit sanctioning of treating “primitives” or “savage” people as different and non-human, “not like us”. It's the basis of several centuries of abuse, oppression, appropriation and destruction.