The following true story about a Dungeons & Dragons (D&D)
campaign might be offensive to sensitive readers. Thus, reader discretion
is advised.
While playing in a University of Minnesota, Duluth (UMD) Gaming
Club D&D campaign; one of our players had a custom, short sword plus one
made for his fighter character. Our player had his character’s family
name engraved in the handle. So, he could pass the sword down to one of
his children.
When the player character paid for the completed sword, the
player was pleased as punch. After his character got his sword, the player
with a beaming smile on his face said, “I got myself a handy-dandy (the N-word)
sticker.”
Everyone around me appeared to laugh. I didn’t
laugh. But, because there were no African Americans in the room when he
made that tasteless and offensive “joke”; I also failed to object to his hate
speech.
Hate speech is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as “public
speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group
based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation”.
When a real human names their fictional sword as a (the N-word) sticker - that
fits the definition of hate or encourages violence towards an ethnic group.
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