The world’s most popular card game is having a bit of a language problem.
“Magic: The Gathering” recently announced it was retiring the word “tribal” from the game’s vocabulary over concerns that the term was racist. All cards printed in the future will have the word removed, and old cards will receive errata to guarantee no one’s feelings are hurt.
Why is “tribal” racist? Who knows! Cultural consultants told the higher-ups at Magic’s parent company, Wizards of the Coast, that it was so there had to be a change.
Criticisms of the term “tribal” have cropped up in recent months, as activists claim the word exclusively belongs to Native Americans, and that anyone else using it is engaged in oppression.
Forget about how the term came from the Romans describing the barbarians they met, or how “tribe” has been used to refer to groups of people from Africa to Asia to Australia. Or forget how actual natives, such as those currently fighting to change Washington D.C.’s football team name back to the Redskins, have said they don’t view these types of things as racist.
It doesn’t matter. White liberal guilt must be assuaged, so a vocal fraction of a faction must be allowed to dictate what language we all use. They won’t rest until they control what you see, what you think, and what you say.
And it truly is a minority that’s in the driver’s seat. Many of Magic’s players reacted with ridicule to the change; gobsmacked by the
