In an announcement this evening, Wizards of the Coast has announced that 7 cards have been banned from tournament play. They have been banned due to depictions of racism.
In addition to these bans, which we'll get to in a moment, Wizards has stated they are going through a review of all cards that have been printed and will be taking action on similar cards in the future. The cards have been replaced on the official gatherer site with text stating why the images have been removed.
These are the cards that have been removed.
- Invoke Prejudice
- Cleanse
- Stone-Throwing Devils
- Pradesh Gypsies
- Jihad
- Imprison
- Crusade
Here are the cards for historical sake as we know there are likely many people not in the loop and will be unaware of what they look like.
I realize this doesn't have an effect on Arena, at least currently, but it is a very important piece of news to highlight. All I ask is that you have nothing good to say, you leave it out of the comments.
Wizard's Statement on Racism in Magic
Quote From Wizards Today, we will be changing the multiverse ID and removing the Gatherer card image for the card Invoke Prejudice, originally printed in 1994. The card is racist and made even worse by the multiverse ID it was unfortunately codified with years ago. There's no place for racism in our game, nor anywhere else.
But to that point, it should never have been published nor placed in the Gatherer. And for that we are sorry. The events of the past weeks and the ongoing conversation about how we can better support people of color have caused us to examine ourselves, our actions, and our inactions. We appreciate everyone helping us to recognize when we fall short. We should have been better, we can be better, and we will be better.
To that end, we will be removing a number of images from our database that are racist or culturally offensive, including:
- Invoke Prejudice
- Cleanse
- Stone-Throwing Devils
- Pradesh Gypsies
- Jihad
- Imprison
- Crusade
Replacing those card images will be the following statement:
"We have removed this card image from our database due to its racist depiction, text, or combination thereof. Racism in any form is unacceptable and has no place in our games, nor anywhere else."
Additionally, these cards will be banned in all sanctioned tournament play.
There's much more work to be done as we continue to make our games, communities, and company more inclusive. Know that we work every day to be better and that we hear you. We look forward to sharing more of our plans with you as our games and organization evolve.
Comments
It's not always minorities. In the 90s they censored everything demonic/ satanic because of the christian backlash
+1
I also don't mind historical references in (card) games, as, I believe, those could be used for informational reasons. Like, depicting or just hinting such events could kindle the curiosity of some individuals and they could decide to inform themselves more about those events (I know, that I would). That's why I would be really interested in seeing such design more often, but I guess not all people are open-minded and some can take those things personally. And, tbh, I don't blame them. A person has to be very careful how they approach such design - for example, it should be clear that the designer doesn't sympathize with the illustrated mistreatment and they are just making an innocent reference. But I guess this might not be possible, as everyone interprets those references in their own way and those could still find a reason to get offended no matter how innocent or well presented the said reference is.
Btw, you probably know this, but censorship is something very common for Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, so for me it's not really surprising how Wizards decided to do the same to their own game.
You forgot about all the censorship that happened in Hearthstone as well.
Still waiting for that un-nerfed Jaina, doubt it'll happen
I haven't, but, unless I am mistaken, certain hearthstone artwork got changed only because it showed too much female skin/body. Yu-Gi-Oh! is well known for its massive censorship of its cards due to one thing or another.
Honestly pretty pissed about this given that the EDH committee is also banning these cards. Pretty much all of them were unplayable trash other than Invoke Prejudice, which is the only card in the game with this effect in these colors and considered good, guess you're SoL if you spent 200$+ on this card just to play it for this effect. Wizards will never print this effect on a card ever again in these colors for that cost since it's on the Reserved List.
With all respect - I'm not from US and I'm missing a lot of context. Can you please help me to understand, what makes these cards racist? It is not clearly visible for me.
Like, the first one is probably hiding a KKK reference?
But some are more puzzling. Cleanse - Kaja Foglio art is wrong? Or it is wrong that the card destroys black creatures? How about Virtous Ruin - 2B, Destroy all white creatures - it is fine? Btw, how will Wizards handle, that black is the "evil" color swamp people and white is the "righteous" color of pepople from plains?
I completely off on Stone Throwing devils, but again, this may be some US historical reference I do not get.
Jihad, Crusade - real world religion references?
Please, if you think this comment is insensitive (I do not feel it like this, but I'm from country with different cultural problems) let me know and I will delete it.
Cleanse's artwork depicting demonic creatures, and not humans of any race, would mean that card's problems are in the combination of the word 'cleanse' and destroying blacks, which is problematic given the foul racist idea that black people are unclean.
As for Crusade, the crusades were a European religious endeavour that, so far as I ever saw in England, no one is ashamed of. Of course no one would support them these days, so I'm sure the 1000 year gap has something to do with the lack of shame. Were they racist? Yeah, they were actively anti-Islam. My understanding is that they were trying to reclaim the holy land rather than directly trying to wipe out Islam, but at the same time I would be amazed if most of the soldiers involved wouldn't have done so if they had the means to.
The even more religious Jihad just should never have been made in any form. Jihads are things that are very poorly understood by most in the West because we only hear the military side and then rarely seek to understand them better than the media's limited portrayal. Add to that the card's text, which in context basically says "choose which colour you want to wage a race war against", and yes you have a stupid design.
I'm pretty sure 'gypsies' is an offensive derogatory term, which incidentally has its origins in the country name Egypt which is itself a misunderstanding of the people it labels.
'Stone-throwing devils' is apparently a racial slur, albeit one I had never encountered personally. I'd guess it relates to the practice of stoning as a punishment, but I won't comment further because I am clearly not qualified to.
Then the easy ones are Invoke Pejudice -> KKK, and Imprision -> black slave, which is wearing a black mask to make it even worse.
As an addition, 'Stone-Throwing Devils' is from the Arabian Nights expansion, which is probably what pushes it over the edge into being racially insensitive.
I do not play MTG, but surmising by WoTC's comments and further context I've been digging around on:
Invoke Prejudice - It's saddled with the ID number '1488' in Gatherer, where the number is now associated with white supremacy dogwhistles, the obvious art being a whole hog reference to the KKK, and then the artist (Harold McNeill) is nowadays apparently a publicly outspoken Neo-Nazi.
Cleanse - Yeah, basically the effect. I wouldn't remove it personally because White and Black as colors are literally the mechanics of the game but I don't really care anyway
Stone Throwing Devils - References the laws of stoning sinners, or nowadays more known culturally as Moslems stoning gay people, which I think is the context and the reason they removed it
Jihad, Crusade - Yeah basically. Plus the fact that they're White is probably why it's removed too.
Damn, what you say regarding Harold McNeill looks really legit. His site is FREAKY, contains a gallery depicting several pieces of clearly Nazi art, with swastikas, eagles and all other common imagery associated with it. Besides some spooky lovecraftian/demonic/erotic stuff. So sad that such things still linger...
I think some people might have found the name "Cleanse" in combination with its effect inappropriate. I don't play Magic the Gathering, but I also assume, that "black" is some sort of a mechanic or a minion-type there and this spell is designed to remove minions of that type from play. The usage of the word "destroy" in that context is imho not really offensive, it sounds like a game term - same as in hearthstone. I believe, that only the title is problematic and, like I've said, it's only because of the context. I would also keep the effect as it is.
Black is in reference to the color of mana of the creatures (think of them kind of like the classes of Hearthstone). In total there’s 5 colors, red, white, black, blue, and green.
While there are plenty of cards that are specifically “do X to Y color” it being called Cleanse, and destroying all Black minions is just kind of an unfortunate result of how the game was made. They’re just playing it safe I’d assume, given current affairs.
I get why it’s called Cleanse (since the black mana color is usually associated with Demons and Undead), but it can still sound really bad out of context
I dont play MTG myself, but something tells me that 2 of those colors are going to be changed to purple and bright pink, colors that doesnt come anywhere remotely near resemblance to human skin tones at present.
Actually they have made a lot of effort in the art to make the actual skin tones of humanoids not tied to the color of mana. They started including a lot more people of color in white and less dark skin tones in black. This was a response to years of people pointing out that all the good characters were white (in skin tone, not just thematically).
Cleanse states "kill all black creatures" while being something "good" like cleansing.