Thank you everyone for the thoughts on my prose experiment the other day. I’ll be keeping things comic-y for the forseeable future, but it’s good to gather feedback sometimes.
And Avery would win a fistfight. Sorry, Selkie.
Todd v Avery wouldn't even be a contest, honestly.
Just because it’s been done for years doesn’t mean it’s okay. Sometimes it can be pretty bad, Agent Brown. Heck even harmful. Which is why this needs to change.
Especially if they’re trying to fit in and get along.
Besides, wasn’t so long ago (only a century, really) when this same behavior was ‘normal’ among humans.
Didn’t mean it was right back then either.
Unfortunately, within certain pockets of the US, it still is. It’s just they hide it around “outsiders,” or it becomes enabled by people who claim it’s “traditional.”
There’s the issue of imposing our views and values on an entirely different culture though… while we don’t like it, they probably don’t like a lot of the things we do either. They’re integrating with humans, but not by choice. The whole thing is a tricky situation. It may seem harmful to us, but not to their culture. We aren’t inherently correct by default just because we believe ourselves to be. If they’re long term going to be living among humans, something definitely has got to change though. It’s just very complicated at the moment and not something any one person can change over night.
I know but it feels so wrong. DX I wish things like this weren’t so tough.
The problem with the “It’s their culture” argument is that logic can be applied to any number of atrocities that turn up as a consequence to unhindered racism. It’s not that hard to draw a connection between this ‘cultural behavior’ and the very reason the Sarnothi were displaced into the US in the first place.
A dictator up and threw them out of their homes. If casual racism is part of their culture, then their culture caused the loss of their old lives.
you are still making the assumption that sarnothi are humans in alien suits. they aren’t. Kudos to Dave for making a STORY where the non-humans are exactly that.
These types of arguments often come down to “They should respect the rules of our country!”
But in this case.. the Sarnothi came first.. sooo…
Yes, Sarnoth came first.
But they are not in Sarnoth now. They are in the US. The rules and laws of Sarnoth do not apply there.
Rules made to protect everyone, sure, they have to obey those, but that’s not at issue here. Todd needs to understand the nature of Sarnothi. Dismissing a true explanation as an “excuse” shows he still has a way to go. (But he’s doing pretty well. I don’t fault him for not instantly folding. These things take time.)
And notice that Benny understood what was really bothering Selkie. She didn’t feel bullied and ganged up, on the way she did with Amanda and later Truck. She felt Tehk kept making a malicious personal attack, so she eventually struck back to show him. She didn’t know the Jin’Sorai stuff was only normal teasing and that it was perfectly acceptable to tease back.
I think we just saw the problem solved. Todd shouldn’t try to stop her from responding appropriately within Sarnothi kid-culture. Also, that bet? It looks like the beginning of a friendship.
I think both of them are right here, Todd is wrong to jump to “racism” without understanding the context, but he’s also right in that if the behavior bothers Selkie it needs addressing somehow regardless.
“I think both of them are right here, Todd is wrong to jump to “racism” without understanding the context, but he’s also right in that if the behavior bothers Selkie it needs addressing somehow regardless.”
Yah, this! Plus if the Sarnothi kids start absorbing racist stereotypes and applying their own “this is just cross-clan snark” assumptions, it could go REALLY BADLY. So addressing it in a larger context might be a good idea. (Hopefully the kids know better than to ask what clans people are from, based on melanin content… Or make comments about “cross-clan” human parents…)
To me, it sounds like that “True explaination” is just “They were raised in a culture with institutional racism”- you know, the exact thing that the Civil Rights movement worked so hard to wipe out?
I get that it’s part of their deep historical culture, but so is the Indian Caste system- and that’s been recognized as counterproductive for modern civilized society and is in the process of (slowly) being abolished. Why should the Sarnothi’s casteism be tolerated? It’s not religious in nature, only cultural. And if they’re going to be _integrated_ into the US, well, that requires give AND take on everyone’s parts. I’d say the Sarnothi immigrants giving up their striated caste-based assumptions about people isn’t too much to ask.
So, see… that’s exactly the kind of thinking Todd needs to unlearn.
For many commenters, the situation triggers built-in assumptions and flashes red with “institutional racism,” bringing with it all the moral condemnation that institutional racism rightly deserves. Humans don’t actually have races. All of our “races” are social constructs.
But these are not humans. Sarnothi clans cannot be assumed to be the same as India’s castes! Reacting as if they are, trying to stuff them entirely into the “human” box, will lead to many mistakes and possibly tragedies. Parenting Selkie calls for suspending judgement, for willingness to learn, for openness to new concepts.
See, at the beginning of this comic, your point that they are not humans would win all the debate points until/unless further information confirming there is no immutable inbuilt psychological basis for the classes, BUT, I’m pretty sure that we’ve long since left behind any pretenses that Sarnothi do not have basically human psychology.
“All of our “races” are social constructs.” ho boy, i’ma show your comment to my athropologist friend after the holidays so she’ll get a hearty laugh!
And what, exactly, makes them different than humans in this regard? What makes it wrong for us to treat our fellow human in this way, but makes it okay for Sarnoth to treat Sarnoth in this way? From my understanding, discrimination (which is what this is, don’t try to sugar-coat this – it’s blatant discrimination to the point of name-calling, a la comments such as “nigger” – the name-calling is equivalent to slurs) is wrong due to the common dignity we all have as sentient beings. Last I checked, Sarnoth are indistinguishable from humans in regards to sentience. Thus, the same logic applies, and it is therefore equally wrong to discriminate.
@Thomas Riley, Humans aren’t dignified we are medium bright, apes with a thin veneer of civilization and in many people that veneer is awful thin.
It *is* still wrong, but change needs to be approached from a sarnothi perspective.
It’s kind of like how muslim women being forced to cover up is wrong, but you can’t just ban veils and burkas because then they are still being forced not to cover up rather than being empowered to make their own choice.
@Just a guy passing by: What, you think an anthropologist who has made a career of studying different human cultures is going to maintain there’s some genetic basis for the differences?
Todd doesn’t get it.
To put it in terms he can deal with.
Cichlids are aggressive as a rule,
Tetras as a rule are pack aggressive,
Loaches are not aggressive and are usually pretty chill except when the weather changes and they freak out.
Pleco are sedate on the level of Cows
These aren’t conscious Traits they are as inborn as lactose tolerance brown hair and facial hair to Europeans.
unless Chichlids, Tetras, Loaches, and Pieco can all produce viable offspring with eachother, I’m pretty sure your analogy is inaccurate.
Vindcara, my point was that what we are calling racial issues are more like in built Genetic traits. But you are right they are probably more like Poecillae family live bearers which can cross breed and sometimes do in the wild (slightly more often in the tank) but are very different temperamentally.
Question is whether “drama queens” and “boring” are genetic or cultural in sarnothi.
I like that this shows the two can get along despite some exchanges that come across as racist from a human perspective.
And I think some of the comments on previous strips had the right idea: This seems less like “them damn chinks stealing our jobs and our women” and more like “ugh, goths, amiright?” Stereotypes against subcultures, instead of stereotypes against whole races, and with a far less aggressive tone. Like the way fans of different sports teams will “fight” each other, or the “PC Master Race” thing in the console debate.
(Heck, the fight among Conservative, Leftist, Communist, and Libertarian has far more vitriol than the way the Sarnothi caste sparring has been presented, so far.)
That being said, Todd’s standard is generally correct. That is the difference between teasing (in the positive sense) and bullying/mocking (or teasing in the negative sense). Families, friend groups, and general group dynamics of various kinds tend to have various ways of cementing group identity through in-jokes, and this can range from very mild to O.0 didhejustSAYthat??
I mean, my brothers and I trade “smeghead” and “bonehead” and the like, and my nephew used to love being called “poopydiaperhead” by his mom’s friend. Which were gross but not too big a deal. And then I got my college friends, and listened to their game banter, which included the line “Ha! I just effed you in the A!” (just like that — I didn’t censor it) and “You just got effed in the A!” and yet it was just the way they did trash-talking. A weird form of kinship in the gaming community.
My friends tease me about my bizarre choices at the gaming table, and my inability to coherently describe movie plots (soon to be a YouTube series called “No Retakes” — we just recorded the first episode on Friday — where I sit in front of a camera for ten minutes and try to describe what I just saw). We tease one friend about not being allowed to talk to NPCs (because twice she has said, confidently, precisely the wrong thing for that group, and it got us in trouble). We tease my friend who hosts the get-togethers for having the worst luck with dice (if someone else has bad luck, we blame it on proximity to him, like he’s a black hole for luck). Stuff like that.
And as long as everyone’s having fun, it’s fine.
It’s when one side is NOT having fun, when they want it to stop, and the other side knows this (or should reasonably understand it) and keeps going anyway, that it’s bullying and not okay.
And the genocide during the war fits in with this how?
Race or cast, you’re born into them, it’s very difficult to leave, and there is no such thing as separate but equal.
Precisely. “Ugh, Goths” has rarely led to a military force hunting down and killing Goths, unless you’re in ancient Rome.
And that worked out so well for Rome, right?
Do I know,… Other way, Do you know me? And vice-Versa?
Sorry, in terms of “Sarnothi caste sparring” I’m talking about the kids, that being the thing on my mind. The larger context of the war was not on my mind at the time… and, frankly, it’s been a while since I read that part, so I may not have the idea straight in my head.
But I recall the war starting because a Sarnothi got captured by a fisherman and killed, and displayed, and the Sarnothi got into a big debate over how to respond to this affront, and couldn’t agree on the best way to make sure that it didn’t happen again.
Now, if the Sarnothi have maintained a caste system with that level of stereotype for longer than America has existed, and if it’s only recently that this devolved into an actual war, and if that war was precipitated by a new and unforeseen attack by outsiders… well…
Suppose that aliens grabbed some key public figures and slaughtered them for experimentation or the like, and humanity as a whole (or at least the United States populace) was aware of this and that it definitely wasn’t a hoax. We’d have all manner of debates about what the right thing to do was.
And it’s pretty common that, when things get heated, you engage tribal mentality and group loyalty. (See Jonathan Haidt’s TED talk on “the moral roots of liberals and conservatives” for an idea of how this plays out — how team membership shuts down the logical part of your brain.)
If, prior to those aliens showing up, we’d had a reasonably peaceful time for a couple hundred years — not perfect, not completely without biased attitudes, but civil toward each other and able to get along and have a prosperous society — would it be fair to judge our previous behavior based on the behavior we showed when we were terrified of being snatched up by aliens and dissected?
I don’t think it’s reasonable to say that the “ugh, goths” part *inevitably* led to the genocide part.
Also, if the caste system is intertwined with the careers (Hufflepuffs are workers, Ravenclaws are scientists, Griffindors are warriors, Slytherin are politicians, or whatever), well, consider our stereotypes for Lawyers, Politicians, Cops, Doctors, Mailmen, Pizza Delivery Guys, various types of Entertainers (including YouTube Content Creator, a relatively new category), Writer, Prostitute, and the like.
The stereotypes as so far described seem far more in line with those than with racial slurs. “Ugh, you guys are annoying drama queens” and “ugh, you guys are so boring and predictable.”
As opposed to racial stereotypes I’ve heard over the years:
Those [bleeps] are lazy! and they’re taking all our jobs!
Those [bloops] are inherently stupid and incapable of learning!
Those [blurps] are all rude! It’s just part of their culture; they don’t know any better and don’t care.
Those [blops] are all terrorists! Even the “nice” ones are just pretending!
Those [blups] are all criminals! And the ones who aren’t criminals are just masquerading in polite society and probably stealing things on the sly! How’d they manage to get that much money anyway? Surely not legitimately!
I’m just staying: Some of these things are not like the others.
We shake hands when greeting, and also to make a deal or a bet.
So I suppose the “claws towards the eyes” thing as a “it’s a deal” gesture makes sense, as it’s also a greeting.
But aren’t the eyes supposed to be closed?
Eyes closed for a ‘submission’ gesture. Eyes open for ‘shaking’ on a deal kinda makes sense to me. One, you’re proving willingness to surrender, the other you and the other party are coming to an agreement, therefore it’s important that both parties can tell the other one is ALSO claws-in so to speak.
Architect who sits all day Vs. trained Special Agent.
Now Todd with an Axe is an interesting twist. A guitar vs Avery … (I gonna guess ‘Keyboards’? ). Yeah, then my money’s on Todd dressed as Val Hallah. And Avery dressed as ElChupa the ‘Luche wrestler.
Do we know if Avery is that kind of field agent? He could be in logistics and just work out.
Uhn, good question I hadn’t thought that deeply about it. Only guy from logistics I ever met was/is a blacksmith with formidable arms. Even if he missed, just the breeze from his swing would take out Todd.
So, what makes the clans different? How come they don’t interbreed and become indistinguishable? How much is genetics and how much is micro-cultural? Is the difference more like the differences between a greyhound, a saint bernard and pitbull where there are clear differences in disposition and behaviour between the strains no matter how they are raised, or more like the differences between a Canadian and an American where it is entirely cultural?
Going with Selkie as our only “confirmed” mixed sarnothi, so far it does seem like they take on the physical traits of just one parent, or even just the mother.
probably more like the difference between Swordtails and Mollies. Or Guppies and Mollies. Or Gambusia and Swordtails. Or Endlers and Guppies,
ALL Technically possible and does happen in the wild not frequently but does happen more frequently happens in captivity or when housed in close quarters.
Geyhound: sleeps sbout 18 hours a day.
St. Bernsrd: sleeps about 18.5 hours a day.
Great Pyr: sleeps about 16 hours a day.
Great Dane: sleeps about 18 hours a day.
Jack Russel/Parsons Jack Russel: drinks espresso about 18 hours a day, while doing N.Y.T. crossword puzzles.
Yorkie mix: barks about 18 hours a day.
I think you may have a very good question/point, there.
I love the use of the hands up claws in thing to seal the bet. And Todd is right – that it doesn’t matter if it’s “cultural”, it’s still bothering Selkie. Not to mention Selkie wasn’t raised culturally Sarnothi…
True, she wasn’t raised in the Sarnothi culture. At least, not past the age of 5, so she never had contact with kid-culture, which is its own thing separate from adult culture. (Remember skipping rhymes and/or marbles?)
Actually, if you go back here and just page forward, getting the natural flow of the story, it’s pretty clear that the only intentional bullying involved is Giselle, and she gets called out for it by Mina right away. Selkie tells Te Fahn what she knows of human kids: “Trusts me, it’ll be easier ifs you gives backs likes you gets.” The rest of it is misunderstandings.
“It’ll be easier if you give back like you get” — and until Benny explained some things, Selkie didn’t understand how best to “give back” toward a Sarnothi, because she’s a cultural outsider.
Now that Benny has explained how to “give back” in a way both sides will accept, it seems like this can go back to the level of “trash talk” that isn’t so horrible and bullying.
When I was much younger, I didn’t appreciate coarse/vulgar language at all. Now I binge-watch Epic Rap Battles of History. There’s an art to an insult war, and it has two big components: the Wit to come up with a good insult, and the Poise to take your blows without losing your cool.
Playground trash talk is like that, so I understand it (I was homeschooled). You’re not gonna be able to make kids be 100% nice to each other, so it’s important to teach some boundaries, and then to teach kids the key skills of Wit and Poise.
It kind of *is* helping though because look, the kids are getting along!
I appreciate how each adoptive parent is wearing a shirt that is close to the color of his child’s skin coloration.
It literally only just occurred to me, but do you think because of Todd’s family – coloured parents, siblings of various ethnicity and sexuality, and the only white, (presumably) heterosexual man among them – Todd is more sensitive to these things that most people are?
Yeah! nothing’s more important than HURT FEELINGS!
Nevermind the damage done when you tell someone “hey you know that way everyone thinks? Not allowed”
That’s gonna make them just LOVE that group now.
But we ARE the master race! Why is everyone so upset? Uh, subjects, am I right?
i´m with todd on this one – respecting foreign cultures is one thing, but if part of the ‘culture’ is stupid prejudices, its ok to protest
Wait till you get out side the US especially into asia… your going to be SOOOO disappointed.
Todd vs Avery wouldn’t even come to a single finger raised, it’d more like Avery’s eyebrow raised in this unspoken dialogue:
Avery’s Eyebrow- Do you really think there’s any point attempting fisticuffs against me?
Todd’s Shoulders- Yeah, no. I concede. You’re capable of bending me in two with your left pinky. Backwards.
I know everyone is saying they need to change their entire culture to suit human values and morals, but does that mean they also need to remove their webbing and file down their teeth and claws to suit our needs because they are otherwise inherently dangerous to us and others? I mean, as of right now, the majority of the human population knows zero about this new species and their values, cultures and views. They absolutely need to be taught that classism isn’t socially acceptable where they are now, but… I would say that really only falls in line within interspecies relations. We can’t just swoop in and tell them what’s right and wrong based on our own assumption of what’s right in our current time.
Who knows, maybe thousands of years in the future things will go back to people being born into a specific class and having a specific job and they’ll look back and laugh at us and call us barbaric and idiotic for whatever they assume to be correct. It’s just something you can’t just… fix or change. If we decide to abolish or ban something just because we don’t like it… well, I don’t see that working out well for our species whatsoever. We’d all eventually kill one another. It’s already difficult and violent because no one else can handle anyone else’s views. I’m not saying any view is objectively right or wrong here. I personally think racism is bad. I think it’s silly to hate someone based on their skin color. I think it’s awful someone would attack someone else based on where they’re from. I think it’s stupid that people think only certain races are allowed to say someone else is racist or not. But my grandfather was fairly racist towards Vietnamese and he was by no means an awful man. He kept it to himself for the most part and never let it leave the house. While I didn’t agree with his views, I didn’t love him any less and he didn’t harm anyone by thinking what he thought in the privacy of his own home. He never went off on any of us if we politely told him we didn’t feel the same and would drop the subject entirely. He was definitely racist towards them, but he never acted upon it or tried to impose his views on anyone else. It doesn’t make it right that he thought badly of them, but as long as he left them alone and didn’t try and make us hate them, I didn’t see how he was really harming anyone but himself. People can think what they want, but they ought to keep things that are hurtful to themselves and their private thoughts.
I dunno, I just don’t think it’s so simple to say everyone needs to be x way because y way is bad and unacceptable. And some people/cultures simply won’t change regardless of what someone else says.
I guess what I’m trying to say is no matter how right you think you are, you might not actually be doing what’s best for someone else. I mean… the crusaders and Nazis assumed they were doing what was best for everyone at the time. Some people think by forcing someone to be straight is saving their souls too. It’s not so black and white, is all I mean and that you aren’t always objectively right.
When you stop believing in objective good and start believing subjective morality, which is based on goals, needs, and obligations, that ambiguity goes away. First principles or how you rank them may very, but you can know what YOU consider just. Also, google Social Contract Theory for some good explanations of how people behave in groups!
You’re slippery slope makes no sense. They literally are not responsible for the way they were born, but they are responsible for their behavior. This sarnothy is harassing others. If your grandpa was insulting Asians to their face, I would hope you’d have the nerve to tell him he’s a terrible prick.
Also, please don’t fall for the PC lie that we should respect cultures. We should respect people, not behaviors. Cultures can be toxic, and they always spread.
I agree with Brown on this one. You don’t even have to look at a possible alien civilization to see it.
I know there are some cultures in the East that do a dolphin harvest and there’s plenty of people who flip out over it, trying to strong arm those cultures into their own viewpoint on the matter.
The reality is, Selkie’s culture may never fully adapt to what modern day humans accept as socially acceptable, that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Right and wrong are abstract concepts created by intelligent creatures in an attempt to try and explain a specific thing.
But as many of us know, Right and Wrong are not Black and White and there are many different gray areas in that matter. Is it wrong for a starving person to steal food for their family, even if it comes at a cost for the person being stolen from.
Selkie is in a weird position because she wasn’t raised in her culture, she was taken away and raised in the human world. Is it possible she may think differently if she was raised with her own people?
I think this is a good learning experience for everyone involved, just because you are offended by something doesn’t mean that anyone actually ever intended for it to be hurtful to begin with.
Selkie might be better off that it isn’t something personal, it’s just part of another culture, part of her culture. That doesn’t mean she has to accept it, but it may make it easier for her to deal with.
Ooh, I love this dilemma. I still think this is the best chapter of the comic so far because of the issues raised. How do we deal with another culture that cheerfully accepts something we find reprehensible? Kudos to Dave for delving in something so multifaceted and potentially controversial.
To address the issue here. My cousin married a girl whose family is from India. They had two weddings. One in Maine, where the American parents lived, and one in India, where most of the bride’s family lived. I was introduced to Indian food at the American wedding, and sought out an Indian restaurant. I mentioned to my dining companion that whatever dish tasted *just* like at my cousin’s wedding, and the waiter inquired about it. He asked the last name of the bride, and proceeded to go on at length how all people from that family are so smart and the women are very pretty, and then said that those of his family name were not so smart, but the women were beautiful and they made the best servers. This was said as a matter of fact, with a note of pride that he was doing what his family was best at, a how many in the states look down on. The caste system is still very much alive, and some take pride in it. It all depends on how things are put forth. An adult, speaking with pride about his job could well have been a young boy who mocked (or was mocked) for his family name.
Yes, Avery would win a fist fight, but Todd is on his home turf and fights dirty, so it’s still up in the air.
Todd may be a street fighter, but someone’s forgetting that Avery’s a trained FBI agent.