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 idea that someone could take offense to such an innocuous phrase. But leftists define what is and isn’t offensive by standards too opaque for the average mind to comprehend. Tribal must go, replaced by a far uglier phrase: “typal.”
That seems to be a common theme amongst the language police, replacing perfectly serviceable words with ones concocted in some academic’s twisted brain. Magic’s “tribal” debacle echoes another linguistic game played by the left, to the same chagrin.
Leftists insist the phrase “Latinx” is the best way to refer to people of Hispanic origins, even though the term “Latino” is far more serviceable and preferred by most people it’s supposed to refer to.
According to Politico, 40 percent of Hispanics said the word bothered or offended them. What do white leftists do? Use it anyway!
That’s the progressive way after all. The thoughts and feelings of those most affected don’t matter, whether they be Native Americans saying the term “tribal” doesn’t offend them or Latinos telling activists to stop butchering Spanish.
The only thing that matters is the feelings of the guilt-ridden leftists in charge, and that’s starting to have real-world consequences.
Is it a huge deal in the grand scheme of things that a trading card game has decided the word “tribal” is too racist to appear on its products anymore? No, not really. But what it stands for is far more insidious.
Wizards of the Coast is owned by Hasbro, one of the biggest producers of children’s toys in the world. The company also happens to be one of Hasbro’s biggest cash cows, making over $1.3 billion in revenue in 2021.
Businesses with seismic effects on the economy are ignoring their consumers and pushing leftist ideology full throttle. Wizards of the Coast is guilty of this. The company is endorsing a tournament that explicitly excludes white men alongside butchering its other blockbuster property, “Dungeons and Dragons,” in the name of Black Lives Matter.
This is the future of culture if these radicals are not stopped: language games that only the most avid progressives want to play. The things you hold dear will be corrupted, and you’ll be told to love it or get out.
Doesn’t really sound all that fun to me.
Douglas Blair is a producer and special correspondent with “O’Connor Tonight” on the Salem News Channel.
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