Super-White Poland, Nazis, and The Witcher 3

Here we go again. See this tweet first: http://i.imgur.com/RMRxTYi.jpg



And then some people saw it and went all outrage on it.



Here’s the thing. You’re all wrong. Yes, those who tweeted or re-tweeted, and those who claim that Poland was always white.



Truth in a long form: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Poland



But in short, the history of Poland is complicated. Like, very, very complicated. For example, Poland is often accused to be full of anti-Semites, but at the same time, “For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jewish community in the world. Poland was the centre of Jewish culture thanks to a long period of statutory religious tolerance and social autonomy.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland)



Extremely simplifying things, you could say there was a period in Polish history when it was called “the melting pot”, and a lot of various ethnic minorities lived in Poland, usually escaping from basically the rest of Europe to the Polish safe haven.



So no, Poland was not always “Caucasian white”.



However:



a) The developers of The Witcher indeed grew up in a white country. It’s not exclusively because of the crimes of Nazis (e.g. did you know that Poland completely disappeared from the map from 1795 to 1919?), but obviously they “contributed” heavily. But today, Poland is white. To give you an idea how white, in 2002, when there were over 38 million Poles, the number of African-American living in Poland was 80. That is not a mistake, the number was 80. And actually only 37 of them were Polish citizens. That is 37 black citizens in the country of thirty eight million whites.



b) The Witcher alludes to times when Poland was basically white. It’s not about “the melting pot” time in our history.



c) As I said it in https://medium.com/@adrianchm/the-boy-who-cried-white-wolf-on-polygon-s-the-witcher-3-review-f7ac8d7f0a5, “it would not be a problem if the third Witcher featured non-white races. It’s just that it’s also not a problem when it doesn’t. It’s a non-issue.” And as every sane person knows, The Witcher 3 does deal with racial/ethnic issues, it just does it through an allegory.



Also, Daniel Vavra nailed the answer here: https://medium.com/@DanielVavra/dispelling-the-myth-of-not-enough-diversity-in-games-7b66cde9bbeb



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