Why Race-Changing is Controversial in Shifting
Hello to whoever is reading this, and welcome to another newsletter at Shifter’s Alley! The topic today is a controversial subject within the shifting community. To this day it’s debated but there is one clear answer: race-changing is bad.
What is Race-Changing?
Race changing is exactly how it’s stated—it’s the act of changing your race when you’re shifting. However, the context of whatever race you’re deciding to shift into changes the direction of it’s controversy. In other words, there are two main contexts when race changing. The first is shifting to be a fantasy-like race. This includes Asgardian, mermaid, fairies, Avatars, and other races that typically do not exist outside of mythical means. The second one is shifting to be an actual-race—like Black, White, Asian, Arabic, Native American, Hispanic, and Pacific Islander.
Why Do people Race Change?
There are many different reasons that people come up with to defend their use of race-changing, or defending the act entirely. Usually these reasons are expressed within the fields of relevancy, education, and reality itself.
An example for relevancy would be someone shifting to a Kpop DR. Because Kpop is a Korean genre, a person that has this kind of DR would think that they need to be Korean because it’s relevant to the main context. In other words, it’s not common to see people that aren’t Korean within the Kpop genre. However, this has been proven wrong as there are many idols that are involved with Korean entertainment that aren’t Korean. Examples would be other Asian ethnicities that are within idol groups or media and also other races. The main point is that relevancy is not a reliable reason to defend race-changing because over the years, relevancy has changed so much within so many cultural entertainment and such.
The other reasoning is for educational purposes—which is just as unreliable. The reason why is because you do not need to change your race in order to learn a specific language or a culture. People that do try to defend race-changing in order to travel or learn about a culture are simply too lazy to do the work in their CR. If you really care about other races and their rich histories, language, culture, and social conducts then you would take the time to do the research here. Another point as to why this is poor reasoning is that when you shift, you cannot bring any skills or immense knowledge of things back. For example, if you scripted that you spoke fluent French in one of your DRs, you can’t shift back here and still think that you can speak fluently in French. Sure, words and phrases might come easier to you or will jog your memory, but you cannot obtain that skill magically here because it is a different reality.
Lastly, many people hide behind the reason that because the reality already exists—there is nothing wrong with it. While this is true in the sense that there are multiple realities where everything can be different, when you’re race-changing you are willingly and actively seeking to go to a reality where you are different. Shifting, most of the time, is the act of seeking out the specific reality that you want to travel to. This obviously leaves out the cases of accidental shifts, but when you are attempting to shift, or even scripting your DRs, you are specifying what reality you want to shift to. And that includes specifying going to a reality where you are a different race.
How Race-Changing Can Be Harmful
While many argue that the act itself is harmless, it’s been proven time and time again that the act is not harmless, but the implications and the consequences are. If someone is shifting to be another race, they are subjecting themselves to experience all of the good and bad things that come with it. This includes racism, xenophobia, injustices, racist stereotypes, and more. It’s even more hurtful when someone is race-changing and scripting out the experiences that the race has no choice but to have in this CR. For example, shifting to be a Black person and scripting out racism, when Black people here cannot escape this experience simply because of the color of their skin. The implications of race-changing are tone-deaf and insensitive, and many POC shifters have stated repeatedly of their discomfort for it.
Another harmful reason is that is opens the door for a sense of entitlement when returning to your OR/CR. There have been cases of people coming back to this reality and having a sense of entitlement when it came to other races and their culture, or even trying to fuse themselves into POC safe spaces despite not being that race. Just because you experience those things in another reality doesn’t mean it’s okay to infiltrate the safe-spaces POC have set up in this reality. This door also includes people that race-change specifically to use slurs or mock racist stereotypes. It allows the room for racists to thrive.
Conclusion
In this conclusion, there is nothing more to say than to just raise awareness about the harmful aspects about race-changing. Unfortunately, while we cannot force people to stop race-changing, the best we can do is raise our voices against it and express discomfort with someone’s ethical choices. We hope that you received something by reading this newsletter, and we will see you all next week!
Happy Shifting!
