From: ddfr@quads.uchicago.edu (david director friedman)
Subject: Shield restrictions, non-whites, picking personae
Reply-To: ddfr@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 07:08:31 GMT


"Duke Cariadoc has noted on occassion the point that Midrealm law

does not permit shields of period weight." (Hal)

Actually, I have noted that Midrealm law does not permit the use in
crown of shields of period size. There are also limits on weight (not
just for crown), but since I do not know what a period shield weighed
I do not know if they are wrong. Of course, the people who made the
rule did not know either.

There has been some discussion of the shortage of blacks in the SCA.
One explanation which has not been discussed is that the SCA fills a
particular need--the need to be part of something, to identify with a
group seen as doing something valuable--and that blacks
(specifically, the middle class blacks who might be attracted to the
SCA) who feel that way are likely to see working for black causes as
a more attractive alternative. I would expect to see religious
mormons underrepresented as well (I have no idea if they actually
are; there is an SCA group in Salt Lake City) for the same reason.

A number of people mentioned North Africa as providing possible
personas for blacks in the SCA. This is possible; there were blacks
in North Africa (and Muslim Spain). But it is worth remembering that
they were a small part of the population in those areas as in most of
al-Islam. What we think of as "Africans" are peoples native to
sub-Saharan Africa; the aboriginal inhabitants of North Africa are
berbers and, by our conventional definitions, white. Abyssinia, on
the other hand, is a genuine old, black, civilization at least
indirectly in touch with medieval Europe.

Along these lines, Charles du Toutaurien writes that "In "western
Europe" there were a LOT of non-whites.  Moors in Spain and Northern
(and Southern?) Africa, Gypsy's all over the place, Mongols in Europe
and in Russia, In really Northern Europe there's the Laplander's,
Arab's of course ..."

Of the groups cited, Moors were mostly white although there were some
"black moors," Arabs are white and I believe gypsy's are white--if I
remember correctly the leading theory of their origin puts it in
Northern India. 

Speaking of which, someone asked about how people picked their
personae. I was influenced by the fact that medieval Islam was an
interesting and exotic culture, influenced by a particular fictional
character (Carahue of Mauritania), and influenced by the fact that
the description I found of what Berbers (what most of the Moors were)
look like seemed consistent with what I like like. My ancestry is
Ashkenazi jewish, not Berber.

Arval points out that the corpora refers to Western civilization. If
one takes that in its literal geographical sense, it would include
both north africa and sub-saharan africa. But I would assume that it
is being used in the usual conventional sense of european
civilization, with middle easterners and north africans on the fringe
(i.e. in contact with and having some influence on) but not really
included. That is consistent with the semi-official references to
"European" civilization which someone, I think Tibor, quoted recently.

David/Cariadoc