Why is my race excluded?

[a9a]

Why wouldn't this company think to include a basic African American male avatar in the rotisserie of starter avatars to chose from? The selections are a bit one sided as diverse as this appears to be.

[Freya Mokusei]

No races are excluded from Second Life, although some are not featured during the sign-up phase.

As soon as you enter Second Life, you will likely shop to replace whatever look you were given during the sign-up phase. The limited selection of avatars at sign-up is deliberate, so that you quickly move onto purchasing real, creator-built content (as opposed to Linden-distributed outfits).

For an answer regarding why your specific real life race is not featured during the sign-up process, you would have to speak to Linden Lab directly. This service is a user-to-user help area.

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

There are no aliens

[Ingkeu]

I hear you, and I agree.  It would be nice to see a more neapolitan assortment of ethnicity in the starter avatars, I admit.

However, the current starter avatars were actually created by in world Residents.  I'm not sure if LL bought the rights for them, or if the content creators volunteered, but Linden Labs actually played no part in their creation.

The bigger beef here, may actually be that there isn't a whole lot of ethnic content creators out there ready and willing to let Linden Labs use their hard work and effort for free starter avatars.

The beautiful thing about Second Life, however, is customization.  You can look any way you wish to look with the right amount of searching and money.  That is unless you're freebie shopping.   If you are, I would recommend utilizing the Marketplace to look up free (or expensive) ethnic skins and shapes that may suit your preference.

Hopefully, in the up comming future of Second Life, this will change though.

[Sidnella Riler]

As said in previous by previous post, you will most certainly change your look as soon as you start using SL, because if you don't then you would be a noob forever not matter what race, but yeah that would mainly be the reason

[Cerise Sorbet]

The join.secondlife.com page, like many other parts of SL, is broken and perpetually out of date. These avatars are in the library, as Male Rocker and Male Pirate, and they do show up in the Me>Choose an Avatar menu inside the viewer. They're actually a couple of the better looking starter avatars, too bad they don't get more exposure.

[161488303349]

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a9a wrote:

Why wouldn't this company think to include a basic African American male avatar in the r

otisserie

of starter avatars to chose from? The selections are a bit one sided as diverse as this appears to be.

---

good point. the male rocker starter avatar is a black guy. he is not on the web page rotisserie  like you say. he should be. and the businessman black guy avatar. he not on there either

+

sometimes on here someone will post and ask how come is hardly any RL black guys in SL. like never see any hardly ever. maybe this is why. plain old dumb no think on part the promotions/marketing department 

[Miserlie]

Just sayin, and don't get offended. But if you're not going to wear the default skins for the rest of you second life, then why should you care so much. This is jist me but all of them look like dolls and i can't identify race when seeing them. And the guy with the long brown hair is black, no ? They also have a black women as well in the female options. You just sound kind of butthurt from something else other than the problem you say it is. Just sayin. Don't get offended. Everytime a person joins or so i believe linde labs has to pay for the user created content thats on the avi. It could be free, it could be pricy but linde labs sent it to you is the point. With all the robots,wolves,vampires no one really thinks about race, because alot of people aren't concerned about it in secondlife. If they were they would be living a very active first life.

[Sephina Frostbite]

My Race is also Excluded. Its VERY hard to find a extremely beautiful Puerto Rican skin. I have seen some but not at the quality I want it to be. 

[Miserlie]

Thats because no skin should be limited to just one race. It's okay for a alien to be a cow. It's okay for a british person to be american. This is secondlife and basically you can be what you want to be. Be as pale as you want and still call yourself native american. But this is just me. When it comes to race i'm basically color blind.

 

(Also for good looking puerto rican skin i would shop bodygossip tan skins)

[Sephina Frostbite]

Where I agree because I am "color blind when it comes to friends etc however my avi represents me. I am Puerto Rican and I want to look like one. That isn't downgrading me or any other race. I don't want to be a tan Caucasian. Not saying anything wrong with it but there is nothing wrong with sl broadening the race aspect especially when there are so many humans. I am proud of who I am and what I look like. A person can't just put on a tan or black skin and say your avi is that race. We have specific features. It's almost insulting. Thank you for the heads up, is it on the MP or Inworld only?

[Miserlie]

Both :robothappy: I like how the eyelids are.

[161488303349]

yes that all true. once you get inworld and can find it all

+

the OP point is how come it don't show up on this page: https://join.secondlife.com/?lang=en-US

which is where you have to pick your starter avatar when you sign up for the first time

3 white guys. 1 Asian and 1 Latin looking dude. No black guys

+

it only matter I suppose to black guys this. like the first time they ever see SL. go to sign up and they go guess this game is not for me then. like I not ever imagine that I might wanna be a ordinary white guy or a asian or a latin looking dude

maybe if they had guns or armor or wings or steampunk or whatever cool like that then maybe. but ordinary guy ??? nah!!!

 

 

[Ceka Cianci]

---

a9a wrote:

Why wouldn't this company think to include a basic African American male avatar in the r

otisserie

of starter avatars to chose from? The selections are a bit one sided as diverse as this appears to be.

---

actually if i remember right.. creators/users of second life from in world made those start up avatars..

not the company..

they also added a lot of content in the library in your inventory..

if you think these avatars are bad..you should have seen the molds of clay we used to have to work with before them hehehe

 

 

[Drake1 Nightfire]

I would like to point out there is only one RACE on this planet.. The human race. The word you are looking for is ethnicity.  Are you going to say all black people are from Africa? what about Haitians? or Dominicans? Are all white people from England?

African American isn't even an ethnicity, its a Country of origin. Where are the Irish starter avs? The Germanic, Russian, Turkish, Aussie and many others? Not every single look on the planet can be covered with the basic starter avatar. Like many others have said, since you will be changing almost immediately, why does it matter?

Perhaps the starter avs should be blue skinned no anatomic parts stick people...  maybe that would be a solution.

[Kelli May]

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Drake1 Nightfire wrote:

I would like to point out there is only one RACE on this planet.. The human race. The word you are looking for is ethnicity.  Are you going to say all black people are from Africa? what about Haitians? or Dominicans? Are all white people from England?

African American isn't even an ethnicity, its a Country of origin. Where are the Irish starter avs? The Germanic, Russian, Turkish, Aussie and many others? Not every single look on the planet can be covered with the basic starter avatar. Like many others have said, since you will be changing almost immediately, why does it matter?

Perhaps the starter avs should be blue skinned no anatomic parts stick people...  maybe that would be a solution.

---

QFT

I'm typically 'white British' looking, and my ancestry matches that (on both sides, for at least five generations). Yet I have 'simian shelves' in my jaw, which were considered to be typical of black African ancestry (and used as 'evidence' that they were somehow more 'primitive' than white Europeans). My father's family have lived in England for as long as we can trace (they probably got beaten up by Romans & Vikings), but he's darker skinned than most sub-continental Indians and many African-Americans.

Many human 'racial' characteristics are purely part of the variety of genetic variation that makes up Homo sapiens sapiens. There is often as much variation *within* a group as there is *between* groups. 

 

 

[Perrie Juran]

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Drake1 Nightfire wrote:

 

Perhaps the starter avs should be blue skinned no anatomic parts stick people...  maybe that would be a solution.

---

Making fun of the Venusians is a very unwise thing to do.  Very, very unwise. 

[Sephina Frostbite]

I agree that we cant all be represented. However would be nice to see more of a variety in skins and shapes for those of us who lack the talent to do so. I dont have an issue with the beginner Avi's. No one is going to stay like that. Well hopefully.

[Melita Magic]

Now you're barking up my alley. I can recommend some genetics testing companies if you are ever curious to break it down scientifically. At least as much as modern science understands it.

Mine was about 96 percent Northern European origin and about 4 percent Middle Eastern, which surprised me. Now the riddle to try to figure out who in the tree was from the Middle East?

A family member (not blood related) goes back to Morocco despite being blond haired and blue eyed. So...it's all very interesting. According to geneticists we are all from the same place originally, which also matches up with certain religious beliefs.

Nat Geo has done further study breaking it down into regions and how long ago a person's ancestors were there. Also if they have Neanderthal or Denisovan DNA and if so, what percentage. People whose ancestors never left Africa will not have those groups, because those are the names of groups which developed after some groups of humans migrated north.

I find all of this stuff interesting, and also that we can be who we want to be in Second Life and I wonder how many stick to the same hair, skin or eye color or gender? Most avatars are "tan Caucasians" as someone said upthread (sorry it's late and I know I will spell it badly!) I agree with Drake's take on the linguistics though. Also what groups like to call themselves changes by generation or sometimes by decade. What was once a nice term is later considered an insult, etc. 

BTW the British Isles were overrun by a lot of different invaders, Kelli; a lot of my ancestors are from "Orcadia" too, and I've wondered who they might have been.

 

[Penny Patton]

Really, I think Linden Lab has always approached starter avatars in the wrong way.

Rather than a limited selection of avatars to choose from, I'd have the new user experience start by walking you through building your own avatar.

This would require improving the appearance editor to make avatar creation much easier, but this is not only possible but exceedingly simple for LL to do while remaining compatible with existing avatars.

 First you'd decide on your gender and approximate height (which you can fine tune later).

 Once you've selected those two things you choose a basic body type from maybe 5 to 10 options, ranging from a fantasy style dwarf to a hulking body builder. Want to be a super model? Pick the tall, thin shape. Want to be a space marine? Pick the heroic shape. Want something more average? Pick that shape!

 Since faces are attached to shapes, I'd probably have LL create a variety of shape varients for each body type using different face presets, although ideally I'd have LL find a way to separate faces from shapes entirely if possible. Either way,  you'd then be able to select a face for your avatar. 

 After chooseing a basic shape, you could, at any time, go into the sliders we all know and love to personalize that shape with every bit as much freedom as we currently enjoy.

 I'd have LL redo the art assets for system skins to make them useful again. Games like Skyrim use a very similar system, the problem with LL's system skins is mostly that the art assets used are such poor quality. Improve those assets and new users could create decent looking skins using sliders. To that end, I'd have people choose from several skin presets to begin with, which like shapes they could then personalize with sliders.

 

Once you'd made it that  far you'd be offered outfits to choose from, since you'd still be in the appearance editing process the outfits offered would be tailored to the body type you'd chosen, making it easy for a new user to select an outfit and have it fit despite choosing from multiple shapes at the beginning.

 This would allow new users to easily put together an avatar to suit them, and make it easier for existing users to create brand new custom shapes, all without losing any of the freedom we enjoy for creating avatars.

 

 Also, since there would be presets to choose from, it wouldn't take nearly as long as creating a custom shape or skin from scratch, you could put together an avatar pretty quickly.

[Perrie Juran]

One of the problems with that is that too many people want instant gratification.

And as simple as you are trying to make it sound, that is still a lot of work.

Even for seasoned Residents, editing our shapes can be very tedious work.

[Pussycat Catnap]

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16 wrote:

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a9a wrote:

Why wouldn't this company think to include a basic African American male avatar in the r

otisserie

of starter avatars to chose from? The selections are a bit one sided as diverse as this appears to be.

---

 

sometimes on here someone will post and ask how come is hardly any RL black guys in SL. like never see any hardly ever. maybe this is why. plain old dumb no think on part the promotions/marketing department 

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Pretty much nailed it there 16.

Minorites often stay away from online gaming communities, and "table top" ones as well, because they are excluded by highly racialized stories and a lack of a diversity in marketing material. SL is no exception to this, even though its not sold as a 'gamer platform'.

 

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Drake1 Nightfire wrote:

I would like to point out there is only one RACE on this planet.. The human race. The word you are looking for is ethnicity.  Are you going to say all black people are from Africa? what about Haitians? or Dominicans? Are all white people from England?

African American isn't even an ethnicity, its a Country of origin. Where are the Irish starter avs? The Germanic, Russian, Turkish, Aussie and many others? Not every single look on the planet can be covered with the basic starter avatar. Like many others have said, since you will be changing almost immediately, why does it matter?

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Erase 500 years of brutality and oppression against Africans (and I might add, other groups as well, including a multi-century genocide against Native Americans) and that might start to not sound absurd.

In biology there is one human species - proven despite centuries of bloodshet by those trying to deny it. But culture and history matter. The blood of my ancestors is on the hands of yours. I can forgive, but I will never forget.

It is one reason why I am so fond of modern Germans. Unlike Americans, they know darn well that to forget or deny is to become complicit in the crime. To acknowledge and then champion against it ever happening again anywhere puts them on a moral high ground above many others in the world.

 

[Drake1 Nightfire]

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Pussycat Catnap wrote:

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Drake1 Nightfire wrote:

I would like to point out there is only one RACE on this planet.. The human race. The word you are looking for is ethnicity.  Are you going to say all black people are from Africa? what about Haitians? or Dominicans? Are all white people from England?

African American isn't even an ethnicity, its a Country of origin. Where are the Irish starter avs? The Germanic, Russian, Turkish, Aussie and many others? Not every single look on the planet can be covered with the basic starter avatar. Like many others have said, since you will be changing almost immediately, why does it matter?

---

Erase 500 years of brutality and oppression against Africans (and I might add, other groups as well, including a multi-century genocide against Native Americans) and that might start to not sound absurd.

In biology there is one human species - proven despite centuries of bloodshet by those trying to deny it. But culture and history matter. The blood of my ancestors is on the hands of yours. I can forgive, but I will never forget.

It is one reason why I am so fond of modern Germans. Unlike Americans, they know darn well that to forget or deny is to become complicit in the crime. To acknowledge and then champion against it ever happening again anywhere puts them on a moral high ground above many others in the world.

 

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you have no idea where my ancestors are from.. 

The general population of the US is firmly against any opression in the world. yes there are some extremist idiots, but they are in every country as well.

get off your high horse and join the human race. Do not make accusations about me when you have no clue.

[Orca Flotta]

Without wanting to sound like a racist and mean and **bleep** and all that negative stuff I have to admit that I am confused by some of the statements here. So let me try to clear it up for myself ... and maybe for some of you as well.

Someone, sorry forgot the name now, said there is only one human race on this planet. That is correct. Biologically there is not enough variaton in humans to split them into different races.

Still we see differences. So let's keep to that, shall we? And let's for fun's sake call them races in the discussion.

Puerto Ricans and American Africans (as two "races" mentioned here) don't even make sense when it comes to avie personalization. Puerto Ricans are mostly of Spanish and black Americans of African ancestry. Particularly the second group is not long enough in America to have built up an own racial distinctive mark. I guess you still can easily see from what part of Africa your ancestors were kidnapped. Puerto Rico and the USA are political constructs, they don't spawn new races yet.

So I guess for most Puerto Ricans a Hispanic starter avie should do and for African Americans (a made up word if there ever was one) a African starter avie. If you want an African American avie, we gotta consider Italian Americans, Irish Americans, German Americans, Greek Americans, Indian Americans, Indigenous Americans as well.

Do we have any Asian starter avies? Indian? Polynesian? No we don't. The lab wasn't clever enough to include them  neither. Still we see many fantabulous Asian avies in SL. I love them so much I often go as a Japanese myself. But that's not the point. My point is if the Lab didn't even think about including the most dominant and prominent basic "races" in their initial portfolio, why do you expect them now to come up with splitter groups of those, like American Africans and Puerto Ricans? I believe you when you say you have an interesting racial background but so do I and most Europeans, although we're mostly of Caucasian ancestry.

For example me: I'm German. So I should be a Caucasian, right? Wrong! I my ancestry you find Hispanic, Normannic and Semitic genes. LL, help quickly! I feel so underrepresented in this game. :smileymad:

Aha, the riddle is solved: Germany is a political construct just like the USA. A melting pot of cultures, tribes and people from all over the place. The population is carrying predominantly the **bleep** genom. And that is ok, more than ok. And as some other forumist pointed out, we're talking virtual world here. Virtual people. Bunch of liars and deceivers. That's great isn't it? I can swap from from a sexy Latina to sexy Japanese to totally unsexy tiny Bunny in a matter of seconds. Heck, I even tried to play a male avie once. Didn't work out too well but was worth a try.