User blog comment:Hippogriff12/The Scarcity of Racists in Skyrim/@comment-109.128.201.36-20120831100714

Well, call them specist rather racist - they're still bigoted and ignorant - far beyond what their real world models ever where (just have a look at viking history, they're a pretty ignorant lot).

Mate - I'm not tailoring anything against any constitution - the Swedish one is a pretty dead letter anyway. I'm more concerned about democractic values and principles. And nationalism isn't a positive force, but a divisive one which was engineered in the 18th C. to achieve social cohesion in nation states. Of course it's not the same as racism - but if you believe in it you're being duped. Why be a patriot when you can just be a decent human being?

The one point you do have is that Bethesda (and all fantasy game designers) opened a can of worm by broaching a subject such as actually different intelligent species and not dealing with it. It actually broaches all kinds of ethical questions - but they palm it all off by treating them as cultural stereotypes