Was Code of Honor racist?

[JarodRussell]

Jeyl wrote:

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There are so many folks here who will defend anything based on things that don't even exist. I posted a while ago that this episode was racist, and I had fans coming in saying "Why would you assume the entire planet's population is black?". To which I said "because.... we didn't see one single non-black native on this planet?"

But just why is an episode that shows only black natives on a planet racist?

Before Europeans came to Australia, there were only Aborigenes.

Would you complain if the entire planet's population was nothing but red colored three-legged lizards? Where are the green and orange and four-legged ones?

[Jeyl]

JarodRussell wrote:

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But just why is an episode that shows only black natives on a planet racist?

Because a few episodes later, we're introduced to a planet that's populated only by blue eyed, blonde, scantly clad white people who welcome our characters with hugs and kisses. A planet so rich, pure and hands on that it even compelled Worf to say "Nice planet".

So in one season, the blacks get the barbaric, mean spirited and kidnap endorsing planet, while the whites get the innocent, happy and blissful planet. While our crew would no doubt encounter many other planets with humanoids populated again by all white people, black people only get one planet to call their own, and it's in the episode one that the cast and crew were willing to call a racist piece of sh**.

[SonicRanger]

Jeyl wrote:

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Because a few episodes later, we're introduced to a planet that's populated only by blue eyed, blonde, scantly clad white people who welcome our characters with hugs and kisses. A planet so rich, pure and hands on that it even compelled Worf to say "Nice planet".

So in one season, the blacks get the barbaric, mean spirited and kidnap endorsing planet, while the whites get the innocent, happy and blissful planet. While our crew would no doubt encounter many other planets with humanoids populated again by all white people, black people only get one planet to call their own, and it's in the episode one that the cast and crew were willing to call a racist piece of sh**.

I always figured that the Edo in Justice were an homage to the Eloi in H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, specifically the 1960s film, in which the Eloi are all small, attractive, blond, and blue-eyed. In both cases, there is a menace and threat behind the scenes of the apparent utopia and life of ease.

[Jeyl]

SonicRanger wrote:

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In both cases, there is a menace and threat behind the scenes of the apparent utopia and life of ease.

But some of the Edo were open to just let Wesley go, even having the great god thing just shrug it off in the end. In Code of Honor, not only are there no Ligonians who sympathize with our characters, but the very mention of bringing up his kidnapping of Tasha Yar brings cheers from the crowd. And when Picard doesn't want Yar to fight to the death, we get this lovely piece.

Lutan: THAN YOU SHALL HAVE TREATY, NO VACCINE, AND NO LIEUTENANT YAR!!

Yep. Nothing racist about casting all black actors as this barbaric race, is there? He openly shouts out at Picard by threatening to keep Tasha Yar all to himself while at the same time allowing millions of innocents die, and all the Ligonians are for it!

[Dale Sams]

Jeyl wrote:

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But some of the Edo were open to just let Wesley go, even having the great god thing just shrug it off in the end. In Code of Honor, not only are there no Ligonians who sympathize with our characters, but the very mention of bringing up his kidnapping of Tasha Yar brings cheers from the crowd. And when Picard doesn't want Yar to fight to the death, we get this lovely piece.

Lutan: THAN YOU SHALL HAVE TREATY, NO VACCINE, AND NO LIEUTENANT YAR!!

"HAHAHAHAH. NO CAFFIENE. NEVER HAD IT. NEVER WILL!"

[SonicRanger]

Jeyl wrote:

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But some of the Edo were open to just let Wesley go, even having the great god thing just shrug it off in the end...

I meant both the Edo and Eloi.

[Christopher]

Jeyl wrote:

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Yep. Nothing racist about casting all black actors as this barbaric race, is there?

I don't think that's fair, because we've seen dozens of alien races in Trek that were just as "barbaric" and were played by all-white actors. The Capellans in "Friday's Child" spring to mind just off the top of my head. And sticking just to the first season of TNG, we have the Bandi in "Encounter at Farpoint" (a technologically backward people enslaving and torturing an innocent alien), the murderous and warlike Anticans and Selay of "Lonely Among Us" (played under their makeup by white actors like Marc Alaimo and John Durbin), the oppressive matriarchy of Angel One, the wartorn Mordanians of "Too Short a Season," the child-abducting Aldeans of "When the Bough Breaks," the ruthless Minosian arms dealer in "The Arsenal of Freedom," the drug-dealer Brekkians of "Symbiosis," and the Romulans of "The Neutral Zone" -- all guilty of "barbaric" behavior, all played by white actors.

It's just the nature of an episodic space-adventure series that the majority of aliens the cast encounters are going to be antagonistic in one way or another. So if you refused to cast nonwhite actors as villains, you'd give them fewer opportunities to play a part in the series at all. Like I said, in 1987 it was rare for aliens to be played by black people at all. Lando Calrissian was about it. However problematic it may appear now, at the time it was actually a small step forward, even if it did turn out to be a misstep. This is the nature of progress. What seems progressive at an early stage (like the miniskirts of the TOS women's uniforms) comes to be seen as backward later on when society has progressed well beyond it.

And Trek did improve on it later on, of course. In addition to having Michael Dorn as the featured Klingon (even if he did fall into the "angry black man" stereotype to an unfortunate degree, at least until DS9 started writing him better), we got increasingly multiethnic casting for major alien races like Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, Vulcans, and Bajorans.

[Jeyl]

Christopher wrote:

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I don't think that's fair, because we've seen dozens of alien races in Trek that were just as "barbaric" and were played by all-white actors.

Alright. Give me one planet that's been featured in Star Trek that has an all black population who aren't barbaric.

[SonicRanger]

Jeyl wrote:

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Alright. Give me one planet that's been featured in Star Trek that has an all black population who aren't barbaric.

The Tamarians.

[Christopher]

Jeyl wrote:

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Alright. Give me one planet that's been featured in Star Trek that has an all black population who aren't barbaric.

I reject the premise of the question. You're selecting the terms in order to force the interpretation you want. The point is that there are plenty of "barbaric" cultures in Trek (and your own use of the loaded and ethnocentric word "barbaric" is rather offensive in itself), so there's nothing unique about this one in terms of how it was written. Nobody's denying that there were some missteps made in "Code of Honor," but you're caricaturing and misrepresenting things for the sake of being inflammatory, and that doesn't achieve anything positive.

[ATimson]

Christopher wrote:

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Like I said, in 1987 it was rare for aliens to be played by black people at all. Lando Calrissian was about it.

Except he's not an alien, which leaves you with a population size of approximately n = 0.

[Christopher]

^He's from the planet Socorro in a galaxy far, far away. I think that counts, even if he's called human.

[Jeyl]

Christopher wrote:

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I reject the premise of the question.

Ok. Give me a planet besides the one from "Code of Honor" who's population is all black.

[R. Star]

I see more apologetic explanations and justifications... I still don't see how anyone can look at that episode and not wonder what the heck they were thinking when looking at it on set. It was a huge mistake and one that was easily avoidable.

[robau]

Jeyl wrote:

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Because a few episodes later, we're introduced to a planet that's populated only by blue eyed, blonde, scantly clad white people who welcome our characters with hugs and kisses. A planet so rich, pure and hands on that it even compelled Worf to say "Nice planet".

The same planet that murders people for breaking a window.