Is Deep Space Nine racist?

[Destructor]

A friend (well, twitter-friend I guess) was up to S3 of DS9 and declared he thinks the show is racist.

I disagreed *generally* but he made some excellent points, many of which I agree with. I storify'd the dialogue (he's James, I am Destructor):

https://storify.com/Destructor/is-deep-space-nine-racist

I then bought this up in a closed Facebook group where a longer-form discussion broke out. There were many interesting responses, and I've curated a few (anonymously, because it is a private group, and I hope they don't mind me sharing some of their very interesting thoughts):

One problem with Trek in general, is that the franchise as a whole buys very heavily into the "you're one of the good ones!" trope. Klingons are all violent, except Worf, so he's okay. Ferengi are all greedy except Rom and Nog, so they're okay. Cardassians are all vicious and scheming except Garak... who's actually even more of that, but he's on our side, so it's okay! But it does often feel like Trek has a moderately racist worldview but keeps holding up its one black friend.

...the line between what the characters believe and what the show believes is at its blurriest when someone uses phrases like "typical Ferengi" and "typical Klingon." The show clearly disagrees with characters that use the term "spoonhead," but seems to endorse Dax's sentiments on typical Ferengi because she's shown to have a benevolent affection toward them. That's when they get into more dangerous and subtle territory that parallels some of the subtle forms of racism in the real world.

DS9 definitely deals in stereotypes, and characters express racist sentiments. I'd tend to argue that the show, in presenting multiple and very different characters from the various species, is trying to unpick this. It doesn't always get it right, but that's mainstream TV for you.

I think that in reality there is a fine line between the influence of someone's culture and someone's individuality. The two can exist simultaneously. Culture is often painted with a broad brush (eg African Americans are centered around their church; Asians emphasize education; Germans are very organized). It's isn't that these things don't have some basis in reality. It is "racist" when individuals are expected to conform to group norms. DS9 does a good job of showing that individuals cannot be locked into the stereotypes of their cultures even if the stereotypes are in some way justified. Saying that various cultures have "norms" isn't racist. Defining individuals is the racist part. Trek does a good job of separating the two in my opinion.

The 99.9% of Cardassians you have met through S3 of DS9 are either active members of the military or intelligence agents. The ones we meet who don't fit that description -- Quark's dissident girlfriend, the scientists who build the cross-wormhole comms beacon, the little boy raised on Bajor -- are neither imperialists nor psychos. Could you form an accurate appraisal of humanity after being introduced to nobody but North Korean military officers?

Further, I challenge the "Ferengi aren't trustworthy" summation too, although as a rule they are treated less fairly than most other races. Ferengi DO honor the terms of a bargain struck, always. But they always search for the most personally advantageous way to do so, and that is what their Rules of Acquisition are about. When you understand that about the Ferengi, they're as trustworthy as anybody else. And most of them are also shown as capable of personal warmth and caring, despite a gigantic cultural blind spot when it comes to female equality.

First, his premise is wrong because acknowledging that cultural differences exist is not racism. So, "Ferengi culture values acquisition more than our human culture" is not racist in and of itself.
Second, even if you take his premise as true, his examples, with respect to DS9 are plain wrong, even before they got really good about character development in the later seasons. Look at Quark. If Ferengi are "untrustworthy" and value profit above all else, Quark would have left DS9 *in the pilot*. Instead, he stayed to help his nephew.

If anything, this one example from the first episode completely refutes the entire premise that star trek "justifies" racism. We are introduced to Quark through the eyes of Odo, who *does * see him as a stereotype, but Odo is proven wrong by Sisko who appeals to Quark's love of his family.
He also attempts to make the point that tokenism is racist in and of itself, but that's not supported by the evidence that every *actual* character (as opposed to forehead alien of the week one off interactions) is shown to be more complex than the stereotypes about their culture. Even in TNG (which aired Code of Honor, of all things) once you have an actual Ferengi character (Daimon Bok), he is shown to have motivations that go beyond the stereotypes.

Anyways, Trek can fairly be accused of lazy stereotyping (it got better though... Amazing what actual story arcs can do for character development). There's maybe a little something to be said about the general trend of "humanity is a goal that outsiders strive for" (of course, the Trek version of "humanity" is a very lofty standard that actual humans today (and many of the humans across all of the shows) fail to meet. But calling out DS9 for justifying racism, for the reasons that he gave, is "not even wrong."

A really great comment here with quotes right from the actors themselves!

Someone asked this very question at Dragon Con this weekend, mostly towards Aron Eisenberg, and I thought he gave a great answer. My memory of the whole weekend is kind of a whirlwind, so my repetition of his answer may not be 100%. But he talked about how DS9 was the first show to really treat the Federation with a little more ambivalence than the other shows, and not necessarily that it is just the golden light good force in the galaxy. He said that Nog basically really embodies what Trek is about by going on this journey to join the federation but how in many ways it gets influenced by him in much the same way it influences him. He has a skillset very different from what defines the Federation, but can use it to his advantage and be very ambitious and grow. He really talks about how his character really embodies an anti-racism view because originally Sisko doesn't want Jake and him to be friends but how he grows and realizes that not all Feregni are alike. Just as many characters grow to realize that not all Cardassians are alike, and examples could just spew forth. I know it's already been pointed out a lot, but we only see small slivers of people from these races, and they're often used to be the antagonist. But at the same time, there are bad guys within the Federation itself (i.e. Admiral Leyton), or on Bajor with a character like Kai Winn.

And then, finally, this largely off-topic quote from me, which I think is quite interesting and probably deserves a thread all to itself...

As you may have noticed, a good proportion of the 'prestige' television era that was ushered in by the Sopranos grapples heavily with a theme that the Sopranos also focused on: Toxic Masculinity. Off the top of my head: Mad Men, The Shield, Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, Better Call Saul, True Detective, Justified, Boardwalk Empire, Jessica Jones, all grapple with this theme (and in some cases (MM, BB) were exclusively focused on this theme) to one degree or another. I would describe it as the dominant theme of the current age of prestige TV.

So I was talking with my wife (who does not watch prestige TV and has only seen Jessica Jones from the shows on the list above) about the topic of this thread, about whether or not DS9 was racist. She cautioned me not to conflate 'culture' with 'race', and that, if anything, the ten-year saga of Worf that started with 'Sins of the Father' and ended with 'Tacking into the Wind' is really the story of the tension between Worf's racial identity as a Klingon and his growing realization that the Klingon culture he aspired to was deeply broken and had to change, and that he needed to be an agent of change for his own culture. And then she described Klingon culture as one of 'toxic masculinity'and reflected that surely we should identify with the story of someone who sees their culture as broken and wants to change it.

Now, I'd never heard of the term toxic masculinity before Breaking Bad came out. And it certainly wasn't in vogue as a theme to tell stories about prior to The Sopranos. I've often thought of DS9 as slightly 'ahead of the curve' in the way it told stories about terrorism and it's often prophetic vision of certain post-9/11 parts of the American identity. However could it be that it beat the prestige shows to stories about toxic masculinity twenty years ahead of it's time?

There was a lot more content but this is sort of a 'skipping stone' eye-view of the discussion, and I thought it might be interesting to throw the discussion to the BBS and see if it sparked any other interesting perspectives- would love to hear them.

 

[Nyotarules]

Star Trek is generally Terrancentric for obvious reasons, its fictional and written by humans but racism as we define it today? I say no when it comes to DS9.

 

[Tosk]

Is the show racist? No.

Are some of the characters speciest? Maybe, yeah.

 

[NaughtyTrekkie]

technically, the proper terms should be specism/specist

 

[CommanderTrip]

IS it just me or is anyone else find it ironic in someone asking if the first trek series to feature an african american captain is racist?

No, deep space nine is not racist. Characters in the show as described in the OP's post behaved in ways in which demonstrate that they perceive all members of a species to behave stereotypically. However, such was not the case for all members of a species. (ex. Nog, a ferengi, joining starfleet. Another ex. Odo, a changeling, not having a genocidal attitude towards any lifeform that isn't goo/playdough-like in physiology)

 

[SPCTRE]

Cardassians are all vicious and scheming except Garak... who's actually even more of that, but he's on our side, so it's okay!

That's not how the show is portraying Garak at all.

 

[OtherGene]

If Avery says it isn't then that's good enough for me. Sure, within the Trek universe, Star fleet appears very Earth centric as nearly every Captain we meet appears to be human and pretty much all the ships are named after Earth things but I think that's more to do with making the TV show accessible and keeping the costs down.

 

[NaughtyTrekkie]

IS it just me or is anyone else find it ironic in someone asking if the first trek series to feature an african american captain is racist?

I don't know. How many times Sisko orders fried chicken at the replimat?

ps. we had african american captain in TNG season 2 (contagion). also the Saratoga captain (ST IV) was a black woman.

 

[rRico]

And Clark Terrell in TWOK.

 

[NaughtyTrekkie]

And Clark Terrell in TWOK.

if I remember exactly, there was a Starbase commanded by an african american in TOS

 

[rRico]

if I remember exactly, there was a Starbase commanded by an african american in TOS

Not to forget the science-Wunderkind Richard Daystrom.

 

[Terok Nor]

Star Trek has never been racist. Sexist on the other hand...

 

[Bad Thoughts]

IS it just me or is anyone else find it ironic in someone asking if the first trek series to feature an african american captain is racist?

No, deep space nine is not racist. Characters in the show as described in the OP's post behaved in ways in which demonstrate that they perceive all members of a species to behave stereotypically. However, such was not the case for all members of a species. (ex. Nog, a ferengi, joining starfleet. Another ex. Odo, a changeling, not having a genocidal few of any lifeform that isn't goo/playdough-like in physiology)

Of course! The first show that allowed its lead to have a racial identity would be racist!

The argument can always be made that the show dealt with difficult topics well or poorly can of course be made. I think some of the people in the twitter conversation make some excellent points.

That said, many of the racial/species stereotypes are not themselves rooted in DS9. Indeed, TNG often judged that one culture or other showed an irrational predisposition to intolerance that we, the Federation (mostly white humans), don't exhibit. DS9 walked back those attitudes, making belonging to a specific culture, be it Ferengi, Klingon, Bajoran, African-American, Irish-Asian, ..., not only legitimate, but possibly compatible with other identities.

 

[SpaceLama]

I do think Klingons were steriotyped really badly at some points in DS9.

But others such as the Klingon lawyer went against this.

Bajorans and their religion also became like that in later seasons maybe.

Cardassians were handled a bit better.

 

[NaughtyTrekkie]

I do think Klingons were steriotyped really badly at some points in DS9.

But others such as the Klingon lawyer went against this.

Bajorans and their religion also became like that in later seasons maybe.

Cardassians were handled a bit better.

the "extremitation" of characters' peculiaities over a serie arc is a common thing

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Star Trek has never been racist.

*ahemCODEOFHONORahem*

 

[Robert Maxwell]

A failing of most Trek (and, indeed, sci-fi/fantasy franchises in general) has been that, while humans are allowed a full variety of emotions, attitudes, and cultural traits, non-human species are typically reduced to a handful of specific traits from which there is not much variation.

So Klingons are a warrior culture, Ferengi are greedy misogynists, Cardassians are paranoid fascists, and so on. We get to see individual members of those species defying the stereotypes, but they're the exceptions that prove the rule.

That said, out of all Trek series, DS9 did the best job of layering in that complexity. TOS, TNG, and VOY were far more guilty of "planet of hats" syndrome, so this seems like a particularly specious accusation against DS9.

I would also say that asking whether a particular show is racist probably misses the point. We live in a racist culture and the products of that culture inevitably reflect that racism. Whatever its faults, Star Trek has always been about overcoming those bigotries and learning to work together harmoniously. It has certainly screwed up from time to time and reinforced stereotypes rather than undermining and dismantling them, but the central message is explicitly anti-racist.

 

[Triskelion]

All I'm sayin' is...
No Insectoid bathrooms.

What's up with that?

 

[UssGlenn]

A failing of most Trek (and, indeed, sci-fi/fantasy franchises in general) has been that, while humans are allowed a full variety of emotions, attitudes, and cultural traits, non-human species are typically reduced to a handful of specific traits from which there is not much variation.

So Klingons are a warrior culture, Ferengi are greedy misogynists, Cardassians are paranoid fascists, and so on. We get to see individual members of those species defying the stereotypes, but they're the exceptions that prove the rule.

The thing is, what happens when you give a species full variety of traits? They turn into humans with funny foreheads. They have to be different to be alien, so the can't be just like humans. These are different species after all. Think about earth species, are we speciesist because we can tell that cats and dogs have different behavioral norms?

 

[Robert Maxwell]

The thing is, what happens when you give a species full variety of traits? They turn into humans with funny foreheads. They have to be different to be alien, so the can't be just like humans. These are different species after all. Think about earth species, are we speciesist because we can tell that cats and dogs have different behavioral norms?

As Kirk put it: "everybody's human."