An Observation About diversity on Discovery, 32nd Century

[Dryson]

Has anyone else noticed that there aren't very many black people in the 32nd century? The only black people I have seen are Burnham, Booker, Doc, and O. I haven't see any black people in the back ground at Starfleet HQ in the 32nd century.

Has anyone else seen black people in the background of Starfleet HQ or any other episode after the jump to the future?

I wonder what happened to them between the battle with Control and the 32nd century.

 

[Timo]

The statistics of this would be interesting. But what's remarkable is that crowd scenes are down for S3. Future Starfleet has very few personnel in evidence - and the Discovery crew is currently mostly being portrayed by affordable groups of eight or less.

The one exception is when the crew ogles the future ships on arrival at SF HQ. In that one, the statistics seem to give a strong black representation (chiefly of utter nobodies), as seen below.

https://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/epics/DSC-S3/S3E5/DSC-S3E5-39.jpg

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JRoss]

Does it matter? I mean this show has the most black regulars of any of the Star Trek shows so far. DS9 had four (Sisko, Jake, Worf and Cassidy). Here we have Michael, Owo, Book, Culber and Bryce.
It's not as if the new background characters and regulars aren't diverse. Vance and Kovich are played by Jewish actors, for instance.

 

[Angry Fanboy]

Has anyone else noticed that there aren't very many black people in the 32nd century? The only black people I have seen are Burnham, Booker, Doc, and O. I haven't see any black people in the back ground at Starfleet HQ in the 32nd century.

Has anyone else seen black people in the background of Starfleet HQ or any other episode after the jump to the future?

I wonder what happened to them between the battle with Control and the 32nd century.

Where's that *rolleyes* smiley...

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Where's that *rolleyes* smiley...

 

[Lord Garth]

In "That Hope Is You, Part 1", we only see one white guy (not in alien make-up) in the background, toward the end. The rest of the time, it's Burnham, Book, and (at the end) Sahil. Sahil's Indian, but it doesn't change the fact that "That Hope Is You, Part 1" didn't focus on any white people.

So I noticed the exact opposite thing.

In "People of Earth", when Discovery reaches Earth, the person who they deal with, who's in charge, is a black woman.

For Starfleet Command itself, I wasn't counting how many black people there were. I wasn't thinking about it. I'm re-watching the season and haven't got there yet. So I'll see how true it is.

 

[eschaton]

I honestly think Discovery's third season did a better job with representation of future humanity - rather than "Space America" - than any of the earlier Trek incarnations.

That said, I was a little irked that they got Oded Fehr and gave him another boring Anglo-sounding last name like Vance. Ash Tyler disease strikes again!

 

[nic3636]

Has anyone else noticed that there aren't very many black people in the 32nd century? The only black people I have seen are Burnham, Booker, Doc, and O. I haven't see any black people in the back ground at Starfleet HQ in the 32nd century.

Has anyone else seen black people in the background of Starfleet HQ or any other episode after the jump to the future?

I wonder what happened to them between the battle with Control and the 32nd century.

That's a really interesting observation given that the show has clearly tried very hard to have as much diversity on the screen as possible. I guess I haven't really paid attention to the scenes with people in the background but among those with speaking lines there seems to be a decent amount of black people (but then again I'm not really an expert on how many of each minority is enough).

Personally I'm surprised there aren't more Asian people on the show. They are 60% of the world's population today. I'm not sure how that would extrapolate 900 years in the future but I would think there would be more Asians.

 

[Dryson]

I wonder if Burnham escaping into the future is more about saving black people or repopulating black people due to something happening to them in the past.

In TNG and DS9 we see numerous black people, Asians, etc.

But Disco we see very few Asians or Black people. Lots of aliens though. Aliens meaning, not from Earth.

 

[nic3636]

I wonder if Burnham escaping into the future is more about saving black people or repopulating black people due to something happening to them in the past.
.

lol, they should have thrown that line in at the end of S2 before they made the time jump, would have made everything make way more sense. The whole Control thing was clearly a secondary objective.

 

[Dukhat]

I honestly think Discovery's third season did a better job with representation of future humanity - rather than "Space America" - than any of the earlier Trek incarnations.

That said, I was a little irked that they got Oded Fehr and gave him another boring Anglo-sounding last name like Vance. Ash Tyler disease strikes again!

Character names are usually created before the actors are cast. That’s why in, say, Saved By the Bell, the character of Lisa Turtle was supposed to be Jewish but the actress cast was black, and the character of A.C. Slater was supposed to be white but the actor cast was Latino, and they didn’t bother to change the character names to reflect this.

 

[eschaton]

Character names are usually created before the actors are cast. That’s why in, say, Saved By the Bell, the character of Lisa Turtle was supposed to be Jewish but the actress cast was black, and the character of A.C. Slater was supposed to be white but the actor cast was Latino, and they didn’t bother to change the character names to reflect this.

They have code names in the series bible, but that can always change.

Julian Bashir was originally supposed to be Julian Amoros (and a Latino) but they changed his last name after Alexander Siddig was cast.

 

[Dukhat]

They have code names in the series bible, but that can always change.

Julian Bashir was originally supposed to be Julian Amoros (and a Latino) but they changed his last name after Alexander Siddig was cast.

MA doesn’t say anything about Amoros being Latino, just that any actor cast for the role could have an accent.

 

[Dryson]

Personally I'm surprised there aren't more Asian people on the show. They are 60% of the world's population today. I'm not sure how that would extrapolate 900 years in the future but I would think there would be more Asians

Maybe most of the Asians, Blacks, Muslims, etc. chose to colonize their own worlds after the first warp colony ship was built.

Those that we see in Starfleet are the ones who stayed behind on Earth and got the best ships to serve on for remaining loyal to Earth.

 

[Imaus]

Personally I'm surprised there aren't more Asian people on the show. They are 60% of the world's population today. I'm not sure how that would extrapolate 900 years in the future but I would think there would be more Asians

Maybe most of the Asians, Blacks, Muslims, etc. chose to colonize their own worlds after the first warp colony ship was built.

Those that we see in Starfleet are the ones who stayed behind on Earth and got the best ships to serve on for remaining loyal to Earth.

It's a little buzz that Asia basically got the worst of it in the Third World War and Eugenics Wars - Econ, and the Khanate- and may had taken longer to redevelop or reconstruct, but there are still bad implications and extrapolations there.

Like, even if Asia got glassed, where are the South Americans? South Asians? Sure Earth's population is 4bil by TNG times and a bit of that may be aliens, but still. Asia would rebound in a century with the rest of Earth. But we basically only see...Japanese, and now a Malaysian, yea?

 

[Lord Garth]

I wonder if Burnham escaping into the future is more about saving black people or repopulating black people due to something happening to them in the past.

In TNG and DS9 we see numerous black people, Asians, etc.

But Disco we see very few Asians or Black people. Lots of aliens though. Aliens meaning, not from Earth.

Frankly, that's blatantly false. I literally listed examples that you're ignoring on purpose. And I could go a lot further.

If anything, all the complaining I've seen about DSC over the last four years has been based on the lack of straight white males and complaining about "SJWs" and all that nonsense. Most of the worst offenders are gone/banned now, but that's what the complaining centered around.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I wonder if Burnham escaping into the future is more about saving black people or repopulating black people due to something happening to them in the past.

What??????????????

In TNG and DS9 we see numerous black people, Asians, etc.

But Disco we see very few Asians or Black people. Lots of aliens though. Aliens meaning, not from Earth.

As pointed out a large number of the cast have African ancestry. One, Lt Rhys is played by an Asian actor. Looking at the Starfleet scene in THIY pt 2 I'm seeing black, Asian and other POC characters in the background and the two SF characters that Vance interacts with, Lt Wila and Lt. Temo are POC. So, what show were you watching?

 

[Tuskin38]

I wonder if Burnham escaping into the future is more about saving black people or repopulating black people due to something happening to them in the past.

Jesus Christ, do you even read what you post?

 

[Dryson]

It's a little buzz that Asia basically got the worst of it in the Third World War and Eugenics Wars - Econ, and the Khanate- and may had taken longer to redevelop or reconstruct, but there are still bad implications and extrapolations there.

Like, even if Asia got glassed, where are the South Americans? South Asians? Sure Earth's population is 4bil by TNG times and a bit of that may be aliens, but still. Asia would rebound in a century with the rest of Earth. But we basically only see...Japanese, and now a Malaysian, yea?

We do know that the Vulcans had contact with Earth as far back as 1957. Perhaps Klingon's breached Vulcan security and discovered their surveys of Earth. During the time after WWIII, Klingon's could have beamed to Earth and either exterminated most of the population or took them as slaves until ran off by the Vulcans. Such events might have taken place ten years before Cochran's warp flight and might even have been part of a Temporal incursion to stop the birth of Starfleet.

Another interesting observation about Discovery is the location of Star Fleet HQ. We have no idea what solar system it is close to. If could find the exact location of Star Fleet HQ we would have a better idea of what solar systems are close by, which would open up another pocket for Discovery stories and episodes.

 

[Awesome Possum]

I wonder if Burnham escaping into the future is more about saving black people or repopulating black people due to something happening to them in the past.

Your imagination goes to some very odd places.