I just hated this episode.
I hate that they made a black character 400 years into the future that is still concerned over the issues of race that began some 600 years ago. Have we not gotten over this by now.
Yes I know it was a statement on current issues but....Good grief it wasn't the first time they did it in DS9. (The Fontaine program issues and Sisko) How do you justify a black man who's 400 years removed from racism to still have it at the fore front of his mind?
"getting over" doesn't mean forgetting and refusing to talk about. From the current day, slavery and the slave trade in the U.S. are long in the past, yet events that happen long ago continue to have ripple effects.
Very, very correct. To add to your post, this book right here:
http://www.amazon.com/Disposable-People-Slavery-Global-Economy/dp/0520224639
...discusses how legal slavery from 19th century Americas and Europe turned into a modern, 21st century form of slavery that affects an estimated 27 million slaves (some estimates go as high as 300 million) currently in existence all over the world, some of whom are very much still in the US. The fact that it's illegal makes finding and rescuing slaves even more difficult, and human trafficking continues to be a major, but highly unrecognized problem, and still very much along racial, class, and imperialistic lines. But a major obstacle in combatting this new slavery is the popular perception that slavery ended with the US Civil War. That number of 27 million up there? That's more than all the slaves that were ever traded between the time of Columbus and the US Civil War -- and that's the low estimate. The book was also made into a film that won a Peabody and two Emmys.
If something hasn't disappeared in 150 years, what makes us think it'll completely disappear in the next 300 years? Frankly, it's issues like that that require episodes like this one. Indeed, in the 24th century slavery's probably gone from the face of the Earth, but it's still alive and well in Trek in other parts of the galaxy, like the Remans. There's still racial animosity between the Bajorans and Cardassians, but that conflict can also become the basis for healing, too.
Are you somehow under the attitude that to be black therefore means one has some sort of emotional connection to wrongs 400 years ago? Do you actually think that blacks are proud of being repressed like Picard is proud to be a Frenchman? Should O'Brien now become part of the IRA?
(Facepalm)
I don't know about the French, but for a long time the Irish were equated amongst Blacks and Asians as the lowest racial class in the US, many of them dying in the industrial or railroad sectors because of straight-up racist practices and neglect of care.
Did they suffer as much as Blacks during the era of slavery? Were immigration bans imposed on them like Asians? I don't know, but a very large problem in racial discourse is a sort of cultural relativism, saying that because one suffered more we should focus on them, as if proportions matter to those being overlooked. In the end, shouldn't ALL racial injustice be corrected? Blacks, Asians, Irish, et all, suffered because of institutionalized, authoritarian abuse of power along race lines -- and that's a major connector. It's not a matter of "Who suffered the most?" but rather "How do we stop this from happening ever again?" And we're still a LONG ways off from that.
It's interesting that in Measure of a Man, Picard couldn't quite understand the concept that mass-producing Datas as tools was slavery until Guinan pointed it out to him. So even then, there's still hints of that mindset in enlightened, advanced 24th century humans, and awareness to that mindset ultimately steers Picard down the right path. If it isn't Black slaves, it could have been Android slaves. We already had EMH slaves. Where does it stop?
