The racist legacy of Star Trek

I doubt Orci would care. Intentionally casting a white man to play a character who is Indian, because you think it's racist to have an ethnic villain is racist itself.

Not to mention, insulting to the intelligence of the viewers, inconsistent, and frankly a little childish.

 

Your post is interesting:

1. As aforementioned, I found nothing "racist" in Code of Honor. (That just seems to be a white 'thang' on Star Trek boards).

2. Uhura was hindered by 60s television, and seems to be one of the 'big three' in the current movies. (I hate that term 'big three' btw).

3. Geordi could have been more.

4. Sisko was a badass.

5. Travis was ignored, and came off token-ish, imo.

6. You mention Janeway....Good. There is also the female captain in Enterprise, which de-canonizes 'Turnabout Intruder.' (Something ENT actually did well!)

7. What about Asians? Even though Kim is the stereotypical weak Asian guy, Sulu in the 60s series is cool - albeit hindered by Shatner and 60s television - and in the movies is given some scenes to shine.

'Race' isn't just a black/white thing.

8. As aforementioned, the OP, who I don't believe is a black person but an individual trying to start a flame war, does bring up some interesting points. Usually whites, due to the aforementioned 'white privilege' don't see racism where people of color do.

 

Well, that sounds like nuTrek all around.

 

I, as a white guy, found that episode to be demeaning to blacks.

Yeah, it has been overused throughout the years abeit the largest factor in Star Trek's success. Good point about our nuUhura... they've done much better with her. They actually gave her skill and talent in liguistics. (much like Hoshi (oriental) I might add)

I think his acting abilities hindered that. I thought they ended up doing the same type thing in DS9 and Voyager as well. They seemed to write the scripts/stories to center around the better actors. Don't know that that's a bad thing.

Wonder why our first black captain had to bee a bad ass. Why not more like Picard?

Agree. I did enjoy the episodes that featured him, but they were few and far between.

Agree. CAPT Hernandez was awesome. We actually got to know her unlike other female Captains thoughout the years.

Sulu was more stereotypical than Harry I thought. Hell, Harry played the clarinet

Agree, my fault. Most comments in this thread seemed driven toward the black race... but your right. Race is all shapes and sizes.

 

I think the one way in which Trek is somewhat reflexively, perhaps insidiously "racist" is the tendency to categorize entire populations in terms of a single or limited group of qualities - Klingons are violent, Ferengi are greedy etc.

 

Well, I think the episode was pretty progressive, myself. I think they should have revisited that planet and the people again. And, write them in a stronger story.

As it stands, the episode was just hindered by shaky writing which is true for a lot of 1st season episodes in any series when finding its ground.

(If I ever do write a Star Trek novel, which I wouldn't mind doing in the future, I may revisit Ligonia and maybe have a Eurasian female love interest opposite a Ligonian male).

Hoshi was alright, she wasn't a stellar character.

IMO.

Nah, being a badass was destiny.

 

That actually raises an interesting point: could Data have been black, and would it have ever been turned into an issue for the characters in-universe? Like, for example, Dr. Pulaski asking Data for his reason to have a black skin. Or when Data makes his offspring and she chooses a different skin color, having people ask her why she did that.

 

But is that really being racist or simply a matter of how TV/Film works? After all sterotyping of nationalites can occur in film/TV.

 

Well, if it was the 24th Century, I would wonder why Pulaski would even have the need to ask? (Because everyone is supposed to be accepting of one another and all that jazz).

While watching the sfdebris review some weeks back, I also thought it would have been interesting to see Data's offspring choose maybe a girl with black skin (or at least dark skin) because maybe the offspring was intrigued by the 'beauty' of an Earth model or something.

 

Well she did ask him for his name choice and other things. So I imagined it as a casual question from her perspective (but a non-casual question for parts of the audience).

What if, in All Good Things, Data didn't just go with a grey stripe in his hair, but changed his gender or skin color or something. They never went there, even though from Data's perspective, it could have been an interesting experiment.

 

With DS9 being the first spin off fron TNG, the creators wanted to go a different direction and didn't want or need another Picard.

Sisko would have been a badass regardless of race.

 

Those aren't mutually exclusive. Stereotyping lends itself to bigotry.

 

Father, husband, religious figure, strategist, and badass--many things that Picard was not.

 

Have you ever known a man to kidnap a woman with intention to conscript into matrimony without expectation to consummate said arrangement?

Even if you're correct and his intention was always to have Yar kill his wife then decide to graciously let her go, that suggests a civilization that places ritual, institutionalized machismo and superstition over interplanetary relationships and common sense. And also considers women to be the property of their husbands.

@Joel_Kirk

By 'Their' I meant obviously the editors and publishers for the magazine, and it's pretty insulting and ridiculous of you to insinuate I was making a 'Those people' type reference to an entire racial group. Again, obviously, I do not think that there exist no black people who watch Star Trek. However I think if you took a poll there would be a statistically significant correlation between Star Trek viewership and ethnicity.

And it's also pretty hypocritical for you to make that kind of knee-jerk accusation while at the same time insisting that anybody who disagrees with you isn't in the 'Club' of people whose opinion counts. If you mean to really debate this issue, please refrain from all knee-jerk stock straw man attacks and other ad-hominem tactics.

Nobody is claiming Code of Honor is the only racist thing about Star Trek, however I am arguing it is the only real example that is far above the norm for contemporary network television. You keep saying "What's the problem with an attraction between a dark skinned alien and Eurasian skinned human?" Many people have responded, there is no problem, but there's a big distinction between an attraction and a kidnapping. And instead of responding to that point you keep throwing out racism accusations and negation by association attacks.

 

Nichelle Nichols was also an important role model for many young African American children and adolescents, according to none other than Dr. Martin Luther King, who urged her to remain with the series after she told him she was considering leaving.

The Enterprise crew? The Enterprise crew was one of the most diverse in the history of Starfleet up to that point. Just look at the number of non-human races standing on the rec deck during the Epsilon IX scene.

Wrong. Clark Terrell sacrificed himself to save Kirk and the others, as he didn't want to hurt another Starfleet officer. You missed the point of that scene--other than the eel leaving Chekov.

And Terrel was from Canada.

Hiram Roth was human (as far as we know). You're thinking of the Federation President from TUC.

I don't think Cartwright was evil, merely misguided. And the decision to include his character in the conspiracy was meant to show how far-reaching it was, and how many people didn't want peace between the Klingons and the Federation.

I don't know how others feel, but I've never thought of Geordi as merely a blind man. To me, he represents what people can achieve if they work to overcome their handicaps and weaknesses.

You need to stop this, because you've no idea what you're talking about. Sisko was human. His mother was human. Her body was taken over by a Prophet, but neither she or her son were in any way not human.

People who happened to be the exact same race as those they're attacking.

As that was a deleted scene, it's debatable if it actually happened. In any case, Worf eventually becomes Picard's XO.

I'd add that his post contains more ignorance than any of the series or films he's maligning.

--Sran

 

To call these stereotypes is like saying Vulcans are "stereotyped" as almost all being subject to their special discipline of logic. These are species-level characteristics, and may very well be the result of species-level genetic predispositions. I'd be surprised if they weren't! That's not racism, that's reasonable science fiction.

Meanwhile: Rom and Nog were, at times, given to a little lip service to their Ferengi heritage and the Rules of Acquisition, but Rom, as far as I could see, loved engineering more than anything else, and Nog loved service in Starfleet. Two of the three most-appearing Ferengi.

The question that the existence of these species traits begs, though, is what is the human "stereotype" among other species--or really better yet, what is the alien perception of the defining characteristic of humans? I'm not saying Quark's perspective is that of every other species, but it might be the general alien viewpoint:


"Let me tell you something about Hew-mons, Nephew. They're a wonderful, friendly people, as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people... will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. You don't believe me? Look at those faces. Look in their eyes."

Is Quark stereotyping humans, or is he touching on some species-wide truth here? (I lean in favor of number 2.)

 

It's not a stereotype if it's true.

 

A point with no point. You're saying is that the two groups in Insurrection are biologically the same except for differences in skin color and appearance? That's the only thing that "race" has ever meant.

Not to say I support the OP in any way. And not to say that you're wrong. It's just that your point doesn't refute anything.

Also you're undercut by the fact that you used "race" at all. If it was somehow provable that the Son'a were a different "race" than the Ba'ku, would the OP then have a valid point?

 

It's been a while sice I watched INS but weren't some of the Son'a children of the Ba'Ku in the settlement we saw.

 

Close. The Son'a second-in-command's mother was part of the settlement and appears at the film's end, as she's re-introduced to her son by Crusher.

--Sran