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): A really great comment here with quotes right from the actors themselves! And then, finally, this largely off-topic quote from me, which I think is quite interesting and probably deserves a thread all to itself... 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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?