Just in case, I didn't mean anything nasty with my last comment. I was genuinely surprised. Probably too paranoid on my part to specify this, but I like my record clear. 
Did the show have too many white actors?
- Thread starter ReadyAndWilling
- Start date
But you look like Alan Rickman! So that means he's not white, either... So confusing!
...Ah, wait, I just checked his IMDB page... he's actually Welsh! Well, then it makes sense, only Anglo-Saxons are white.
... Seriously, this whole conversation is rather silly... and so is the entire concept of "race" and "whiteness".
"Upon arriving to the melting pot
I get penciled in as a goddamn white
Now that I am categorized
Officer gets me naturalized"
- Gogol Bordello, "Immigrant Punk"
There's the issue in a nutshell. Race is a nebulous concept, and racial/ethnic labels are imprecise at best. Suppose a man's ancestry is mainly sub-Saharan African, he “looks black,” he was born in El Salvador and his native language is Spanish. Is he black or Hispanic? And what about Charlize Theron? She became an American citizen a few years ago, which makes her an African-American. And she's one fine sista!
Given all that, I'd say Star Trek casting has always at least made an effort to be ethnically inclusive.
My impression is that, as this thread proves, "whiteness" is not just about skin pigmentation (a very relative aspect) or origin, but mostly it is used to denote a concept of belonging to a "majority" or "dominant" ethnicity from the Western - in this case mostly American - point of view.
Damn me and my Romano-Celtic genes!But you look like Alan Rickman! So that means he's not white, either... So confusing!
...Ah, wait, I just checked his IMDB page... he's actually Welsh! Well, then it makes sense, only Anglo-Saxons are white.
Wow, I'm discovering now that the name "Wales" comes from the ancient Germanic word "Walha" used to designate Romanized Celtic tribes. Almost the same word is used in some parts of German- and Slav-speaking countries to designate Italians and other Romance languages-speaking people (Romanians, French, etc).
So the comparison it's not really out there.
The more you know.
Of course -- I'm sure you've heard of the Black Irish? Not to mention Black Russians!
Well, I invariably use the word as synonymous with 'ethnic European'. Russians are white. Greeks are white. Spainards are white. Jews are white (well not, say, Ethiopian Jews, but you know what I mean).
Well, presumably, an entirely hypothetical Welshman might take umbrage at being called an Anglo-Saxon as the Welsh are a Celtic people.
Them's fighting words!...Ah, wait, I just checked his IMDB page... he's actually Welsh! Well, then it makes sense, only Anglo-Saxons are white.
Well, presumably, an entirely hypothetical Welshman might take umbrage at being called an Anglo-Saxon as the Welsh are a Celtic people.
It's exceedingly silly. But where we draw the line in our imaginary sand matters a great deal to people. I find it irresistable because I can't resist a good argument, but even so, it's sort of ridiculous.
And let us consider the backgrounds of the characters.
Captain Picard: Brti... er, "French" Human.
Commander Riker: American (Alaskan) Human.
Lt. Commander Data: Human Planetary Colonist Constructed Android.
Lieutenant Worf: Orphaned Alien adopted by Humans living on a Russia-established colony world.
Lt. Commander LaForge: Africa-Born African Human.
Commander Beverly Crusher: Human born on the Moon with American/English ancenstory, raised Scottish-Established Colony.
Lt. Commander Troi: Human/Alien Hybrid.
Lieutenant Yar: Human born on colony world.
Wesley Crusher: Human (where he was born or Jack Crusher's origins are unestablished but he'd be Half Scottish and likely either born on Beverly's home planet or on a starship.)
So, seems like a pretty "diverse" crew to me.
Only one crew member was born in America (Riker) only three were born on Earth (Riker, Picard and Geordi), two were born/raised on planets established by Earth cultures (Beverly, Worf) one is a hybrid (Troi) and one was born/built on an independant human colony (Data, Yar.)
Five are human (Picard, Riker, Geordi, Crusher, Yar.)
One is a hybrid. (Troi.)
Two aren't human at all. (Worf, Data.)
And six of them come from "non-American" "ethnic" backgrounds. (Everyone except for Riker was born to different cultures. (Picard "French"/British, Data to an independant presumably multi cultural colony, Worf on a Russian colony, Geordi in Africa, Troi either on ships or a mostly "alien" cuture (IIRC she mostly grew up on Betazed), Crusher grew up on a colony centered around Scottish culture.)
So, yeah. I'd say it's a diverse main crew.
Captain Picard: Brti... er, "French" Human.
Commander Riker: American (Alaskan) Human.
Lt. Commander Data: Human Planetary Colonist Constructed Android.
Lieutenant Worf: Orphaned Alien adopted by Humans living on a Russia-established colony world.
Lt. Commander LaForge: Africa-Born African Human.
Commander Beverly Crusher: Human born on the Moon with American/English ancenstory, raised Scottish-Established Colony.
Lt. Commander Troi: Human/Alien Hybrid.
Lieutenant Yar: Human born on colony world.
Wesley Crusher: Human (where he was born or Jack Crusher's origins are unestablished but he'd be Half Scottish and likely either born on Beverly's home planet or on a starship.)
So, seems like a pretty "diverse" crew to me.
Only one crew member was born in America (Riker) only three were born on Earth (Riker, Picard and Geordi), two were born/raised on planets established by Earth cultures (Beverly, Worf) one is a hybrid (Troi) and one was born/built on an independant human colony (Data, Yar.)
Five are human (Picard, Riker, Geordi, Crusher, Yar.)
One is a hybrid. (Troi.)
Two aren't human at all. (Worf, Data.)
And six of them come from "non-American" "ethnic" backgrounds. (Everyone except for Riker was born to different cultures. (Picard "French"/British, Data to an independant presumably multi cultural colony, Worf on a Russian colony, Geordi in Africa, Troi either on ships or a mostly "alien" cuture (IIRC she mostly grew up on Betazed), Crusher grew up on a colony centered around Scottish culture.)
So, yeah. I'd say it's a diverse main crew.
Last edited:
I'd say reality, but I wouldn't say the show actively went out of its way to find white actors, either. It was part of the atmosphere back then. It's still lauded as one of the most diverse casts in TV history, and each spinoff has been more and more diverse.
I believe racial differences should be celebrated, certainly as Roddenberry intended to back in the 60s. However, in the 80s, we didn't have the numbers saying that minorities would eventually eclipse whites by the mid 21st century... it's sort of like blaming Star Trek for having the Eugenics Wars in the 90s, even though in reality we clearly didn't have them (or did we?!).
These days, it might seem like TNG was a little white-heavy, but I blame the 80s moreso than anything else. In 1986, a cast as racially diverse as any of TNG's spinoffs would be unthinkable (DS9 is obvious, but I would argue Voyager was more diverse than TNG), but only because TNG wouldn't have come first.
^ I guess the real question is who should they be more concerned with, their reality, or ours? I'd say that given the aspects of the Trek universe, the featured characters were widely diverse, & though the skin on the actors might have been predominantly more whitish than not, the characters themselves were representative of a whole galaxy, with a good number of the Humans being born in extraterrestrial locations, & who's to say what the skin color percentages are, on those worlds?
It's fiction, after all. I mean, in the entire run of Star Trek, they've only had one Chinese person, & they number the highest of any people on earth
It's fiction, after all. I mean, in the entire run of Star Trek, they've only had one Chinese person, & they number the highest of any people on earth
Not to sound confrontational, but who do you mean when you say "they?" I'm just a tad confused.
As far as I'm aware, we're talking about TNG, correct? I ask this because DS9 and Voyager seemed to show us more diverse skin colors when it came to other races. In my opinion, of course.
But for TNG, when we saw humans, they were most likely white. Of course, like I said earlier, my problem wasn't whiteness, but just how often we kept seeing humans (and that's budget, so it's not quite a race problem). For non-humans, you're probably right with skin color percentages being pejorative (and they weren't really plot points, either), but that's not quite the same for Trek's star species, the human race, and the premise that Trek is supposed to be humanity's positive future.
Basically speaking, what was diverse in the 80s wouldn't be diverse today, but that's only because of the changing times and not really the fault or malicious intent of some casting director (I think). And showing diversity in fiction, I would argue, is very important anyway. The phrase "It's just a TV show" misses the impact that media can have on a person.
Just curious, but who's the one Chinese person? Are we counting main and secondary characters or are we counting recurring or one-shot characters as well? Trek has had starring Asians before, but I don't recall any Chinese specifically.
On a side note, I like and dislike Firefly for the same reason: I thought it was great that their universe was a combination of the US and China because they were the two biggest superpowers in the future, thus a lot of culture, language, and philosophy was Chinese in nature -- yet on screen, there were clearly far more Caucasians than there were Asians, nevermind people of Chinese descent. Then again, we also had Caucasian actors playing characters with Chinese surnames, so it's also possible that a good chunk of future humanity is at least biracial.
Harry Kim. Garrett Wang (or Wang Yi Chung) is Chinese-American. AFAIK Harry Kim is supposed to be Chinese, even though to my ears Kim sounds more Korean than Chinese...
That said, TV in general and Trek in particular often gets its Asians mixed up. Hikaru Sulu is often thought of as Japanese because George Takei is Japanese-American. But he's never mentioned as being Japanese on TOS, and John Cho who played Sulu on STXI is Korean by birth, he was born in Seoul. Hoshi Sato is Japanese, yet the Korean born Linda Park was cast in the role.
I don't think putting a racial label on people in the 21st century is helpful. Remember that these shows were products of their time and from the very start ST made a very striking effort NOT to be American white men in space. Of all the shows to pick on, I think ST has always acquitted itself well as regards inclusiveness.
Is it racist to be against the descendants of ghost-fuckers?
Anyway, yes, there were too many white people on TNG. The dodge, I suppose, is that Whitey survived World War 3 in greater numbers due to the preponderance of his nuclear weapons. And for production reasons, white people are obviously going to be predominant in a 1980s Hollywood production; it's like wondering why there aren't many females in positions of authority in Flash Gordon, or--searching for scandal in even more innocuous spaces--why Godzilla prefers to attack Tokyo instead of Vladivostok or Seoul.
It still kind of sucks, and presumably a ground-up Trek made today would be much more balanced, reflecting changes in demographics and marketability.
Then again, Enterprise was a ridiculous, retrograde atrocity. Also, it could have stood to have had a bit more diversity.
Yours and everyone else's, since 'Kim' is one of the most common Korean surnames. Where did you get the idea that Kim is Chinese? Garreth Wang's ethnicity doesn't matter - Daniel Dae Kim played Corporal Chang in ENT - judging by the last name, Chinese or of Chinese origin.
And of course, Patrick Stewart played Jean-Luc Picard, but Picard was still meant to be French. And Walter Koenig, a Jewish American whose parents came from Lithuania, played a Russian.
Trek, and a lot of other TV & big screen also often get their Europeans (and occasionally Middle Easterners) "mixed up".
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FakeNationality
Some examples:
Fake Russians: Sam Neill, Viggo Mortensen, Vincent Cassel (twice), Matthieu Kassovitz, Nicole Kidman, Robin Williams, Ralph Fiennes, Liv Tyler, Rade Šerbedžija, Peter Stormare, Lena Olin, Isabella Rossellini, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueler-Stahl, Alfred Molina, Mads Mikkelsen, and a bunch of other actors of various nationalities and ethnic origins.
Fake Lithuanian: Sean Connery
Fake French (other than Patrick Stewart): John Malkovich, Leonardo Di Caprio, Chris O'Donnell, Charlton Heston, Michael York... oh hell, everyone who's ever been in anything about the three Musketeers.
Fake Italian: Heath Ledger, Jean Reno, Dustin Hoffman (in "Perfume")
Fake Italian-Americans: Tony Shalhoub (of Lebanese origin), Adrian Pasdar (half-Iranian), Peter Stormare, Michael Weatherly...
Fake Arab: many examples, but Israeli actor Oded Fehr specializes in those. Also, Antonio Banderas in "The 13th Warrior".
Is it racist to be against the descendants of ghost-fuckers?
Anyway, yes, there were too many white people on TNG. The dodge, I suppose, is that Whitey survived World War 3 in greater numbers due to the preponderance of his nuclear weapons. And for production reasons, white people are obviously going to be predominant in a 1980s Hollywood production; it's like wondering why there aren't many females in positions of authority in Flash Gordon, or--searching for scandal in even more innocuous spaces--why Godzilla prefers to attack Tokyo instead of Vladivostok or Seoul.
It still kind of sucks, and presumably a ground-up Trek made today would be much more balanced, reflecting changes in demographics and marketability.
Then again, Enterprise was a ridiculous, retrograde atrocity. Also, it could have stood to have had a bit more diversity.
One wonders how you could bring yourself to watch such abominations.
What, Enterprise, Sub Rosa, Flash Gordon, or kaiju films?
