Did the show have too many white actors?

[Cyke101]

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.

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.

Yeah, I always thought Harry Kim was Korean. I knew Garrett Wang was Chinese, but this is an American production, after all. Do we still have a Chinese-character?

As for Sulu, I've always wanted to think of him as Japanese-Filipino, specifically. Not just from Memory Alpha but because Sulu is a Filipino location. But that may or may not be just a mere preference.

 

[Mojochi]

^ I guess the real question is who should they be more concerned with, their reality, or ours?

Not to sound confrontational, but who do you mean when you say "they?" I'm just a tad confused.

The writers. Should the TNG writers be more concerned about having an interestingly diverse set of characters for the given story & universe, or should they be held to representing a balance of ethnicity, proportionate to that of latter 20th century Earth, & the concepts from that time, of what a fictional 24th century population would be like?

So long as they do the first, I couldn't care less, if they do the second, personally, because there's no way to get it perfect anyway. At least they do make attempts to reflect multiple human cultures on the show. The effort means more than the outcome, as I see it

 

[Cyke101]

^ I guess the real question is who should they be more concerned with, their reality, or ours?

Not to sound confrontational, but who do you mean when you say "they?" I'm just a tad confused.

The writers. Should the TNG writers be more concerned about having an interestingly diverse set of characters for the given story & universe, or should they be held to representing a balance of ethnicity, proportionate to that of latter 20th century Earth, & the concepts from that time, of what a fictional 24th century population would be like?

So long as they do the first, I couldn't care less, if they do the second, personally, because there's no way to get it perfect anyway. At least they do make attempts to reflect multiple human cultures on the show. The effort means more than the outcome, as I see it

When you said "they," I thought you meant the audience, so reception was in my mind.

But it's interesting that you bring up the writers. I get the feeling, and maybe more analysis could be put into this, that many of the characters we see as secondary, background, or guest-stars, were written so that anyone could audition for them, no human-ethnicity in mind (alien-ethnicity, on the other hand ). Nor should they be, if the vast majority of Trek stories had earth-race in mind as the central topic.

Ie, the mad scientist, the distressed governor, colony leader, the starbase captain, etc. etc. weren't written as "whites-first" roles, because that wasn't important, so any ethnicity could be cast. I sort of feel like that's the case with a few primary roles too, with their backstory not being fleshed out at the time of casting. Gary Graham was a finalist for Sisko, but Brooks won in the end and then the show celebrated the character's ethnic/racial roots. On the other side are characters like Sulu and Chakotay, whose ethnicities play an important and positive part of their characters, so you would have to cast along those lines.

So if the writers are creating characters as relative blank slates for most characters, then I get the feeling that it's less the writers shooting for cultural diversity, and more like casting directors/producers/showrunners. And even then, I doubt they were intentionally going for any sort of exclusion at the expense of minorities, it's just that the Hollywood talent pool is far more populated with white actors.

I'll use 24 as an example: its uses of West Asians is a separate topic altogether, but I noticed that it tended to use many kinds of Asians as background or recurring characters as good guys, and these Asian characters tended to have non-Asian surnames, like Baker. To me that shows that the producers weren't outright looking for caucasian actors, and that since race wasn't a factor, that they were simply casting whoever they felt was best for the job. I imagine TNG and perhaps Trek in general had the same policy.

 

[ST1701]

I have been a Star Trek fan for many years and only now do I go searching for people who share my interest.

I registered yesterday and today I'd thought I'd browse the forum and discuss Star Trek with like minded people.

And what is this first subject I see? "Did the show have too many white actors?"

Why do people have to have everything fit into their own world view and question things that don't? Can't we have some things that don't have to be dissected every single day?

For some, everything must be analyzed through the prism of race and woe to anything that is not "diverse" enough i.e. too many whites.

"Diverse", an incredibly overused word that is shoehorned into any topic nowadays. I swear people edit articles on Wikipedia just to add that word.

People who advocate Cultural Hegemony love these kind of topics.

You know, I love Japanese culture and watched Ultraman, Godzilla,etc when I was a kid. I still watch them now and not once did I say "hmm not very diverse(there's that word again)..oh my".

I really got into Hindi films ( I adore the films Bobby and Henna)and love to watch them. Not once did I think "Gee..I hope this cast is inclusive and diverse, representing all the castes in India".

See my point?

I watch Star Trek and read Green Lantern. Not to change it to fit my world view but to get away from all the crap in the world. I just wish more did the same and left their baggage at home.

Peace and love

 

[Cyke101]

I have been a Star Trek fan for many years and only now do I go searching for people who share my interest.

I registered yesterday and today I'd thought I'd browse the forum and discuss Star Trek with like minded people.

And what is this first subject I see? "Did the show have too many white actors?"

Why do people have to have everything fit into their own world view and question things that don't? Can't we have some things that don't have to be dissected every single day?

For some, everything must be analyzed through the prism of race and woe to anything that is not "diverse" enough i.e. too many whites.

"Diverse", an incredibly overused word that is shoehorned into any topic nowadays. I swear people edit articles on Wikipedia just to add that word.

People who advocate Cultural Hegemony love these kind of topics.

You know, I love Japanese culture and watched Ultraman, Godzilla,etc when I was a kid. I still watch them now and not once did I say "hmm not very diverse(there's that word again)..oh my".

I really got into Hindi films ( I adore the films Bobby and Henna)and love to watch them. Not once did I think "Gee..I hope this cast is inclusive and diverse, representing all the castes in India".

See my point?

I watch Star Trek and read Green Lantern. Not to change it to fit my world view but to get away from all the crap in the world. I just wish more did the same and left their baggage at home.

Peace and love

No offense, but I don't think anyone is really saying to "force out whitey" or anything like that. But it's also about cultural honesty and fair representation, too. If you go into a coffee shop in a big city, you're bound to get a group of people that's more diverse than TNG, but that's because of changing times and changing demographics. One could have argued that seeing a Russian in TOS was merely Cold War-era PC-pandering ("Why couldn't Kirk get an American navigator?!"), but a couple decades later Americans and Russians would be serving together on many space missions.

Let's remember that the difference between India/Japan and the US is that the US prides itself on being a multicultural melting pot. The country was founded with a lot of mishmashing -- Europeans explorers, Native Americans in the literal sense, Black and Asian labor. India and Japan can't quite make that claim, but since it's a source of US pride, it's something we try to live up to. Not for appeasement, but because it's part of our history *and* our future.

People who see race as a baggage tend to be ones who don't want to celebrate or value pride, and feel like they're being forced to. Rather, race isn't baggage or an accessory; baggage can be dropped. We can't change our race or nation-of-origin, it's a part of our humanity. So we celebrate our origins -- Japanese, Indian, French, Scot, Brazilian, Vulcan

 

[Nerys Myk]

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.

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.

Yeah, I always thought Harry Kim was Korean. I knew Garrett Wang was Chinese, but this is an American production, after all. Do we still have a Chinese-character?

As for Sulu, I've always wanted to think of him as Japanese-Filipino, specifically. Not just from Memory Alpha but because Sulu is a Filipino location. But that may or may not be just a mere preference.

IIRC, Sulu was described as "pan-asian" originally. And According to STV it appears he was born in San Francisco's Chinatown.

 

[Myasishchev]

I have been a Star Trek fan for many years and only now do I go searching for people who share my interest.

I registered yesterday and today I'd thought I'd browse the forum and discuss Star Trek with like minded people.

And what is this first subject I see? "Did the show have too many white actors?"

Why do people have to have everything fit into their own world view and question things that don't? Can't we have some things that don't have to be dissected every single day?

For some, everything must be analyzed through the prism of race and woe to anything that is not "diverse" enough i.e. too many whites.

"Diverse", an incredibly overused word that is shoehorned into any topic nowadays. I swear people edit articles on Wikipedia just to add that word.

People who advocate Cultural Hegemony love these kind of topics.

You know, I love Japanese culture and watched Ultraman, Godzilla,etc when I was a kid. I still watch them now and not once did I say "hmm not very diverse(there's that word again)..oh my".

I really got into Hindi films ( I adore the films Bobby and Henna)and love to watch them. Not once did I think "Gee..I hope this cast is inclusive and diverse, representing all the castes in India".

See my point?

I watch Star Trek and read Green Lantern. Not to change it to fit my world view but to get away from all the crap in the world. I just wish more did the same and left their baggage at home.

Peace and love

Actually, the bizarre American monopoly on our sector's power rings sucks too.

This is the deal: when you create a fiction that purports to embrace the entire Earth (or Alpha Quadrant), you're obligated to try to reflect in some way the population of the Earth (or Alpha Quadrant).

On the other hand, I recognize all too well that this is a difficult task for writers, who from the starting line probably knows jack about the exotic culture they're imposing on one of their characters, and will likely still only know next to jack by the time they're done . And I'd probably just as soon not see "diversity" if it means some Claremontesque pastiche where Russians swear by Lenin's ghost and the Irish accents are more unintelligible than the Shi'ar's, but all that really tells us is that the writer is lazy.

It is also, as noted, a problem for the production staff in collaborative media (it might be difficult to find a Sentinelese actor, for an extreme example).

And yet at least in Trek, that first objection (writing foreigners is hard) must be thrown out, since the Roddenberrian ideal is an integral part of any Trek future, and it is a monoculture not exactly mappable onto any present culture, even if it is essentially some kind of crypto-American civilization perfected via the addition of replicators and Marxism.

(This is actually, I suspect, one of the draws to genre writing--not only can you invent spurious cultures and expect people to take you seriously, but you don't even have to write recognizable humans, either. Trek and particularly TNG were occasionally guilty of this indulgence.)

But in any event, it is a future that is supposed to have a united human species, so how 50-80% of human beings became white in the intervening 300 years is, indeed, a topic ripe for discussion. Just like it's a valid question why 75% of human Green Lanterns Corps members are white, and 100% of them are American men.

Actually, that reminds me, I'm also curious as to how the Trek future's population became 60-75% male...

The only valid explanation remaining, then, is production realities, and that's only an excuse, not a reason.

a couple decades later Americans and Russians would be serving together on many space missions.

I'm very excited about the joint mission to Jupiter later this year.

 

[Ensign_Redshirt]

a couple decades later Americans and Russians would be serving together on many space missions.

I'm very excited about the joint mission to Jupiter later this year.

Sorry, gotta make do with the less-exciting Soyuz TMA-01M mission.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_TMA-01M

 

[Cepstrum]

I'm going to even get into the pseudo-scientific notion of "race" (there are certainly many different skin tones and physical features, and of course, ethnicities). Also, I do think it's not trivial that this was an American show made for American audiences.

But what what I really want to say is one of things I like best about Trek is how "race"/skin color is *never* mentioned, even obliquely — when they do try to have a message about racism, they use the vehicle of aliens. I have loved watching a show in which there is no racial animosity — it's not even relevant at all — especially given the recent racial polarization occuring (in America, at least). I can't wait for the day when skin tone becomes as innocuous as say, height or shoe size.

But I do appreciate the complaints of certain members of certain ethnic groups who feel underrepresented in Trek. Part of that is logistical, and part of it is due to the target audience. I very much hope, however, that we can move past that and unite as humans amongst the myriad aliens. We really have a lot more in common with each other than we would with any Vulcan or Ferengi!

 

[Kegg]

And six of them come from "non-American" "ethnic" backgrounds.

But the question was are there too many white actors; not were there too many American characters. Nationality and race aren't the same thing; if sometimes related, nor are the characters and actors the same thing.

In terms of casting the show is predominantly white, with other ethnicites as a minority. Does that really reflect the racial dynamic of the real world? No, not really. The United States? Probably.

And the whole 'population makeup of the world' is the issue here. This isn't a series set somewhere in India or in a particular part of Japan or the American Midwest. It's outer space and it's about an organization that includes the majority of humanity and reigns over the entirety of Earth... so, why it's mostly white is a fair criticism. It's not one that bothers me enormously (the show's makeup reflects American because, hey, it was made in America); it's hardly unique to TNG - pretty much all space operas are guilty of this (American, British, etc.) - but it's a point worth raising all the same.

 

[Cyke101]

But what what I really want to say is one of things I like best about Trek is how "race"/skin color is *never* mentioned, even obliquely — when they do try to have a message about racism, they use the vehicle of aliens. I have loved watching a show in which there is no racial animosity — it's not even relevant at all — especially given the recent racial polarization occuring (in America, at least). I can't wait for the day when skin tone becomes as innocuous as say, height or shoe size.

I hear you on that. It's pretty refreshing to see crewmembers who "just happen to be" (insert color here), because then there's the sense of equality and no sense of a glass ceiling (I'm looking at you, Rest of Hollywood). In the future, it's not weird to have a diverse group of humans on board.

And even then, there's nothing wrong with Kirk talking about Iowa, Riker about Alaska. I wish some of the "minority" crew could do a bit more of that, because whenever anyone did, the rest of the crew seemed genuinely interested.

But I do appreciate the complaints of certain members of certain ethnic groups who feel underrepresented in Trek. Part of that is logistical, and part of it is due to the target audience. I very much hope, however, that we can move past that and unite as humans amongst the myriad aliens. We really have a lot more in common with each other than we would with any Vulcan or Ferengi!

I think it's worth mentioning that minority Trek heroes helped inspire generations of people. Whoopi Goldberg credits Uhura for her career, and there's a slew of Asians that look up to George Takei, all because of what they did 40 years ago! That's mindboggling, but in a very positive, warm-fuzzy kind of way

I think it's important to note that Trek has a positive history of inspiring other certain ethnic groups to achieve above and beyond as well; in that sense, if a few ethnic groups feel underrepresented in Trek, I'd probably say that Trek would more than likely continue going down that route as time goes on. On one hand, one group feels slighted and ignored, on the other hand Trek has that history of opening up. I'd be quite certain then that Trek doesn't set out to be exclusionary, Trek just needs to be aware of various ethnic groups.

Now, that's a bit passive and a few letters to the franchise heads wouldn't hurt, but ethnic groups who feel underrepresented and Trek as a whole both have quite a number of common goals in mind, and that should be recognized. One can work for the other and vice-versa.

 

[Anji]

I'm not understanding this? I thought as Star Trek fans we were supposed to have learned to look beyond the superficial and see ourselves in the characters irregardless of what they look like?

 

[Cyke101]

I'm not understanding this? I thought as Star Trek fans we were supposed to have learned to look beyond the superficial and see ourselves in the characters irregardless of what they look like?

There's a big thing between preaching something and seeing something in action, though. Most, if not all, population projections for the US predict that in a few decades, whites will no longer be the majority; "white" won't be the default when people think American anymore. In order to be true, if TNG is about our future, it would have to be more diverse when it comes to humans. And, as a minority myself, I'd argue that minorities in Trek have been pretty good role models all around. It's good to see heroes of your own ethnicity and of others, and it could also spur interest in exploring other histories (ie, the way Avatar the cartoon helped increase readership of Asian culture and history in America).

Of course, while having true, fair ethnic representation is an idealistic, positive, and very worthy goal, I'd argue that it's not really TNG's fault as the show came out before such projections were made.

We could take Hollywood for example: if race isn't key for a role but the casting sheet says "Caucasians preferred," then you're excluding people based on superficial reasons. The OP is positing that something similar might have happened in Trek. I myself don't believe that per se, but hey, that's what we're discussing here.

(On a side note, I always thought it was weird that Trek in general would preach racial harmony and equality amongst humans, but then not trust Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, Ferengi, etc. etc. all for general, perceived, racial personality traits bordering on stereotypes. Are all Romulans really dishonest and sneaky? Are all Ferengi a bunch of greedy aholes?)

 

[Admiral James Kirk]

I think the more interesting question is: Did Chico and the Man have too much Chico and not enough of the Man? I mean what's Chico without the Man? We all love the Man!

 

[ReadyAndWilling]

"White" is a relative term...

lets see

Levar Burton: African American
Michael Dorn: African American
Marina Sirtis: Greek/British
Brent Spiner: Jewish American

that leaves

Patrick Stewart: White/British
Jonathan Frakes: White/American
Gates McFadden: White/American

As you can see most of the cast are actually of an "Ethnic Minority" (i've not included Denise Crosby, Wil Wheaton and Diana Muldaur, since they were not continuously present throughout the series)

Anyone else find the term 'white' offensive? Why do you use the term 'African American' and then 'White'? Why don't you say European?

 

[Nightdiamond]

I always give credit to Mr. Roddenberry for being conscientious and having his heart in the right place .


I think with the ethnicity issue, it boils down to something more basic- if someone looks a certain way, they'll probably categorized a certain way.

In that case the minor issues of ethnicity are put aside in favor of the appearance in general.

It's probably a way we've been programed to think tens of thousands of years ago.

Maybe, and that's maybe, nature deemed it necessary for ancient caveman/humans to think that way for survival reasons, but in today's world it's an obsolete, primitive behavior.

Unless anyone would enjoy living life 80 to 1000 years ago or something...

 

[zar]

Anyone else think it was weird how basically everyone was of European extraction?

...

It would have been much more prudent to include several Asian/African characters I think.

How do you define "basically everyone" and "several"?

- half of the main cast is not European
- Geordi: African
- Keiko O'brien, Nurse Ogawa: Asians
- plenty of Asian and African conn, transporter, and security officers appear throughout
- several other non-European actors play aliens

For a show that's supposed to encompass the entire world, TNG made a huge mistake with this. Hell, white people will become a minority by the year 2020 in the USA.

As I'm sure you know, TNG was not produced in the year 2020. In order to avoid that "huge mistake", they would have had to ignore readily available talent to specifically seek out minority actors. It would have been terribly silly, especially considering that those projections probably hadn't even been done yet in 1987.

The majority of TNG characters were not written to be of any specific descent, only to have a specific place of birth. In fact, a black actor was being considered for the role of Picard before they settled on Patrick Stewart.

 

[FormerLurker]

I'm still trying to figure out why people are calling foul over things that are really out of the control of the people that are being blamed for them. Maybe they're just trolls.