I hate all the racially correct places Trek visits

[misskim86]

This is a rant mixed with discussion. I am just watching Voyager for the first time in my life (I'm a huge TNG and DS9 fan) and howcome every tribe or village or whatever who equals earth's technology à year 1300 has like equal amount of blacks and whites and a token asian. Seriously, look at how Europe was back then, it was all white people, look at Africa, it was 99.9 black people. They didn't have the means of travel like we do now, sure there was a nubian or arab here or there in Europe but hardly like modern america or europe. Yet when They beam down to a village or whatever, true enough, all equal races.

I know Trek is supposed to show how we as humans evolved and erased racism and are all equal and that is great but shouldn't the show then show how it might have looked back when humanity (which in this case is represented by humans with a new ridge of the week on their forehead) wasn't as racially spread out as we are now.

Oh and I have to make a disclaimer before I get called a nazi or something. I'm korean american and if there's anything the politicly correct villages need it's more asians ^.^

 

[Kegek]

You can't please everybody. I've seen people criticising Insurrection because the Ba'ku, the heroic village aliens, were all white people.

Anyway, they're aliens. I don't think the ST folk think a great deal about their racial distinctions, although they do occasionally make pains to show alien racial diversity (whatever the heck that is). It's not a big deal either way, IMHO, but what do I know?

 

[A beaker full of death]

I suggest the OP watch Star Trek. There was far less of this sort of thing there.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Sorry, the colorblind casting for aliens that was initiated in the fourth or fifth season of TNG was a good thing. Other than the stupid misfire of "Code Of Honor," Trek had been going along for decades doing the stupid white-people-are-the-default routine with their aliens. It was way past time to stop that.

 

[misskim86]

North pole I'm not sure you understand what I tried to say. I don't mind if an alien is black or white, what bothers me is the pre modern technology villages that are 100% equally mixed in races (well black and white no others) when logicly they are still using horses or whatever to travel. It should technicly be impossible for a village to reach such a diverse ethnic setup.

I don't think anyone cares if an alien is black or white as you seem to think the topic is about, and certainly not that "white people are default". I'm ALL for that aliens are portrayed as different races and not just white, but that's not that this topic is about.

I wouldn't have mind an all black village or all asian village, just simply not forced equal diverse villages when there's logicly not even travel means to travel that distance.

If the civilization is at an advanced stage, by all means they should have ethnic diversity

 

[CorporalClegg]

Or perhaps you're just way over thinking it?

 

[misskim86]

I might over think it, but it started to bother me because VOY does this over and over and over, it's like every single planet which has a medieval equalent of technology has a very diverse racial village. And then I imagined if Star Trek would do a show where they travelled back in time to our 1300th century, and Earth would be the only planet in the universe where whites/asians and blacks didn't all live together back in the feudal societies.

 

[Red Ranger]

Misskim86, et al.,

I actually see what you mean with your post. But since this is science fiction, perhaps we can postulate a reason why people who seemed to be of different races were in primitive populations.

Here's an idea: just because certain populations in Earth's history were more "segregated" doesn't mean that has to exist on an alien world, whose populations might be more diverse in terms of skin color and features for any number of biological reasons.

What I actually had more of a bone to pick when it came to depicting the various alien races was the lack of diversity of skin coloration and other physical features. Andorian are all blue, or Vulcans (until Tuvok) had similiar skin and hair color, and so on.

At least with the Andorians, they introduced another race, the Aenar, they shared their homeworld with, and if I recall they were more white, almost an Andorian version of albino.

I wrote a treatment once about racism among Andorians where I was going to establish there were yellow Andorians who were still treated as second-class citizens but because of the Prime Directive, the Federation never interfered.

An "out-of-universe" explanation, of course, was the casting directors tried to make an effort to cast other types in roles that up till TNG, seemed to go primarily to Caucasians. We often saw folks of African descent eventually playing Klingons, starting with casting Michael Dorn as Worf, I believe. There was even one Romulan Commander who was played most likely by an African-American, in the TNG ep "The Pegasus."

As for Southeast Asian types cast as extraterrestrials, you're right, not too many. However, I do recall seeing some Southeast Asian faces in the Vulcan scene on TSFS, and there was the Southeast Asian so-called model/actress who played the Romulan delegate on Nimbus III in TFF.

Red Ranger

 

[Malcom]

Yet modern Treks don't have people from Russia, India, etc. in their casts. Haven't they seen what the science departments look like at universities?

 

[Nerys Myk]

Who's to say where these societies are located in a geographic sense. Perhaps they are the equivalent of Western Asia and at a cultural/ethnic/trading crossroads on those worlds rather than being the equal to Scandinavia, Japan or the Congo.

 

[A beaker full of death]

misskim86 said:
...howcome every tribe or village or whatever who equals earth's technology à year 1300 has like equal amount of blacks and whites and a token asian....

True, after the brilliant "Code Of Honor" this did become a problem.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Yes, I agree that it is completely ridiculous. Apparently, there are only two possibilities in the Trek universe: either a planet has the same racial and ethnic mix as the United States, or there's only white people there. I may have missed it, but I don't remember seeing a planet inhabited predominantly by black people or asian people.

 

[Kegek]

^
Uh, people have mentioned "Code of Honor" repeatedly, a planet inhabited by black people, who are also both tribalist and atavist. Ick. I guess they decided after that if they couldn't do a planet of blacks without making morons of themselves it was best not to do it.

Anyway, the argument about racial divides doesn't hold water in most cases as we're dealing with a planet normally with a planetwide government. That's the typical VOY setup, which the OP criticised. If there's more than one race, the government must be in contact with them all.

 

[Stormrage]

That has been itching at me for a long time. In pre-modern era Blacks shouldn't be in areas dominated by Whites and Vica Versa. Just look at todays society. There are areas full of Blacks and Areas full of whites.

I think this colour blind stuff is a way of the producers wanting to include everyone.


Q: Did you ever want to destroy an episode that you did? Something you thought just should not have been made.
ByronD

JF: We tried to get the racist "Code of Honor" episode out of the loop.



I don't have a problem with. It was just a bunch of assholes in a planet who happened to black.

 

[Jamee999]

Red Ranger said:


I wrote a treatment once about racism among Andorians where I was going to establish there were yellow Andorians who were still treated as second-class citizens but because of the Prime Directive, the Federation never interfered.

Red Ranger

Andor(ia) is a member of the Federation...

 

[misskim86]

Red Ranger that's a pretty good idea, the best explanation I can think of for the fact that every time they land the village has such a ethnic mix is that for some reason the away team happens to land in the most central village of the whole planet where different races just happens to be on exactly same medieval technological level and all meet in that exact village to trade etc.


Also I never saw a problem with Code of Honor until people brought up the problem, an asshole is an asshole, doesn't matter what color. It's more racist to say that an episode is racist just because the bad guys are all black, but yet I bet noone would have complained if they were all white. Code of Honor was a good episode in my opinion and the director had the logic sense to tell a story where atleast one race had not reached uber political correctness.

People complain that aliens aren't black, or asian but in a PC society apparently they can't be casted as villains only good guys, while for some reason there's absolutely no problem to showcase whites as villains in like 99% of the time.

 

[tmclough]

Disclaimer: I've never watched Voyager, but I plan to some day, just not in the immediate future.

That said, my belief is that it is quite possible that the different skin colors could easily be explained by genes that are just "out there" all over the planet, not just in certain regions of it. This would be akin to genes for, say, tall people vs. short people here on Earth. Granted, there are regions where one or the other in a tribe or culture is dominant (various Pygmy groups in Africa come to mind), but they are the exception rather than the rule. Plus, they are much more limited in area than whole races.

 

[Forbin]

CorporateClaus said:
Or perhaps you're just way over thinking it?

Are you on the right bboard?

 

[Forbin]

The Mirrorball Man said:...but I don't remember seeing a planet inhabited predominantly by black people or asian people.

"Code of Honor" (TNG)

"The Omega Glory" (TOS)

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

tmclough said:
That said, my belief is that it is quite possible that the different skin colors could easily be explained by genes that are just "out there" all over the planet, not just in certain regions of it.

Of course we can rationalize it. I mean, if we weren't able to rationalize almost anything, we probably wouldn't be Star Trek fans in the first place, now, would we? Me, I can live with any explanation, I don't really care. I just find it philosophically regrettable and disappointing from a creative point of view that the racial/ethnic mix on every planet just happens to be the same as the racial/ethnic mix of the United States.