On a completely unrelated matter...while I liked this episode, Guinan's attitude really turned me off. In the TV & Media forum here, there's a thread about TV & movie tropes that you hate...well, this is one of mine. The jaded, arrogant jerk with a bad attitude who's given up on everything. I mean, it's a wonder Guinan doesn't get a nosebleed from having her fucking nose in the air.
I agree. Her angst was completely out of character. I realize some people liked her, but I felt that the writers were just making her a symbol for oppressed minorities with their heavy-handed social commentary this season. Which is quite silly when Guinan is supposed to be an alien who to my knowledge was never oppressed because of the color of her skin. Now, that's not to say that she couldn't be in a situation where she was judged based on that, but I would think someone like Guinan would just shrug that off and move on to some other planet, and not act all pissed off about it.
Guinan was hiding out from her father on Earth in those early years, so transportation offworld might not have been as simple to arrange as you suggest, nor was she likely to desire to leave so soon while she had unfinished business.
Her later "angst" is perfectly in-character and understandable given spending a century and a half living as a black person and a woman in America (which, despite her alienness, is all that she is able to reveal since she is on Earth pre-First Contact), and all the ups and downs that entails. For every step forward in one area, there is often a backlash and a step back that follows afterwards. And while conditions for black Americans (and in other countries) have undoubtedly improved, one could understand becoming frustrated that there's is still so much work left to be done and at the fact that fighting for basic decency and human rights is still met with such resistance after 130 years where you would hope people would have learned from the wrongs of the past and stopped acting as a constant roadblock to positive change.
Does it seem like an accident that an alien with the appearance of a black human woman would choose to settle on a planet in a region where black people and women were treated as second class citizens unless it was her intention to encourage change in those areas? It's no accident that she established herself as a wealthy author and socialite, as that's one of the few places a person of her gender and appearance would be granted an audience with civil rights friendly (if still paternalistic) white elites like Samuel Clemens. Frederick Douglass was able to use his story and status as an author on slavery and the black person's condition in America to grant him access to the elites of American and foreign society, and Guinan came up in American society just before his death in 1895, so it's highly likely she took her cues from him.
Guinan was the one who reminded Picard of the
slavery angle and "disposable people" treated as property when Bruce Maddox wanted to reproduce Data to serve as a disposable labor force that the Federation owned. You think that was because she wasn't touched by the experiences of ex-slaves in post-Civil War America and empathized with them?
At the same time, while she has the wisdom and temperance of centuries of experience, we have seen that Guinan is not beyond giving into fear and frustration like her human counterparts. When Hugh was first brought aboard the Enterprise, she had as much of a kneejerk "Kill it with fire!" reaction as Picard did before she too went to meet with Hugh and judge for herself. And those reactions should come as no surprise given that Picard and Guinan were the ones on the crew who had experienced the most troubling things at the hands of the Borg. But after being convinced of Hugh's new nature, she changed her mind and became an advocate for his protection. Just as she had reached her final straw in this 2024 Earth before Picard convinced her to stay and that it will get worse before eventually getting better. Though he's kind of burying the lede with them being on the cusp of WWIII.
I like to think Guinan stayed throughout humanity's dark times as a guide until she finally left for home aboard the NX-01 (because she was fond of the name Enterprise) and that's when she had her encounter with the Q (in disguise). Ironically she makes it home a century and a half before her homeworld is assimilated and has to come back to Earth again.
But I digress, the offense to her statement as being the product of a "jaded, arrogant jerk with a bad attitude" sounds like so many of the same complaints about black activists taking a knee during the anthem, protesting, saying or wearing shirts with "Black Lives Matter" on them, holding up a fist, refusing to sit at the back of the bus, refusing to get up from a chair in a white's only diner, etc. Why can't they just be accepting of all the good things they've got? They're always getting uppity and daring to ask for the same things white people take for granted. And why does it have to be in the middle of watching my game when I don't want to have to think about such things? I'd just prefer never to have to confront these unpleasant realities of life at all.
