Could no one take him to one side and have a word with him. ...."Sorry to do this to you Neelix but a number of the crew are a little uncomfortable with your casual racism and wondered if you could tone it down.....encouraging Tuvok to be less logical is a bit like encouraging him to be less black, you moronic rodent" I know we focus on humans (for obvious reasons) but if Vulcans actually existed and watched Star Trek, i think a large number of them would be profoundly unhappy with how the show represents them and how strangely acceptable it is to mock or criticise they're entire culture
Sisko did encounter prejudice. From a Vulcan. Solok. Human on human prejudice may be gone, but the galaxy is stuffed with more than just human beings. Hux. Rule #1. You don't fuck with the people who handle your food. You can try to think of a better rule number one, but then you'd probably end up eating a wheel barrow worth of other peoples boogers every year.
Solok was an incredibly illogical person. I imagine other Vulcans probably scoff at him for using baseball as a medium to prove racial superiority, or for even caring about racial superiority in the first place.
That's a good point about Solok. We do see Vulcans being really prejudiced against humans a lot, from TOS and Enterprise primarily, but then they deal with Vulcans more than other shows. Even Voyager didn't have many Vulcan guest stars the way TOS and ENT did.
Who said anything about being "evolved"? I'm well aware that we are only particularly smart monkeys, and we're very unlikely to become much more than that any time in the next few thousand years unless we start doing some serious tinkering with ourselves through genetic engineering and biomechanics (which they haven't, so far as we've seen, on Trek). And even if we do that, we're likely to either screw ourselves up or just manage to turn ourselves into a higher order of a*holes - the cruelty of the universe is a hard coded "feature" of the place. No, all I was talking about is that people tend to be just a little kinder or at least more rational about things when they are taught (or more rarely, learn on their own) to engage in certain exercises in thinking and even feeling. They're nothing extraordinarily advanced, exactly - Native Americans had an expression about walking in another man's moccasins that alluded to what I'm talking about with at least one of the exercises - but people do have to incorporate them into themselves. And it just seems to me that advances in education, psychology, and sociology would standardize and fine tune teaching them by the 24th century - especially with the added advantage of telepaths and empaths able to "assign and check homework" in them, so to speak. I'm by no means talking about Picard's BS about there being no greed or whatever. I'm just talking about advances in enlightened self-interest. Maybe by the year 2300 there's a standard middle school class on "How Not To Allow Your Emotional Impulses To Screw You Over".
I've seen remarkable changes in social attitudes towards minorities in my life time. When I was a kid there was an incredible amount of prejudice against pretty much everybody that wasn't a straight white protestant male, and in comparison our society has come a long long way in the last few decades. Even in the last 20+ years since I've come out I've seen amazing growth in society towards gays. Given the growth in tolerance and equality towards minorities in my lifetime I could believe that in a few hundred years we could achieve something kin to the utopian united humanity of Trek.
I don't think a Vulcan would be offended by criticizing logic. Political correctness is illogical, and offense is an emotion. When children grow up surrounded by a lot of different kinds of people with lots of different ideas rather than surrounded by people just like them, it naturally makes them grow up to be more tolerant of personal differences. Also in the 24th century we see in Trek, all the socioeconomic advantages that fuel current racial divides are gone.
There was that alien from the generational ship that Kim was allegedly in love with and yet he decided to stay on voyager rather than with the woman he loves which I find stupid. Romeo leaving Juliet of his own volition so to speak. Too bad he didn't stay with her, he would have been happy instead of being miserable all the time and we would be rid of him. It's a win win!
While that's a valid interpretation if you really think so low of humanity, it goes against the entire message of TNG which pretty much Q asking "Can you humans really better yourselves?" And the heart & soul of the show straight up answers "Yes." And it goes against Voyager as well since the premise is they are holding to evolved sensibilities while being stranded without the assistance and technology of the rest of the federation. Whether or not that's realistic, it is what the show is portraying for these futuristic humans. Many episodes of Trek deal with human issues rather than just technical problems, including the decisions at Farpoint and Janeway's decisions with the Caretaker which got them stuck in the delta quadrant.
And yet it doesn't go against the crew of the Equinox that did exactly the opposite, when push comes to shove... It looks like Voyager never went beyond "push" or they too would have become like the people on the Equinox...
Well the Equinox showed the potential dangers present but in the end Voyager overcame that. We are after all taking the journey with Voyager's crew and not the Equinox. Just like in TNG we are with peaceful exploration Picard and not Yesterday's Enterprise's war time Picard.
Social engineering. Children are trained to be just so, so that they become adults who are just so when they grow up. Human beings don't just happen. There are millions of sociologists running around the Federation treating children like rats in a cage making sure that they learn the correct value system in the most timely fashion. If I am to believe the Interview, the children of North Korea are raised to believe completely that Kimberly is a God with no asshole, who does not poop. It's just basic brainwashing. Thing is, when you're brainwashing a child, you can take your time and you don't have to break them physically, mentally or sexually like you would have to with an adult when you are training him or her to be loyal. If above is true. Kieko O'Brien was either complicit in the mental programming of the children she was educating at the school on DS9, or she was blind to the subtly of the Federation syllabus and course structure, & unable to recognize the entrenched transformative psychological game theory. Just a cook following a recipe.
I love that Quark speech. It shows that the writers/producers are paying attention and understand the universe they're working in. Roddenberry's vision is a great thing and it's heart is in the right place but by the time we get towards the end of TNG and the start of DS9, those involved in making the show have realised (as much as the fans) that this utopia just isn't feasible when you analyse it more closely That's why i liked the Maquis as an organisation (it finally highlights that not everyone is happy with this utopia after all) and Michael Eddington in particular. I think one of the reason's Sisko is so angry with him (another example of petty vendetta) is that on some level he knows Eddinton has a point and as a black man the irony isn't lost on him Human children grow up around Vulcan's.....but then according to what we see in the shows, they learn to be irritated by their incessant logic and regularly engage in mocking it or simply being appalled by it. Seems like ignorant, non tolerant, casual racism to me And how many times are the Ferenghi laughed at or judged? Didn't the 23rd century generation assume all Klingons were violent dicks. I see very little evidence of tolerance. All i see is privileged people getting their own way.....a lot When Kim gets befuddled around Janeway and calls her ma'am. Is this not another reminder that people in the 24th do still notice gender, race, difference (even if they're pretending not to) and Harry is a well brought up 24th century guy The Equinox showed us what we were missing
Sisko wasted real food on Eddington. Valuable, valuable real food. In two distinctly differently hate-fuelled ways he wasted his home grown radishes on this liar. 1. Sisko wasted real food on a ####### he retroactively despises. 2. Sisko wasted real food on a ####### who "owns" 12 planets that are nothing but farms cultivating real food.