Porthos needed a girlfriend. Or Girlfriends? Maybe a Boyfriend? South Park had a gay dog, was Enterprise less progressive than South Park?
Why is it that when I'm thinking I'll have another dull night, now I'm over here wondering if a Porthos love interest would have been more fun than Trip/T'Pol, Archer/Hernandez or any of the other entanglements?
And this is why I both laugh and cringe at claims that criticisms of Discovery are motivated by bigotry. To believe that I would have to believe we became less racially tolerant in 2019 than in 2001.
I'm not sure who "we" is in that sentence -- Americans in general? White Americans? But either way, you don't need to believe that white Americans generally or Americans generally were more racist in 2017 than in 2001, in order to believe that a significant percentage of people who hate DIS are motivated by bigotry. It's a well-established fact of history that moments of racial progress can be followed by racist backlash. The emancipation of enslaved persons and the election of black people to political office in the 1860s and early 1870s was followed by decades of Jim Crow. The breakthroughs of the civil rights movement in the 1960s were followed by coded anti-black backlash in the form the racially-motivated "war on drugs." The election of the first black U.S. president in 2008 has pretty obviously led to a backlash in the form of Donald Trump's white nationalism. The racist reaction to DIS is pretty obviously part of a pop culture manifestation of the widespread anti-progressive backlash against the progress represented by the Obama era. (DIS also receives that backlash because it is so good in its representation of queer people and women.)
That's a fancy way of saying "I'm a grievance monger who thinks white people need to apologize for existing."
And that is a fancy way of going, "I refuse to listen to anyone else and instead I'll lie about what they're saying."
The cast of ENT being primarily white had nothing to do with anything. Because every Star Trek series since TOS has had a primarily white cast, with usually one African-American and one Asian-American, or two African-American cast members. TOS: Nichelle Nichols, George Takei TNG: Levar Burton, Michael Dorn DS9: Avery Brooks, Cirroc Lofton VOY: Tim Russ, Garrett Wang ENT: Anthony Montgomery, Linda Park VOY also had a Latino-American (Robert Beltran) and DS9 had an American of Middle Eastern descent (Alexander Siddig.) Where am I going with this? For ENT (which is what this topic is about), the problem wasn’t that most of the cast were white. The problem was that most of the cast were Americans, when a show about a united Earth should have had a cast made up of people from diverse countries (other than the US and England.) Even Hoshi Sato came across as an American of Japanese descent rather than an actual person from Japan (although Linda Park is actually of South Korean descent, but that’s not really important to this discussion.) And that this sort of thing was not limited to just ENT, although it stuck out far more with that show than it did with the previous Trek series.
The difference, though, is that ENT was the first since TOS to sideline all of its non-white actors so completely. Montgomery and Park might as well have been recurring characters for how little screen time they got across four seasons. That is also definitely part of the problem, agreed.
I have, previously, mentioned how American Hoshi’s behavior is so I do definitely see why Enterprise felt so American. Characters behaved in a very American manner but didn’t they actually have only two expressly American main characters? Archer and Trip? And isn’t that exactly the same as the original series? Two expressly American characters? Kirk and Bones?
Oh, I’m not arguing that. If anything, Mayweather should have been THE most important person on that ship, with his experience being a Space Boomer, while people like Archer, Reed, and Trip actually had much less experience in space, yet they were focused on far more than Travis ever was. But my point was that Mayweather being black had nothing to do with his character being sidelined. He could have been played by yet another white actor and the same thing would have happened, because his character was simply not developed well. And that’s saying a lot because most of the cast weren’t developed well either. As for Sato, she should have been the second most important person, with her knowledge of languages. But that was completely glossed over too. But not because she was Asian; because the writers simply didn’t know what to do with the character. Where was Mayweather from? And other than the token British guy and the two aliens, where was every single other human crewmember on that ship from? Where was MACO Hayes from? Where was Admiral Forrest from? Where was Erika Hernandez from? Because they all looked like Americans to me.
Yep! Mayweather was a Boomer, born and bred amongst the stars. I don’t think we ever heard if Boomers held any Earth nationalities. The implication, to my mind, was that Boomers were unto themselves. I am certainly not, in any way, saying that the other crew members and the recurring characters on Enterprise did not appear to be American. They definitely did. They were, I suspect (though I have not researched every actor), played by American actors so that is rather to be expected. However, Uhura, Sulu and Chekov were played by Americans. Scotty wasn’t Scottish either. None of them actually sounded like they had the background their character was supposed to. If we ascribe to those characters the backgrounds they were given in the show despite this, then couldn’t we, theoretically, ascribe whatever backgrounds we want to the supporting characters on Enterprise since their lack of any established history permits it?
Mayweather. And where was his family originally from? If they were ‘unto themselves,’ why would they bother with last names?
I think we should be cautious before saying that even a significant portion of DIS haters hate DIS for diversity, or because they're bigots. This approaches Godwin's Law. The majority of Americans are not MAGAts (read: maggots), and Star Trek has historically been cutting edge on the diversity front, (theoretically) meaning even less Trek fans are racist than the general population.
As I have mentioned elsewhere, because the guy was so forgettable, I - for a time - assumed his name was Merriweather.