star trek diversity. the fact that that phrase is meaningful is sad.

[cimorene]

Here's a crazy thought I had today: original Star Trek was one of the best racially representative shows in science fiction tv. It certainly did better than TNG (the only black member one of 2 black regulars on the cast was a savage alien - extra points if you've reimagined aliens who originally allegorically represented the USSR as ultra-violent, hulking black guys with a tribal bent; the other's a blind sidekick, essentially, the way he's usually written as Data's bff, whose sole romantic encounter is with one of the vanishingly-few black women they meet! And Whoopi's Guinan is a magical, sexless, ALIEN negro who tells fortunes, provides motherly advice as well as sassy straight-talking, and wears a robey-muumuu thing that I'm pretty sure is also offensive) and DS9 (one Indian, one black guy who is essentially the governor of a huge-ass COLONY and a diplomat, but is somehow militarily ranked below Picard and Kirk; a bunch of aliens, but none of them dark-skinned; of the two newly-introduced races we have Bajorans who are white, and Cardassians who are PAINTED GREY but always played by white people!)

I believe Voyager had a black Vulcan and a North American native (as well as maybe an Asian cast member? Am I remembering that right?). BSG has some racial diversity from what I've seen (I've not watched it myself), but the Stargate franchise has always been pretty abysmal (Teal'c: he's black, alien, AND a magical negro! And let's not start on Ronon and Teyla's treatment in canon).

So I mean, essentially, race has not made progress in mainstream tv sf since 1964.

Comments

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Really? Wow, I had... completely 100% forgotten about that! But you're right, I don't really know what to make of it. On the surface, it's yet another "biracial relationships are ok, but only as long as they're imaginary/subtexty flirting with no consummation", which I seem to see a LOT of in tv (to be fair, Worf had UST with Deanna and a relationship with her in one AU even before marrying Dax, but the TNG incidences can also fall under 'imaginary/flirting' - and both Worf *and* Dax were supposed to be aliens, so...).