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Is there an in universe explanation for racial segregation within the Star Wars universe?

posted a year ago by FootOfDavros (8704)
15 replies | jump to latest

Currently trying - for the third time now - to make my way through this show and one thing which has stuck out for me is the weird diversity within the show.

e.g. The crusty hippies on that farmland planet had one, literally one, Mongolian looking chap among their number.

e.g. The Imperials, also on the farmland planet, and back on Coruscant have a very light sprinkling of very dark skinned "pure" black people.

Now obviously the real world explanation is some apparently quite limited attempt at diverse casting but what could possibly be the Star Wars Universe explanation for this?

Because we have a universe where humans have spread out over thousands of planets over a period of presumably thousands of years, yet have somehow retained racial purity. Wouldn't this mean that the humans within this universe must all be practicing racial segregation when it comes to breading and thus therefore all must be pretty racist? And they've maintained this racism over thousands of years?!!

I can't see another explanation - We should really be seeing a largely mixed race society by this stage of interstellar settlements and yet, no.

Has anyone who's read any of the Disney extended universe books come across any in universe explanation for this weird racial segregation that exists?

[–] FootOfDavros (8704) 8 months ago

Same issue exists in The Acolyte.

Racism is definitely alive and well a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

[–] Enigmaticocean77 (2490) 6 months ago

Racism and sexism are alive and well within the Disney company.

[–] moviechatterer (16326) 8 months ago

🙄

[–] FootOfDavros (8704) 8 months ago

? It's a fair question...

[–] LanceDance (1394) 6 months ago

In real life, most people stick to others that look like them when it comes to breeding, regardless of whatever propaganda is pushing otherwise. Most parents want their kids to look like them, and there's nothing wrong with that. This is reflected in the fiction they write, and even if other galaxies do have intelligent life, I wouldn't be surprised if they do the same thing.

[–] christomacin (4730) a month ago

If, in some increasingly unlikely future, the human races spreads out to many planets, wouldn't many of the geographical and cultural barriers tend to melt away, or at least become less powerful, the further people are from the home world, and are thrown together on tightly knit, far flung communities? The issues would probably never go away completely, and religion would probably tend to be a sticking point even more than race, but it certainly would become a lot more complicated at the very least.

Look, I don't want to debate the MANNER in which diversity has been handled. Clearly, starting with Lando and on into the prequels, and up until the present Disney Era, minority and female roles have been given greater and greater prominence, sometime (arguably too many times), this has been pushed at the expense of the story. For Star Wars to work as a universal allegory taken from all the world's legends and belief systems, why is the idea of many different types of people and living together any more or lesloathesome than a human and a wookie being best friends?

I don't think you're really considering how different space travel and living on other planets might be to life on Earth as we presently know it. Star Wars operates on the assumption that intelligent behind would HAVE TO learn to get passed these ancient and tribal barriers to have the type of inter-galactic civilization. It's probably on nonsense, sceintificall, but it's just a modern day fairy tale, after all.

You're assuming. also, that the home worlds in the Star Wars universe haven't already begun the cultural homogenation process on their home worlds, either through one world government/empire via military conquest or more peaceful and gradual political integration. I don't know what the Star Wars lore is concerning humanoid species in Star Wars. Are they all presumed to be from the same home planet, or did humans arise spontaneously in many parts of the galaxy? This would seem to be scientifically impossible. but then again, strict scientific logic is hardly a hallmark of Star Wars, is it? If they're all from different planets, then a darker or lighter skinned person on one planet may feel more kinship with someone from a difference race on their own planet, as opposed to someone form a same race on a different planet.

[–] LanceDance (1394) a month ago

Geographical and cultural barriers haven't melted away yet, after thousands of years, so why would they melt away in the future? If oceans and continents couldn't break them down, why would different planets and the void of space fair any better? Time and distance don't matter.

If anything, barriers have increased over time, as history has shown. The more that propaganda tries to force groups of people together, the more they drift apart. It's not that people love segregation, they just prefer familiarity. They're willing to appreciate different races and cultures, as long as those foreign races and cultures don't follow them back home.

[–] christomacin (4730) a month ago

There's a big difference between our reality and the reality of Star Wars, though. You've also got completely NON-HUMAN species, plus sentient robots, which would tend to make humans, regardless of their differences, band together. Yet, implausible though it might seem, there doesn't appear to be a great deal of this sort of prejudice in Star Wars, either. Realistically, there probably would be more inter-species, but all we really are shown is a bit of anti-droid prejudice.

We also don't know if all humans are from the same planet, originally, so any assumptions that their ideas of race would exactly track with ours are very possibly wrong. OR, humans are so free to move about and their system has been so open for so long that these types of prejudice are mostly a thing of the past, at least as far as humanoids are concerned. I'm willing to give Star Wars the benefit of the doubt in this area (it's pure fantasy, anyway), but they DO need to write better charactes and not have race as the "big concept" as they sometimes seem to do in newer Star Wars.

Again. pure fantasy, but immigration control seems non-existent, at least in the Republic period (not sure about the Empire, I'd imagine they are more strict). It seems like the EU Shengen Zone, at least aside from the Outer Rim. Maybe it's not so easier to move to a place further away (Kamino), but things are shown to be pretty loosie goosie (even in the Lucas era). People can seemingly hop on a spaceship and go wherever they please. Hard to see how race would remain as rigidly calcified in such a civilization. In any case, this is what we are shown. We can chose to either accept it as naively optimistic, or not.

[–] FootOfDavros (8704) a month ago

Hard to see how race would remain as rigidly calcified in such a civilization. In any case, this is what we are shown. We can chose to either accept it as naively optimistic, or not.

It's strange that you'd describe that as "naively optimistic" as the opposite was what I was getting at with the OP.

This show of races practicing racial segregation (for example that Mongolian looking guy among the crusties I mentioned) means that despite being part of a more advanced human race, spread out over hundreds, if not thousands, of planets, his parents must have sought out the blood of similar stock when it came to reproducing...

And this is the irony I was getting at - The producers made these casting decisions on a basis of diversity and inclusion in order to show tolerance and hope for the future now but ironically in doing so, show an advanced society which still practices extreme intolerance!

So I'd say that's the exact opposite of optimistic...

[–] christomacin (4730) a month ago

There are so many cooks in the kitchen at this point I'm not sure I even know what the official position on race relations is. The predominantly white casting gradually becoming more diverse is more a reflection of cultural changes and market forces in our world than a coherent thought out position in the Star Wars Universe. Honestly l, that might be for the best, as it will just become yet more fodder for debate rather than settling anything.

[–] Martoto (5191) 25 days ago

All children look like their parents.

[–] LanceDance (1394) 25 days ago

Not the race-mixed ones.

[–] TheCatman (375) 6 months ago

That's racist Tokenism.

It's where the writers of a story use a minority, typically a black person/character, to make themselves look good.

If you were behind the scenes someone said we need a "black" and an "Asian" for these scenes. Then, the casting director went out and found a "Black" and an "Asian" to stand there.

Generally speaking, casting is difficult. You need real actors for the movie and a lot of money is going into making the production so the actors have to give good performances.

So, if you get the idea that you MUST have an Asian kid in your movie you had better be sure the kid can act. Meanwhile, where will you find a really good Asian kid actor? If you can't find one there's probably a lot of white kids to choose from.

You better choose well because millions of dollars are on the line, so it's smarter to go with white actors.

The recent Star Wars movies had Finn played by a not very good looking black actor who had a stiff and confused quality. Marvel Comics also has a variety of shows with minorities and women that people hated because they didn't have good actors playing the characters.

When you cast based on race/sex and not talent, you get crap.

On an amusing note, the 1970s had many all black action movies. Sounds good, but the actors weren't very good and so the films are more comical that adventurous.

[–] christomacin (4730) a month ago

If Finn had been better written with a more believable character arc than loyal storm trooper to "it's the right thing to do" with no real reason shown it would have helped. It's smarter to go with good stories with well-written characters. The sequel trilogy is impossible to defend on those grounds. I'm not sure I think that's why they failed (female and non-white actors more prominent), but it's just a fact of life that it's an uphill battle and you have to make doubly sure the stories and characters are good for them to be accepted. That's just how it is.

If you're referring to blacksploitation films in the last paragraph, then yeah, you wouldn't expect such types of films to date well, and they haven't.

[–] TheCatman (375) a month ago

As you've said, if you have a great story and good actors it doesn't matter what the race of actors is.

I have watched many very good Chinese and Indian films. That's because they have a billion people in those countries and a lot of interesting cultural stories. So, if you don't mine reading subtitles you are in for some great stuff.

In the US we have a small pool of writers in Hollywood and they tend to be from a micro cultural, so not a lot of original stories are made. Then, those people like to virtue signal and so they will stick token minorities into films and write them in a very boring way because the writers probably don't have much contact with anyone outside of their own group.

I also think it's wild that movies in the 30s and 40s had very good female characters who were the main characters and now we do not have movies with complex female characters or lead actresses. I attribute that to what I've said about the small pool of writers from the same culture.