Racist, sexist trolls: The final frontier
Takei boldly speaks out to shut down criticism of diversity in new Star Trek: Discovery series
George Takei was first cast in Star Trek two decades after the Second World War, when racism against his Japanese ancestry still burned strong in the U.S.
Although Takei’s character Lieut. Sulu was portrayed as straight in the original TV series, Takei himself is openly gay and has become a strong voice on social media for inclusion and gay rights. The most recent movie, Star Trek Beyond, has a brief scene suggesting the Sulu character is gay. And the various Star Trek series and movies have always championed inclusivity of race, gender and other issues.
So who better than Takei to respond to a spate of racist and race-tinged criticism that greeted a trailer for the series’ new instalment, Star Trek: Discovery, featuring high-ranking black and Asian officers — who are women, to boot.
NextShark collected a choice sampling of comments below the trailer: “oh great a woman captain again”; “The captain looks like she was affirmative action’ed onto the bridge”; and plenty of racist slurs.
MSNBC brought Takei on Sunday to get his take — probably knowing that the actor has loudly protested Hollywood’s history of “whitewashing” U.S. entertainment.
“People are finding the time to hate on Star Trek for having diversity,” host Joy Reid prompted. “What?”
“Well you know — today, in this society, we have alien life forms that we call trolls,” Takei said.
“And these trolls carry on without knowing what they’re talking about and knowing even less about the history of what they’re talking about. And some of these trolls go on to be presidents of nations.”
Yeah, Takei was going to bring alien analogies and U.S. President Donald Trump into this space fight.
The president actually hadn’t said anything about the new show, at least not in public. But Takei is no fan of Trump. He even wrote for The Washington Post last year about how Trump’s threats to ban Muslims from the U.S. recalled the Japanese internments through which his family suffered during the Second World War. Which came up again on MSNBC. “These people claiming Star Trek is racist genocide, or whatever, white genocide, don’t know what they’re talking about,” Takei said. “They’re equal to the president of the United States.”
Discovery actually features plenty of white, male characters — enough that some fans were criticizing it for not being diverse enough, before the trailer brought on the troll attack.
Star Trek casts have always looked more diverse than those of most contemporary shows: from the ’60s-era run with Takei and a black female lieutenant, to later instalments where a woman and a black man commanded starships (as Michelle Yeoh will in Discovery).
Not all the critics of appearances by Yeoh and Sonequa Martin-Green (as the captain’s first officer) in the trailer resorted to racism.
As NextShark wrote, one commenter noted that the new series is a prequel to the original run — and there’s this fan theory that no women were allowed to captain starships before Kathryn Janeway in Voyager.
Never mind race or diversity, the commenter argued — the female captain in Discovery isn’t canon.