First interracial kiss on American television
#41
Posted 04 July 2007 - 02:51 AM
#42
Posted 04 July 2007 - 03:38 AM
Knowing that there have been other interracial kisses on TV before Kirk and Uhura did it. Namely at least one kiss between a yellow woman and a white man in The Wild Wild West a year before the Kirk/Uhura kiss. So the questions are, shouldn't we give credit to other series with earlier interracial kisses? Isn't it insulting to Oriental people if we don't acknowledge the historical vallue of the first interracial kiss they participated in? Shouldn't we Star Trek fans stop to pat ourselves on the back that it was in our series the historic first interracial kiss took place? Ect.
Debate (serenely) please.
#43
Posted 04 July 2007 - 10:21 AM
#44
Posted 04 July 2007 - 10:21 AM
#45
Posted 04 July 2007 - 10:44 AM
The Chinese were definitely treated differently, but it has to be acknowledged that the Chinese themselves were inclined to treat Americans as "ghosts", and you can infer from that that they saw westerners in general as something less than human. The Chinese culture was so different from the mainstream American culture because it was Eastern. The Chinese migrants were somewhat distainful of American values and resisted them as much as they could. Mainstream US culture has always made a virtue out of being a "melting pot", but the Otherness of the Chinese made Americans believe that they Chinese people could never be culturally assimiliated, and this led to a great deal of mutual suspicion, and an unwilligness to allow more Chinese in. If you read Maxine Hong Kingston's The Warrior Woman set in 20th century Chinatown in San Francisco you will be able to experience the difficulties first generation Chinese Amercans had in reconciling Chinese culture with the relative freedoms afforded by the US to those who could access them.
American Asians may have had a rough time, so did American Jews, but the racism is based upon something other than colour. The blacks were treated as an inferior species and it took vocal activists like W E Dubois to show the world in the early 20th century that blacks were thinking people who could be articulate. Asians and Jews were discriminated against for other reasons. The Chinese left their homeland to seek a better life and keep their relatives back in China alive; many Jews arrived in the US because they were displaced my pogroms in Eastern Europe, but the Africans arrived in the US in chains. It is this fact that keeps consciousness of the Black struggle to the fore in the US, that and in the 1960s, the blacks had had enough of serving their country and being denied so much of the American dream because of the colour of their skin. Simply put: they got themselves organised, built on what few but important advances had been made before, and made the Civil Rights Movement happen in the face of huge danger. Simply put, they had suffered the most and they had had enough.
#46
Posted 04 July 2007 - 10:52 AM
#47
Posted 04 July 2007 - 01:02 PM
Anyway,
Every country that has ever been since the dawn of time has done things that most people would rather forget. I would say that as long as one group has something that a different group wants, you're going to have a problem.
#48
Posted 04 July 2007 - 05:00 PM
The country is urging our Prime Minister, the greasy & bumbling John Howard, to reconcile with our Aboriginals...but he's holding off as long as he can...he's managed to avoid it for years now & continues to do so.
"But they'll re-claim stuff...they may want to take YOUR land"
Good, I say...let them have it.
Reconciliation is a big step...it is necessary.
What does that have to do with an interracial kiss on US TV....nothing.
Something that would not have passed my mind. You never know how something can effect different people.
I had become somewhat used to the term 'gay' as a negative..."Man, thats soo gay"
I never liked it, but always shrugged it off.
Not anymore. Because it is not innocent...instead of saying something is total crap or absolute BS, they say it is gay, hence referring to gay people as something bad! Not cool.
You see....I had never even looked at it that way!
I had seen it in the more positive light. This guy, whoever he was, was making a statement....he is still afraid of the backlash from his comment, hence those first few words...."I believe in the seperation of the races...BUT..."
We do not know the man...perhaps if he saw a white woman kissing a black man...he would have said the same thing. But then, is it still just as wrong? (taking into account the attitude of the era) not the seperation of the races thing, but the rest.
This is why discussions like this are important...it is best to have as many views on a topic as possible before you start making your own judgements. Cheers Jules...& everyone else.
It would seem to be the case that we are birds of a feather. Perhaps it is Trek's own message that allows us to understand each other. Racial diversity was a big thing in TOS. Everyone working together.
It would be odd for a Trek fan to be closed minded. Though I'm sure there are a few.
Out of interest, how did the black communities respond to the interracial kiss in Trek?
#49
Posted 05 July 2007 - 02:22 AM
I was going to go talk about white women with black men, but I thought it would get too complex (a different dynamic seems to be at work there), so I thought I'd stick to adressing the statement the man made. You may well indeed be right about the qualification and the "but" ~ I didn't see it that way to begin with!
As for the shift in the use of the word "gay". I too have issues with that, and I won't allow my daughter to use gay as a perjorative term. I can't see how anybody can justify using "gay" in that way and then try and wriggle out of it by saying it's just a word that has no connection to homosexuals. When I'm an English teacher, it's one adjective I won't tolerate my students using in a negative way.
To Berns: TBH, I didn't even think of Native Americans ~ of course they too suffered. We also tend to forget how England was conquered many times and the indigenous people oppressed!
This has been a good discussion, and totally Trek!
#50
Posted 05 July 2007 - 09:00 AM
My point is that there is a lot of work to be done by the Black community as well as the White community to make society as whole a better place where all races are respected and treated equally.
#51
Posted 05 July 2007 - 04:40 PM
Soo many reports of domestic abuse, petophilia (sp), sniffing petrol....I honestly can't tell you if things are the same for whites & blacks (in that respect) in my area...for the last few months they have really been looking into the desperate situations of the Aboringinals, especially those living in outback isolated areas. Their situation seems truely horrible.
It actually surprises me that I have yet to meet an Aboriginal who's personality seems to reflect this...it is rare I even see them, excpect on Wednesday when they go downtown to get their government cheque thingy...but all I have met are really nice people...rascals, yes ...but really nice to be around.
As VF said, It is not a sitaution that white man can change by themselves...& I would hate to see what could happen if we try to force ways of life on them again.
It's soo difficult...I just want peace...I guess everyone does....atleast I hope they do.
Do you actually see many of the native Indians around in the US? or are they more isolated as well?
It would have been nice to see a Trek series that only had ONE token white guy...& everyone else was Native US, African America & various other races.......never happen!
#52
Posted 05 July 2007 - 08:49 PM
#53
Posted 06 July 2007 - 12:25 AM
Oh, and has anyone noticed that the Star Trek Captains who came after Kirk were only one step away from the white American male? I mean Picard wasn't American but he was white and male. Sisco wasn't white but he was American and male. Janeway wasn't male but she was American and white.
#54
Posted 06 July 2007 - 08:41 AM
Chakotay - Mexican/Native American
Kim - Asian-American
Tuvok - African Americans
Janeway - female (even though women outnumber men on earth, they too face many of the same problems minorities face)
id say half aint bad
#55
Posted 06 July 2007 - 10:36 AM
In the UK back in the 1980s I poured scorn on the Labour Party for lumping women's issues with ethnic and disabled issues. The way I see it, women's struggle for equality in work and in pay have an effect upon not just themselves and other women, but on thair male partners and male offspring ~ in other words the entire population of this planet!
Aid groups are slowly cottoning onto the fact that the best way of beating poverty and disease in the Third World is to direct resources towards the education of women because if you educate one woman, then you educate an entire village. It is time that the substance behind the platitude "the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world" was realised.
#56
Posted 06 July 2007 - 06:15 PM
They did seem to stop trying with the Trek Captains. They have broken whatever ground they wanted to break.
We had the young dashing white American Captain
We had the mature French white Captain with an English accent
We had a black American Captain
We had a white female American Captain
And now we're back to the dashing young white Yankee!!
Come on...where's our Fijian transvestite gay midget female captain...huh??...huh??
Chakotay - Mexican/Native American
Kim - Asian-American
Tuvok - African Americans
Janeway - female (even though women outnumber men on earth, they too face many of the same problems minorities face)
id say half aint bad
A lot of people were't happy with a female captain. My uncle Joe the angry German refused to watch. I think the beefed up role of women in Voyager really isolated a lot of Trekfans....they can look up to Kirk or Picard or Sisko...but can they do the same for a female? can they identify with her?
I really never understood what people had against Voyager. It had some really cool episodes...not all, much like any series...but definately some stand outs. I could only ever imagine that it was the strong feminine element.
TNG had plenty of women to start with...but Tasha was the only one of note. Crusher was barey used & Troi was completely left out of a few episodes in S1.
I still find it bizarre that up until 100 or so years ago...you ladies couldn't even vote!!! Man that woulda sh*t me to tears.
And whilst I probably shouldn't say this...the way the Muslim women are treated is....well, it's heart breaking.
But we shouldn't go into that.
#57
Posted 07 July 2007 - 01:47 AM
A lot of people were't happy with a female captain. My uncle Joe the angry German refused to watch. I think the beefed up role of women in Voyager really isolated a lot of Trekfans....they can look up to Kirk or Picard or Sisko...but can they do the same for a female? can they identify with her?
I really never understood what people had against Voyager. It had some really cool episodes...not all, much like any series...but definately some stand outs. I could only ever imagine that it was the strong feminine element.
Your uncle Joe sounds like a guy in need of an education if you don't mind me saying so!
I must admit I also detected a certain degree of male chauvinism whenever the subject of Voyager came up. I think Janeway was a big test as to how inclusive the Trek world really is and how far some fans could carry the idea of IDIC ~ not very far in some cases. It's an interesting point you make. Women are expected to look up to men and we're not required to identify with them. What happens in reality is that no women with a brain automatically looks up to any man ~ including those nominally in authority ~ until they have proved their mettle in the job, or have attributes worth looking up to. It's true that men look up to men in authority because that is the patriarchal system.
In any case, Janeway made half the fanbase very happy, and what was so refreshing about the series is that it began from a standpoint that women were in command as a matter of course and we didn't have to work through that tedious women-making-it-in-a-man's-world scenario, and it just got on with things.
So do I! You can see why so many women now resist staying at home and raising kids because when that was all we did, our role was considered so unimportant that we weren't allowed a say in how the country we bought our kids into was run. To this day I resist any forms of addressing males that harks back to those times. I refuse to address any little boy on an envelope as "Master", and no one had better ever address me as Mrs Clive Cope!
But we shouldn't go into that.
Maybe we shouldn't, but it's about time the UK government began addressing religion-based inequality under the Human Rights Act. There has been too much acceptance of practices that violate our laws to accommodate faiths.
#58
Posted 07 July 2007 - 09:03 AM
I think Janeway turned out to be a quite capable captain. I never liked that Katherine Hepburn hairdo she sported in the beginning, but that had nothing to do with her competency as a Captain. I think what may have turned some folks off is that even though this was the fourth live action Star Trek series, it was still a little early to eliminate white males completely from the senior staff, meaning the Captain, first officer and second officer positions. A woman as Captain was a big step, but a Black Vulcan too? And a Native American First Officer? A little bit too much to swallow all at one time by the overall audience. Star Trek's time period is ready for that but we are not there just yet. I grew to like Janeway, not as much as other Captains, and found Tuvok a convincing Vulcan but never really ever liked the character of Chakotay.
#59
Posted 07 July 2007 - 09:46 AM
I liked Janeway a lot. Chakotay on the other hand....well, I found the idea of anyone in the 24th century putting his faith in tribal ways and a medicine bundle a bit far fetched, and he was always soooooo serious!
#60
Posted 07 July 2007 - 10:40 AM
Yes, perhaps, but it may have been also the demographic that could have made the show more of a success as well. My way of thinking and good business sense dictates that when you put out a product, you market it to a great extent to the majority of buyers, because otherwise it might not sell and your stuck with something you cant make a profit on.
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