Star Trek and racism: a rant.

I understand there's to be the launch of some new Star Trek series, soon.

I'm an original series girl, myself, but I'm always pleased to hear how the Star Trek universe is getting on. A recent article in the Telegraph newspaper had quite a lot to say about Star Trek's anti-racism. This is something of which I, in my position as a long-standing fan, am rather proud.

Star Trek's creator, Gene Roddenbury, did quite a lot to challenge 1960s assumptions about Other Types of People. His original Star Trek crew contained the efficient Lieutenant Uhura (I'm not sure if her heritage was explained at the time, but she has a Swahili name); the fanciable Russian Checkov; the efficient and fanciable half-Vulcan Spock; and of course Lieutenant Sulu, a man of East Asian appearance (was he Japanese in the series? I can't remember).

Japan had been at war with the USA only a generation before that original series aired, so to feature as a hero someone of the actor George Takei's Japanese heritage was really quite a statement. It was certainly a great advance on the treatment George Takei's parents received in the USA. They, according to the Telegraph article I was reading, 'had been interred during the Second World War'.

Good grief. 

I didn't know the racism had been that bad...

Word To Use Today: inter. This word means bury in the earth. It comes from the Latin terra, earth. Intern means to detain without trial or charge, especially during wartime. That word also come from Latin, from internus, interval.