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Racism is contextual

About movies:
•The first references to the "Clone Wars" were in the very first movie when Obi-Wan told Luke his father had fought in them/it, not depicted as ancient history at all.
•The soldiers in the prequels were clonetroopers, and they were all derived from Jango Fett, a light-brown human. Finn is not a clonetrooper but a stormtrooper, in sequels that are set a couple of generations later. (They still all seem to be human, but the shortage of non-humans in Star Wars in general is a separate problem.) And there was no uproar about him, just some people claiming there was.
•There was also no uproar about Heimdall (I actually saw more complaints about Odin), but his case is actually pretty funny anyway. Of all the Nordic gods, he's the one that should have been least likely to get get depicted as dark, because one of the few original manuscripts mentioning him specifies that he's the whitest of the gods (possibly even translatable as glowing the brightest). :D

Anyway, back to the subject...

Being willing to treat people of different races differently to accommodate someone else's racism is still racism. Non-racism would require treating people fairly including when it means refusing to accommodate the racists.
 
ponderingturtle said:
Well that all depends on how old Kenobi is thought to be. The clone wars are mentioned as him having fought along Leia's father in them after all. That being the original reference to them. So they couldn't be generations ago as it was fought by the previous generation.
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19 years between III and IV.
 
To continue the side track, I wonder why my impression from the first movies was that the clone wars were much more distant history. Because the Jedi were just legends in Luke's and Han's minds?

My brief internet search indicates there was at least some opposition to Heimdall being black. Sure not much but some, also seems to have been primarily racist rather than fan boys complaining as fanboys do.
 
Belz... said:
Ok sorry for the confusion.

Are those advocacy groups or just regular folk, and do you have examples?
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Both, plus various celebrities. The actor Lenry Henry is a fairly prominent example of the latter. Every now and again it gets reported that a survey of BAME people think there should be greater representation on screen.

There is a slight "problem" in that a large chunk of the BAME population tends to be clustered in certain cities, which therefore end up comprising a larger percentage of the population than across the country as a whole. For example, 15% of England population is BAME, but that rises to 40% in London and 42% in Birmingham.

In terms of advertising, this source states that 5.3% of a sample of 34,499 commercials contain BAME actors. That's clearly an under-representation, although I'm not sure if it takes account of adverts which feature no actors at all, as some obviously do not.
 
ahhell said:
My brief internet search indicates there was at least some opposition to Heimdall being black. Sure not much but some, also seems to have been primarily racist rather than fan boys complaining as fanboys do.
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The rise of the internet should have killed "Anecdotes aren't Data" deader than dead but it didn't.

Any variation on "I found somebody who has a problem with X" can be completely ignored. You can say water is wet and there's a Facebook group dedicated to the idea that it's dry and it's the Jews fault.

So hear "There are people online who are reacting racistly to..." and you can just stop listening at that point. You can stop listening even harder if the people in question are anonymous and even harder still if they had to go find them.
 
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Information Analyst said:
Both, plus various celebrities. The actor Lenry Henry is a fairly prominent example of the latter. Every now and again it gets reported that a survey of BAME people think there should be greater representation on screen.
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So then, opinions by individuals, not by the population at large or people in general.

And since we're talking about opinions, I'm not too concerned with representation, so long as there's no concerted effort to avoid representing certain groups like there used to be. But if blacks are found in, say, 20% of movies even though they are 13% of the US population, I don't care, etc.
 
Belz... said:
You missed my point, then. The issue was the reason behind their objection: that it violated what they saw as canon, or that ******* should be kept off screen.
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No, I got that, and I agree. Just saying that in some cases it could also be a bit of both.
 
JoeMorgue said:
The rise of the internet should have killed "Anecdotes aren't Data" deader than dead but it didn't.

Any variation on "I found somebody who has a problem with X" can be completely ignored. You can say water is wet and there's a Facebook group dedicated to the idea that it's dry and it's the Jews fault.

So hear "There are people online who are reacting racistly to..." and you can just stop listening at that point. You can stop listening even harder if the people in question are anonymous and even harder still if they had to go find them.
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So your point is, there wasn't an uproar because it was only somebody on the internet?

Lambchops said:
Also, being a fanboy does not necessarily preclude being a racist. And vice versa.
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Belz... said:
You missed my point, then. The issue was the reason behind their objection: that it violated what they saw as canon, or that ******* should be kept off screen.
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The venn diagram certainly overlaps too. Its easy to see the fanboys complaining that Hugh Jackman was too tall to play Wolverine were just fanboys but those that might complain if the next spider man is Miles Morales instead of Peter Parker, might be either or a little of both.
 
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ahhell said:
To continue the side track, I wonder why my impression from the first movies was that the clone wars were much more distant history. Because the Jedi were just legends in Luke's and Han's minds?

My brief internet search indicates there was at least some opposition to Heimdall being black. Sure not much but some, also seems to have been primarily racist rather than fan boys complaining as fanboys do.
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There is also how much neo nazis love Norse myth.
 
ahhell said:
So your point is, there wasn't an uproar because it was only somebody on the internet?
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Sorta, but there's some nuance there.

If "Hey I found an anonymous Youtube or forum comment that claims to be made about Y for X reason" is enough to qualify as "an uproar" than... well there's an "uproar" about everything that's ever happened and the term becomes rather meaningless.

So it's more "A single angry anonymous person or small number of angry anonymous people who are mad about something online isn't enough by itself to quality as a meaningful "outrage.'"
 
ahhell said:
The venn diagram certainly overlaps too. Its easy to see the fanboys complaining that Hugh Jackman was too tall to play Wolverine were just fanboys but those that might complain if the next spider man is Miles Morales instead of Peter Parker, might be either or a little of both.
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For all you know the Jackman nay-sayers might've been anti-tall, too.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Sorta, but there's some nuance there.

If "Hey I found an anonymous Youtube or forum comment that claims to be made about Y for X reason" is enough to qualify as "an uproar" than... well there's an "uproar" about everything that's ever happened and the term becomes rather meaningless.

So it's more "A single angry anonymous person or small number of angry anonymous people who are mad about something online isn't enough by itself to quality as a meaningful "outrage.'"
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I can't disagree too much with that. I just think the small amount of opposition to Idris Elba as Heimdall was worthy of note and you would probably draw the line at some higher level of outrage.

It is absolutely true that you can find some one who's outrage about just about anything and started a facebook group on account of it.



ponderingturtle said:
There is also how much neo nazis love Norse myth.
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That probably did ring a bell for them that spider man wouldn't.
 
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In the Star Wars fandom I've heard a number of folks noting things like, if you collate data from fan fiction sites, Finn is way under represented compared to the % of fanfics about any of the Prequel lead good-guy characters, while fanfics about Kylo (understandably) and Hux (less understandably - I mean hands up everybody here who even remembers who that is) are the lion's share. A lot of people have the impression, backed up by some raw numbers (though I don't know how meaningful or well curated the data is) that Poe underperforms in fandom representation compared with how a typical Star Wars lead character performs. The counterargument is usually 'well cause he's not a very interesting character.' Then somebody says that Hux in't very interesting and has more fanfics. Then slapfights.
 
ahhell said:
I can't disagree too much with that. I just think the small amount of opposition to Idris Elba as Heimdall was worthy of note and you would probably draw the line at some higher level of outrage.

It is absolutely true that you can find some one who's outrage about just about anything and started a facebook group on account of it.
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How about mainstream news media personnel taking time to fight against black santas? A true offensive on the war on christmas.

"Santa is white that is just a fact people." Megan Kelly on Fox News.
 
Lithrael said:
In the Star Wars fandom I've heard a number of folks noting things like, if you collate data from fan fiction sites, Finn is way under represented compared to the % of fanfics about any of the Prequel lead good-guy characters, while fanfics about Kylo (understandably) and Hux (less understandably - I mean hands up everybody here who even remembers who that is) are the lion's share. A lot of people have the impression, backed up by some raw numbers (though I don't know how meaningful or well curated the data is) that Poe underperforms in fandom representation compared with how a typical Star Wars lead character performs. The counterargument is usually 'well cause he's not a very interesting character.' Then somebody says that Hux in't very interesting and has more fanfics. Then slapfights.
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Well Kylo/Hux has a lot more kink potential in the original material than Finn/Poe.
 
ponderingturtle said:
Well Kylo/Hux has a lot more kink potential in the original material than Finn/Poe.
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lol! Well, true. They're probably a little starved for kinkable bad guys after Prequels full of villains like "my character is that I snarl" "I am a robot or something and I have a lot of arms" and "parody gross old guy"
 
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