Expanded Universe Eugenics: starting to see a pattern here

ive just finished dark journey, and now im really beginning to question the ideas brought up earlier about star wars characters (EU created characters, not lucas created ones) having a seemingly subtle tendency to be tall blond and naturally caucasian. i know this is an old topic, but it isnt exactly beating a dead horse here.

It seems in every book at least one or two of the new characters introduced seems to be blond, and more often tall, and always caucasian. Is there perhaps a need for further addressing of this, because its starting to seem less like coincidense and more like character eugenics. thoughts?

 

And your exact point being that they use too many Caucasian Males????? with blond hair???

Out of the main characters which one's of them would you call blond???

 

The only blonde characters I can think of off the top of my head are Turr Phennir, Tycho, Cray Mingla and Callista (original body)

 

And Danni Quee

 

What are the solo kids hair color's ?

 

before you start complaing that none of the main characters are Jewish, let me point out that none of them are Christian either.

 

I don't think it's a question of a diversity in religion.

It's more of a question of a diversity in ethnicity.

 

precisely vergere. we dont see any definitive asian, black, or any other ethinic characters. i know a lot of people will say 'but so and so are!', but unless your speaking of the lucas created characters, thats not true. In the books either their depicted as tall/blond or red haired (but always) caucasians, or not depicted acurately at all.

sure its easy to say 'so what, just look at them colorblindly'. well, that would make sense, if the authors were writing them color blindly, but their not. we get very accurate descriptions of characters fitting the above profiles. someone should address this with the author or at the very least LucasBooks so it can be taken into consideration after this whole NJO is over and they get the rights to the EU.

 

precisely vergere. we dont see any definitive asian, black, or any other ethinic characters. i know a lot of people will say 'but so and so are!', but unless your speaking of the lucas created characters, in the books either their depicted as tall/blond or red haired (but always) caucasians, not not depicted acurately at all.

First, one of Han's girlfriends in his trilogy was.

Also, remembering we are in the GFFA, what is ASIAn? Oh, and considering they tall and blonde or red haired, why does Jaina have so many brown haired men in her life?

 

How is different species doing for ethinc diversity?

Seriously though, the sources for the main human characters is fairly set. The main characters from the movies plus their children & humans who were in the Empire or descended from it. The main characters are set and therefore the children are. The Empire was not big on diversity.

But I see your point. There could be a little spread in it. But how would describe and Asian without it sounded bad?

 

exactly

 

Also, remembering we are in the GFFA, what is ASIAn?

Surely, creative minds can think of ways to adequately describe Asians. Or they wouldn't be authors, would they?

I think this is an important point. We are led to believe that the human race in the GFFA managed to scrounge out any semblance of diversity. What remains is an elitist group of humans with very specific but similar ethnic traits.

 

The Tears of Palpatine was Hispanic, and he once pointed out that it is impossible to have a Hispanic character: Spain never colonised worlds in the Star Wars galaxy.

For the same reason there are not and have never been Caucasians (no Caucasus Mountains), Asians (no Asia), Africans (no Africa), or any other ethnicity seen on Earth.

There can only be "light-skinned" or "dark-skinned" humans, with planets of origin replacing our terrestrial ethnic identities.

Some Hispanics, Anglo-Saxons, Slavs, even Asians can all be described as "light-skinned." Some Hispanics, Arabs, Africans and Australoids can all be described as "dark-skinned."

So when a character is described as "light-skinned" or "dark-skinned," isn't it true that it is a bias on the part of the reader to assign an equivalent terrestrial ethnicity thereto?

If one automatically concludes that "light-skinned" means "Anglo-Saxon" or "Western European," isn't the party guilty of a sort of chauvinism the one who makes that conclusion?

 

Are you so bored with SW that you have to throw ethnic diversity issues into it? Who cares? And don't beat around the bush, just say "They're racist". At least that would make for an interesting argument.

 

Well, I personally would rather hear about different cultures so much as different ethnicity. Ethnicity doesn't really seem to matter either. I've never heard of the Galactic KKK, out to get all black humans. On the other hand, it probably would be nice to get even a few more dark skinned people in the stories. The only ones I can think of offhand, and I'm a little vauge on these, are Han's girlfriend, Salla, I think, and that guy that Han was helping during original Han Solo trilogy in the Coporate Sector.

 

Well on the note of the KKK is the Empire, which was anti-alien, and to an extent the Peace Brigade, which is anti-Jedi.

 

III_Vir_RPC, I agree fully.

 

A lot of Charictors aren't described, sometimes they talk about "dark" people, which could mean anything from Hispanics to Blacks.

When you write your charictors are people you can identify with. How many black Authers have there been, would it be difficult for a black/Asian Auther to write about a western cast. I think it would.

 

so you're saying that, as a caucasian, i would never be able to relate to an asian or african person.....? hmmm......

i believe that Tendra Risant was also described as 'dark', but i could be mistaken on that one. however, i would have to agree with the assersion that every major charactor seems to be of caucasian desent, and not just the off-spring of the movie characters, but all new characters as well. after all, how many black jedi and fighter pilots are there (that play a significant role that is). however, i would not really view the sw universe as all that rascist due to the strong presense of aliens. (hey, the chiss have blue skin, does that count as ethnic diversity?)

 

we all know that simply saying that someone is 'light' or 'dark' skinned doesnt denote ethnicity. italians and greeks are dark skinned, but white. some black people are light skinned, but black. native americans, and many other races vary just as greatly.

im speaking of ACCURATE depictions of non white characters, not just someone pegged as 'dark skinned'. the reason i say is because we get acucurate depections of the white characters. blond haired, fair skinned and blue eyed cannot be confused with any other race but white, as an example. its also a kind of 'grasping at straws' to find two or three EU created characters and say 'here, this ones black' or asian or whatever. a galaxy with hundreds of billions of humans in it and you can only find a handful that arent white? that doesnt make sense.

and its very easy to say that you look at characters colorblindly if your of the same complexion of most of the characters. maybe it should be taken into consideration that people of other backgrounds than ours may want to see characters more relatable to them. diversity is not a racist thing, and taking the lack of it as 'colorblindness' is pretty inconsiderate.

and why do people naturally fear the mention of race? no ones saying EU is racist (at least im not). im just saying that perhaps there should logically be a little more diversity in the writings. also, dont think that whenever someone asks about race in EU, there talking about black people. there are other races than black and white people, though the only ones we pretty much see in EU are white.

 

Surely, creative minds can think of ways to adequately describe Asians. Or they wouldn't be authors, would they?

They already have, in fact. In more than one WEG book ( Galaxy Guide 7 : Mos Eisley and Galaxy Guide 10 : Bounty Hunters ) two characters from Ord Mantell were Oriental in appearance.

Now, this may have just been those two, but it could be possible that people with those physical attributes could primarily come from Ord Mantell, just as the "British" characters ( Imperial officers and such ) commonly come from Coruscant and other Core Worlds.

Edit : Remember those "hicks" that Wedge, Janson and the Wraiths were impersonating in Wraith Squadron? They were supposed to be from Agamar. They had the country accents and everything. Could be a first in the EU...

 

The problem here is that LFL only draws from the top Sci-Fi and Fantasy authors to write SW novels. The authors themselves aren't a diverse lot, and most of them are used to writing novels about Tall Blond Fantasy Heroes and such. Of course, this isn't a problem, because these authors are best suited to write SW novels... Do you see where I'm going here? The only option would be to have LFL enforce a "diverse cast" policy, which is a tad racist in and of itself. In addition, most of the human characters in the NJO are either old characters, or descendents of old characters, so there isn't a lot of opportunities add new ones.

TC

 

Brian Daley had strong supporting characters that were black in his Han Solo Adventures. Fiolla and Rekkon.

 

Since this fire started from a reading of Dark Journey, I'd just like to point out that the Hapan royalty being described were all tall blonds, it was the original author of the courtship of pricess Leias way of describing a culture that had started from pirates who chose to only breed with certain women.

Anyway, what about blue skinned people? DO they count as ethnic?

 

the chiss arent human and therefore dont count within the human-ethnicity discussion.

then again, if they were related to humans.....well, thats another topic for another thread.