TV Discussion SWTV Diversity Thread (Minor Spoilers Allowed)

At no point was it established that the nearly all species aside from human in Republic space were exterminated during the Clone Wars. Not even close.

 

I never said nearly all. I said largely made up.

No baiting.

 

Still not even close to true. There were at least thousands of species on Coruscant alone. Having the Empire be ruled by the infinitesimal white male human minority was not a sustainable model, it beggars belief.

 

I didn't say on Coruscant alone, but OK. Sure there may be thousands of species on Coruscant alone, but they're examples that are not necessarily indicative of population make up and that's not the point. What you should be looking at is percentages of the human population vs the various different alien population, and going by what we know of canon.

Using the movies as a visual indicator, humans seem to out number aliens. Especially in the Empire.

 

Not on ROTS Coruscant, nor Tatioone, not in Cloud City, certainly not in the Endor system. They only employ white male humans to work on their spaceships and spacestations, I assume all those soldiers are born from the sizable female population of the Empire that we also don't see.

 

This is twice that you've made a direct mention to ethnicity and gender. Is there a particular reason? Humans come in various colors, shapes, and sizes. Have we forgotten Hannah John Kamen in TFA?

What about Rae Sloane?

You can't conclusively say for the Endor system, we only saw the one moon. Anyways, you're again referring to pockets of population and likely community hubs. Neither are necessarily indicative of the population make up of the GFFA, nor as pervasive as the Empire.

Well, where did all those male Jedi come from if not an unseen female population in the PT? I'm sure you know how the birds and the bees work.

 

This is silly.

The movies have a human bias because they're made by humans, and making aliens is expensive and time consuming.

The movies had/have a male, perhaps even white male, bias because Star Wars was created by a white male who has said that he made these movies for young boys.

We all know this. Just as we know the story behind what Obi-Wan told Luke about his father in ANH.

How we deal with this is up to personal preference. You can take the universe exactly as you see it in the movies and believe those movies to be an accurate representation of the universe, or you can take into account OOU concerns and allow that to override certain shortcomings. But we all know why it is the way it is.

In other words: You can see Obi-Wan as telling a lie, or you can see it as Obi-Wan telling the truth as was the case at the time ANH was written. Or you can even reconcile the two. But you know why that dilemma exists.

 

This is a Star Wars message board, is it not? Some nerd bickering is expected.

Eh, I think the production/budgetary reasons were no longer so much an excuse by the time you get to ESB and ROTJ.

 

Hannah John Kamer (nor the rest of the First Order as a whole) is not a part of the Empire and you said look at the movies.



This is what the movies give us, following your instruction we really shouldn't stop at human but conclude that to be a citizen of the Empire you need to white, male, human and last 30 years of age. Rae Sloane, not in the movies, was specifically created to combat this image of the Empire.. Which is a step in the right direction but there's no reason to stop there. The Empire makes up most of the galaxy and is OBVIOUSLY made up of a lot of species. It's a Rebellion, a Civil War, the aliens in the Rebel Alliance still come from within the Empire, that is understood right?

The Seperatists had a lot of alien races (not near most of them but a lot). They were seperatists, trying to split off from the Republic and lost. The Empire sure as hell didn't give them their independence afterwards. All those alien races and their homeworlds are all part of the Empire.

 

I made reference to canon, I wasn't the one that specified the OT. That was another poster. I said visually, because that's the best indicator we have of population mixture that the movies give us. The First Order is a direct off shoot of the Empire, it stand to reason that examples of other genders and ethnicity that are human likely served in the Imperial military.

You're conflating that to be a citizen you have to be a service member in the Empire's military. I've been referencing the military structure, of which you posted a picture as an example. I wouldn't deny that you can be a an alien and a citizen of the Empire, but there aren't many examples in the Imperial service that we can point to that are alien.

Yes, I'm not the one conflating that to be a citizen you also have to be in Imperial military service. You on the other hand, appear to be doing just that.

And Rae Sloane very much belongs in this discussion, as since she has had direct involvement with characters that are in canon, i.e. Hera and Kanan.

There's some conflation here. You thinking of being a citizen of the Empire, not a service member like an officer in the Imperial Navy. When I reference the Empire, I and likely the others are mentioning the Empire in form of the military functions primarily. I think that's where some disconnect is here. I'm not denying that there are citizens of the Empire that are aliens, they are however largely not shown to be in service of the Imperial Navy or other services.

 

You cannot occupy a region while restricting yourself to only employing 0.00000001% of it's population. Either the many millions of species that make up the Star Wars universe all put together are somehow still a clear minority to just the humans or the Empire is gonna have to work with them in certain regions. To portray it as anything else is idiotic. I acknowledge that Rae Sloane is canon, she's canon despite the movies not portraying an Empire that she could a part of. Same with Thrawn. Those two should just be first shown of billions of alien, female or non-white Imperial officers.

 

You're conflating conscription or enslavement with willing servitude. Regardless, you're making a claim for numbers that I don't think you can back for that percentage. What's idiotic is extrapolating that two characters that have shown to be a distinct minority in canon, justify a hidden larger percentage of aliens that are in service of the Empire.

Whether they're female, male, black, white, or whatever doesn't matter if they're human. This is more about xenophobia, not so much about gender. Gender and color was brought up by you, even though we have examples of humans in canon that conflict with your notion that you have to be a human, white, and male. Aliens on the other hand, distinct lack of them shown.


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You asked me to look at the movies. There were no female Imperial personel in the movies, there no Imperial personel of color in the movies. Rae Sloane was brought into canon outside of the movies not just despite this but pretty clearly to outright combat this image of the Empire. Same can be done with the aliens.

As for the numbers, the Empire is made of everything the Republic and the Seperatists were and more (given that they have a presence on Tatioone where the Outer Rim back in the day was completely lawless). The galaxy is not shown to be populated by a human majority, not unless tons of predominantly human planets are being presented by an alien in the Senate. So again, unless the argument is that the Empire has been spending the dark years exterminating most of their alien populations and emptied out most of the galaxy save for humans by OT times, the Empire is occupying planets with only the tiniest part of the populations groups making up their ranks. For no discernible reason.

 

You're miss interpreting what I have said pretty much entirely. Again, I'm not talking about gender or ethnicity, I'm talking about human as a species. I don't know how many ways, and how many times I can say it more than I already have. Regardless of the out of universe explanation, that extrapolation is not supported as of yet and to assert as such is presumptuous.

You're trying to distract from the argument at hand by adding additional arguments. I'll say it again, as I said it before. I merely brought up other genders because you were talking about the Empire being solely made up of white male humans as if that was the case for seemingly no purpose. Especially in regards to them being white and male.

Missing the point completely. The amount of the Empire personnel stationed on Tatooine is obviously smaller than say that which is on Lothal. And that's not the argument here. We're talking about aliens in the military structure of the Empire.

Actually, I'm done with this because you're trying to distract from the argument at hand by making it about something else entirely: the Empire being while male humans. I don't get why you want to make it about white males, rather than discussing how humans as a species are apparently what makes up the forces of the Empire. It comes off as if you have issues with white males in general, and if that bias exists has no place in this discussion.

 

I really wouldn't call this an additional argument. We can't have aliens in the Empire because we haven't seen aliens in the Empire so far. To then go on and say they want humans and don't care about gender or skincolor is disingenuous. That's not the image of the Empire that got put to us either. We abandoned that image of the Empire and moved on and created Rae Sloane. It's the same argument and it has the same solution. Just put aliens in the Empire now. It's not complicated.

Yeah, the Empire's reach is not infinite but it has grown since the time of Republic. Which is bizzare if the Empire is unspeakably exclusive in whose is allowed to work for them and just let go of most of the forces it inherited from the Republic on account of race.

 

It's not disingenuous in the slightest, it's the honest way that you see humans function in numerous science fiction. Another poster mentioned the Mandalorians as having been thought to be more inclusive, when in fact they're more nationalist in nature in the current canon from what we've seen. Add to it that the Empire is closely modeled after Nazism, and you can clearly see where I'm coming from on this topic where humans are the preferred species/race over aliens in the Star Wars Universe for the Empire's military ranks.

See above.

Anyways, I'm out.

 

We mostly see humans because that's cheaper for live-action to do well. And we cater to human audiences. I feel the Star Wars franchise has reached a point that it doesn't need to beholden to either of those points. It has the money and it has the audience that is expected a fictional galaxy populated by many different species.

In current canon Mandalore is a planet with a mostly human population. That's fine. The Empire is a bit bigger and has to deal with that fact.

Modeled after, but not the same. Palpatine didn't get into power by stirring up sentiment that humans are superior. Palpatine enjoyed massive support from most corners of the Republic (if anything, his opposition in the Senate was seemingly more human then his power base). To then turn around and shot himself in the foot doesn't make a lot of sense. They ended up looking like space nazis but the story of how they got there isn't really told. And we can do the space nazi thing without Thrawn being the only alien officer.

 

"silly" is calling any nitpickable discussion about Star Wars... on the The Jedi Council forums... in the Diversity thread... relating to a diversity issue... "silly"

And "time consuming"? Sure was. Less so now. And no less so than constructing an entire galaxy out of models in your garage! Or recording 1000's of sounds to use as sound effects or! Or for use to create a Droid language! THIS is what these guys do consume their time with -- and many are well-paid to do it!

And that analogy I don't see as relevant. Obi-Wan didn't tell Luke anything about Alien persecution -- or the other way around. In fact, no one did - which os why it feels so forced and unnecessary -- to me.

As for a couple points -- of COURSE budgetary constraints is a factor in why we don't SEE more aliens on screen. However, it is not any indicator that we needed to include an Anti-Alien sentiment in the GFFA at large. That is a matter of what you write and type on a page in your plot. Thus, IMHO, "unnecessary"

I don't know of any official Canon source stating the genetic make up of the GFFA as skewed human. If you look at the Senate scenes -- I always saw a group of mostly Aliens. Maybe i need to take another look.

And yes, of COURSE movies made by humans will feature... humans. Of course... right? Oh, wait -- not true. I could list many examples -- especially in our era of CGI.

Thrawn being an Alien is ambiguous to me -- because he is Humanoid. nuff said on that.

I have yet to read anything in here that has changed my mind outside of the rationalization made by CT-867-5309 that provided context and visual evidence and that I both quoted and agreed with.

Most everything else has been cited out of context and somewhat subjective to the poster.

 

Not new canon but the novelization of Revenge of the sith does elude to the fact the the banking clan, techno union, and trade fed were chosen by sidious for that reason.

 

That's not New Canon? I thought the movie novelizations were.

I'd love to read that quote... but I just sold that book in a group on eBay literally this week.

 

jabberwalkie

Please don't bait other users.

 

There's definitely aliens working with/for the Rebels in the build up to the OT as we've seen them in Rebels, we know there are definitely aliens working with the Rebels in ROTJ so we can presume fairly reasonably that there were in fact alien members of the Rebellion all along, but for reasons creative or pragmatic we never really got to see them on screen.

The Empire on the other hand is an extremely tough place to get a break if you're not a rich white human male, militarily at any rate. This is not a good thing, though of course the Empire are not the good guys...

 

The Empire is supposed to be based of the Nazi's I believe. George Lucas mentioned that a long time ago? That's why we see so little of aliens in the Empire, or why they have to work so hard to achieve the ranks they do such as Thrawn. Or are used as slave labor. However with Rebels I expect we will amd have been seeing a more diverse characters and aliens.

 

their is the female moff on Rebels currently, also it looks like we will met Sabine's mom who per recent epiodes is a imperial aligned Mando, there is Admiral Sloane. All new canon characters all imperial or imperial aligned and female, and two of them are extremely high ranking officers. All of them featured in media set during the dark times when the Empire was at its peak. And unlike Daala, isard, tavira, Luminya,Mara, they are canon.

There is a lack of non white imps though so I would say the imperial officer core is dominated By white humans from the Core worlds And colonies(Since Tarkin is from the Colonies)

 

But that's just the thing -- it's just my opinion, but I actually think the "Empire = Nazi Germany" is really more of a fan theory. I don't ever remember seeing anything for GL as to the veracity of it.

However -- If anyone can prove me wrong... please post some old quotes!