Incredible in Tales of Transhumanism

SEVERE-ASS WARNING: What I am about to write will contain racist slurs, but get some perspective - I am not using these slurs against anyone or for any purpose other than accurately documenting a recent experience. I am not, repeat, NOT condoning racism in any way, shape, or form. Don't you fucking dare give me any shit about this entry.

It's fairly well known that I am a huge Star Trek fan, and I particularly love Deep Space Nine, which I have just recently watched from the very first to the very last episode. An episode in one of the later seasons, an episode called Far Beyond The Stars, saw Captain Sisko seemingly flung back through time into the character and personality of a 1950's pulp sci-fi writer who has his story cancelled. The episode in question is widely regarded as one of the best DS9 episodes to air. It was masterful in many ways; everything about that episode worked - and there are some extremely memorable quotes. "Wishing never changed a damn thing", "Calm down, dear boy. We're writers, not vikings", "Oh yes. If the world is not ready for a woman writer, imagine what would happen if it learned about a Negro with a typewriter. "Run for the hills! It's the end of civilization!" "... but there was one line in particular that caused an awful lot of chin-scratching and eyebrow-raising - "Well, I've got news for you: today or a hundred years from now, it don't make a bit of difference. As far as they're concerned, we'll always be 'niggers'."

It was a jaw-dropper, especially for prime-time TV in 1998, but this was powerful stuff. No other sci-fi TV show that I can recall ever faced such an issue in such a way, certainly no-one ever said "nigger" at 7PM on TV, and yet it worked - the show didn't lose any credibility for it, and in fact the stories seemed all the more evocative and powerful because of that episode rather than in spite of it.

You may be wondering what the point of all this is. I was going to make this entry all about how we have such a weird attitude to words, and that we don't seem to understand that there are no bad words, only nasty contexts, and that whilst it's unpleasant to hear to many people (especially those suffering from White Guilt) there is nothing inherently wrong with the word "nigger", as much as there is with the context in which it's being used... but then, halfway through writing the entry, something happened.

Okay, so, as I was writing this entry, I was having a discussion about this episode with someone who, until this particular moment, seemed quite intelligent, and then he said something I'm going to take with me to the grave. In the year 2014, this man said the following: "It amazes me that they went with the whole "nigger-in-space" concept at all".

Now, I admit my responses were, even for me, kind of unprintable, but it set me to thinking - is this really an idea that still prevails? Racism - are we still perpetuating this horseshit?

And then I stumbled upon Chimpmania. This shit can't be real. I mean, Christ, is this shit real?

I was planning on copypasting some choice quotes from this "site", but fuck, dude, even I hesitate to propagate this shit, so click on the hyperlink and see for yourself. I just hope it's satire; I'm open-minded as fuck, but I have zero tolerance when it comes to racism. And I'm not talking about light-hearted ribbing at the "expense" of a demographic. Stereotyping for humour's sake is one thing, but out-and-out hatred of an entire race or nation of people simply because they are from a particular race or nation of people is fucking stupid.

There's a joke and then there's being a fucking moron.

Anyway, whatever. Just some thoughts on Star Trek and racism.

Oh, one last thing. Comment as you will, you know the score, but no private notes on this entry, please. Any and all private notes will be made public. I can't turn off private notes, but I can definitely shame you if you say something stupid to me in private.