Thank you! Partly, it's that the show was a product of the 90s. A lot of these issues weren't part of the larger cultural conversation around culture, race, and religion. If they'd had a majority-minority writers' room they might have spotted this as an issue, but even then maybe not. Now, looking back, it's a really obvious problem. But back then? I don't blame them for not realizing this and addressing it. I just have to deal with it for the show to make any sense to me now, from the perspective of the 21st Century.
And sorry for not replying earlier! My spam folder ate this one. (Why this one and not a couple of other comment emails from ad astra, I have no idea.)
Taking a wider lens, it's even more interesting because in-universe (as confirmed in VOY) Federation Standard is indeed ENGLISH, not just rendered into English for the benefit of the audience. So, any alien who did a deep dive on human history, pre WWIII, would note that the lingua franca of the Federation is the same one used by the two most powerful colonial empires (meaning Britain and the United States, a bit more loosely in the case of the US) in history.
Also, the seats of power for United Earth and the Federation at large are all located in the United States and Europe, ffs.
I'm also wondering just how difficult it was to get, say, China to give up their sovereignty to a Western-dominated power structure and join United Earth (I'm just talking in general and assuming that the PRC isn't a thing anymore by this time). I know in the Litverse they're listed along with the US and Australia as the last nations to join.
Yeah! And Nerys, who probably did not get that much education in the camps and when she was in the Resistance, and who is very busy with a very important job, is probably not going to do that deep dive. But I bet you there are Bajoran academics who have!
And also, it wouldn't take an alien to do that deep dive. I betcha there are a lot of humans very aware of it! There's an AOS story I read years ago on AO3, about OCs of color who are very aware that there's colorism still in Starfleet and where you're from affects what type of ships you get posted to. But I looked for it just now and couldn't find it.
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Beatrice_Otter Mon 26 Jun 2023 02:34AM UTC
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Beatrice_Otter Mon 26 Jun 2023 03:40AM UTC
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