Cultural Studies essay #2
Sep. 3rd, 2007 12:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bagheera_sanI continue to spam you with Star Trek meta posing as essays. They're wonderfully easy to write because I don't have to spend 90% of my time researching and quoting secondary sources.
Television, or any kind of media, is part of any kind of discourse within a society, be it political, religious or social. It represents that discourse, and the way it represents it is shaped by the prevalent opinions and beliefs within society, but in turn, television is enormously influential and has the power to shape the discourse and change it. Television can consolidate opinions or challenge them, and it reaches a huge number of people. Therefore popular culture like television shows cannot simply be discarded in any serious discussion of the interrelation between art and culture. In their essay on "Racial Formation", Omi and Winant point out that television is also a huge factor in shaping our ideas about racial identity. The characters of television series must be easily recognisable for a huge audience, and since not all members of an audience watch every episode of a series, the easiest way to make a cast instantly familiar to irregular viewers is to outfit them with a couple of more or less stereotypical core characteristics: age, gender, economic and social status as represented by their way of talking and dressing, and race.
At first sight, a show like Star Trek might seem more or less isolated from the discourse about race. It is set in a future where racial boundaries among humans have ceased to be important. The crew members of the Enterprise, Deep Space Nine or the Voyager seem to be blind to whether a person is "white" or "black". The most that can apparently be said about Star Trek in terms of race is that is an utopia without racism.
But Star Trek works with metaphors. The metaphor for race is species, although in some cases "species" might not only stand for racial identity, but for gender, culture or religion as well. The universe of Star Trek is populated with a wide range of humanoid and non-humanoid aliens and entities like holograms, androids and energy beings that are not even biological, but are regarded as sentient persons nonetheless. While the human cast is free of racial stereotypes, alien races are often defined by just a few characteristics. Vulcans are logical, Ferengi are cowardly and greedy, Klingons are passionate and aggressive, androids do not possess emotions and have a hard time grasping the complexities of human language and interaction. The variation within these groups is very small, but often the main characters are caught between different groups and identities.
Star Trek progresses from a relatively simple message of tolerance to more complicated and less easily resolved issues of identity. In "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", an episode of the original series, the Enterprise encounters two beings who at first appear to be of the same species, Comissioner Bele and the fugitive he hunts, Lokai. Both are black on one side and white on the other. But it turns out that for the two of them, it is very important whether they are black on the left and white on the right or the other way round. It was on this basis that those which looked like Bele suppressed those which looked like Lokai, claiming that the different distribution of skin colour made them naturally inferior. The difference on which they base their distinction of race is a biological one, but they claim that it has an impact on their behaviour. Indeed, Bele and Lokai behave differently. Lokai is the more emotional of the two, while Bele is cool and aloof, and Bele can command the Enterprise with his mind, while Lokai appears unable to do so. But whether it is their nature or their nurture that makes the difference is never clarified; it could just as easily be that their roles as law-enforcer and oppressed revolutionary have brought about the difference. It hardly matters, since the episode's message is one of tolerance – their intolerance leads to the mutual destruction of Bele's and Lokai's people. Their insistence on a fundamental difference is portrayed as stupid and small-minded. Nevertheless the episode does enforce a number of stereotypes: the oppressed "race" has less refined manners and the oppressing "race" has better technology – Bele's invisible ship – and more developed skills, which might lead to the conclusion that they are if not the more intelligent, then the more scientifically-minded ones.
The Federation of the original series is not entirely free of racism, either. While the human members of the crew are never racist among themselves, Spock, who is half-human and half-Vulcan, may have equal rights, but he is not treated equally. Often discriminating remarks about his Vulcan personality and biology are made, and his friends Kirk and McCoy never cease to encourage him to behave more humanly. While Spock is clearly their intellectual and physical superior, they hardly ever aspire to be more like him. Spock is also one of the few aliens living among humans who emphasizes his alienness rather than adapting to them.
The Next Generation deconstructs the Federation utopia further. In episodes like "The Drumhead" and "Measure of a Man", people of "racial" minorities are not simply treated differently, but their very rights are threatened. In "The Drumhead", two people are discriminated due to their species: a Klingon exchange officer and a young man whose grandfather was Romulan. An apparent act of sabotage and the suspicion that the Romulans were behind it leads to an investigation. The Klingon exchange officer is quickly discovered to be a spy, but the persecutor, Admiral Satie, is convinced that Simon Tarses, the one-fourth Romulan, is also a spy. For Satie, the fact that he has any Romulan blood at all makes him Romulan – a clear parallel to the belief that anyone with ancestors who are anything but white is automatically non-white, regardless of how they look or identify. Simon Tarses, however, turns out to be innocent: socially, he is one hundred percent human. The only effect his biological heritage has had on Tarses is that he had to live with a lie in order to hide that he had Romulan ancestors, but this is due to social pressure. Thus the definition of race/species as presented in "The Drumhead" is two-fold: discrimination based on a biological definition of race/species and identity formation based on social factors.
"Measure of a Man" also deals with discrimination, but this time the problem is even more complex. Tarses is treated differently based on prejudice, but what is held against the android Data is far more substantial that prejudice. Data is different, and even his friends find it hard to argue that he is "equal". To say the definition of race in "Measure of a Man" is biological is to stretch the definition of biological quite a bit, since Data is technically not alive even though he is sentient*, but it is definitely not a social definition: it is not his social environment and upbringing that makes Data different, but his innate incapability to emulate humans as perfectly as he wishes to do. Throughout most of the episode, Data's difference is not treated as a racial trait: since there are no other androids besides Data** , he is treated as an isolated case. The question is whether Data, who is not biological, has the same rights as a humanoid lifeform. Only in order to save Data, Picard invokes the spectre of a whole "race" of Datas who would be treated as slaves without rights. The definition of this android race would then be both social – as defined by their rights – and "biological" – based on their physical make-up.
Again, "Measure of a Man" features a few common stereotypes about minorities. For example, Data aspires to adapt to the human majority of his environment, although, as in Spock's case, he is superior to them in many aspects. Also, surprise is displayed at the discovery that Data had an "inter-racial" relationship with a human officer, revealing common prejudice against romantic relationships between people of different cultural backgrounds even in the enlightened society of the Federation.
An episode where "race" is seen as an entirely social concept is Deep Space Nine's "Far Beyond The Stars". Unlike all other episodes discussed here, it is set on Earth in the 1950s. Captain Sisko suddenly finds himself living the life of science-fiction writer Benny Russell. In his vision of Benny's life, he encounters many of his friends and foes on Deep Space Nine, aliens and humans alike, living as humans in the 1950s. But while it does hardly matter for Captain Benjamin Sisko that he is black, it matters a great deal for Benny Russell. He and the other black members of the cast, as well as the female ones, find themselves discriminated against in the world of the fifties. The magazine Benny writes for hides the fact that he is a black writer, white policemen assault him on the street, and even his girlfriend tells him to give up writing because he is never going to make a career in it as a black man. The episode, perhaps because it needs to establish a host of "new" characters in a very short space of time, is chock full of racial and gender stereotypes. There is the athletic black man, the black juvenile delinquent, the black woman working as a waitress and the black street preacher, but there are also the racist white policemen, the pretty but dumb white secretary and the emancipated white woman.
The black and white characters are not different from each other the way Data or the aliens of Star Trek are different from humans. It is merely social convention that keeps them separate and unequal and this is clearly portrayed as wrong in the episode. They have widely different attitudes towards this: everyone is aware that Benny is a black writer, but while his white colleagues try their best to pretend they do not notice, his black friends never cease to remind him of it, either to discourage him or to get him to display more racial pride and solidarity. While the white characters have differing political opinions and argue among themselves, the black characters are depicted as a tight-knit group in which everyone knows everyone else. They have ambitions – being a sports star, opening a diner – but they are intensely aware of their limitations. Apart from Benny, none of them hopes for change, and Benny is portrayed as a dreamer. Benny himself chooses race as a topic in his story: he writes about a future in which blacks are equal. His refusal to change the topic gets him fired and he ends up having a complete breakdown. While the episode assures us that things have changed in the future of Star Trek, how they changed is never shown.
Aside from the 1950s world of racial struggles and discrimination portrayed in this episode, Deep Space Nine is interesting in its portrayal of black characters in the science-fiction setting and the stereotypes it adheres to. Unlike the original series and The Next Generation, which completely ignored race among its human cast of characters, Captain Sisko and his family are portrayed as aware of their ethnicity. Sisko's parents, his dead wife, his girlfriend, his son – all are black***. He is an athletic man who likes boxing and baseball; compared to Kirk, Picard and Janeway, he is the most emotional and religious Starfleet captain. While Sisko as a captain has a high social status, his father is merely a restaurant owner and cook. In one episode, Sisko refuses to visit the holosuite program of Vic Fontaine's bar because the historical period in which it is set was one in which blacks were discriminated against. Like the Native Americans in the Next Generation episode "Journey's End", he is aware of the history of his ethnic group.
In the Deep Space Nine episode "Chimera", it is shapeshifter Odo who deals with his "race", but once again the metaphor of species is used. Like Data, Odo is genuinely different from humans and unless he physically becomes human, he will never overcome the difference. For most of his life, Odo, like Data, was isolated among humans, a single freak of nature. Unlike Data, Odo was treated badly from the start, and did not wish to be more human because he believed humans to be superior, but simply to escape discrimination. Only in the course of the series he discovers that there exists a whole species of "changelings", the Founders. But they are hostile conquerors, and soon the Federation finds themselves at war with the Founders. Odo chooses his friends – his "social" race – over his species – his "biological" race. Like many alien species in the Star Trek universe, the Founders seem less diverse than humans. The uniformity of their "racial group" goes so far that in their natural state, they exist not as individuals, but as a single entity, the "Great Link".
In "Chimera", he encounters Laas, another changeling who grew up among humanoids. Odo and Laas are immediately intensely attracted to each other because of their similar background****. Laas is fascinated by the idea that there might be more changelings who grew up among "solids" and he wants to set out with Odo to find more of these changelings and form a new "race" of changelings who are neither Founders nor solids. But Odo chooses to stay behind with his humanoid lover Kira and in the final scene he attempts to "link" with her.
Odo and Laas have radically different attitudes towards their "racial" identity. Laas is proud and unashamed of his difference, although his arrogant pride seems rather defensive. He does not try to adapt to or mingle with solids, and he is unafraid of confrontation. He believes that the difference between solids and changelings is too great for them to live in harmony, and that changelings are superior to solids. The hostile attitude Laas and the Founders display is a response to hostility from humanoids: changelings have always been persecuted. The basis of their mutual hatred is fear of the "other". This gives us insight into the minds of the enlightened humans of the Star Trek universe. While they have become much more tolerant than we, they have not entirely overcome xenophobia.
Odo, on the other hand, is almost ashamed of his difference, and he tries to keep his shape-shifting a private matter, allegedly because it would make the solids "uncomfortable" to be reminded that he is different. Odo is afraid of rejection and hostility, and while he knows and accepts that he is different, he tries his best to "pass". "You deny your true nature in order to fit in," Laas claims. Even with Kira, his lover and closest friend, Odo behaves as much as a solid as his possible for him. Only when she tells him, "If I ever made you feel you couldn't be yourself with me, I'm sorry," he opens up enough to touch her in his true, non-solid form.
For Odo, racial identity is a choice, a matter of adapting his looks and behaviour to the group he wants to belong to, whereas for Laas biology determines identity and any attempt to adapt is to deny your true nature and debase yourself. The episode "Chimera" seems to say that Odo is right and that identity is a consciously made construct. But only eleven episodes later, in the final episode of Deep Space Nine, Odo leaves Kira and his humanoid friends in order to live with the Founders. He does so out of necessity because it is the only way to cure them from a disease and end the war, but this choice still calls the message of "Chimera" into question. Is Laas right in the end? Are people meant to live with those that are "like" them? Could Odo and Kira have lived happily together despite their differences, or would Odo always have remained isolated among solids?
For a show that portrays an utopian society without racism, Star Trek deals surprisingly often with issues of race and racial identity. In many cases, nature rather than nurture determines the personality of characters. For example, Spock's logicality and Worf's hot temper are portrayed as racial traits. When a character makes the conscious choice to live differently than his or her nature dictates, this always leads to friction and difficulty, but at the same time, it is portrayed as a worthwhile effort – at least when they are trying to be more "human", for example in the case of Nog, a young Ferengi who becomes a Starfleet member. Since humanity and the Federation have traditionally been metaphors for Western values and US culture, the message Star Trek seems to send is that the ideal society is a melting pot in which cultural identity of individuals is maintained up to a certain level, but their moral values all conform to the same, western ideal. Star Trek also shows that while it is natural to fear and reject difference at first, the further a society progresses the more tolerant it becomes. The mission statement, after all, is "to seek out new life and new civilizations", which presupposes a sense of curiosity and openness for the "other".
Footnotes:
*The biological definition of life hinges on these factors: reproduction (which Data achieves through his "daughter" Lal), response to stimulus, metabolism (arguably, Data "metabolizes" some form of energy) and growth. So whether Data is alive or not is difficult to say.
** Except his "brother" Lore of course, and the other versions of Data discovered in Star Trek: Nemesis
*** Actually, Sisko's mother is a wormhole alien, but she poses as a human to marry his father.
**** They "link" which is the closest changeling equivalent to sex.
Also, I need a Star Trek icon.
Television, or any kind of media, is part of any kind of discourse within a society, be it political, religious or social. It represents that discourse, and the way it represents it is shaped by the prevalent opinions and beliefs within society, but in turn, television is enormously influential and has the power to shape the discourse and change it. Television can consolidate opinions or challenge them, and it reaches a huge number of people. Therefore popular culture like television shows cannot simply be discarded in any serious discussion of the interrelation between art and culture. In their essay on "Racial Formation", Omi and Winant point out that television is also a huge factor in shaping our ideas about racial identity. The characters of television series must be easily recognisable for a huge audience, and since not all members of an audience watch every episode of a series, the easiest way to make a cast instantly familiar to irregular viewers is to outfit them with a couple of more or less stereotypical core characteristics: age, gender, economic and social status as represented by their way of talking and dressing, and race.
At first sight, a show like Star Trek might seem more or less isolated from the discourse about race. It is set in a future where racial boundaries among humans have ceased to be important. The crew members of the Enterprise, Deep Space Nine or the Voyager seem to be blind to whether a person is "white" or "black". The most that can apparently be said about Star Trek in terms of race is that is an utopia without racism.
But Star Trek works with metaphors. The metaphor for race is species, although in some cases "species" might not only stand for racial identity, but for gender, culture or religion as well. The universe of Star Trek is populated with a wide range of humanoid and non-humanoid aliens and entities like holograms, androids and energy beings that are not even biological, but are regarded as sentient persons nonetheless. While the human cast is free of racial stereotypes, alien races are often defined by just a few characteristics. Vulcans are logical, Ferengi are cowardly and greedy, Klingons are passionate and aggressive, androids do not possess emotions and have a hard time grasping the complexities of human language and interaction. The variation within these groups is very small, but often the main characters are caught between different groups and identities.
Star Trek progresses from a relatively simple message of tolerance to more complicated and less easily resolved issues of identity. In "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", an episode of the original series, the Enterprise encounters two beings who at first appear to be of the same species, Comissioner Bele and the fugitive he hunts, Lokai. Both are black on one side and white on the other. But it turns out that for the two of them, it is very important whether they are black on the left and white on the right or the other way round. It was on this basis that those which looked like Bele suppressed those which looked like Lokai, claiming that the different distribution of skin colour made them naturally inferior. The difference on which they base their distinction of race is a biological one, but they claim that it has an impact on their behaviour. Indeed, Bele and Lokai behave differently. Lokai is the more emotional of the two, while Bele is cool and aloof, and Bele can command the Enterprise with his mind, while Lokai appears unable to do so. But whether it is their nature or their nurture that makes the difference is never clarified; it could just as easily be that their roles as law-enforcer and oppressed revolutionary have brought about the difference. It hardly matters, since the episode's message is one of tolerance – their intolerance leads to the mutual destruction of Bele's and Lokai's people. Their insistence on a fundamental difference is portrayed as stupid and small-minded. Nevertheless the episode does enforce a number of stereotypes: the oppressed "race" has less refined manners and the oppressing "race" has better technology – Bele's invisible ship – and more developed skills, which might lead to the conclusion that they are if not the more intelligent, then the more scientifically-minded ones.
The Federation of the original series is not entirely free of racism, either. While the human members of the crew are never racist among themselves, Spock, who is half-human and half-Vulcan, may have equal rights, but he is not treated equally. Often discriminating remarks about his Vulcan personality and biology are made, and his friends Kirk and McCoy never cease to encourage him to behave more humanly. While Spock is clearly their intellectual and physical superior, they hardly ever aspire to be more like him. Spock is also one of the few aliens living among humans who emphasizes his alienness rather than adapting to them.
The Next Generation deconstructs the Federation utopia further. In episodes like "The Drumhead" and "Measure of a Man", people of "racial" minorities are not simply treated differently, but their very rights are threatened. In "The Drumhead", two people are discriminated due to their species: a Klingon exchange officer and a young man whose grandfather was Romulan. An apparent act of sabotage and the suspicion that the Romulans were behind it leads to an investigation. The Klingon exchange officer is quickly discovered to be a spy, but the persecutor, Admiral Satie, is convinced that Simon Tarses, the one-fourth Romulan, is also a spy. For Satie, the fact that he has any Romulan blood at all makes him Romulan – a clear parallel to the belief that anyone with ancestors who are anything but white is automatically non-white, regardless of how they look or identify. Simon Tarses, however, turns out to be innocent: socially, he is one hundred percent human. The only effect his biological heritage has had on Tarses is that he had to live with a lie in order to hide that he had Romulan ancestors, but this is due to social pressure. Thus the definition of race/species as presented in "The Drumhead" is two-fold: discrimination based on a biological definition of race/species and identity formation based on social factors.
"Measure of a Man" also deals with discrimination, but this time the problem is even more complex. Tarses is treated differently based on prejudice, but what is held against the android Data is far more substantial that prejudice. Data is different, and even his friends find it hard to argue that he is "equal". To say the definition of race in "Measure of a Man" is biological is to stretch the definition of biological quite a bit, since Data is technically not alive even though he is sentient*, but it is definitely not a social definition: it is not his social environment and upbringing that makes Data different, but his innate incapability to emulate humans as perfectly as he wishes to do. Throughout most of the episode, Data's difference is not treated as a racial trait: since there are no other androids besides Data** , he is treated as an isolated case. The question is whether Data, who is not biological, has the same rights as a humanoid lifeform. Only in order to save Data, Picard invokes the spectre of a whole "race" of Datas who would be treated as slaves without rights. The definition of this android race would then be both social – as defined by their rights – and "biological" – based on their physical make-up.
Again, "Measure of a Man" features a few common stereotypes about minorities. For example, Data aspires to adapt to the human majority of his environment, although, as in Spock's case, he is superior to them in many aspects. Also, surprise is displayed at the discovery that Data had an "inter-racial" relationship with a human officer, revealing common prejudice against romantic relationships between people of different cultural backgrounds even in the enlightened society of the Federation.
An episode where "race" is seen as an entirely social concept is Deep Space Nine's "Far Beyond The Stars". Unlike all other episodes discussed here, it is set on Earth in the 1950s. Captain Sisko suddenly finds himself living the life of science-fiction writer Benny Russell. In his vision of Benny's life, he encounters many of his friends and foes on Deep Space Nine, aliens and humans alike, living as humans in the 1950s. But while it does hardly matter for Captain Benjamin Sisko that he is black, it matters a great deal for Benny Russell. He and the other black members of the cast, as well as the female ones, find themselves discriminated against in the world of the fifties. The magazine Benny writes for hides the fact that he is a black writer, white policemen assault him on the street, and even his girlfriend tells him to give up writing because he is never going to make a career in it as a black man. The episode, perhaps because it needs to establish a host of "new" characters in a very short space of time, is chock full of racial and gender stereotypes. There is the athletic black man, the black juvenile delinquent, the black woman working as a waitress and the black street preacher, but there are also the racist white policemen, the pretty but dumb white secretary and the emancipated white woman.
The black and white characters are not different from each other the way Data or the aliens of Star Trek are different from humans. It is merely social convention that keeps them separate and unequal and this is clearly portrayed as wrong in the episode. They have widely different attitudes towards this: everyone is aware that Benny is a black writer, but while his white colleagues try their best to pretend they do not notice, his black friends never cease to remind him of it, either to discourage him or to get him to display more racial pride and solidarity. While the white characters have differing political opinions and argue among themselves, the black characters are depicted as a tight-knit group in which everyone knows everyone else. They have ambitions – being a sports star, opening a diner – but they are intensely aware of their limitations. Apart from Benny, none of them hopes for change, and Benny is portrayed as a dreamer. Benny himself chooses race as a topic in his story: he writes about a future in which blacks are equal. His refusal to change the topic gets him fired and he ends up having a complete breakdown. While the episode assures us that things have changed in the future of Star Trek, how they changed is never shown.
Aside from the 1950s world of racial struggles and discrimination portrayed in this episode, Deep Space Nine is interesting in its portrayal of black characters in the science-fiction setting and the stereotypes it adheres to. Unlike the original series and The Next Generation, which completely ignored race among its human cast of characters, Captain Sisko and his family are portrayed as aware of their ethnicity. Sisko's parents, his dead wife, his girlfriend, his son – all are black***. He is an athletic man who likes boxing and baseball; compared to Kirk, Picard and Janeway, he is the most emotional and religious Starfleet captain. While Sisko as a captain has a high social status, his father is merely a restaurant owner and cook. In one episode, Sisko refuses to visit the holosuite program of Vic Fontaine's bar because the historical period in which it is set was one in which blacks were discriminated against. Like the Native Americans in the Next Generation episode "Journey's End", he is aware of the history of his ethnic group.
In the Deep Space Nine episode "Chimera", it is shapeshifter Odo who deals with his "race", but once again the metaphor of species is used. Like Data, Odo is genuinely different from humans and unless he physically becomes human, he will never overcome the difference. For most of his life, Odo, like Data, was isolated among humans, a single freak of nature. Unlike Data, Odo was treated badly from the start, and did not wish to be more human because he believed humans to be superior, but simply to escape discrimination. Only in the course of the series he discovers that there exists a whole species of "changelings", the Founders. But they are hostile conquerors, and soon the Federation finds themselves at war with the Founders. Odo chooses his friends – his "social" race – over his species – his "biological" race. Like many alien species in the Star Trek universe, the Founders seem less diverse than humans. The uniformity of their "racial group" goes so far that in their natural state, they exist not as individuals, but as a single entity, the "Great Link".
In "Chimera", he encounters Laas, another changeling who grew up among humanoids. Odo and Laas are immediately intensely attracted to each other because of their similar background****. Laas is fascinated by the idea that there might be more changelings who grew up among "solids" and he wants to set out with Odo to find more of these changelings and form a new "race" of changelings who are neither Founders nor solids. But Odo chooses to stay behind with his humanoid lover Kira and in the final scene he attempts to "link" with her.
Odo and Laas have radically different attitudes towards their "racial" identity. Laas is proud and unashamed of his difference, although his arrogant pride seems rather defensive. He does not try to adapt to or mingle with solids, and he is unafraid of confrontation. He believes that the difference between solids and changelings is too great for them to live in harmony, and that changelings are superior to solids. The hostile attitude Laas and the Founders display is a response to hostility from humanoids: changelings have always been persecuted. The basis of their mutual hatred is fear of the "other". This gives us insight into the minds of the enlightened humans of the Star Trek universe. While they have become much more tolerant than we, they have not entirely overcome xenophobia.
Odo, on the other hand, is almost ashamed of his difference, and he tries to keep his shape-shifting a private matter, allegedly because it would make the solids "uncomfortable" to be reminded that he is different. Odo is afraid of rejection and hostility, and while he knows and accepts that he is different, he tries his best to "pass". "You deny your true nature in order to fit in," Laas claims. Even with Kira, his lover and closest friend, Odo behaves as much as a solid as his possible for him. Only when she tells him, "If I ever made you feel you couldn't be yourself with me, I'm sorry," he opens up enough to touch her in his true, non-solid form.
For Odo, racial identity is a choice, a matter of adapting his looks and behaviour to the group he wants to belong to, whereas for Laas biology determines identity and any attempt to adapt is to deny your true nature and debase yourself. The episode "Chimera" seems to say that Odo is right and that identity is a consciously made construct. But only eleven episodes later, in the final episode of Deep Space Nine, Odo leaves Kira and his humanoid friends in order to live with the Founders. He does so out of necessity because it is the only way to cure them from a disease and end the war, but this choice still calls the message of "Chimera" into question. Is Laas right in the end? Are people meant to live with those that are "like" them? Could Odo and Kira have lived happily together despite their differences, or would Odo always have remained isolated among solids?
For a show that portrays an utopian society without racism, Star Trek deals surprisingly often with issues of race and racial identity. In many cases, nature rather than nurture determines the personality of characters. For example, Spock's logicality and Worf's hot temper are portrayed as racial traits. When a character makes the conscious choice to live differently than his or her nature dictates, this always leads to friction and difficulty, but at the same time, it is portrayed as a worthwhile effort – at least when they are trying to be more "human", for example in the case of Nog, a young Ferengi who becomes a Starfleet member. Since humanity and the Federation have traditionally been metaphors for Western values and US culture, the message Star Trek seems to send is that the ideal society is a melting pot in which cultural identity of individuals is maintained up to a certain level, but their moral values all conform to the same, western ideal. Star Trek also shows that while it is natural to fear and reject difference at first, the further a society progresses the more tolerant it becomes. The mission statement, after all, is "to seek out new life and new civilizations", which presupposes a sense of curiosity and openness for the "other".
Footnotes:
*The biological definition of life hinges on these factors: reproduction (which Data achieves through his "daughter" Lal), response to stimulus, metabolism (arguably, Data "metabolizes" some form of energy) and growth. So whether Data is alive or not is difficult to say.
** Except his "brother" Lore of course, and the other versions of Data discovered in Star Trek: Nemesis
*** Actually, Sisko's mother is a wormhole alien, but she poses as a human to marry his father.
**** They "link" which is the closest changeling equivalent to sex.
Also, I need a Star Trek icon.
