Sense, Sensibility and Nonsense: A Sensitive Inquiry About Race and E:D Idea of the Future

You submission reminds me of Haber trying to get George Orr to dream into reality a world without racism, and they wake up to a world where everyone is a uniform gray color. The diversity, as you capture, isn't the issue - the nonfactual pre-judgment on the basis of that diversity is the problem. Nice video, thanks.

I was actually just talking about this with my cousin this morning; the root problematic issues of sexism and racism and the like. I'm gonna be lazy and copy/paste my comment from that:

It seems to me like one of the major problems with racism, sexism, and those sorts of issues isn't so much the feelings themselves that people have, it's lack of awareness to put those feelings into context, which then makes people think those feelings are always correct, or important enough to share.
For example; I and theoretical-sexist-pig-guy are both walking down the street and an incredibly beautiful lady walks by; no lie, our initial thoughts are probably going to be exactly the same.

The difference, I think, comes from when one of us entertains those thoughts more and dwells on them, and the other catches them, puts them into proper context, and then goes about the day.


In this context, I would say I don't think it's the pre-judgement that the so much the issue, I think that's a reflexive human instinct. It's failing to recognize the pre-judgement as a pre-judgement, and mistaking it for reality.
 
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I think that's very much on purpose - they want players to be able to just look at a power's portrait and get a good idea of their ethos. I don't think anyone here would be shocked to discover that Torval is a traditionalist, Hudson is a hawk or Aisling kinda wet behind the ears.

Absolutely. I'll bet the left nut on my Sidewinder that the team at FD sat down with the girl from the marketing department, the guy from PR and a sociologist/psychologist and said, "Now ... we need representation here."

I'm not trying to be cynical about it: it just makes sense from the point of view of FD. I'd love to see that statistics on which characters are the most popular - like, who's supporting Zemina Torval? My opinion isn't really valid in regard to PowerPlay, as I tried it briefly, and then bailed on it.

When the avatar design is implemented, then it'll be pretty awesome. Currently, my commander is female (I'm male) - I've always done this in games where the option is available to me. I'm not sure why; I guess that I've always felt that women are under-represented in games. I haven't thought about it enough, so I'm not sure. I'm a heterosexual, middle-aged guy ... it sounds kinda weird now that I think about it.

I'm going to go away for a minute and reflect on this. Hmmmm...
 
I also always assumed Patreus was of at least mixed origin, perhaps some Indian or Arab blood in there. Reminds me of a Vizer (evil of course, all Vizers are evil, its in the job description). I would believe there is some african blood there as well.

And Winters i definitely thought was at least half-black.

So, i really don't see the OPs issue here.

We had this discussion a good while back (pre-powerplay i think) where we discussed what humanity might look like in the future. Two of the options were:

1) The human race would intermingle more and more until most people were kind of mixed race, perhaps like southern spanish or arabian, the black, brown, white, races intermingling.

2) With the expansion into space, the intermingling would still happen on some worlds, probably the older worlds, but with the abilty for whole societies to set up cultures that match that of their homelands, they become more and more separate and diverse from each other. Given thousands of years, different colonies of mankind would perhaps even evolve away from each other, possibly to the point where the different species of man could no longer interbreed.

The second type has been covered extensively by many Sci-Fi authors, such as Dan Simmons and Peter F. Hamilton.

Look at some of the worlds of Elite, and i think we can see both types happening here.
 
You submission reminds me of Haber trying to get George Orr to dream into reality a world without racism, and they wake up to a world where everyone is a uniform gray color. The diversity, as you capture, isn't the issue - the nonfactual pre-judgment on the basis of that diversity is the problem. Nice video, thanks.
+1 for Lathe of Heaven reference.

The whole book was a cautionary tale of trying to fix the symptoms rather than the problems.
 
I also always assumed Patreus was of at least mixed origin, perhaps some Indian or Arab blood in there. Reminds me of a Vizer (evil of course, all Vizers are evil, its in the job description). I would believe there is some african blood there as well.

And Winters i definitely thought was at least half-black.

So, i really don't see the OPs issue here.

The issue is that there is not a single very dark character.
The variety among them is clear and great - doesn't mean they nailed it.
 
I also always assumed Patreus was of at least mixed origin, perhaps some Indian or Arab blood in there. Reminds me of a Vizer (evil of course, all Vizers are evil, its in the job description). I would believe there is some african blood there as well.

And Winters i definitely thought was at least half-black.

Not wanting to hijack this thread, as the OP has really brought a fascination topic to the table, but ... when I look at them, I make up their voices in my head. Does anyone else do this, or is it just me?
 
I also always assumed Patreus was of at least mixed origin, perhaps some Indian or Arab blood in there. Reminds me of a Vizer (evil of course, all Vizers are evil, its in the job description). I would believe there is some african blood there as well.

And Winters i definitely thought was at least half-black.

So, i really don't see the OPs issue here.

That I don't see black people among the people E: D has currently shown us in their future. You're not wrong in submitting that there might be, possibly, some conditionally dark-skinned people somewhere, but my exploration is their lack of forefront presence, one, and my/you/our sensibilities around these issues and any "gaming future" as a conversation.

We had this discussion a good while back (pre-powerplay i think) where we discussed what humanity might look like in the future. Two of the options were:

1) The human race would intermingle more and more until most people were kind of mixed race, perhaps like southern spanish or arabian, the black, brown, white, races intermingling.

2) With the expansion into space, the intermingling would still happen on some worlds, probably the older worlds, but with the abilty for whole societies to set up cultures that match that of their homelands, they become more and more separate and diverse from each other. Given thousands of years, different colonies of mankind would perhaps even evolve away from each other, possibly to the point where the different species of man could no longer interbreed.

The second type has been covered extensively by many Sci-Fi authors, such as Dan Simmons and Peter F. Hamilton.

Look at some of the worlds of Elite, and i think we can see both types happening here.

Interesting; would love to see that thread, thanks.
 
Here's my take on this.. I think we need to look back to Elite's lore to put things in perspective. According to it there was a nuclear war in 2040.. as in a global thermonuclear war with devastating effects. Now if we put that into context we can probably speculate an unfortunate negative outcome to this disastrous scenario. Third world and developing places like Africa generally are not equipped to deal with medical emergencies and disaster situations probably got the worst of the after-effects of the fallout hence why the number of darker skin people is drastically reduced to potentially only the descendants of those who live in the US, UK and other places. By this point they probably are well integrated in those societies and eventually intermingled... in a convoluted way I'm saying that in the future... Elite's future where World War III was a harsh reality there may not be too many if any really dark skinned people. The best bet would be darker skinned indo-Pakistani groups. If the story didn't evolved that way we probably would have seen a few stations and planets with distinctively African names and so far I haven't run across any.
 
You're a sly one. ;)

46lfwYv.jpg
 
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Here's my take on this.. I think we need to look back to Elite's lore to put things in perspective. According to it there was a nuclear war in 2040.. as in a global thermonuclear war with devastating effects. Now if we put that into context we can probably speculate an unfortunate negative outcome to this disastrous scenario. Third world and developing places like Africa generally are not equipped to deal with medical emergencies and disaster situations probably got the worst of the after-effects of the fallout hence why the number of darker skin people is drastically reduced to potentially only the descendants of those who live in the US, UK and other places. By this point they probably are well integrated in those societies and eventually intermingled... in a convoluted way I'm saying that in the future... Elite's future where World War III was a harsh reality there may not be too many if any really dark skinned people. The best bet would be darker skinned indo-Pakistani groups. If the story didn't evolved that way we probably would have seen a few stations and planets with distinctively African names and so far I haven't run across any.

Search for the planet called "New Africa". It has a moon that orbits every 90 seconds.
 
Search for the planet called "New Africa". It has a moon that orbits every 90 seconds.

Too generic I recall a nice song by Toto called Africa and those guys were pretty much white... now if you're talking about Dikembe Mutombo Relay or Hakeem Olajuwon Starport then you're talking.
 
Here's my take on this.. I think we need to look back to Elite's lore to put things in perspective. According to it there was a nuclear war in 2040.. as in a global thermonuclear war with devastating effects. Now if we put that into context we can probably speculate an unfortunate negative outcome to this disastrous scenario. Third world and developing places like Africa generally are not equipped to deal with medical emergencies and disaster situations probably got the worst of the after-effects of the fallout hence why the number of darker skin people is drastically reduced to potentially only the descendants of those who live in the US, UK and other places. By this point they probably are well integrated in those societies and eventually intermingled... in a convoluted way I'm saying that in the future... Elite's future where World War III was a harsh reality there may not be too many if any really dark skinned people. The best bet would be darker skinned indo-Pakistani groups. If the story didn't evolved that way we probably would have seen a few stations and planets with distinctively African names and so far I haven't run across any.

Interesting take; my take on your take, lol, is to differentiate the lore from the Frontier team. In one very good sense, the lore as you've articulated it could account for the lack of dark-skinned black people in the game generally, and in PP in particular; however, that lore was crafted by people with their own sensibilities, awarenesses, strengths, biases, emphases and ignorances. To wit, if I'm on the team and we are drilling down on that selfsame lore, I might argue that dark skin - being a protector against skin cancer and a harm in terms of absorbing enough Vitamin D - would, in a post-WWIII, irradiated world, lead to more (albeit Vitamin D deficient) dark-skinned people in the future, not less...that lacking dark skin would expose people like that to more radiation, not less, across the globe (aside: isn't that the subtextual take on Zion reflected in the Matrix series? Could be wrong....). So maybe that voice, during that lore-exploration, just wasn't present among the Frontier team, I don't know. But your take is an interesting one, thanks for sharing!
 
[...]So maybe that voice, during that lore-exploration, just wasn't present among the Frontier team, I don't know. But your take is an interesting one, thanks for sharing!

You are far too considerate Brennan.

How could anyone possible start a good flame war on that topic like this? Like, intentionally.

:p
 
2 observations:
A) the E:D personalities portrayed show lots more variance than the real-life group photos of Frontier Developments Make what you will.

B) I would expect in 3301 pigmentation of skin, eyes, membranes, etc to be as problematic as hair-tinting is today. Feature/body shaping/modding would be like getting a pedi/manicure today. Assuming of course that advancements plateau off for a while. Also, fads and seasonal styles.
 
They are all out there, it's just that space is black, so we can't see them. Dark Matter! Crisis Over! (Don't ban me! It was a joke!)
 
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This assumes that racism and geography will keep people from inter-mixing and mingling melanin levels.

Thankfully the reality is much lovelier than your antiquated rainbow notion, and by as early as 2050, this is what the average person will look like in America at least, and this will set a global trend as people migrate to avoid the consequences of global warming (eg Syria is just the beginning):


http://cdn1.trueactivist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/ng1a.jpg

Does this mean we'll all be women in 2050? ;)
 
Interesting take; my take on your take, lol, is to differentiate the lore from the Frontier team. In one very good sense, the lore as you've articulated it could account for the lack of dark-skinned black people in the game generally, and in PP in particular; however, that lore was crafted by people with their own sensibilities, awarenesses, strengths, biases, emphases and ignorances. To wit, if I'm on the team and we are drilling down on that selfsame lore, I might argue that dark skin - being a protector against skin cancer and a harm in terms of absorbing enough Vitamin D - would, in a post-WWIII, irradiated world, lead to more (albeit Vitamin D deficient) dark-skinned people in the future, not less...that lacking dark skin would expose people like that to more radiation, not less, across the globe (aside: isn't that the subtextual take on Zion reflected in the Matrix series? Could be wrong....). So maybe that voice, during that lore-exploration, just wasn't present among the Frontier team, I don't know. But your take is an interesting one, thanks for sharing!

Thanks! This is just me trying to have a "logical" interpretation to what has been established as Elite's background which at this point is a given... and than again it may not be, just look at the jump from Elite to Frontier (not our galaxy filled with aliens to an empty version of ours with crappy relativistic drives) and then from First Encounters to ED (Thargoids gone?, even emptier space and awesome hyperspace drives).

The good thing is with character creator we'll be able to go whatever direction we want, perhaps with enough interest you'll get more content that way. Best of luck with it!

- - - Updated - - -

Does this mean we'll all be women in 2050? ;)

That's how the Thargoids roll.
 
I do expect the elite galaxy to be very white, and here's why.
Black skin is a self-defense mechanism associated with long, and much exposure to sunlight. However, as a thousand years have passed, sunlight protection has become a thing about everyone have, and therefore, given natural selection, white skin would be more common. Only on very poor planets, where people cannot afford this, there would be black-skinned people.

Well at least that's my assumption.
(But i do have to agree, some black-skinned people would be nice)
 
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