Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to discuss the baffling conundrum that is the racist Star Trek "fan." We know not from whence they came, but they seem to be hellbent on ruining Gene Roddenberry's vision for us decent nerd folk.
If you haven't heard yet, CBS is launching a new Star Trek show, Star Trek: Discovery, which will star Sonequa Martin-Green and Michelle Yeoh, continuing Star Trek's tradition of having diverse casts and characters. Some "fans," however, have taken issue with Sonequa Martin-Green's casting in particular. This is ridiculous for three reasons:
If your "good reason" for bashing Martin-Green's casting is that you think Discovery won't be good in light of the recent Trek movies, your argument has no leg to stand on without having actually seen Discovery. A trailer all of two minutes and twenty-four seconds doesn't give you anything close to sufficient ground to make that claim. You're likely just using said reason as a way to appear objective so that your actual issue, the black female character who will be the protagonist and center of the show, doesn't get you called out.
EVERY true Trek fan knows that Gene Roddenberry, the show's creator, was a huge advocate for equality and diversity.
The show has been racially diverse since the very beginning. (So, um, racist, faux Trekkies...are you just gonna go ahead and forget Uhura and Sulu? Yeah? Mmkay.)
It is just odd that people who hate "PC culture" (Rolled my eyes just writing that.) and "SJWs" would call themselves a fan of a show that not only revolutionized science fiction, but American television as well. It boldly went where few American shows want to think about venturing even nowadays in our present so-called "post-racial" society. While the show wasn't perfect in terms of diversity, having Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) and George Takei (Sulu) as main characters was a significant and defining action. They were characters who weren't servants or "comedic" stereotyped caricatures, and that in itself was a huge statement.
Like many POC who are sci-fi fans, I grew up watching Star Trek--The Next Generation, Voyager, Deep Space Nine--and it's one of the things that made me love the genre. So when I see racists spewing hatred about a series of whose vision and credo they refuse to acknowledge or comprehend, it aggravates me. It aggravates me because they profess that they love the same series that I do, yet they believe that racism is not only okay, but a reasonable, positive thing.
Quite frankly, it's an insult, but hey, if their goals in life are to be living definitions of cognitive dissonance, who am I to stop them?