“May we together become greater than the sum of both of us.” ~Surak
Few attributes of the Star Trek universe stand out as starkly as its commitment to the concept of diversity. From the debut of the original series, the broadcast of the very first episode on Sept. 8, 1966, audiences could see that commitment up close. Alongside the white guy stood an Asian, a black woman, a Southerner, an alien – and, before long, a Russian.
That commitment would continue through series after series, as Trek gave us a multiracial family (Chief O’Brien and Keiko on Deep Space Nine), a black captain (Sisko), a female captain (Janeway) – and, here in the 21st century, a black female captain (Michael Burnham on Discovery), a number of LGBTQ characters in her crew; Voyager’s Seven of Nine in a same-sex relationship on Star Trek: Picard; Spock and Uhura in a relationship in the Kelvin Timeline, as well as Sulu’s family.
That diversity was nestled not only in the core of Trek, but in Gene Roddenberry’s own humanism. He commented on it many times, summing it up as follows:
“If man is to survive, he will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures. He will learn that differences in ideas and attitudes are a delight, part of life's exciting variety, not something to fear.”
Trek’s diversity commentary extended beyond race and sexuality to mind, spirit, and life in any form. From Spock’s reconciliation of his own dual nature to Sisko’s participation in the Bajoran faith, from Janeway’s acceptance of ex-Borg Seven of Nine to the friendship between Geordi LaForge and Data, Trek has celebrated diversity endlessly, living up to its creators’ humanist vision.
Kirk himself expressed it perfectly in “The Savage Curtain”: “We’ve each learned to be delighted with what we are.” That self-acceptance – the social norm in Trek’s idealized human future – reflects a universal acceptance and tolerance that pervades humanity through the 23rd century and beyond.
We might even note the very stark contrast between that beautiful social norm and the much darker one that permeates the Federation’s most horrifying adversary, the Borg – a vast collective of beings completely stripped of all individuality. Anti-diversity.
We can even note that diversity is so deeply inculcated in Trek that we notice it most when it goes missing:
The Horta has killed 50 miners on Janus VI and placed the lives of everyone in the colony at risk – and the surviving miners want it dead. But Spock discovers that the Horta is no monster, but a mother protecting her young: the miners have been destroying the useless silicon nodules they keep finding, which are in fact her eggs.
When they threaten to attack the creature, Kirk levels his phaser at them: “The first man that fires is dead.” The dedication to diversity here is clear, not only in the defense of the Horta by Kirk and Spock, but by the ready acceptance of the miners, once the situation is made clear to them.
Alexander has been stripped of his dignity, reduced to slavery and literally treated like a house pet by his fellow Platonian colonists, all of whom have become incorrigible narcissists since acquiring telekinetic powers - which Alexander lacks, leaving him at their mercy. Alexander is a dwarf, and is mocked and demeaned for it.
Kirk befriends him, and seeks to learn from him about the power of the other colonists:
"Alexander, are there other Platonians like you?”
“What do you mean, ‘like me?’” Alexander asked guardedly.
“Who don’t have the psychokinetic ability,” Kirk clarifies.
Alexander is relieved. “I thought you were talking about my size, because they make fun of me for my size. But, to answer your question, I’m the only one without it. I was brought here as the court buffoon. That’s why I’m everybody’s slave and I have to be ten places at once, and I never do anything right.”
Spock asks Alexander about the power, and Kirk comments that he and the other Enterprise officers are perfectly happy without it.
“You know, I believe you are,” Alexander responds. “Listen, where you come from, are there a lot of people without the power, and my size?”
“Alexander, where I come from, size, shape, or color makes no difference.”
These examples (and there are, of course, many more) project an image of a society that has embraced diversity in all its forms, just as Roddenberry foresaw. The citizens of the Federation and the personnel of Starfleet in particular have gotten over the racism, ethnocentrism, misogyny and other social toxins that still contaminate humankind today.
It is exactly this commitment to diversity, and the recognition that its absence is toxic to us all, that motivates humanists. It is an integral part of the humanist social framework, and tops the list of humanist aspirations for our progress as a species.
Otherness vs. Sameness
The health and benefit of diversity might seem so obvious and essential that it might baffle those who embrace it that anyone would feel otherwise. But, of course, many do; on the flip side of diversity we find xenophobia – more recently rebranded othering, the ancient tradition of lumping some people into a rejected or despised group apart from one’s own.
Othering serves up mirror-image versions of diversity’s categories: there is ethnic othering, religious othering, gender- or sex-based othering. Political othering, in particular, has made a spectacle of itself in recent years.
What is at the core of othering?
“Othering is not about liking or disliking someone,” wrote John A. Powell in The Guardian. “It is based on the conscious or unconscious assumption that a certain identified group poses a threat to the favoured group. It is largely driven by politicians and the media, as opposed to personal contact. Overwhelmingly, people don’t “know” those that they are Othering.”
It’s that threat that drives otherness, wrote Čega se bojiš on Wordpress. “The fear of otherness is closely linked to the fear of the unknown and to the degree of trust in people. It is based on the fact that someone by their existence endangers what we consider ‘our own’ or ‘ours.’ It is often manifested in the form of fear that someone who has a different cultural characteristic to us – such as faith, language, customs and value system – endangers ‘our’ culture and way of life. According to this matrix, the influx of other people’s elements into our cultural register leads to the long-term loss of ‘our’ identity and cultural affiliation.
“Otherness does not often come from far away. It is found in the neighbourhood, partly in the society and community to which we belong. Someone from a rival fan camp, someone on an opposing political-ideological spectrum, someone of extremely different material possibilities or understanding of sexual orientation and gender affiliation is a representative of the otherness which in the most radical forms often becomes a source of collective and individual fears.”
In a 2016 interview by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic, then-President Barack Obama cited othering as the primary source of most of the world’s conflict: “tribe - us/them, a hostility toward the unfamiliar or unknown.” It’s not hard to see this reality reflected in even a cursory reading of human history; anywhere diversity has been lacking, othering has flourished, to the detriment at all.
Humanists, whose focus is persistently fixed on a positive human future, understandably see othering as a significant barrier to be addressed in progressing toward that future. The embrace and tireless nourishing of diversity everywhere is essential to tearing down that barrier.
The Humanist Stance on Diversity
The humanist commitment to diversity is included in its manifesto:
“Humanists are concerned for the well-being of all, are committed to diversity, and respect those of differing yet humane views. We work to uphold the equal enjoyment of human rights and civil liberties in an open, secular society and maintain it is a civic duty to participate in the democratic process and a planetary duty to protect nature’s integrity, diversity, and beauty in a secure, sustainable manner.” (Humanist Manifesto III, 1993)
More than just a value statement, that commitment surfaces in the agendas of specific groups. There is a humanist Statement on Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion that says
“Pursuing justice, equity, diversity and inclusion is a moral imperative for the American Humanist Association (AHA), and integral to our work as advocates. Humanist values require the affirmation of the inherent dignity of every human being, as well as the related need to create a society where all can flourish and become one’s best self.” (American Humanist Association)
which is in turn operationalized by The Humanist Society as follows:
We will foster and sustain an environment of inclusion, equity, and diversity through training, recruitment, and peer support.
We will challenge long held opinions and assumptions and act in order to change them.
We will evaluate and rectify organizational structures, policies, and practices that cause differential impact and limit access and opportunities for all chaplains, celebrants, and those they serve
We will foster a culture of respect and inclusion that values the experiences and perspectives of all of our chaplains, celebrants, and those they serve
We will address intergroup disparities in representation and retention through consistent dialogue and training, and intentional efforts to make our environment welcoming to individuals from underrepresented groups.
We will support and advance a diverse collective and make intentional efforts to recruit individuals from underrepresented groups.
We will provide resources and programs to promote individuals that enhance our ability to reach our goals of diversity, inclusion, and equity.
Humanism supports research in social science, including the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, which pursues “authentic humanistic research and scholarship, by definition, must reflect the vast diversity of human experiences, identities, and relationships (considering the whole person within contexts).”
So great is the humanist commitment to diversity that the global community of humanists itself is wildly diverse, making it notably distinct from other large groups, such as religions or political parties, which tend to possess far less diverse and far more like-minded constituents.
“Humanists are fairly diverse, as humanist ideas have arisen independently in many places at many different times,” according to an essay on Re:Online. “There are humanist groups and organisations all over the world."
Consequently, “Humanists sometimes worry that humanism lacks a clear ‘identity’. For the non-religious, it is not always easy to find a group identity, but many humanists are satisfied by their belief in human solidarity and/or the concept of ‘multiple identities’...”
Roddenberry’s IDIC
In the third season of the original series, the story is famously told that Roddenberry, who had spun up a side business selling Trek memorabilia, created a Vulcan medallion, to be worn on a necklace – the “IDIC”, which stands for “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations”. Leonard Nimoy was to wear the medallion in an upcoming episode, “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” The idea was to create a new Trek artifact that he could sell through the mail, and putting it in an episode was basically free advertising.
Nimoy and Shatner both objected. This was blatant opportunism, Roddenberry exploiting the show for personal gain.
Nimoy: “Certainly, I was all in favor of the philosophy behind the IDIC,” he wrote in his memoir I Am Spock, “but not the fact that Gene wanted me to wear the medallion because he wanted to sell them through his mail-order business, Lincoln Enterprises. Where the scene had been problematic creatively for me, it now was problematic ethically.
“Although I didn’t appreciate Spock being turned into a billboard , I at least felt that the IDIC idea had more value than the content of the original scene.”
Shatner, in his Star Trek Memories: “I called [producer] Fred [Freiberger] down to the set, asking him, ‘What this “IDIC” thing all about?’ I knew that Lincoln Enterprises would soon be selling these things, and there was no way I was going to muck up a perfectly good story line just so we could include Gene’s rather thinly veiled commercial.”
The scene was rewritten, with the explanation of the idea behind the medallion now being Nimoy’s job. Since that idea appealed to him, even if the scene itself did not, he gracefully compromised – and now we have the IDIC concept to celebrate as a core principle of Trek, memorabilia marketing aside.
Was Roddenberry being opportunistic? Yes. He himself, to his credit, didn't even try to pretend otherwise. But does the conflict diminish in any way Trek’s obvious, pervasive and consistent embrace of IDIC? Not at all.
In fact, Roddenberry went out of his way to tie our potential to achieve the future he foretold very firmly to the embrace of diversity.
“Star Trek was an attempt to say humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate but take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in lifeforms.”
Our successful transition to the stars, he argued tirelessly, is inevitably dependent upon our achieving exactly the embrace of diversity that the IDIC celebrates:
“Diversity contains as many treasures as those waiting for us on other worlds,” he said. “We will find it impossible to fear diversity and to enter the future at the same time.”
And this:
“If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences, to take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind, here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there.”
Humanist Diversity and Inclusion, Trek-style
The diversity of Trek changed both television and science fiction, as Roddenberry’s advocacy of humanism brought it to the fore. Maintaining that commitment through more than five decades, a dozen spin-off series and 13 feature films, it has adapted to the times, manifesting differently in each.
“Inclusiveness has always been at the core of Star Trek.,” wrote Swapna Krisha on www.superculture.com. “And in fulfilling Roddenberry’s vision, each series of the show has been quietly revolutionary. It’s fundamental to what Star Trek is as a franchise.
“But in the 1960s, diversity meant something very different than what it does today. And that’s what is so incredible about this franchise, and why it’s currently experiencing another cultural renaissance: It’s dynamic. It’s always been an allegory, helping us grapple with our imperfect world by showing us a kind of utopia that we can strive for. Star Trek has always shown us what we are capable of - a vision of a better, kinder future. And as the years pass, it changes and reinvents itself to stay relevant.”
This constant renewal of its diversity theme has kept Trek in a position of leadership among its peers, while positioning it as a touchstone for the humanism it so capably models.
“The amount of positive representation Discovery and Star Trek’s other new shows have included has put the franchise far out in front of any other modern sci-fi in terms of diversity,” wrote Dana Hanson of Screenrant. “When compared to movie franchises like Star Wars or the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Trek shows them both up time and again.”
And accusations that the ethnic diversity of the original series amounted to hollow tokenism have fallen away from the franchise as a whole.
“Besides pushing cultural boundaries, Star Trek has portrayed people of color not as tokens, but as complex characters with relationships,” wrote Nancy Wang Yuen on HuffPost. “The father-son relationship of Benjamin and Jake Sisko (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) and Keiko O’Brien’s interracial family (Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) are seldom portrayed on television.”
The presentation of diversity on the bridge of the original Enterprise did more than break social and cultural ground; it brought to the forefront the dreams of many that humanity pursue that future literally.
“For all the positives and problems within the original series -- reflecting as they do the wider positives and problems of the liberal American left - Star Trek's conflicting representations of race, gender and politics nonetheless stuck in cultural memory,” wrote Katrina Ojaste in “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations: Star Trek, the Sixties & the American Left”. “Characters such as Uhura, Sulu and Chekov are remembered not as somewhat problematic representations of an idealized future but as real, ground-breaking figures of early television. Roddenberry's future, though imperfect, became the vision that others wanted to see come true. Much of today's television criticism relies on issues of representation, and any show that dares present an image of the future that does not reflect the realities and diversities of today is not destined for long-term success. This does not necessarily mean that the Star Trek of the sixties no longer reflects the future we want to see: of all the many series in the franchise, it was the original 1960s one that has been revived recently.”
Nichelle Nichols, who earned the endorsement of Martin Luther King, Jr. with her portrayal of the black, female communications officer Nyota Uhura on the original series, went on in the Seventies to become a spokesperson for NASA, recruiting women and minority members into the space program. Among those she brought in were Sally Ride, the first American female astronaut; Col Guion Bluford, the first black astronaut; Judith Resnik and Ron McNair. Astronaut Mae Jemison, who is both female and black, not only cited Nichols as her inspiration, but poignantly went on to appear on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
This very active, very humanist pursuit of diversity was remembered and celebrated by NASA in 2021, when it observed Gene Roddenberry’s 100th birthday with a special event, “Celebrating Gene Roddenberry: Star Trek’s Bridge and NASA”. Gene’s son Rod, now an executive producer in the new Star Trek franchise, was a featured panelist.
In an interview with Variety, the younger Roddenberry reiterated Trek’s humanist commitment.
“If we all do the same thing every day, we don't grow, we don't evolve, we don't learn anything. And so it is the diversity in everything, whether it's something outside, different trees, different looking people. But more importantly, it's the difference in idea. The Enterprise and the crew weren't out exploring the galaxy, looking just for weird looking aliens. They were for species that looked at the universe in a different way than we did.
“Because up to that point, humanity had finally come together and realized that it's our diversity that makes us special. We realized working together, we can do so much more. And so now we were trying to find people who looked at the universe in a different way, because we knew that we could grow and evolve by hearing something we'd never heard before. And whether we agreed with it or not, it was the hearing of that, the analyzing of it and the taking pieces out of it that we agreed with and incorporating into our own that allowed us to grow.”
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