Quote:
Originally Posted by Destined_Fate
Society decides what is and isn't racist and in TE they don't consider those things racist while in RL our society would see them as racist.
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No, that's where you're making your mistake. Racism is an
objective question: "Does a person believe one race is superior to a different race?" It's a yes or no question. Social and cultural background, or context, have nothing to do with it.
Society does not determine if racism
exists. It only can determine
whether racism is seen as a bad thing by that society. This does not change whether the society is real or fictional. Picking an example out of the air, in
Dragon Age there are racist attitudes in human society against elves. In real life, during WWII there was nationalism against Germans and Japanese (combined with racism against the Japanese). Society at that time said it was fine to act that way. Now, society says that we were wrong back then to have those attitudes. Note also that it's completely possible that in TE, perhaps the people of that world (if they haven't been nommed up by BETA by then) will look back at 2001 and say "Man, we were a bunch of racist dicks back then, weren't we?" Heck, the character development we're seeing with Yuuya right here and now in this episode is to begin to work past his anti-Japanese prejudice (at least as far as to begin to value Japanese TSFs).
Those are value judgments--right and wrong, good and evil--and they fluctuate over time. But you cannot say that society can determine that bigotry and prejudice don't exist just because the society as a whole happens to approve of them.
Edit: With specific reference to Goose's ninja post, it's further only to be expected that we as individuals watching the show will decide that certain elements of the things depicted there are good or bad depending on what
we believe as people. If the ethics depicted by the show are out of whack with what we think, we're justified in saying so and explaining why.