: Re: In modern Sci-Fi/Fantasy, does real world racism need to be addressed? I have read through a lot of questions regarding questions of a similar nature, but all of the questions I looked at involved

@Karen856

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It's not necessary at all.

A little over 50 years ago, Gene Roddenberry produced Star Trek. Of the main cast members, two were very much White Americans, one was black, one was Scottish, one was Russian (in the middle of the Cold War!), one was Japanese, and one was non-human, and this was all treated as perfectly normal and never remarked upon in-universe. And it became a massive success, spawning one of the biggest franchises of all time.

A little over 25 years ago, Haim Saban & co produced Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. Of the five Rangers, three were white, one was black, one was Vietnamese, and partway through the first season they introduced Tommy, the Sixth Ranger, who was later explained to be Native American. These characters were portrayed as not only teammates but friends, people who always hung out together even for civilian activities, and being of different races from each other never mattered. About the closest anyone ever came to mentioning race as being something significant in any way was when Tommy's story arc involved a Native American spirit quest, and one point when introducing a new Ranger, an asian girl, she's shown using karate to fight off a monster. Someone asks her where she learned that, and she says "my ancestors invented it!" That's about as far as the show ever went in acknowledging race at all; I can't think of a single time throughout the franchise when anyone's been hated or discriminated against because of their ancestry or the color of their skin. And it was a massive success, spawning another one of the biggest franchises of all time.

There are other examples, but those are ones that should be familiar to pretty much everyone to one degree or another. They show that it's perfectly possible to have a story with a multi-racial cast, without the story caring about their races, and have it turn out well. If you don't want to talk about racism, don't write a story about racism. Just write a good story, and people will enjoy it.

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